Suspending failure: temporalities, ontologies, and gigantism in fusion energy development

Abstract

Tracing the history of terrestrial fusion energy to a giant multinational experimental fusion facility under construction reveals a series of consequential failures, re-evaluations of once defunct designs, but also persistence. To account for how this vast enterprise, dogged by failure, endures, I suggest that different ontological narratives re-orientate the enterprise both temporally and vis-à-vis different forms and valences of failure. Thus the rhetoric of mission-driven project vies with that of open-ended, present-focused experiment: the former is positioned as the crucial solution to the threat of climate change; the latter ‘bakes in’ virtuous failure as integral to creative practice. Visionary promise moves to a focus on the meanwhile. Finally, the sheer unfurling size to which attention is constantly drawn offers a disorientating spectacle, denying perspective or closure and acting to suspend judgements of failure.