Why isn’t nuclear fusion possible yet?
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Fusion as a reaction is very much possible, it’s how must of the energy is produced in a Hydrogen bomb.
Fusion in a reactor has 3 problems:
1. Containment. It has to be contained in a magnetic bottle, which is difficult to make stable. Most reactors lose this stability after a few seconds or minutes. A useful reactor would require stability for days or hours.
2. Fuel cycle. There is a verity of fuels you could use, but for complicated reasons, the best is Deuterium Tritium. The Deuterium is easy enough to get out of water. Tritium needs to be bread from lithium using the neutrons from the DT reaction. This stage is extremely complicated. Also Tritium is really nasty shit. Nobody has ever added breaded blankets to a reactor.
3. Extracting energy. You may see headlines about fusion reaching “break even”, getting out as much energy as they put in. But this refers to a plasma physics value known as Q, and this break even refers to a Q of >1. You can’t build a useful reactor with a Q of 1.5, or 2, or 10. You’d need about 20. Because all the inefficiencies in both generating and extracting the energy are not included in Q. Nobody has generated a single watt of electrical energy from a fusion reactor. Nobody has ever added the generators.
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