Power plants based around nuclear fusion are clean, economical to operate and can provide virtually limitless amounts of power.

They are also still maddeningly non-existent, but that may change in a few years, according to Dr. Ed Moses, Principle Associate Director of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) speaking at the Big Science conference sponsored by The Atlantic in San Jose this week.

NIF, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is close to demonstrating a controlled, sustained fusion reaction with an array of high-powered lasers. The lasers essentially squish a peppercorn-sized target filled hydrogen into something about the diameter of a human hair. The pressure and heat inflicted on the target transform hydrogen into helium, generating unfathomable amounts of heat in the process. The NIF has achieved “burn”, i.e. fusion, but not yet succeeded in transforming that into a chain reaction,

via The Global Race For Fusion Power – Forbes.