About 60 years ago, Russian physicist Lev Artsimovich said nuclear fusion “will be ready when society needs it”.

For decades, scientists have tried to recreate the fusion reaction that powers the sun, hoping to produce potentially unlimited clean energy. But recent advances in science and technology, and funding from tech companies desperate to power the artificial intelligence boom , now make fusion a “realistic option”, said Fortune .

The UK has achieved a “major breakthrough for fusion energy research”, the UK Atomic Energy Authority announced last week. Researchers there stabilised the fusion process in a spherical tokamak – a more compact fusion machine than those used by most researchers – for the first time. This is a “significant step forward”.

What is fusion?

When most

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