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The obstacles to exploitable fusion will not be overcome. There, I said it, I own it, come back and beat me with it if I turn out to be wrong.

In order to see this, by way of contradiction, suppose a stable, sustained reaction.

1. How much of the heat is exchanged, and how is the rest dissipated? (How would you design a conventional steam generator if the ignition temperature of coal or gas were millions of degrees?) 2. How refuel? (Stars don't need to refuel: how far down does that scale?) 3. How small a breach of containment would destroy the apparatus?

I think you're right, but for different reasons: http://progressive.org/op-eds/let-cut-our-losses-on-fusion-e...

Quite so; there is a stable fusion reactor 93 million miles away (the closest good, safe distance), of whose output we could be harvesting much more than we are.

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