Fusion: the power source of the future Inertial Confinement Option

Among the various energy options opened to man, fusion appears particularly attractive since fuel is plentiful, cheap, and universally available, the reaction is self quenching, produces in itself no radioactive wastes and radiation hazards are minimum. However, creating on earth conditions emulating the sun is not as easy task. Two significantly different approaches to obtaining the necessary conditions are being actively pursued and both have shown encouraging progress in the past few years. Magnetic confinement will be discussed in the next paper. Inertial confinement fusion is progressing towards scientific breakeven in the 1980's. High yield targets have been successfully imploded proving the feasibility of thermonuclear burn. High densities have recently been achieved using glass lasers as drivers. Power plants using fusion sources are being studied and could become operational in the early 2000's