ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly
I am going to need some help on this one as my knowledge on physics is limited: What makes scientists believe that the solution to nuclear fusion power is only a matter of scale? I desperately want nuclear fusion to work because nuclear power is the only realistic way to solve the looming energy crisis of the 21st century while still maintaining the same standard of living for everyone. It's also 500% more important that nuclear fusion works because most people around the world think that nuclear fission is scary (weaponization concerns even though fission power is different from bomb-making, radioactive waste, reactor meltdowns, etc.), even though it's the only realistic method we have today of going carbon-neutral.However, I looked up the article on "fusion power" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power) and it says "but to date, no design has produced more fusion power output than the electrical power input, defeating the purpose."Can anyone help explain what I am missing, or what is not explained well? My common-person impression is if a laboratory experiment cannot even produce desired outcomes, what makes people think that an engineered, faulty-prone system will? The way I see it is that researchers produce the proof-of-concept, and engineering will attempt to reproduce that at scale. Isn't this preemptive? Or, from the article, it seems that it is necessary to build this thing in order to get any conclusive research results.