One of the reasons it's still failed to eventuate is that the engineering and scientific challenges are significant and funding for fusion endeavours is already

One of the reasons it's still failed to eventuate is that the engineering and scientific challenges are significant and funding for fusion endeavours is already quite limited and has been declining. The benefits from fusion are insanely good (I have read that in an energy-producing reactor, you would only need ~250kg of deuterium to power the US for a year), so it would be foolish to relegate it to 'pipe dream' status just because of the current difficulties. It just needs continued effort and investment. The 2 main issues are addressed in another couple of comments [0], [1] Burning fuel is easy, of course it's going to stick around, but for maximum efficiency and power generation capabilities, you can't really go past fusion. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14205346 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14205346 [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14203704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14203704 > At this point I'm honestly not convinced that this is an economically solvable problem. The energy industry as it is, is belligerent and seemingly resistant to new technologies that aren't fossil fuel based. How long would this remain the case if actual concerted (gov, scientific and industrial) effort was dedicated to fusion rather than pissing it up the wall trying to hold on to fossil fuel based approaches for mass scale power generation. > It's not sufficient to output more energy than you input either. The science says otherwise, if this was the case we wouldn't even be bothering to get power out of it.