After decades of “disappointingly slow but steady progress”, the race for fusion energy is now fully on, with governments, scientific institutions and private enterprises pouring billions of dollars into this potentially world-altering technology, the director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Centre at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said in an article in The Washington Post.Prof. Dennis Whyte said the availability of fusion energy would be a monumental breakthrough in the battle against climate change. But the technical challenges of essentially creating an “artificial mini-star” have been daunting.