Germany’s Merz: Nuclear fusion to make wind power obsolete – Chancellor Friedrich Merz claimed nuclear fusion would introduce electricity so cheap that it would replace wind power within thirty years.
Germany’s Merz: Nuclear fusion to make wind power obsolete – Chancellor Friedrich Merz claimed nuclear fusion would introduce electricity so cheap that it would replace wind power within thirty years.
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From the article
The participants in this week’s [North Sea Summit](https://balkangreenenergynews.com/north-seas-region-signs-landmark-offshore-wind-deal/) in Hamburg committed to building 15 GW of offshore wind per year over 2031-2040. Country leaders including German Chancellor Friedrich Merz confirmed the goal of 300 GW on the so-called North Seas by 2050. At the same time, he apparently believes that wind turbines will begin to be dismantled much sooner!
Wind power is a “transitional technology” and it will be around for “ten, twenty, maybe thirty years,” Merz claimed, as quoted by [Bild.](https://www.bild.de/politik/inland/merz-windenergie-ist-nur-uebergangstechnologie-6977c6f7fe9fcdf90e7ca672) He expressed confidence that Germany would put the world’s first fusion reactor online and estimated it would make electricity so cheap that no other generation methods would be needed.
Another day, another person bragging about fusion, a technology that still doesn’t exist. Maybe wait until you can sustain a reaction before claiming it’s the new standard.
The actual turbines themselves will be obsolete but the infrastructure that go along with them will be used by the replacement technology so it’s not a waste of time.
“In 5 years, any time now, soon, just wait.”
‘Facts’ about fusion for the last 5 decades.
Typical right-wing rhetoric. “Nothing we do today will have any consequences because we solve the problem later with this nonexisting technology instead of preventing the problem by means we have available today.”
I don’t think anyone will be upset with cheap energy, even if it means windmills go obsolete. If that’s the path you are willing to dedicate billions on, do it. Go wild. As long as the light at the end of the tunnel is real and tenable.
Even if this was true, fusion will still be expensive.
“Viable fusion is only 30 years away and always will be”
Sure.
One issue though. The AI companies claimed they will solve our future problem, ALL OF THEM, but will need all the fusion power to do that.
So no cheap energy for us. 🙂
Also, for more serious note. Even in fusion was worked out tomorrow. and we started designing powerplants next day…
We will need about 100 years to replace current sources. That is simple economics of how much a GW of fusionm power plant would cost, and how much money/resources we have.
And it is not like everyone would JUMP INTO building them, especially when their product – electricity – is expected to be so cheap. Where is ROI?
so 100-150 years
This guy…
Maybe it will, in decades. But talking about this under current circumstances in this way is just bonkers. Focus on the things that are possible now, and maximize public benefit. The agenda should be clear: max out regen and battery storage. WIN.
Is this nuclear fusion in the room with us now, Friedrich?
He Is not wrong per sé, but nuclear fusion is still far away. Good to keep investing in it.
Too many people are under the impression that nuclear fusion energy will basically be free. You seriously think the most complex form of energy production we have ever created will not require huge amounts of capital to be invested and probably some very highly skilled people to operate it? Nuclear fission is so expensive that it doesn’t make economic sense to operate it without some form of government subsidies. And it’s not because the fuel is so expensive.
Some people hate wind turbines. You can see windmills everywhere, so it’s easy to put your hate on it. Those people usually also hate the green party, veganism, lgbtq rights, and electric cars. Merz wants them to vote for his conservative party, so he has to talk shit. Same lame dumb story as everywhere.
I see videos about fusion progress all the time, and there is progress, but no one has actually made it commercially viable yet. Fusion has been a “in 10 years” thing for like 50 years, so don’t hold your breath, even if they “seem” almost there. However, I’m still in support of fission reactors instead of wind, far less environmental impact if you really look into it.
“We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles”
-Thomas Edison in 1880.
Fusion may be cheap, but wind is actually free. Zero. Nada. Nothing.
That’s hard to beat.
How is it going to make it cheap?
What’s the cost of building a working reactor that can output usable power? We don’t know because we don’t have any designs
What’s the cost of maintenance bearing in mind the high temperatures involved, neutron bombardment and radiation created? We don’t know
Reactors will create some low level radioactive materials. How much will it cost to deal with these?
Reactors will likely need highly trained staff to build and operate them. How long will the training of enough people take?
