Fusion has been a staple of science fiction for decades, powering everything from starships to Terminators to Marty McFly’s DeLorean. The technology promises unlimited energy with zero carbon dioxide emissions, if it can be mastered. The US National Ignition Facility (NIF) grabbed headlines in December with their latest breakthrough, and after decades of slow progress, commercial developers are racing to get a fusion reactor to market by 2030. Is fusion here at last, or is it, as cynics say, “the power source of the future, and always will be”?
Existing nuclear reactors, and atomic bombs, work by nuclear
