There seems to be many missunderstandings of this process

1 Fusion has been achieved for many tens of seconds in JET

The problem being that the power taken to start the reaction is more than the output of the fusion

2 Fusion in either the NIF or JET is safe just someone touching the JET plasma with a finger would instantly stop it. In the NIF stopping the fuel droplets instantly stops that. This type of fusion has also been done before with the SHIVA laser

3 The Hydrogen (Deutirium or Tritium) is converted to Helium water is not actually used execpt that you get the hydrogen from it (as in a lead acid battery)

Hope this clears a couple of things up

Jeff

I would assume that the seawater is simply being used as a source of deuterium.

Only one part in 6500 is deuterium and it's uneconomical to attempt to extract more than a small fraction of it. What's left is 99.995% of the original water which is perfectly safe to dump back where it came from, although a fair proportion of it will have been sufficiently purified en route to be saleable as a product in itself (or used on-site). You'd probably use ten gallons of "liquid deuterium ore", not just one, to pull out a few grams of deuterium oxide - the equivalent of 300 gallons of gasolene.

That would be in a reactor which, mark you, doesn't yet exist. Getting fusion fuel never was a problem, creating a reactor most definitely is.

No reactor-tourism then? No hordes of town folk in their Bermuda shorts flocking to get a reactor-tan? I think you are mistaken! Certainly where I am right now, during the day the sky is grey, the ground is wet, people are getting sleepy and irritable and we have another five months of it to look forward to. Those of us who can afford it and square our consciences over global warming may get away to a seedy foreign tourist resort for a week, but wouldn't it be nice if we could just packs the kids in the back of the car and bimble off for a day in the artifical sun just up the road from here; giving ourselves skin cancer and being sick with too much ice cream all the year round?