I cannot find it via google (so perhaps I'm remembering it wrong), but DoE or NSF created in the seventies - as part of some larger report - what I thought was a fairly well known chart guesstimating the time needed to develop working fusion energy generation, based on how much money was spent on the endeavor. The idea being that to do it relatively quickly we'd have to spend a pretty extravagant amount of money on research and development, and as the amount of money spent decreased the timeline extended further into the future.
The unintended joke was/is that the U.S. has never spent anywhere close to the amount money the DoE estimated was needed to develop fusion power, so we haven't even tested the accuracy of the chart.
Here is the chart. I wouldn't call $3B/year in 2012 dollars an extravagant amount of spending for a program, which is the level the authors call "moderate."
Thanks. I'll have to brush up on the details of this report, it's been a while.
I read recently that in total, the US has spent about $50 billion dollars on fusion energy generation research over the years. Regardless of the chart's usefulness, that puts us in the "fusion never" realm of the chart.
The unintended joke was/is that the U.S. has never spent anywhere close to the amount money the DoE estimated was needed to develop fusion power, so we haven't even tested the accuracy of the chart.