Investors are pouring billions into the field to build power plants, and some companies are even signing huge agreements to purchase power from those still-nonexistent plants. Nearly three years ago, the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory hit a major milestone for fusion power. The NIF experiment finally showed that a fusion reactor could yield net energy. To operate a fusion power plant, not only do you have to achieve net energy, but you also need to do that on a somewhat constant basis and—crucially—do it economically. Or better yet, who would be the first to get a power plant up and running?