And with the power of the sun...

We can power the world! Well, that's the idea, at least. But we may be bungling it up. Seems that some of the top minds in the world of energy (scientists, not CEOs) think so, or are at least worried about it.

Nuclear fusion is shaping up as one of the longer-term investments in the power portfolio. For the next few decades, cleaner coal, biofuels, nuclear fission, geothermal, wind and solar power will be much bigger factors in the energy equation. Theoretically, fusion could provide clean, cheap and abundant power - that is, once scientists solve all the technological challenges associated with controlling the nuclear reaction that fuels the sun.

That's what the $13 billion ITER project is all about: By 2016, a huge magnetic containment vessel (also known as a tokamak) is to be built at a facility in France. Researchers will use that tokamak to test their concepts for sustaining a fusion reaction.

But at a time when other countries are putting more resources into fusion research, less and less U.S. funding is going into developing the technology for extracting power from a magnetically contained fusion plasma, Kulcinski said.

He said his own program has had a lot of success in magnetic fusion development, but "we're in danger of losing that now as resources get pulled away and faculty retire or die off or whatever, and we're not replacing them now with people who are looking down the road at the end product."

By the time magnetic confinement fusion is ready for commercialization, perhaps a generation from now, America will sorely miss the scientists and engineers who should have been trained for the task, Kulcinski said. "It's very ironic: The closer we get to that, the more it's collapsing," he said.
- Source

There's some more interesting stuff in the article, such as discussing other forms of fusion and so on. The premise does seem rather dire. Especially if you consider that many are trying to slide our education backwards by demanding religious philosophy be taught in science curriculum. Science teachers having to use code words for scientific theory in science class? Yep, we're screwed.