The "breakthrough" is just an increment improvement in a slow slog through the Tokamak fusion advances. Look at the timeline for ITER, the first fusion reactor expected to *demonstrate* actual energy production. That reactor, an extremely expensive undertaking, will not result in any electric generation. It's just a bigger, better fusion experiment than in the past.

Fusion as limitless power was just around the corner - in the 1950's! That was before they discovered how hard it is to control plasma instabilities.

I think we can have hope that some of the non-Tokamak projects will work out - reactors of a much smaller scale for reaching net positive energy. But hope is a common commodity in the fusion power world, but it doesn't bring results. Keep an eye on those efforts - good results could be transformative. But don't bet on them.

Also, a couple of corrections: any neutron producing nuclear process will produce radioactive waste. The neutrons will transmute the elements in the surroundings into new elements, often radioactive.

In the meantime, if you want green energy, get it from fission. And if you want lower GHG emissions, support replacing coal with natural gas. It isn't perfect, but it is reliable, cheap and lower CO2.

So while the fuel doesn't become radioactive waste, you still produce waste. And by the way, waste from fission reactors, a long proven technology, is not really a huge problem. Almost all of the "radioactive waste" that environmentalists freak out about is low level, hardly dangerous in a sane world. The high level waste mostly deteriorates rapidly - the more radioactive something is, the shorter the half life, and thus the faster it loses the energy that produces radiation.

Also, megawatts is *not* a measure of energy. It is a measure of power. Megawatt-seconds, or watt-seconds, or kilowatt-hours or however you want to multiply *power times time* is a measure of energy.

And as an aside, I think Feynman would not be fond of this article. Feynman, some of whose lectures I attended, would , like many other theoretical physicist, say that the evidence for "climate change" is very weak; that yes, adding greenhouse gases, all things being equal, will raise average surface temperatures. But how much? That is not known. Feynman was a stickler for solid evidence, not speculation, not computer models which have yet to produce testable results.