Controlled Fusion Today

At the outset let me say that plasma physics and controlled fusion is still a tricky, uncertain science, with many open questions and lots of room for opinion. What I shall give will accordingly be just one man's view of the present state of research on controlled fusion. One way to discuss the situation is to break it into two parts, which are in actuality only partly independent. The two parts are the problem of heating and the problem of containment. Adopting this course, let me first discuss heating.