Only once in my lifetime has a recession had a serious impact on me. It was in the 1970s, when even a care-free Oxford physics student couldn’t help noticing that the lights had started to go out, and that much of our frantic socialising took place by candlelight.

However, we physicists were optimistic, despite the three-day week and the power cuts.

We knew that the world’s future energy problems would be solved soon. In only a few years, nuclear fusion — the reaction which powers the sun and the hydrogen bomb — would be producing cheap, clean limitless energy for us all.

However, despite billions of pounds spent by governments worldwide, it has taken far longer than expected to perfect the techniques needed to release the energy by sticking hydrogen nuclei together.

Supporters of fusion say — quite correctly — that it is inherently safer than nuclear fission, which is used in current nuclear power stations.

Fission can easily get out of control – as experienced at Chernobyl — and it leaves a legacy of several thousand years of nuclear waste. Fusion, by contrast, is difficult to start unless you use an explosive device, and stops as soon as you remove the huge temperatures and pressures needed to fuse the hydrogen atoms. And its nuclear waste legacy is measured in decades, rather than thousands of years.

The biggest nuclear fusion project in the world — Jet — arrived at Culham in Oxfordshire in 1983, bringing international prestige and hundreds of jobs. The giant machine uses the tokamak approach to fusion, confining a slippery sub-atomic soup called plasma in a doughnut-shaped ring to produce the fusion reaction.

The Jet project was supposed to last for 20 years, but the date for closure has moved beyond 2014, when the work will begin to transfer to another international project called Iter in France.

In the mean time, the Jet project has been given a new lease of life as a test-bed for Iter. Rather than being run down, nuclear fusion research at Culham will generate about 140 new jobs between now and October.

Iter, now being built in Cadarache in the South of France, is intended as the penultimate step towards a nuclear fusion power station, producing limitless energy without the need for fossil fuels.

A 14-month shutdown to replace the ‘wall’ of the new machine, allowing testing of a new material for Iter, means 70 temporary blue-collar jobs. These electricians, mechanical fitters and mates will be recruited through contractors Morsons. Another 20 or so technicians are needed for the upgrade work by contractors Rullion.

There are also 29 permanent vacancies for chartered engineers, plus another 20 needing qualifications ranging from a PhD to electrical technician status. These staff will all be on permanent contracts, despite the fact that Jet is due to close some time in the future.

Some of Jet’s 400-500 staff will gradually move to Iter from next year, with others transferring to the UK’s own fusion research programme, which employs 150 people at Culham. But no one knows what will happen to the rest of the workforce.

When Jet arrived, the European Commission agreed to restore the site after the project finished.

A public consultation about the future use of the site last summer showed 70 per cent of respondents wanting to see the Jet research buildings kept, with less than ten per cent in favour of removing the buildings and returning the site to farmland.

Spokesperson Nick Holloway said: “The feeling is that some kind of scientific research will continue on the site.”

Engineering department manager David Martin hopes that this year’s recruitment will be easier than usual – Britain has a long-standing shortage of engineers. He is hoping to attract staff laid off from Formula 1 teams or the petro-chemical or pharmaceutical industry.

The new jobs are undoubtedly welcome. But why is it taking so long to create a fusion power station? Nuclear fission was harnessed for peaceful purposes only a few years after the first atom bomb, while in the intervening 40 years, no one has yet managed to produce more than a few seconds of controlled power from the reaction that powered the hydrogen bomb.

“The average person in Britain spends £1,000 a year on energy. Of that, £30 is spent on renewables and 30p on fusion. Give us 60p and we could do it much quicker,” said Mr Martin.

But perhaps the tide will finally turn in favour of fusion.

A new generation of environmentalists, with no memory of anti-nuclear marches, has suggested that nuclear power will be necessary to avoid irreversible damage to the planet before we can produce enough electricity from renewables – wind, wave and solar energy.

Advocates include the Green Party prospective parliamentary candidate for Oxford West and Abingdon, Chris Goodall, who sees nuclear power as a means of getting rid of dirtier coal-fired power stations, such as Didcot.

Mark Lynas, from Wolvercote, the author of Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, is also among the renegades.

However, there doesn’t seem much hope that a fusion nuclear power station will come on stream in time to keep the lights shining as North Sea gas runs out.

At current progress, even if everything goes swimmingly and cash-strapped governments come up with more funding, it seems unlikely that fusion will be putting electricity into the National Grid in my lifetime, at least.