The need for domestic manufacturing conveniently matches up with several new energy industries, much of which has been blogged about on Daily Kos. While scalable opportunities appear to be emerging in solar power, wind, biofuel from algae, the US Navy has a gag order on a small fusion project that could be the Next Big Thing. Another Daily Kos blogger covered the significant points up to July of 2008 and we have all been waiting for some report from a Dr. Hirsch since then for estimates on what might happen next see Roger Fox's diary here. Obama and his energy advisers are too smart not to know about these developments, we can understand their reluctance to build up potentially false expectations, but I seem to remember our going to the Moon without any precedent other than the will to do it and knowledge of a few unmanned rockets that achieved orbit.
In the unlikely event that somehow the US Navy has managed to get their fusion success story off the Obama team sonar (they are good at that kind of thing) this diary is meant as a reminder to the Kos community to gently remind our policy makers they might be accused of sitting on their hands ... again. As a military secret, a new power plant for a submarine, the value seems to pale in terms of a civilian power source that could substantially provide concrete hope for the World. About the US Navy gag order, it had been in effect on the researcher, Dr. Bussard, during R&D, until they suspended funding circa 2006, during that brief window he went public, then funding was turned back on circa 2007 and he died, a talented physicist from Los Alamos National Lab, Dr. Nebel, took over the project, duplicating and exceeding Bussard's last test reactor within a year and the rest is ... mums the word. The price tag for an answer at the next level, a small 100MW reactor is $200 million EMC2FUSION, donate at New Mexico Community Foundation, yet, you would think we might be interested in the analysis of the completed research, given global warming, a faltering economy, etc. It is primarily due to Obama selecting Dr. Chu to head DOE that I have confidence they will do the right thing, or at least have that capability.
"There is hope for the future, when The World is ready for a new and better life all of this will come to pass, in God's good time." - Captain Nemo from Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (film adaptation).
Update: 2008 research passed peer review (no big fails to report) and a little stimulus package support is also headed in this direction.
For additional promising plasma fusion technologies also Google Rostoker and Lerner.