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Are you suggesting that all those people doing fusion research don’t know about this, or that they make false promises to the public to fund their research?

• ncmncm 4y ago
  At least many know and do not care. Many deceive themselves, as often seen here. Others don't think about it, considering it Somebody Else's Problem. Promises of commercial power are naked lies they will never be called to account for.
• tsimionescu 4y ago
  Probably a mix of both, and other stuff. For an example of other stuff, look at the inertial confinement fusion reactors. Those are only plausibly useful for fusion weapons research (as fusion-based nuclear weapons work on the same principle, but are somewhat harder to study up close). However, that's unfashionable to talk about, so they are touted as a potential source of energy. Given that a single shot costs many tens of millions of dollars (because of the incredibly precisely machined piece of gold, called a target, that gets heated up by lasers until it emits X rays that cause the fuel pellet to implode in a perfectly symmetrical fashion), and is over in nanoseconds. So, a continously operating plant would literally spend millions of dollars per minute even with optimistic improvements in the cost of the targets - not exactly a promising new "free energy" generation technology.