Meet the Reactors Accelerating Us Toward Fusion Energy
http://singularityhub.com/2016/08/12/meet-the-reactors-accelerating-us-toward-fusion-energy/?utm_source=StoryGrid&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=content%20access
I do not think our current pursuits of fusion in a torus will yield the answer. I will embellish on this and provide reasons for this as well as other alternatives.
The problem with a D-T fusion reaction is that you end up making a neutron that carries away a lot of the energy. We don't yet have a good energy conversion system for high energy neutrons to electricity. Most of the energy in a fission reaction goes to the kinetic energy of fission fragments which is easy to convert into heat. This is why I think our focus should be on aneutronic fusion created in a pollywell design. The fusion waste is high energy helium nuclei that can easily be converted into heat. Add in a heat engine like the ones we have been using for many decades and you may have a good start. With additional work, we may one day have a direct power conversion process of converting the high energy of these helium nuclei directly into electricity.
http://www.geekwire.com/2016/emc2-revives-quest-to-harness-polywell-nuclear-fusion/ (http://www.geekwire.com/2016/emc2-revives-quest-to-harness-polywell-nuclear-fusion/) (I am not endorsing EMC2)
Another possibility that I think goes unnoticed is muon catalyzed fusion. These short lived particles may provide an answer to the coulomb repulsion issue if we were to make a lucky scientific discovery. What if we somehow figured out a way to make a tight beam of these particles at nearly the perfect energy range to be absorbed by a hydrogen plasma? The short halflife of a muon may be longer than the time required to get the fusion event to occur.
These are just my personal opinions.