Going to overextend myself here.
“Cold” fusion is real. But like solar, not economically viable for large scale power generation.
Functional “hot” fusion changes the world.
It seems that every article I've read on fusion since I was a teenager has said we're 20 years away from fusion.
Fusion at the solar center proceeds very slowly, as is evident from the several billion year lifetime of the sun. The sun's break-even time is tens of millions of years, corresponding to pre-nuclear-physics estimates of its lifetime, based on gravitational energy only.
Soooo, to break even in a few nanoseconds, one must naturally far exceed the pressure and temperature at the center of the sun.
... tell me where I'm wrong, and I'll listen.
“In our new review article, we report that the NIF has met many of the requirements believed necessary to achieve ignition—sufficient X-ray intensity in the hohlraum, accurate energy delivery to the target and desired levels of compression—but that at least one major hurdle remains to be overcome, the premature breaking apart of the capsule.”
Capsules? You’re working with capsules? You need dylithium crystals in a plasma containment system! Have you even invented transparent aluminum yet?
The purpose of the NIF is to do nuclear weapons related testing and research. These stories about power production are a misdirection.
They will have it perfected in 30 years....
They just need more funding from fed gov....
Now the “Oak Ridge Boys” had a working LFTR reactor in the late 1960’s but we just sat on that and soon the Chinese will be selling LFTRs back to us....
Keep funding the Hot Fusion boondoggle while we have a viable alternative with less engineering problems than current nuclear reactors...