It will be quite difficult to make fusion cheaper than present day fission. Fusion reactors are new so significant research work will need to be done. There are difficult engineering challenges related to breeding fuel, which involves moving hot, radioactive, and water reactive molten lithium around. Fusion reactors need to be built to high tolerances and will need to be refurbished occasionally due to radiation/heat and in the case of NIF style fusion, explosion damage.
And one still has to deal with many of the same radiation challenges fission plants must deal with. A large quantity or radioactive tritium must be kept on site and neutrons from the fusion reaction will make the reactor radioactive. In fact, fusion produces more neutrons than fission per unit energy. Even so called 'aneutronic' fusion would have side reactions which would produce quite a lot of neutrons.
Fusion is a lot more complicated than using special rocks to boil water.
The main advantage of fusion is a political one. It politically nigh impossible to build a fission reactor in a suburban industrial park, but Commonwealth Fusion Systems is doing exactly that with a fusion reactor[0]. And there is also the slim possibility this type of reactor could explode. Said reactor uses superconducting magnets which store a lot of energy and if something goes wrong, it would be possible for them to release that energy fast.
But, the NRC hasn't made laws for regulating fusion power yet, so they are able to do this.
Hopefully, both. Even if fusion works extremely well, fission should find niches. Fission power is likely to remain more power dense than fusion for a while, so in situations where one cares about weight and size it is better than fusion.
> However, the capital costs & construction time for Fusion Energy should theoretically be much lower than nuclear reactors.
Maybe then current Gen3+ reactors.
But there is no way they will win economically against GenIV Fission reactors. That are already solving most of the issues with Gen3+ reactors.
They already are much smaller, and therefore much lower CapX. Fuel cost are even cheaper because of better utilization of the fuel. Modern plants operating cost are also less because they are even more automated and need to be refueled less.
There is no practical way fusion can compete in my opinion.
I think the biggest reason nuclear energy stopped being built is it takes too long to get political wins.
NuScale and other SMNRs might be able to help with that.
However, the capital costs & construction time for Fusion Energy should theoretically be much lower than nuclear reactors.
But are we too far away from it being a reality that anyone is predicting how much?