alt Hacker NewsGeothermal is fission, and wind, solar, and batteries are fusion at a distance. In both cases, the failure scenarios are benign vs traditional fission generation. It's fine to keep striving for fusion humans control, but the problem (global electrification and transition to low carbon generation) is already solved with the tech we have today. It took the world 68 years to achieve the first 1TW of solar PV. The next 1TW took 2 years. Globally, ~760GW of solar PV is deployed per year (as of this comment), and will at some point hit ~1TW/year of deployment between now and 2030.
Geothermal is a great fit for dispatchable power to replace coal and fossil gas today (where able); batteries are almost cheaper than the cost to ship them, but geothermal would also help solve for seasonal deltas in demand vs supply ("diurnal storage").
https://reneweconomy.com.au/it-took-68-years-for-the-world-t...
https://ember-energy.org/data/2030-global-renewable-target-t...
I also love geothermal for district heating in latitudes that call for it; flooded legacy mines appear to be a potential solution for that use case.
Flooded UK coalmines could provide low-carbon cheap heat 'for generations' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45860049 - November 2025
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Look at Electricity Maps and realize that France is the only large industrial country where electricity generation is permanently carbon-free and cheap.
https://particulier.edf.fr/content/dam/2-Actifs/Documents/Of...
Failure scenario in modern fission reactors is also benign. Reactors are designed to lock down to prevent any leaks.
We deploy solar PV capacity, this doesn't mean we actually get that much power from the deployments. Nuclear fission provides reliable, baseload power, and doesn't require huge battery arrays to compensate for the sun setting or winds calming.