It seems that for the last couple decades fusion is always 30 years away and by this point we’ve well passed the initial 30 and seemingly little progress has been made.
Is it just that it’s so difficult to make efficient?
Has the technology improved substantially and we just don’t hear about it often?
In: Physics
The problem has always been primarily a money problem. We’ve been able to do a lot more with a lot less, now that computers are so much better and can run far more complicated simulations than ever in reasonable time frames, but we still need to build actual reactors to get real data.
It really comes down to the fact that the U.S and other countries don’t find it politically attractive to invest heavily. Part of that is that there’s a particularly stupid segment of the population who hears “nuclear”, and automatically associates that with radioactive waste, meltdowns, and bombs, even though we’re talking about radically different processes, and these people flip out and make trouble for the politicians.
This is a graph of projections of achieving fusion, vs funding. It was very likely overly optimistic, but shows the issue.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._historical_fusion_budget_vs._1976_ERDA_plan.png
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