Update on Fusion Power

Following this for years.  Another decade needed?   In IEEE Spectrum, an update on progress.

ITER Celebrates Milestone, Still at Least a Decade Away From Fusing Atoms
Machine assembly has commenced, but this gigantic nuclear fusion experiment costing tens of billions of dollars is nowhere near starting up    By Payal Dhar

TerraPower’s Nuclear Reactor Could Power the 21st Century
It was a twinkle in U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s eye, an enthusiasm he shared with General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union: boundless stores of clean energy from nuclear fusion.

That was 35 years ago. 

On July 28, 2020, the product of these Cold Warriors’ mutual infatuation with fusion, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in Saint-Paul-lès-Durance, France inaugurated the start of the machine assembly phase of this industrial-scale tokamak nuclear fusion reactor. 

An experiment to demonstrate the feasibility of nuclear fusion as a virtually inexhaustible, waste-free and non-polluting source of energy, ITER has already been 30-plus years in planning, with tens of billions invested. And if there are new fusion reactors designed based on research conducted here, they won’t be powering anything until the latter half of this century.

Speaking from Elysée Palace in Paris via an internet link during last month’s launch ceremony, President Emmanuel Macron said, “[ITER] is proof that what brings together people and nations is stronger than what pulls them apart. [It is] a promise of progress, and of confidence in science.” Indeed, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to baffle modern science around the world, ITER is a welcome beacon of hope.  ... "