[xte]

Few things: no government really want unlimited energy for all for a simple reason: power&control. If any country in the planet can be autonomous if it can produce enough food for their citizens there is only war as a means to control it's development and that's unacceptable for nearly all ruling classes.

Second things: we have already achieved nuclear fusion in France and UK and perhaps other researches I do not know but from there to arrive to a positive sustainable heat production and in turn to arrive at industrial scale the road is super long only technically leaving apart any political and business consideration.

Third and last thing: actual fission based nuclear power is useful to produce plutonium so usable and powerful nuke, and anyone like the idea of having many of them in it's arsenal. With fusion we only produce heat. Usable for many things, mostly to produce steam and so electricity and even to heat cities in the winter. But with little use for military purpose.

Long story short: I think even if someone know and can produce a working fusion-powered electrical plant no government will let seriously develop it, at least for next few decades...

[AboutTheWhisles]

Wouldn't that imply that less powerful governments would want unlimited energy to become less dependent on richer and more powerful governments?

[xte]

They simply can't... Less powerful in that sense means less developed. Such kind of research demand enormous resources and knowledge.

These days industrial knowledge is mostly in private hands with universities that are not anymore a "center of (public) knowledge" bu mere gym to form Ford-models workers with a different skillset respect of classic one but not much different in terms of ability to understand the big picture, being autonomous etc.

In present society there is no room for new "Einstein", "Tesla" etc.

[AboutTheWhisles]

Your post that I replied to said that no governments wanted free energy, now you are shifting the goal post to some sort of further made up hypothetical world where big governments have free energy and small governments don't.

[xte]

I reformulate: no governments that theoretically can achieve free energy want it, perhaps governments that can't dream it as a temporary solution to find a way to lock it out for their own sake. Better?

Keep in mind a thing: hitler was not blocked via military operation forces against forces nor interior civil war but due to the lack of gasoline. And that's true for essentially anything. If you can "ground" a country you can rule it to a certain extent a thing any government powerful enough want.

Did you remember prohibitionist in the USA to avoid an improbable development of alcohol powered cars because produce alcohol is easy, produce gasoline it's not?

I can cite many more examples.