The late Omni magazine forecasted that a revolutionary new energy technology called nuclear fusion — an innovation that would address a multitude of issues — was a mere 10 years away. That was in the early 1980s.

“What happened?” a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was asked 30 years later about the unfulfilled prophecy. He replied without hesitation: “We sobered up.”

Such is the hype and miscalculation that has long persisted around the promise of nuclear fusion — a potential energy source that Bloomberg forecasts could become an industry valued $40 trillion.

Fusion has been the holy grail of energy for more than 50 years. It is the field of research striving to replicate the physics of the sun, whose core burns at 27 million degrees Fahrenheit. Fusion’s promise is a big one indeed: to produce limitless clean and safe power to run the world’s economies and societies.

It’s important not to confuse nuclear fus