Since the late 1950s, U.K. scientists have been attempting to achieve the fusion of hydrogen nuclei (tritum and deuterium) using magnetic confinement (MCF).

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In the Nature study, Brian Naranjo and colleagues, from the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), initiated fusion of heavy hydrogen, or deuterium, using the strong electric field generated in a pyroelectric crystal.

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And it does not use hot fusion, the union of hydrogen atoms into larger elements that powers the sun and stars.

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After the Soviet Union broke America's atomic monopoly in 1949, several prominent scientists and politicians favoured the development of the hydrogen bomb, a fusion weapon hundreds of times more powerful than the bombs that the Manhattan Project had built.

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Unlike the sort of fusion done in big machines, which squeeze heavy hydrogen nuclei together, no neutrons are released in this reaction.

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One of the challenges of aneutronic fusion is the fact that it uses a Hydrogen-Boron reaction for fuel, rather than the more traditional deuterium-tritium fusion reaction.

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Acting alone, gravity would cause stars to collapse completely, but as long as energy is produced at their centers by nuclear fusion (the joining of atomic nuclei to form new elements, as in a hydrogen bomb), the star is heated and puffed up.

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The newspapers were full of articles on solar power, fusion and converting the economy to run on fuel cells and hydrogen.

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