Nuclear Fusion and why it matters

Imagine a world where you could power your home without coal or natural gas.  Think about doing away with some of the silly "green" projects.  No longer would you rely on expensive solar units.  There would be no need for unreliable wind farms.  The power of water will no longer matter because now it doesn't matter if you live near a major source of water or one that is diverted by man.  With fusion power, engineers and scientists can recreate the power of a star and use it to power our homes, and the savings on energy costs and resources will be abundant.  Few detractors claim that developing fusion can possibly create an event where the reaction breaks down and collapses into a black hole.  Physically speaking any reaction created would not have the mass to do such a thing.  Take our own star, the sun, for example.  The sun with it's tremendous size does not have the mass to collapse into a black hole.  Take our much smaller reaction, that only uses a fraction of the power of a star.  It simply will not have the potential to collapse and consume the solar system. However, I am a very big fan of black holes and would not mind creating one simply to advance scientific knowledge, but that's beside the point.  One might ask what does fusion do?  And how does it work?  When two atomic nuclei collide together to form a new nucleus.  However not all of the mass is conserved, as some of the mass is converted into photons.  The difference between this and Fission, which is used in power plants and weapons is that fission cuts an atom, which releases the energy held together from the strong nuclear force.  The problem with fusion power at it's present state is that all fusion reactions attempted have been either unsuccessful, or have been unsustainable and lasted for milaseconds at best.  The problem is that fusing two atoms together is incredibly difficult.  Even if you take the lightest element (Hydrogen) and try to fuse it, it will not work.  that is because all nuclei have a positive charge, since like charges repel it is incredibly difficult to fuse two like nuclei together.  However, if both nuclei are accelerated to incredibly high speeds and collided they can overcome the natural electrostatic force and create a strong enough attractive force to achieve fusion. That is where I will be going with the next few posts, which is how we can achieve fusion sustainably without the use of massive particle accelerators.  While nuclear fusion is still a long way off, Thermonuclear reactions, more specifically those used in weapons, are widespread in use.  Basically it uses the heat given off from a fission to ignite a nuclear fusion stage.  Essentially not fusion, but more of a fission catalyst to start the fusion reaction.  Take a look at the Ivy Mike test in 1952, that will give you a better sense of what a thermonuclear reaction looks like.