After more than five decades of research, a major milestone toward the harnessing of fusion power is expected within the next year or two. This milestone, known as "fusion ignition," should take place at the National Ignition Facility, an experimental facility built for that purpose in California.

Faced with ballooning costs and growing delays, ITER — a multi-billion-euro international experiment boldly aiming to prove atomic fusion as a power source — will initially be far less ambitious than physicists had hoped, with the first experiment capable of validating fusion power not likely before the end of 2025.

A look at the work of the National Ignition Facility, a U.S. government fusion research facility that if successful, "would help keep the nation’s nuclear arms reliable without underground testing, would reveal the hidden life of stars and would prepare the way for radically new kinds of power plants."

The newly completed National Ignition Facility (NIF) has begun harnessing lasers to create a fusion reaction rivaling the power of a miniature sun. The lasers will eventually focus their power on compressing and heating a single, pea-sized fuel capsule to more than 180 million degrees Fahrenheit in order to trigger thermonuclear fusion.

Working on a shoestring budget, researchers have found no reason why a low-cost approach to nuclear fusion won't work.

Physicists at MIT have addressed one of the many technological challenges involved in harnessing nuclear fusion as a viable energy source by demonstrating that pulses of radio frequency waves can be used to propel and heat plasma inside a reactor.

Lab experiments suggest that future fusion reactors could use helium-3 gathered from the moon.

France won an international competition today to be the site of the world's first nuclear fusion reactor, an estimated $12 billion project that many scientists see as essential to solving the world's future energy needs.

Scientists have built a device that mimics the magnetic fields surrounding the Earth and other planets. They hope to use the device to understand how the Earth's protective magnetosphere works -- and possibly gain insights into how to make fusion a feasible energy source.

Scientists say they are more confident than ever that they can successfully build and operate a planned experimental fusion reactor, a necessary step for fusion energy to prove the technology's commercial potential.