A few decades ago one Alex Cheung (of Korean lineage I think) proposed a Boron-11 / Hydrogen-1 (i.e. single-protonic) fusion reaction. The (very) good news: fewer stray neutrons (if for no other reason than that leftover 11B is such a neutron sponge). The bad: Cheung's process languished in the realm of Theory. - until lately, when in 2021, TAE got a nice reaction started.
The fusion problem has always been that of the Seven Rings - you needed the gold to breed the gold, the gold here being energy. (Slight exception for tritium/deuterium but there you had that neutron problem.) I didn't know it was worth the candle. But - Bikini Atoll showed us that we might be able to get much more gold from the initial investment. You can't know, until you do the engineering.
h/t Winchell Chung (no relation) a host of Chinese names (also not Winchell's) and a "Hoffman" are proposing an improvement to the Boron-Proton process. The yield
is so much improved that we might be happy to provide that initial spark, after all.
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