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All fusion produces helium, though. I don't think anyone is looking into fusing heavier atoms.

If you look at the nuclear binding energy curve (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_binding_energy#/media/... ) you'll see a nice bump there for He4. So there's no gain in fusing heavier stuff.

Not unless you could somehow bang three of them together at once to get to C-12. That seems unlikely with current technology. We can't even get C-N-O cycle fusion in the dinky little star we live next to.

So that's at least 20 years away from being 20 years away from being 20 years away. And you could just make more alpha particles, anyway. It's not like the universe is short on hydrogen.

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