Environment & Energy

C. They did so in 1938 using an apparatus that fit onto a laboratory tabletop at minimal cost.

D. Chicago 1 went critical about four years later, in the process generating 0.5 watts before Fermi shut down the reactor.

E. Hanford B - a full-scale plutonium production reactor - went critical less than two years later, in September 1944.

F. We launched the Nautilus in 1954, the same year that the USSR generated grid power from a nuclear reactor for the first time.

So, sixteen years between proving and reproducing the physical process and the deployment of working technologies based on that process to generate power to run ships and power the grid.

Meanwhile, scientists and engineers have been working on fusion since the 1950s, and while we know far more than we did back then, there is no proof that this is going to work, or that any net energy produced is going to be affordable to anyone other than the richest of the rich. And as the climate horizon closes, I have little confidence that we're going to have 20 or 35 or 50 years to perfect the technology, much less "win a race" with China or whoever.

As noted in the article, it's like coming up with a viable concept for an internal combustion engine in a world where metals have yet to be invented - and that's coming from a fusion supporter.