illudium q-36

While Germany’s Energie-Wende is set to wean the power-hungry nation off of traditional nuclear power (though the change initially demanded that Germany import nuclear-generated electricity from France, fire-up coal and coke plants that had laid dormant for dozens of years and the renewables conduit is making some conservationists angry over environmental and scenic impact), research into alternative forms of nuclear power production is not a completely taboo subject.
As Business Insider reports (with a lot of thorough and accessible background on the science), the University of Greifswald in partnership with the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics is about to bring on-line its experimental Wendelstein 7-X, a fusion reactor—also known as a stellarator, mimicking what happens inside a star, as opposed to fission reactors that harness the energy produced when large, unstable radioactive materials break apart. The one billion euro facility, just completed, is the largest of its kind and hopes to one day sustain a continuous and contained plasma-discharge that will usher in the next generation of large-scale, sustainable energy-production.