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That's what they told me last century. It might just be that practical nuclear fusion isn't possible on a small enough scale to be useful. (that is, you need something as big as a star to make it useful)
Nuclear fusion hasn't been 5 years away for a good century. The traditional wording of the joke is "nuclear fusion is 20 (sometimes 30) years away and always will be". It was indeed the case that the engineers' timetable for useful fusion power coming out of the big government-funded fusion projects was 20-30 years from 1952 (when the first H-bomb was tested) to 2014-5 (when Tokamak and Helion tested their first prototypes).
As of today, there are three private-sector fusion startups (Tokamak, Helion and Commonwealth) with SMART plans to build a useful fusion power plant within 10 years. This is different, and exciting.
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