Nuclear fusion: when will it come together

In the first half of the 20 century nuclear fusion and fission were both seen as processes that could potentially be harnessed as a powerful energy source. Research into fusion began in the 1920’s, but it was too technically challenging to make a working fusion reactor. Fission developed much more successfully during the Second World War, when North America’s Manhattan Project attempted to use the energy concentrated in the atom as a weapon. This prompted much more research into the field of nuclear energy. In 1942 Enrico Fermi and his colleagues created the world’s first controlled self-sustaining nuclear reaction under the University of Chicago’s stadium. Atoms were split, releasing neutrons that caused other atoms to fission on absorption. Reactor designs were made and improved and by 1948 the U.S.A announced plans to commercialise nuclear power production for consumer use.