A supernova explodes deep in space.

In one of the many nondescript office parks dotting the roads of Seattle’s suburbs, an experiment with the potential to change the way everything on this planet is powered is under way. Efforts to fund similar experiments are taking place in a field in the south of France and in Vancouver, B.C. Each is looking for the Holy Grail of energy production: Nuclear fusion, which some believe could provide baseload power using an inexhaustible power supply and make little to no waste, all at an extremely low cost of power.

On its face, nuclear fusion seems like the end-all, be-all of cleantech, though it may also turn out to be a modern-day Rube Goldberg machine. Take one of the most common elements found in the universe as fuel for a reaction that produces more fuel for itself and harvests the energy generated ad infinitum.

There are a few drawbacks to power from fusion technology though. The biggest being that, strictly speaking, it might not be possible. No one has ever actually generated more energy than they’ve put in, although it’s been worked on for more than 50 years. Another hurdle for fusion is its future timeline. Although representatives from Redmond, Wash.–based MSNW, LLC and General Fusion in Vancouver, B.C., both say their technology could be ready for market by 2015, other baseload sources such as nuclear fission, “clean” coal and even utility-scale solar could be providing cheap power by then, creating a competitive marketplace for a new, relatively unproven technology.

But the idea of fusion is an attractive one if the technical hurdles can be overcome. While power from currently operating coal plants costs in the neighborhood of $40 to $60 per megawatt-hour (MWh), one person working on fusion says he may be able to generate power for less than $30 per MWh.

What the heck is fusion?
Nuclear fusion is distinctly different from nuclear fission. At nuclear fission plants, atoms are split, releasing a huge amount of energy that is used to make steam to turn turbines and generate power. Currently, the United States receives slightly more than 19percent of its electric power from nuclear fission plants.

At its simplest, fusion is the opposite: Force the nuclei of atoms together in a violent reaction and release energy. Scientists have tried for more than 50years to find a way to make a sustained, controlled fusion reaction with two isotopes of hydrogen: deuterium and tritium. Using hydrogen isotopes to create energy is attractive because hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and about one out of every 6,000 hydrogen atoms is deuterium. Meanwhile, the reaction when the two are fused in the presence of a small amount of lithium (itself a cheap and abundant metal) creates tritium.
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