Fusion power has been one of those Future technologies that is always coming but never here. A.I. was in that category for quite a while too before it really broke out with ChatGPT in 2022. Quantum computing is also looking slightly more hopeful.
Fusion itself has of course been a source of energy for billions of years, powering our sun and the billions of stars in the billions of galaxies that make up our universe. But despite efforts going back to the 1950s, commercial fusion reactors still appear decades away.
The New York Times this week brought fusion front and center with a page one article entitled “China Goes Big Hoping to Alter Energy’s Future: Researching Fusion in Bid to Outspend U.S.” The article details China’s government-sponsored approach versus the U.S.’s mainly private one. Both efforts have been accelerating recently due in part to the massive energy needs of A.I.
Similar to the way the Cold War sparked the Space Race which got the U.S. to the moon in 1969, there’s some hope that the energy race with China will make fusion energy a reality too. Somewhere here on planet Earth. Sometime this century.
