Will Nuclear Fusion Soon Be the “Norm?”

When I was but a wide-eyed whelp, barely old enough to possess a bank account or a functioning frontal cortex, I devoured popular science magazines with the zeal of a child convinced the future would be paved in chrome and powered by starlight. Chief among the tantalizing promises that lit up my imagination was nuclear fusion—the holy grail of energy, so bountiful it would be too cheap to meter, a phrase now worthy of being etched in satire above every failed prototype. That was nearly half a century ago, when fusion was allegedly just 20 or 30 years away. Fast forward twice that span, and we’re still poking plasma with glorified toasters, not even remotely close. Turns out, physics is stubbornly indifferent to virtue-signalling and immune to the moral pantomimes of ideological street theatre. A hard problem remains a hard bastard, no matter how loudly the mob chants for miracles. 

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