Props and jets

Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

A good bit of this month’s edition of Nuclear News is devoted to the latest developments in fusion energy.

While 2024 may not have the punchy investment headlines of ’22, I think it’s fair to say that fusion energy technology is making tangible progress beneath the surface, with unannounced stealth funding plans and the continuation of public-private partnerships.

When will it become a productive element of our global energy architecture? No one knows for sure. There are still myriad challenges to be solved in high-temperature ­materials, high–critical temperature superconductors, advanced algorithms, and tritium fuel cycle control, just to name a few. But every day, fusion feels a tiny bit more mature, like somehow it has left its childhood bedroom in physics to move into the dorm room of engineering.