
Eureka, Utah — Brian Shields squints his eyes and stares into the wavy heat-blurred mirage floating over the twin polyethylene pipelines stretching into the Utah desert. A pair of McElroy fusion machines is spitting out 80 feet of new pipeline every 15 minutes while a single fusion technician slowly paces between them like an expecting father. Shields slides his hardhat off to expose his shaved head to the August sun and says, “In a total …


