The difference between what's going on with fusion today and what was going on when you were a teenager is pretty huge, actually. When you were a teenager there

The difference between what's going on with fusion today and what was going on when you were a teenager is pretty huge, actually. When you were a teenager there wasn't a gigantic international consortium (ITER) dedicated to making fusion happen in our lifetimes. The US government effort was limited to fringe experimentation; in contract, today, the NIF and France's Laser Megajoule are both aiming for net power out in the next few years. And, perhaps more importantly, unlike in the 80s there are now private startups looking to commercialize fusion processes -- that wasn't even being seriously considered 10 years ago. Just because there isn't net power out today doesn't mean that an enormous amount of progress hasn't been made.