The Fusion Delusion
I’m reading about the latest fusion breakthroughs. The National Ignition Facility’s achievement in 2022 still resonates, a moment when the world collectively held its breath, believing we’d finally cracked the code to limitless energy. Yet here we are, four years later, and the narrative has reset. The physics works. The engineering doesn’t. Not yet.
Fusion is a tantalizing prospect, a dream of clean, abundant power that could redefine our relationship with energy. The breakthrough at the NIF was a milestone, a validation of the physics. But the leap from achieving net energy gain in a lab to powering cities is immense. The gap between scientific triumph and practical application is vast, a chasm that most fusion companies seem to underestimate.