[hobscoop]

It's not plausible that even fusion power plants would make energy 'basically free'.

1) Fusion plants still require site infrastructure, power conversion technology, waste heat removal, and (though not for this particular concept) steam generators (or other fluid cycle generators). These have significant capital costs but finite lifetimes. You're right that the variable cost of energy is pretty low, probably comparable to current fission plants, but that's still more expensive than the variable cost of electricity from solar and wind.

2) The price of electrical transmission and distribution starts to become important (I forget what the typical cost of that today is, but it's a few cents/kWh.) This doesn't matter if you can put a small power plant at your local industrial park though.

3) There's a big difference between $0.05/kWh, $0.02/kWh, $0.01/kWh, and $0.005/kWh, and then a huge difference to 'true zero'. This is because there's probably lots of industrial processes that we might like to do if electricity and heat were cheaper than it is today, each becoming reasonable at a certain price. There could be a large market at each price floor 'step'.

4) Yeah, the fuel is abundant, which is good, but fuel costs are not significant drivers of the cost of fission.

While not free, I'd like to think that fusion will help make a world with energy much cheaper than the world without fusion.