The reason we don't have morenuclear fission power may be in large part thanks to politics and economics, but the reason we don't have fusion yet is that it's hard. Very hard. But researchers at MIT have made a discovery that could take us one step closer to the wonderful nuclear fusion future.
As this succinct little video from the institute explains, the trouble is all about sustaining the right (high) amount of heat and pressure required to make to hydrogen molecules combine. It's a process that's complicated by the previously unexplained turbulence of churning plasma.
This new discovery—that turbulence in superheated plasma takes place not only on an atomic scale, but also on a large ionic scale simultaneous—sheds a whole lot of light on the inner workings of prospective fusion reactors. With a better understanding of why plasma moves the way it does, it can hopefully be better controlled in the future to prevent the sort of heat loss that, until now, has been mysterious.
For the time being, increasingly sophisticated and nightmarish fusion reactors have taken to manipulating plasma currents in the only way we know how—with increasingly complex layers of sophisticated technology. But with any luck, we're one step closer to a simpler solution.