There are several aneutronic fusion projects. The biggest is Tri Alpha, with over $500 million invested. They proved stable plasma in 2015 at 10 million degrees, and just completed a new reactor they plan to take to 100 million degrees; according to their model, the plasma should get more stable at higher temperatures. If it turns out that way, pumping up the heating to boron fusion temperatures is relatively simple, and they have a straightforward path to a practical reactor in 2025 or so. (Source: recent articles plus a presentation I saw from one of their people in 2016)
There's a group that thinks a sufficiently powerful petawatt picosecond laser could ignite fusion in a block of boron fuel. This will be testable with an off-the-shelf laser before long; these lasers are improving by a factor of ten every three years.
YCombinator has an investment in Helion, which is working on a hybrid D-D/D-He3 reactor (the He3 comes from the D-D reactions), saying only 6% of the energy would be released as neutron radiation.
Plus there's LPP, a tiny dark-horse project that will finally get a decent test of their idea this year.
Like you, I’m hoping for an unforeseen breakthrough, but it seems very unlikely anytime soon. Just containing such an energetic plasma for any length of time past ignition is going to require it’s own set of breakthroughs in materials and manipulation of magnetic fields.
The temperature would be very high but the amount of energy wouldn't necessarily be remarkable. And for the pulsed designs (laser and LPP), containment time isn't a concern.
There's a group that thinks a sufficiently powerful petawatt picosecond laser could ignite fusion in a block of boron fuel. This will be testable with an off-the-shelf laser before long; these lasers are improving by a factor of ten every three years.
YCombinator has an investment in Helion, which is working on a hybrid D-D/D-He3 reactor (the He3 comes from the D-D reactions), saying only 6% of the energy would be released as neutron radiation.
Plus there's LPP, a tiny dark-horse project that will finally get a decent test of their idea this year.