"The Moonshot Promise of Fusion Energy"

The old joke goes something like: "Fusion has been thirty years away for the last sixty years".
From Nanalyze:

They say that the most compelling investment offering combines some sort of impending doom with the promise of abnormally large returns and – this next part is important – you’ll be one of the select few who saw it coming. As you sip dry martinis on the upper deck of your Benetti FB 277, all those small boats you see in the harbor will act as a constant reminder of your Nostradamus-like investing acumen. One example of such an investment theme would be the “U.S. dollar is going to crash so put every penny you own in gold bullion” thesis which frankly doesn’t sound like the worst idea when you consider the country’s heavy debt load and extreme political polarization that occupies all their time these days.

When it comes to disruptive technologies, there’s no shortage of “moonshot investments” with investors looking to “find the next Microsoft.” Founder & Partner of 100X.VC, Sanjay Mehta, describes a moonshot investment as “something radically hard,” a “seemingly unsolvable problem.” He then gives examples of unnamed startups from his own portfolio of moonshots which include a commercial space station (sounds like Axiom Space), an address for everyone in the world (sounds like what3words), and wireless charging as seamless as WiFi (sounds like one of a half a dozen startups). Today, the moonshot technology we’re going to discuss is the seemingly unsolvable problem of fusion energy.

The Moonshot Promise of Fusion Energy
Progress for moonshot startups is always extremely slow, so about once a year we go down our list of known entrants in any given race and see what new press releases have been published and which companies didn’t meet previously stated milestones. Sometimes, we’ll find some over-the-counter (OTC) company trying to take advantage of Joe retail investor so we’ll point this pitfall out much to the chagrin of the investor relations firms trying to promote it. (We found at least one example of an OTC company that “recently made history that is known and understood by only a small handful of plasma/fusion experts, but not by the general public or investors yet.” Uh-huh.)

Most of the companies working on fusion energy happen to be startups. We identified a handful in the article on 3 Nuclear Fusion Energy Companies for Investors to Watch we published back in 2015. Here’s a brief synopsis of how these three startups have progressed since our last piece:

• Helion Energy – No news and no further funding. In a 2013 article by GeekWire titled “Helion Energy’s futuristic reactor could make carbon-free power by 2019,” the CEO said “Helion isn’t looking for funding to do more science. We already proved our technology. We’re now ready to start commercializing fusion energy.” We’d settle for a simple update.
• Tri Alpha Energy – Re-branded to TAE Technologies and released a machine called Norman in 2017 which has 80,000 settings that need to be tweaked just right for fusion to happen – maybe. They’re using some of Google’s AI technology to speed things up and CEO Michl Binderbauer told Forbes they’ll “bring a fusion-reactor technology to commercialization in the next five years.” (Adds note in Google Calendar.)
• General Fusion – Funding continues to pour in with just over $127 million raised so far. This past March, CEO Christofer Mowry told CNBC that “General Fusion has built all the components to create a reactor, but now it needs to develop a prototype, which will take five years.” They’ve partnered with Microsoft in hopes of using AI to speed things up.

So, everything kicks off five years from now – 2024 – and maybe AI can help make that happen. Since moonshots progress slowly, investors need to be extremely patient while keeping an eye on the giant prize. With fusion energy, one tablespoon of liquid hydrogen fuel could generate as much energy as 28 tons of coal with no radioactive waste. Saint Elon Musk describes the significance of nailing nuclear fusion as follows:...

....MUCH MORE
If interested see also:
Tri Alpha Energy Raised $500 Million To Pursue Nuclear Fusion, Has Exited Stealth Mode
The financial backers are the usual suspects: Goldman Sachs, the Rockefellers (Venrock), Queen of England Government of Russia etc. We had a couple prior posts, links below....

The Billionaires Backing Nuclear Fusion: Bezos, Allen and Thiel
"The Opposite of Cold Fusion" (10 million degrees Celsius)
Russia may export thermonuclear reactors in 25 years
Nuclear Fusion: Max Planck's Stellarator Produces Its First Hydrogen Plasma
The U.S. Navy Has (filed) Patented a Compact FUSION Reactor
Google's Nuclear Fusion Project Is Paying Off

News You Can Use: "Learn How to Build a Nuclear Fusor "
Warning
This project uses high voltages at potentially lethal currents. A high-vacuum apparatus may implode if improperly handled. This device may produce ultraviolet and x-ray radiation. Do not attempt to build or operate it unless you are capable of safely using high voltage and vacuum equipment.  

On the other hand there's Stanford's Paul Ehrlich:

"Giving society cheap abundant energy is . . .like giving an idiot child a machine gun"

-Los Angeles Times, April 19. 1989