Re: All aboard the next part of the gravy train trip
The biggest problem with fusion is that every time there's a setback, funding gets cut
This is bleeding edge discovery, almost pure physics. Each "failure" - isn't. It's invariably a new discovery which opens up more possibilities and questions (but backers only interested in $$$ don't see it that way)
Until relatively recently Fusion has been funded at a a"fusion-never" level. It was the EU and China who kicked it back into high gear
It's WORTH pursuing. It's also WORTH noting that any commercial outfit which does so is virtually guaranteed to be throwing money into a black hole - but then again so were the 6 different teams chasing the Transistor after that was proven to be theoretically possible by Heisenberg in the 1920s - and despite AT&T gett8ing there first with the point contact device it was the thin film transistor that Philips demonstrated 6 weeks later which ended up being the basis for virtually all modern electronics
Fusion will probably work eventually, once (as Edison famously pointed out) all the methods which don't work are eliminated. In the meantime the research has given us a whole new bunch of knowledge about subatomic physics we didn't previously have along with VAST experience in handling and controlling HOT plasmas (which will be highly valuable for spaceflight)
Molten Salt is a stepping stone to the future - and it should be noted that in 1961 light water technology was regarded by nuclear scientists as a very temporary stepping stone along the way due to its many drawbacks. If any popped up today they'd be asked why the hell we're still using it (and where's their flying car?)
Thorium has a bunch of benefits over uranium - mostly that it gets away from the weapons cycle(*), but thorium is a really easy fuel to obtain (watse product of raw earth mining) and doesn't need enrichment.
Seaborg et al tried to weaponise thorium and failed every time. U233 bombs would be really cheap if they worked, but there are fundamental reasons it can't happen and why enriching natural uranium (actually, depleting it to produce very pure plutonium to make bombs - enriched uranium is a waste product of weaponsmaking) is always going to be vastly more economic for military systems than other processes. The problem is that military systems have been allowed to exert total control over the nuclear cycle (tail wagging the dog) instead of being muzzled hard.