The main fuels would be deuterium and tritium, isotopes of hydrogen. Tritium can be made from lithium, which is also abundant. The deuterium in one liter of water could produce as much energy as the combustion of 300 liters of gasoline, so there is enough deuterium in the oceans to last for millions of years. The task of building fusion power plants is a great challenge, however, because the deuterium-tritium fuel must be heated to about one hundred million degrees centigrade in order to achieve fusion ignition. Both methods produce heat that could be used to generate electricity.
Magnetic confinement uses extremely powerful electromagnets to contain and insulate the fuel plasma.
These values are close to what is needed for a fusion power plant. In about ten years time, if ITER is built, it will demonstrate controlled ignition and extended energy production. The next step would be a demonstration fusion power plant. The IAEA assists the ITER activity with meetings, publication of documents, a newsletter and management of the joint fund. Inertial confinement uses intense ion or laser beams to compress a pea sized pellet to extremely high densities, at which shock waves heating would ignite the pellet.