The 2004 report “Burning Plasma: Bringing a Star to Earth,” from the U.S. National Research Council, sold Washington on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a massive R&D project that proponents predict will be the breakthrough project for fusion energy. In its fiscal 2008 budget, however, Congress drove the United States’ role in ITER right into the ground, slashing US $160 million promised for this year to $10.7 million. That has some wondering if fusion research, considered since the 1960s one of the great long shots for a sustainable and relatively clean energy supply, has run out of time.
What makes fusion a long shot? Like most fusion experiments to date, ITER proposes to use formidable electric currents and magnetic fields to induce fusion in isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium) and to contain the resulting burning plasma-akin to a tiny star and exceeding 100 million ˚C. Existing fusion reactors have produced heat equivalent to just a few megawatts of power–less than the energy required to induce the reaction–and for just fractions of a second. ITER should put out ten times as much power as it consumes, but still for just a matter of minutes.
And even that level of performance will require a 27-meter-high magnetic confinement chamber that will take a decade to build and cost an estimated $2.76 billion. Including design, administration, and 20 years of operation, the project’s total expenses will be nearly $15 billion.
For more on fusion’s troubled poster child, see my story at Spectrum Online.
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Peter Fairley 
The ITER project was doomed to failure before it began, as is all Tokamak fusion generation.
There are, however, other options one of which — Polywell — has entered into the “Venture capital investment” stage.
Fusion has a future. Just not government-induced. Which, of course, comes as a surprise to no one; the ITER & Tokamak projects were only focused on because the researchers involved were brought on board with the understanding that the real goal was tridium generation. Three guesses what uses tridium aside from Tokamaks.
Tritium is a fuel source for nuclear weapons.
Polywell is an alternative approach to containing the fusion reaction. Polywell proponent Robert Bussard
presentsexplained his vision (Bussard died last October) in this November 2006 presentation at Google’s silicon valley headquarters, no doubt a pitch for some of the millions that Google has invested in alternative energy.The Bussard Fusion Reactor is moving right along:
WB-7 First Plasma
Such fusion projects strike me as a waste of time and money. I believe the future belongs to a mixed genertion system using more and more decentralized alternative energy. However, the US will probably lag behind other nations in making the transition.
Why doesn’t the US can the whole project and use cold fusion as an energy source?