Fusion Power-"Unlimited Energy"- is right around the corner, right?  That's what you get from the usual cheerleading articles about "breakthroughs" and "record high temperatures", etc.  It's been right around the corner since I first read about Tokamaks in Popular Mechanics when I was in 3rd grade.

In all likelihood, it will be right around the corner for another 50 years.  Here's one of the things you usuallyy DON'T hear about.  The Hydrogen is supposedly "unlimited" since it is part of Water molecules.  Except run of the mill H isn't what you need for a fusion reactor, you need isotopes of H which have an extra neutron or two.  Deuterium and Tritium they are called.  These isotopes are found in much smaller quantity in water, and if Fusion power was ever to be scaled up, would have to be produced in a "breeder" reactor using an isotope of Lithium, also  in somewhat limited supply.

None of the details of how all this D & T will be produced have been worked out, since they're still bizzy just trying to confine super hot plasma long enough for fusion reactions to take place, and  at some point maybe yield more energy than it takes to fire up the reactor.  IOW, after a half century, they're still not even past Step 1 in a multi stage engineering problem to finish someday with a commercially viable plant scaled up to produce gigawatts if not terawatts of power and acquire the fuel necessary to run it.  To make any kind of economic sense, a Fusion power plant would have to produce enormous amounts of energy.

So, except for calling out the bullshit, I don't see much point in reporting on Fusion power.  Write this one off the list of Hopium solutions.

https://physicsworld.com/a/the-fusion-industry-must-rise-to-its-tritium-challenge/

The fusion industry must rise to its tritium challenge

RE