The world's biggest experimental nuclear fusion reactor in operation was inaugurated in Japan on Friday, a technology in its infancy but billed by some as the answer to humanity's future energy needs.
The ITER was basically supposed to have been built starting in the 80s from my understanding… Until cheap fossil fuels dried up all interest in funding fusion research. When it takes 40 years to fund a single project via international collaboration, 50 years is a short timescale.
Even with renewed recent interest, fusion still has less than half the funding it did during the energy crisis. Of course the predictions from that era were optimistic given they were no longer able to do experiments like these when they expected them to proliferate.
The ITER was basically supposed to have been built starting in the 80s from my understanding… Until cheap fossil fuels dried up all interest in funding fusion research. When it takes 40 years to fund a single project via international collaboration, 50 years is a short timescale.
Even with renewed recent interest, fusion still has less than half the funding it did during the energy crisis. Of course the predictions from that era were optimistic given they were no longer able to do experiments like these when they expected them to proliferate.