The Glade 4.0

Nobody would be using electric batteries. Hydrogen fuel cells are stable, provide a competitive mass-to-power ratio with carbon combustion, and would be cheap to manufacture if we had the electricity to separate hydrogen from water. Electric cars could already be run entirely on Hydrogen Fuel Cells, and they'd have a longer range before they need to pull into a service station to quickly swap cells than current cars do with a tank full of gas.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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Using fusion to make hydrogen from sources other than fossil fuels (i.e. water) for fuel cells means there's another conversion process (electrolysis, thermolysis etc.) to manufacture hydrogen. Yes, there is a new way to generate hydrogen, but it is also limited by the abundance of its own fuel source. Any realized fusion reactor design is not implicative of instantaneous, unlimited electricity or heat for any purpose as you suggest.

Batteries have the advantage of fuel distribution systems already existing. It's likely transmission systems would not be able to handle the demand of an entirely battery powered vehicle fleet in the United States (or any developed country for that matter) in their current state but it's still at an advantage to HFCs as even if batteries need to be shipped by vehicle because it can still be augmented by the existing transmission system. Even a decentralized HFC production model would require significant up-front construction costs, including the up scaling up the current transmission networks over even what batteries would demand, as the process of electrolysis and hydrogen discharge consumes more energy than simply charging and discharging batteries.

Eventually, HFC may be be fuel storage unit of choice, but not without massive funding for development and construction to support it. So contrary to what you're suggesting, batteries will indeed play a part in the coming decades, and a significant one at that.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

I didn't say it would happen overnight. We'd be looking at a decade to see it become commonplace, and at least two decades to completely replace fossil fuels.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

There are reactor designs that can run on thorium or even natural uranium that doesn't need to be enriched at all. Yes, these have some problems that need to be addressed but when making a comparison to fusion power where we don't even know for sure if it works at all yet, let alone how much it's going to cost if it does, I don't think it's a stretch to include them.

The latest generation of nuclear plants are also designed such that they shut down if they overheat. It's not some kind of active system that detects this and shuts them down either, the way they're built makes it impossible for them to remain critical if the temperature is too high.

You do realize that Rafael works on power plants, specifically nuclear ones? I'm pretty sure these sorts of reactors are not exactly news to him, so if he wants to know where you got your information, that's probably a subtle hint that you're misinformed.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Nor did I imply batteries would be in use predominantly, forever.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

News flash: all fission plants are designed to shutdown, automatically by control and by passive design (negative feedback reactivity), when they breach certain operating parameters. All current light water reactors are designed around negative moderator coefficient primary coolants.

Metal cooled fast breeder reactors of which you speak aren't some special panacea to the possibility of core meltdown. The same limiting faulted conditions that plague Gen 2 and 3 reactors are share with them. A loss of coolant during a seismic event, loss of auxiliary power, or both could still cause core damage leading to an offsite release.

_________________
"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

I'm still waiting to hear about this FBR that achieves critical mass with unenriched fuel, when all fast reactor designs require enrichment far beyond what light water reactors need because they aren't designed to thermalize decay neutrons, which also cannot experience core damage.

_________________
"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones