re: oliver mayes

(I'll ignore the wee mistake in the last sentence, I assume you meant to say "fusion is the other way around...")

From wikipedia

"The second basic type of nuclear weapon produces a large amount of its energy through nuclear fusion reactions. Such fusion weapons are generally referred to as thermonuclear weapons or more colloquially as hydrogen bombs (abbreviated as H-bombs), as they rely on fusion reactions between isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium). However, all such weapons derive a significant portion – and sometimes a majority – of their energy from fission (including fission induced by neutrons from fusion reactions). "

The way I was taught it was that a fission event (ala "atomic bomb") provides the initial energy to kick off the fusion process creating a "thermonuclear bomb". The US bombs over Japan were fission bombs, but hydrogen bombs have only been tested. Thank god.

The Sun uses fusion in much the same way as H-bombs do, except it has a tad more fuel to burn through, and its own gravity stops it from exploding. When enough mass is burned then gravity won't stop the explosion and the earth will experience some severe global warming... :)

As I said, we can already produce uncontrolled Sun-like fusion, but it's the controllable aspect which is delaying the technology.