. . nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity. —LORD ACTON The cold-fusion affair captured the imagination of the public. Two chemists, two outsiders, claimed to have succeeded with a cheap, tabletop experiment where legions of physicists with hundreds of millions of dollars had failed. Fusion energy is hard. Even if you manage to get a fusion reaction going in a small device—and a number of people have succeeded in doing just that59—“tabletop” devices all consume more energy than they produce. The more researchers experiment with fusion, the more most of them are convinced that the best—if not the only—way to create a fusion reactor is with a hot plasma, confined and compressed by some powerful force. Nowadays, that leaves only two realistic options: big, expensive magnets or big, expensive lasers. Both approaches require billions of dollars and thousands of scientists. And both have secrets. Laser fusion’s secret is a matter of national security; magnetic fusion’s secret is a matter of some embarrassment.