Once we know the cost of building, staff training, maintenance and disposal, will it be cheaper than building the equivalent renewables/storage? We don’t know but it’s unlikely
How are you going to solve the tritium breeding problem and how long will it take to breed enough for a large rollout of fusion?
I’m pro fusion research but it isn’t going to turn into a viable product in 30 years. Possibly never on earth.
He’s right. Just like Elon Musk made high speed rail obsolete in California by installing the hyperloop.
‘too cheap to meter’- where have I heard that before?
There’s a documentary on Netflix called “Dark” if you want to know what happened next. And, for that matter, before.
“would replace wind power within 30 years…”
And when’s the actual building of working fusion plants going to begin, in another thirty years?
They’ll do anything to discredit renewables.. even fantasize about none existing technology…
Dear Fotzenfritz Merz. You are the chancellor of Germany. It is your move to make at least this single correct decision and invest a lot more into fusion, so perhaps Germany could indeed develop this technology first and regain a leading position in the world from that – and solve climate change en passant.
“Replaces” implies the existing turbines that exist then, including new ones, would be removed. But why would you throw away existing infrastructure?
I don’t believe it. Wind simple. Fusion enormously complex.
While everyone here is some what rightfully skeptical on the claim of Nuclear Fusion being X years away, I will point out that Germany is in fact working on a novel Fusion reactor design.
‘Conventional’ Fusion reactors fall under the Tokomak category, which is effectively a giant toroid (donut). One of the issues with Tokomaks is the uneven magnetic field density at the inner vs outer radii of the toroid, leading to particles effectively escaping the magnetic field, hitting the wall, and losing energy.
Germany’s approach is called a Stellerator, in which magnets are shaped in such a way so as to provide a uniform magnetic field throughout the reactor. This ensures that particles don’t escape confinement quite as easily as they do in a Tokomak type reactor. Germany’s current research fusion reactor is called the [Wendelstein 7-X](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X), and I believe it to be the most feasible approach to Fusion currently.
We are trying to replace fission and coal. Why did you not state that instead of calling out wind power which is way cleaner than fusion will ever be? Did the coal and nuclear lobby pay you too much to adress these shitstains?
I absolutely believe that Fusion is really archievable. We never invested seriously in it (like we did with Nuclear or even the research that went into renewables) so with a big push, it should really be no more than 10 years for grid working plants to start being build. But, and that’s a big but, I seriously doubt that they can be economically compared to Wind Turbines. If you look at price per kw/h, Wind outclassed everything and every thermal plant by a wide margin. Currently we have a bit of a storage problem, but in 10 years it seems very likely that Wind + Battery (you need way less capacity than with solar since it is very unlikely there is no Wind over several days at sea, for example) is cheaper than any thermal plant. And any new thermal plant would be calculated over 20-40 years, so in reality it must compete with Wind+Solar over that timespan. So, while probably technologically feasible, any concept of new thermal plants just looses on the economic side. So government intervention in those fields will inevitable drive energy prices up, not down.
Scientists still have to solve the tritium problem (https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/commentary/blog/tritium-a-few-kilograms-can-make-or-break-nuclear-fusion/)
tl;dr – only about 25 kg of tritium currently exists, and a typical reactor would need 55 kg per year.
Not all fusion is the same. Costs will depend on those types that actually work. For example, the laser confinement and big tokamaks are fine for research but have severe limitations that (most probably) prevent them ever from making power economically. Other more compact approaches might have a shot at economic power, but await engineering details yet to be resolved.
Weird to focus on wind so much when solar seems to be winning already: [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?country=~DEU](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?country=~DEU)
Yea sure, but since dimensional folding flux reactors and quantum time travel interchanges will make simple fusion reactors obsolete in less than 50 years we might as well just skip right over fusion entirely.
Absolute nonsense, both what I said and what he said.
Wasn’t this promised with nuclear fission back when the first commercial reactors were going online in the 1950s?
I remember 30 years ago this day was only 20 years away.
As whoever is saying this would be dead and buried by then. Wind power is right now
Pipe dream fusion is nowhere even near our solar system
how much extra heat the fusion reactors make ? i’m not sure all the heat it generates is converted to electricity .
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Nice! Lets stop building wind power when fusion is an actual reality, not something that’s always 20 years away as it has been for the last 70.