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Right now there are two promising forms of fusion in development, inertial confinement and tokamak plasma fusion.
Tokamaks are the most likely near-term solution, but inertial confinement is the more promising solution long-term and for smaller and safer applications (including as small as a car).
Tokamaks use torus shaped magnetic confinement systems that are filled with superheated plasma. Fuel in the form of various hydrogen, lithium, beryllium, or helium isotopes is injected into the plasma and high temperatures and pressures (simulating the environment of a fission explosion or that of the interior of the sun). This causes the fusion fuel cycle to commence.
In general, tokamaks rely on heat more so than anything else to create fusion - very much like the Sun.
Inertial confinement is different. These systems use pellets of stable, frozen/cooled fusion fuel (typically a deuterium-tritium mix) that are placed in magnetic suspension and then blasted at multiple angles simultaneously by multiple lasers. The impact causing an implosion of the pellet under great pressure and thus, the strong force takes over, and we get fusion. This is more akin to how a thermonuclear warhead is designed. It is more pressure and force than it is temperature.
The benefit of inertial confinement is the potential for miniaturization, and the portability of it's fuel (pellets). Tokamaks will always be fairly large, unwieldily, and dangerous. Tokamaks also require a great deal of energy to get started, let alone maintained.
However, tokamaks have some added uses, one of which (since we're talking about future energy production) is that they can be used in far-term scientific pursuits towards using singularities as energy storage; but that's a ways off.
Cold fusion isn't a pipe-dream, it is not only possible but has been experimentally demonstrated. This is commonly known in science circles; but among popular science articles the concept of room temperature fusion is often conflated with the claims of a few crackpot scientists who stated they caused fusion in some kind of table-top experiment. This is unfortunate because it killed research into very viable yet elusive forms of fusion based on binding muons with nuclei to form muonic atoms which are far easier to fuse.
Real cold fusion is muon-catalyzed fusion, and again, is experimentally sound and a verifiable phenomenon. It does not produce more energy than what is put into the experiment, however, due to the difficulty in generating muons, among other things. However, with greater research, it may be possible to overcome some of these limitations.
Muon catalyzed fusion is not dependent upon high temperates, so for all practical purposes, it should be known as cold fusion - but, it isn't, so go figure.
Anyway, we need a great deal more research on muon generation at large scales before we can overcome the several problems associated with, let's call it, "luke-warm" fusion..
The ITER tokamak is already being built, so we should start with tokamaks for the time being until inertial confinement generally replaces it on small and moderate scales. Tokamaks should then be reserved for the largest scale energy generation.
Going back to an earlier point, I think we need to explore anti-matter generation at large scales as well. Tokamaks can be useful here as well.
One way of generating anti-matter quickly and cheaply is to collimate beams of charged particles into an oppositely charged Reissner-Nordstrom singularity that is actively and simultaneously evaporating due to Hawking radiation. This would take place, confined, within a tokamak attached to a particle accelerator. Such a system would yield a 50% conversion rate of matter-antimatter.
There are difficulties to this approach (primarily getting the singularity to have a large enough cross-section), but in general it is sound.
Fusion can get us there; especially the helium-3 fuel cycle.
One could potentially generate electricity, directly, without the need for turbines, with fusion reactors. This is because the helium-3 (+boron) fuel cycle is aneutronic, and releases very little energy in the form of non-reactive pions which carry off energy and ultimately decay into lethal gamma rays.
Instead, He-3's fuel cycle results in mostly high velocity charged particles as end products (protons), meaning these particles can be directly converted into electrical current, rather than using a medium for thermalization, steam, blah blah blah...
This is a much more efficient process than using a turbine.
What intrigues me the most is the Hawking Radiation. With it, it allows the possibility that an artificial singularity can generate enormous amounts of energy. What if a small singularity could be contained; what is the energy projection for such an event and is it possible?
I also wonder, if there is life outside our system, would the discovery of a warp field lead to some reaction? In my mind, the greatest argument against extent alien contact is the fact that our government has done nothing to protect us against a hostile species. I judge this on the basis that the US Government has done little to nothing to further research on new energy production technologies that are required to further weapons and propulsion research.