Here's one for fellow science geeks out there...

Sometimes I'm amazed at what isn't making bigger news. I came across an article on CNN.com on Japan and France fighting over who gets to build the next step in nuclear fusion facilities. France has claimed that if they are not awarded the contract they will go ahead and build their own. This urgency peaked my interest. So I did some research and was amazed at what I found. Worth mentioning most is the JET facility in the UK.
There are a ton of pics, papers and articles on the website (http://www.jet.efda.org/). Basically plasma is generated inside of a vacuum chamber as seen above. Using magnetic fields to control and contain the plasma, and firing neutral particles at it to "keep it going", amongst a number of other tricks, it has already been shown that it can generate much more power than it takes to run it. I'll say that again, it can produce more power than it requires. While it doesn't seem the reaction has been held for very long time they make a lot of progress each year. Now it seems not a question of if but when a constant reaction can be created. I couldn't figure out why the states with all their wealth is not jumping on the bandwagon, surely a never ending energy source was worth tossing a few billion towards, but then the problem hit me. It doesn't run on gasoline.