Isn't that to be expected during proof-of-concept builds? Once you can show that it's actually possible, you can start optimizing the process.
Fusion could be a super breakthrough, even if it never gets super cheap and "we power the world by doing this one weird trick and all we need is one building". Provides reliable energy 24/7, is safe to use (as in no melt-down potential that people would be scared about) and does neither produce co2 nor blast coal dust particles all over the world.
I'm sure we could do the same with nuclear power, but it's politically impossible in many countries, because the name short-circuits people's minds.
> Provides reliable energy 24/7, is safe to use (as in no melt-down potential that people would be scared about) and does neither produce co2 nor blast coal dust particles all over the world.
None of this is really plausible for any fusion plant, especially in the early phase. The first plants will likely be plagued by expensive time consuming periodic maintenance. They will be prone to catastrophic failures if plasma containment fails, easily killing everyone in or near the plant. They will be constantly spewing radioactive tritium. They will require fission plants to produce new tritium. They will require rare materials to create the superconducting magnets and others.
>> if plasma containment fails, easily killing everyone in or near the plant.
That couldn't be further from the truth. "Magnetic containment" doesn't mean the magnets are holding in the reaction. The magnets are compressing/heating everything to start and sustain the reaction. Any containment failure will cause the reaction to stop instantly. Letting the plasma touch anything solid, any metal/wood/ceramic, would be like throwing a bucket of ice water on a burning candle.
The far more dangerous aspects of this project are the same any any large industrial process: compressed gasses in big tanks. High power electrical lines. Fire. Confined spaces. Gas leaks resulting oxygen displacement. Normal industrial only dangerous to those persons inside the building. But I wouldn't want to have any metal fillings too close to those magnets when they power up. At 20 teslas they might start moving though your head like a bullet.
I exaggerated with "anyone near the plant", but accidentally allowing 800 cubic meters of radioactive plasma/gas starting at 150 million degrees to suddenly expand would certainly hurt any human being it comes into contact with.
Hopefully it wouldn't actually be that hard to construct a reinforced concrete shield around the actual reactor to prevent an explosion of the high temp, high pressure, radioactive material from reaching too far into the facility.
The reactor and all its complex components would almost certainly be utterly destroyed, so even if no human victims are made, the money will just have to be written off.
The dangerous thing in the ARC reactor is not the plasma; it's the magnets (most of the mass of the reactor is the steel supports needed to constrain the stored energy) and the titanium hydride neutron shield for the magnets. This shielding is close to the molten salt; at the temperature of that salt TiH2 fully decomposes, releasing its hydrogen gas. There's a lot of hydrogen there.
Sure, I'm not claiming that they'll be there next year (or possibly ever). If the predictions/promises/whatever you might want to call it, hold true, they'd be great, and it's not totally crazy like the perpetual motion people.
If not, then we've spent a few billions and probably just learned a lot of interesting stuff and improved a bunch of scientific areas.
It stops being plasma, but it keeps being hundreds of cubic meters of hot gas at about ten times the temperature of the (core of) the sun. It's low by mass, but it would still be extremely dangerous, and radioactive.
Catastrophic failures won't kill anyone near the plant, but when the expensive radioactive fusion reactors breaks themselves and can't be easily (or at all) repaired, it could well kill interest in fusion reactors.
I am reminded of what they did at Hanford when installing the facilities where spent fuel would be processed to extract plutonium: to show that the machinery in the hot cells could be repaired with remote control manipulators, they had the workers install that machinery with the manipulators. I'll believe a tokamak can be repaired remotely when the build one the same way.
Fusion could be a super breakthrough, even if it never gets super cheap and "we power the world by doing this one weird trick and all we need is one building". Provides reliable energy 24/7, is safe to use (as in no melt-down potential that people would be scared about) and does neither produce co2 nor blast coal dust particles all over the world.
I'm sure we could do the same with nuclear power, but it's politically impossible in many countries, because the name short-circuits people's minds.