Nuclear fusion: energy of the stars, energy of the future?
summary
Describes how hydrogen fusion in stars converts mass to energy and why fusion yields far more energy per reaction than fission, then reviews two engineering approaches: magnetic confinement (tokamaks and stellarators, mentioning Wendelstein 7‑X runs and the ITER tokamak under construction at Cadarache) and inertial confinement with many lasers (noting the LLNL shot that produced 3.15 MJ from 2.05 MJ fuel but required ~300 MJ electrical input, so overall Q≪1 despite a local Q≈1.5). Also explains that neutron-activated waste from fusion decays over decades rather than millennia and gives a realistic timescale that industrial fusion deployment is decades away, not years.
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