Nuclear fusion is closer than ever to becoming a commercial reality as the private sector takes over research and development. For decades, nuclear fusion research lay outside the scope of private enterprise, as the leading technology used to conduct such experiments were so prohibitively expensive that only public funding could reasonably be expected to foot the bill.
But now, thanks to a breakthrough from one of those state-funded projects, nuclear fusion has become far more accessible, and venture capitalists have wasted no time jumping into the nascent market. Nuclear fusion – the natural process that powers our sun – is often touted as the holy grail of clean energy research because of its ability to produce near-infinite amounts of completely carbon-free energy. But reproducing such a process here on Earth has proven difficult and costly. Some experiments have had some success in achieving a nuclear fusion reaction, but creating a sustained reaction that emits more energy than went into it is another stor