...AND CHEAPER...:

Fusion energy has been the promise of physicists for decades, but is it finally arriving? As we face a warming climate and increasing energy needs, fusion power may hold the potential to deliver an abundant, clean energy future. On a recent episode of "Political Economy," Arthur Turrell discussed whether nuclear fusion will be powering our homes any time soon, what government can do to push this technology forward, and if renewables are making fusion obsolete before it can get off the ground.

Arthur is Deputy Director at the Data Science Campus of the Office for National Statistics in the UK and the author of The Star Builders: Nuclear Fusion and the Race to Power the Planet.

Below is an abbreviated transcript of our conversation. You can read our full discussion here. You can also subscribe to my podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher, or download the podcast on Ricochet.

Pethokoukis: A skeptic might say that nuclear fusion is the future of energy . . . and always will be. Yet over the past year, it seems to me that there's been a lot of activity. So what's going on?

Turrell: The investment and the human ingenuity that's been put into fusion is starting to demonstrate some really interesting breakthroughs recently. The biggest of those has been the emergence of a private sector in fusion, which suggests that there's some market confidence. Investors must think that they're able to get some return, whether from fusion energy or from technologies related to fusion.

The other thing is there have been a number of technological breakthroughs, things like superconductors, which allow for new types of experimental fusion reactor design. For instance, there's been an enormous result at the National Ignition Facility -- which is trying to do a type of fusion called laser fusion -- recently, where they've demonstrated a world-record beating net energy gain from fusion. So the breakthroughs have really given the whole field a sense of optimism.

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