I stand corrected on two fronts. That's what I get for just reading headlines. Still, the more recent ventures are trying different tacks, and I am allowed to be hopeful. I fear without fusion energy Peak Oil will come, though I doubt in my lifetime, thankfully.
Here's the deal with fusion. It can be done, but can't be contained. Why is it so different than fission? Well, here's an abstract, just from me. This is an engineering treatise not a physics primer.
Fission in it's natural state occurs on Earth. In fact, if you own a plane built before ~1956 and it has original instruments in it, you have fission occurring right on your panel. Gak! Yup, fission is simply radio-chemical decay of one element into another element(s). Radium, Plutonium, Uranium are all spontaneously fissile to some degree or another. We can make fissile elements in the lab by using a great deal of megawatts, and forcing various isotopes together to produce stuff like Californium 252, which is nasty, nasty little stuff. But, the fact remains that there is fission going on right now out in the desert of Utah, and in central China, the Urals, and several other places. It's natural, it's happening, and when we make a fission reactor, all we do is use a costly process to gather up those isotopes we want, and put them all in one place - viola! Instant power(well, of course not really).
Fusion - It does not occur naturally on the planet, or within the planet Earth. We know the mantle is hot, and we know it's molten, but I assure you, it is not fusing two(or more) elements together to form a new element. To do that, you need to go - yup, to the Sun. The Sun is a very modest fusion reactor. If you'll notice, it is not artificially contained, it is contained by the natural forces of the gravity, and well obeys the known forces of nature.
Fission - occurs in nature, all we do, like a primitive cro-magnon is gather up the wood(U235 isotopes), and strike a spark(withdrdaw the LiO2 control rods) to light er off. Ugh - fire good, Grob make fire, fire heat meat, Grob eat meat.
Fusion - only occurs in nature in it's uncontained form, principally the Sun, but we have been successful in generating enough heat and pressure to recreate the Sun in microscopic scale with a fusion bomb, but never, ever has it been contained by nature, by man, never, ever in history.
There are a few working theories that a dark star or black hole is a contained fusion reaction, but the densities and temps of that phenomenon have not and cannot(to my limited knowledge) been empirically tested. In other words, aside from inferring a black hole from the event horizon, there is no way to conclusively maintain that the darn thing exists. And here I am at the limit of my physics understanding. However, it should be pointed out that if one is capable of recreating a black hole on, or near Earth, and one is successful in somehow capturing the radiant heat(um, how does the heat 'leave' the black hole?), it appears to me that the casual failure of such a reactor would suck the planet and everything nearby into it, thus defeating the purpose of the reactor to power our steam gen set.
