But that's not really fusion power. That's just making some fusion happen.

France is now rushing to construct the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, (ITER), which is supposed to show that nuclear fusion can be used to power nuclear power stations. ITER is often presented as the long term solution to the problem of global warming, because nuclear fusion can provide an infinite and clean source of energy.

And that energy is what powers fusion.

Steven Cowley Fusion is energy's future

The Fusion Myth

We can do fusion. In the center of this device we made 16 megawatts of fusion power in 1997.

In the fission reactions that nuclear power generation relies on today, heavy elements such as uranium break into smaller ones, while in nuclear fusion small elements such as hydrogen stick together and form heavier elements (helium). Both fission and fusion produce a lot of energy.

It turns out you can't do fusion on a table top despite all that cold fusion nonsense. Right?

Is the European Union imploding?

But, while the fusion process has produced some power (16 million watts of it, to be specific), scientists have yet to create a self sustaining fusion burn. Indeed, unlike nuclear fission, which went from the laboratory to the power grid within two decades, fusion has proved a tough nut to crack.

Because we want 30 million years worth of fusion power for the Earth.

And there is one reaction that's probably the easiest fusion reaction to do.

It's going to cost us 10 billion. And we'll produce half a gigawatt of fusion power.

Fusion is very hard to do.

But we can't abandon it now we have to push forward, get fusion to happen.

So I finished my 20s with a Ph.D. in fusion energy, and I discovered I was useless.

Some political leaders explain that nuclear fusion is at work in the sun, and that, thanks to ITER, we will harness it. They often add that, since fusion burns hydrogen, which can be found in seawater, it is an infinite source of energy.

We also think that individuals can make a difference, and they should, because individuals, together, we can all help create a movement.

We make estimates of what we think it would cost to actually make a fusion power plant.

In spite of large international research programmes such as Joint European Torus (JET) and the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the future practical utilization of fusion energy remains uncertain.

Other designs are emerging to join the race for fusion power. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory s National Ignition Facility in California is getting impressive results by firing high powered lasers at capsules of fuel, crushing the particles together to trigger fusion reactions.

(2) It was then decided to change the technology and use polypropylene instead.

Smart material types include piezoelectric polymers, conductive polymers, piezoelectric and electrostrictive ceramics, electrorheological fluids, magnetorheological fluids, electrochromic coatings, magnetostrictive materials, micromachined integrated devices, and biomimetic polymers and gels, shape memory alloys and polymers.

It all depends on one s budget. If ITER could really solve the planet s energy problem, 10 billion would be a negligible investment less than the net profit of the oil company TOTAL ( 13 billion in 2006) and equivalent to ten days of waging the war in Iraq.

And in fact we can make fusion happen.

That means that Africans have been accumulating this mutational diversity for longer.

The key question is, When are we going to get fusion?

We've got to take that, we've got to make that into a fusion reactor.

This legislation establishes a system of prior authorization for the exercise of the import, export, production, possession, transfer, use or transport of fusible, fissile or fertile nuclear material or any material, with the exception of ore, containing one or more fusible, fissile or fertile elements.

Machines all over the world are reaching fusion temperatures and extending our technological capabilities. The ITER experiment, when it starts up in the early 2020s, will embody those advances, achieving the long awaited fusion burn and place us just one step away from the ultimate goal of getting fusion power on the grid in an affordable manner.

and focus on how to win when it is called on.

We are looking forward to joining the International Thermonuclear Energy Reactor project involving nuclear fusion, as a full partner.

When people say fusion is 30 years away, and always will be, I say, Yeah, but we've actually done it. Right?

I need all the courage I can muster to die at the age of 20.

In this room, all this expertise, if we joined it all together, we could change the world.

In the middle of stars, you're joining hydrogen together to make helium and then helium together to make carbon, to make oxygen, all the things that you're made of are made in the middle of stars.

So here you see the robot combining a motion that builds up momentum and then changes its orientation and then recovers.

You must not grow bitter, Juanito.

It's really been a long time since we've known about fusion.

It's the only machine in the world that's actually done fusion.

In the 1970s, American researchers estimated that getting fusion power on the grid would demand investment of 2 3 billion annually in research and development until anywhere from 1990 to 2005 (depending on the amount of effort applied). They also estimated a minimum level of investment, below which funding would never be sufficient to build a fusion power plant.

In the longer term, some scientists view nuclear fusion as a potentially inexhaustible and emission free means to meet the world's energy needs.

In order to study it, it has been decided to build the International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility (IFMIF) in Japan. Some scientists have argued that the neutron irradiation in IFMIF won t be the same as in fusion reactors, but it should be noted that its cost, at one billion euros, will be one tenth that of ITER.

Drop by drop, the water can conglomerate into a lake.

Tom is able to come to our party tomorrow.