Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab
It is an important milestone. But to have a commercially viable fusion reactor, you'll need a factor of 50-100 more energy out than in to make up for inefficiencies in electricity generation using this kind of scheme.<p>The real story here is that this facility allows the US to do nuclear weapons research without violating the nuclear test ban treaty. If the goal was to develop a commercially viable fusion reactor, the $3,500,000,000 spent so far could have been put into projects geared towards small scale fusion experiments investigating novel confinement schemes.<p>Like the one I was working on, <a href="http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP07/Event/71002" rel="nofollow">http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP07/Event/71002</a> whose funding has since been cut and has been mothballed.