The prospect of fusion reactors providing enormous amounts of clean energy has been around for decades (1). A great deal of time and fortune has been spent on their construction and development, but still nothing to commercialize.
The Chinese recently claimed to have set a new world record for a sustained plasma reaction, lasting for over 100 seconds (2). The previous record was South Korea, at about 20 seconds (3).
Now, Jeff Bezos of Amazon is investing in a new reactor in the U.K. that is expected to become operational in 2025, but not sufficient for energy distribution (4). It is only an experimental reactor like all the others. One suspects Bezos is doing this as he will need to source a lot more power if he is to conquer the world with Amazon.
With all the efforts, no real progress, other than a glimmer of fusion reactions, seems to have been made.
Are we getting even close, or are all these efforts only teasing us for something that is beyond our abilities to construct and operate?
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeli...nuclear_fusion
2. https://www.sciencetimes.com/article...-sustained.htm
3. https://phys.org/news/2020-12-korean...-sec-long.html
4. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57512229