Within the global social environment of dis-information created by the ruling, Rocke-Nazi plutocracy, the prevailing opinion of the prospects for fusion power that we are all supposed to hold goes something like the following:
"In the last 50 years, fusion has always been 20 years away! It always will be 20 years away! It's a scam."
Of course!
The official, tokamak "fusion program" of the Rocke-Nazi-prostitute government is designed to fail [or, in the case of the "inertial fusion" program, is designed as a cover for funding unpopular nuclear weapons research].
The government fusion programs — seeking a [nonexistent] linear = equilibrium fusion regime — are analogous, for example, to the Bush programs to "combat AIDS transmission" in Africa, and in the United States, which are required, by law, to promote only "abstinence", and to mention condoms only in terms of their failure rate.
Numerous scientific, evidence-based, double-blind, randomized trials have found that these "abstinence only" programs are INeffective against AIDS/HIV transmission, and have also found that condoms ARE effective against such transmission, at a high level of statistical significance.
That is the purpose of the Bush "anti-AIDS" programs: to destroy the condom-use-promoting programs in Africa, in the U. S., and elsewhere, that HAVE worked, and to put in their place the "abstinence-only" programs that have been found, scientifically, to FAIL against AIDS/HIV propagation. The Bush programs are intended and DESIGNED TO FAIL.
Likewise, the governmental "Fusion" programs are designed to fail, and to discredit the fusion opportunity.
Scientists employed in this "fusion program" — those susceptible to careerist corruption — have been bought-off by the promised sinecure of perpetual payment of salary for endless fusion failure, and are as anxious to see fusion power developed as are careerist bureaucrats in the [cancerous] American Cancer Society to see a cure for cancer!
The scientists conducting fusion research who DO begin to succeed are –
Indeed, suppose the capitalist ruling class DID ALLOW development of a technology like Fusion energy which would 'technodepreciate', "morally depreciate", or "obsolescence-depreciate" to near-zero the entire capital-value basis of the rule of its leading faction, namely, that faction's economic basis in the petroleum industry, and in the major Rocke-Nazi banks [Citibank, Chase Morgan, and Bank of America, etc.], many of whose 30+ year loans would immediately enter default due to technodepreciation of capital assets that this ruling faction does not directly own, but that their banks have financed via long term commercial loans.
In that case, the entire tradition of Marxian analysis of ruling class strategy and policy — not to mention basic street sense — would have to be radically revised!