FIA Archive

After twenty five years of research, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology think that they have finally cracked the code for the commercialization for nuclear fusion reactions.

Nuclear fusion is 30 years away and always will be, physicists have long joked. But its allure has never diminished: the prospect of harnessing the fuel that makes stars shine to produce clean, cheap and perhaps limitless electricity. 

IN THIS week’s Babbage, Alok Jha, our science correspondent, investigates a technology that could solve all of the world’s energy problems in a stroke—nuclear fusion. From Iter, the world’s largest collaborative fusion experiment, to private start-ups, he talks to the organisations racing to be first to create fusion power. Could the long-promised dream of nuclear fusion—to…

Walking with Michl Binderbauer into his 2-acre laboratory feels a bit like taking a factory tour with Willy Wonka. In one corner Binderbauer, chief executive of TAE Technologies, shows off a new machine that blasts cancer tumors with a neutron beam. Engineers huddle in a control room. Beyond their window: Norman. 

On a Friday afternoon, a small group of scientists gathered in front of a bank of computer screens near a Ping-Pong table in a warehouse close to Britain’s Oxford University. Scattered conversations and laughter hushed as a siren started blaring.

In 1920 Arthur Eddington, an English astrophysicist, gave a lecture to the British Association for the Advancement of Science on the internal structure of stars. In it, he hypothesised that what makes the sun shine—then a matter of much debate—was some sort of nuclear reaction.

For decades, the quest for nuclear fusion energy has been driven by giant government-led projects — with giant price tags to match.