"Such vessels are known as tokamaks."
LOL
I remember reading about these in the mid to late sixties in the Science Year Book put out yearly by World Book Encyclopedia. Basically, they are a proton (or is it an electron? probably electron) accelerator causing the acceleration with magnetic fields around a circular track.
At a certain high speed, crashing it into another will cause them to "fuse" with one another with resulting huge amounts of energy AND heat to be released. Much like nuclear fission, which splits the atom, nuclear fusion relies on "fusing" subatomic particles together to produce energy.
Three things that I believe make nuclear fusion an impossibility:
-- holding one subatomic particle for only something like 1/1,000,000th of a second--an impossibility at this point
--accelerating the particle to be smashed into it to near the speed of light -- another near impossibility
--our sun is experiencing "billions and billions" (H/T Carl Sagan) of nuclear fusion reactions every second--THAT is the source of it's energy in the form of heat and light. Should we perchance ever achieve the feat of nuclear fusion, we would have to be able to contain extreme heat equal to that of the sun, and I think that is another impossibility.
Back in my college days (mid seventies) they were talking about using lasers to achieve nuclear fusion. Now I see that "plasma" has entered the conversation.
And isn't is weird that they chose to crank up that CERN during the total eclipse, and that after it being mothballed for 5 or 6 years. Last time it was cranked up they discovered/ produced "the God particle"-- the Higgs Boson particle. Yeah right, my ass craves stove wood too.
The so-called scientists involved with these Rube Goldberg contraptions are only interested in one thing: money.
They have to announce some new and amazing discoveries on occasion to justify their being the beneficiaries of huge government grants and financing of their "research." But you will never see them announce their achieving nuclear fusion. If you ever do, bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.