Nuclear Fusion: Electrical Energy for the Future or Just Another Boondoggle?
In the opening months of 2018, there was a spate of news stories pronouncing a coming victory in the effort to achieve nuclear fusion — an unlimited, pollution-free energy source, the same source of energy that powers the sun.
The U.K. Guardian article entitled “Nuclear fusion on brink of being realised, say MIT scientists” was typical of the tone of the stories, with its subtitle reading, “Carbon-free fusion power could be ‘on the grid in 15 years.’” The article quickly sums up the benefits of fusion and the biggest hurdles standing in the way of producing it:
Fusion works on the basic concept of forging lighter elements together to form heavier ones. When hydrogen atoms are squeezed hard enough, they fuse together to make helium, liberating vast amounts of energy in the process.
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