I just came across this over at the Netscape blog.

This is amazing news, a high school student name Thiago Olson managed to build a fully-functioned nuclear fusion reactor in just 2 years.

Since then there have been a number of advances in the field like the one's detailed in Easy Low Cost No Radiation Fusion.

Latest Gadget has more:

...Olson's nuclear fusion reactor won't work for generating commercial power because it takes more energy to run it than to produce.

Money is being raised (on a donation basis for now) to build a small prototype to repeat earlier experiments (with refinements) and to get a better definition of the reaction constants.

Using this reactor as a power source would lower the cost of alcohol distillation into the range where alcohol would be a cheaper fuel than gasoline.

This is a high risk venture. I'd guess the chances of succes are around 80% although it might be as little as 10%. In any case the cost of the experiment ($200 million for a working prototype) is about .002% of GDP. Certainly we can afford such a risk given the rewards.

Cross Posted at The Astute Bloggers