The dream of harvesting energy from the same reaction that powers our sun has been around since 1920, when Arthur Eddington suggested that the energy of the sun and stars was a product of the fusion of hydrogen atoms into helium. Since the 1950's, great progress has been made in nuclear fusion research.
Researchers stress that nuclear fusion has an almost unlimited potential to supply electricity.
The hydrogen isotopes in one gallon of water have the fusion energy equivalent of 300 gallons of gasoline. A nuclear fusion power plant would also have no greenhouse gas emissions, and would generate none of the long lived, high level radioactive waste associated with conventional nuclear fission power plants. Despite its theoretical potential, leading experts predict that the world is still at least 50 years and billions of research dollars away from having electricity generated from nuclear fusion. This is largely due to the enormous size and complexity of a reactor that would be capable of sustaining nuclear fusion. The Fusion Reaction Nuclear fusion involves the binding together of hydrogen atoms, creating helium, as outlined in Figure 1.