Fission had another advantage in its early years: it was born into the breakneck wartime effort to develop an atomic bomb. The early atomic reactors were essential to that effort because they produced plutonium, so money was poured into their development. After the war, the rapid research continued as military planners saw fission reactors as a perfect power source for submarines. In fact, the light-water reactor, which has come to dominate the nuclear power industry, is little more than an adapted submarine power plant and, with the benefit of hindsight, wasn’t the best choice for land-based electricity generation. All of that development would probably have taken decades if carried out by civilian scientists in peacetime.
Fusion was also born in the military research labs of Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union and at first was kept classified for the same reason as fission: because it could be used to create plutonium. But as soon as military planners realised it would be no easier than using a fission reactor, they lost interest in controlled fusion. Since then, fusion research has struggled along, buffeted by cycles of feast and famine as government enthusiasm for alternative sources of energy has waxed and waned. It has never enjoyed clear enthusiastic support from government such as the Apollo programme received following President Kennedy’s pledge to put a man on the Moon. This is one reason for fusion research’s obsession with achieving break-even. A clear demonstration that fusion can generate an excess of energy will grab the headlines and generate a wave of excitement. Scientists and engineers will then be clamouring to join the ranks of fusion researchers and government funding will come pouring in. That’s the hope, anyway.
Some technological dreams just do take time to come to fruition. Look at the history of aviation. The Wright brothers’ flight in 1903 wasn’t the start of the process; aviation pioneers had been struggling to get aloft for decades before that. The first twelve-second flight at Kitty Hawk was just the demonstration of feasibility – analogous to break-even in fusion, perhaps? Orville and Wilbur had no idea how their invention would develop next. They couldn’t possibly have imagined the huge jet airliners of today, let alone the spacefaring pleasure craft of Virgin Galactic. But those developments didn’t happen instantly: it took more than four decades, and the accelerated development of two world wars, before jet engines and pressurised cabins became the norm. Fusion is still at the wooden struts, wire and canvas stage of development. Future fusion power plants may look nothing like a puffed up version of ITER.
The cost and time that it will take to make fusion work has to be balanced against the enormous benefits it would bring. Assuming that all the engineering hurdles described by the likes of Lidsky can be overcome, what would a world powered by fusion be like? The current partners in ITER represent more than half the world’s population, so the technological know-how to build fusion reactors will be widespread – there will be no monopoly. Nor will any nation have a stranglehold over fuel supplies. Every country has access to water. There will be no more mining for coal or digging up tar sands; no more oil rigs at sea or in fragile habitats on land; no more pipelines scything across wildernesses; and no more oil tankers or oil spills. The geopolitics of energy – with all the accompanying corruption, coups and wars of access – will disappear. Countries with booming economic growth, such as China, India, South Africa and Brazil, will no longer have to resort to helter-skelter building of coal-fired and nuclear power stations. It is highly unlikely that fusion power will be ‘too cheap to meter,’ as US Atomic Energy Commission chief Lewis Strauss claimed in 1954, but it won’t damage the climate, it won’t pollute and it won’t run out. How can we not try?
Getting there will not be easy and it won’t happen unless society at large and its governments, as well as fusion scientists, want it. Lev Artsimovich, the Soviet fusion pioneer who led their effort for more than twenty years, was once asked when fusion energy would be available. He replied: ‘Fusion will be ready when society needs it.’
Further Reading
The Scientific Origins of Controlled Fusion Technology, by John Hendry, Annals of Science, vol. 44 (1987), pp. 143-168
An excellent summary of the ‘prehistory’ of fusion research and early work in the United Kingdom up to 1950.
Fusion Research in the UK 1945-1960, by J. Hendry and J. D. Lawson (AEA Technology, 1993)
A definitive history of fusion research’s ‘heroic age’ in the United Kingdom.
Project Sherwood: The U.S. Program in Controlled Fusion, by Amasa S. Bishop (Addison-Wesley, 1958)
The story of America’s early years, by someone who was there.
Fusion: Science, Politics, and the Invention of a New Energy Source, by Joan Lisa Bromberg (MIT Press, 1982)
The official history of the US programme from its beginnings to 1980.
Fusion: The Search for Endless Energy, by Robin Herman (Cambridge University Press, 1990)
A popular account of the international fusion effort up to the late 1980s.
The Science of JET, by John Wesson (JET Joint Undertaking, 2000)
A brief technical history of the Joint European Torus.
Nuclear Fusion: Half a Century of Magnetic Confinement Fusion Research, by C. M. Braams and P. E. Stott (Taylor & Francis, 2002)
A thorough history of magnetic fusion packed with technical details.
Lasers Across the Cherry Orchards, by Michael Forrest (Michael Forrest, 2011)
A personal memoir of the Culham scientists’ expedition to Moscow to take the temperature of the T-3 tokamak.
Inertial Confinement Nuclear Fusion: A Historical Approach by Its Pioneers, by Guillermo Velarde and Natividad Carpintero-Santamaria (eds) (Foxwell & Davies, 2007)
A collection of personal accounts of the development of inertial confinement fusion.
Search for the Ultimate Energy Source: A History of the U.S. Fusion Energy Program, by Stephen O. Dean (Springer, 2013)
A thorough account of the US effort by one of its main protagonists.
Acknowledgments
Firstly I would like to thank my colleagues at Science magazine who have aided and abetted my attempts to chronicle fusion’s progress, including Colin Norman, Robert Coontz, John Travis, Richard Stone, Eliot Marshall, Jeffrey Mervis, Adrian Cho, Robert F. Service, Dennis Normile, and Andrey Allakhverdov.
This book would be nothing without the scores of scientists and science administrators who have given their time and effort to talk to me and explain the intricacies of their work. For that I would like to thank Roberto Andreani, Robert Aymar, Michael Bell, Stephen Bodner, Harald Bolt, Duarte Borba, Richard J. Buttery, David Campbell, Valery Chuyanov, Tom Cochran, John Collier, Bruno Coppi, Glenn Counsell, Michael Cuneo, Ron Davidson, Anne Davies, Stephen O. Dean, Arnaud Devred, Mike Dunne, Jacques Ebrardt, Chris Edwards, Umberto Finzi, Eric Fredrickson, Richard Garwin, David Gates, Alan Gibson, Siegfried Glenzer, Robert Goldston, Martin Greenwald, Greg Hammett, David Hammer, Norbert Holtkamp, Lorne Horton, Kaname Ikeda, Kimihiro Ioki, Jean Jacquinot, Gunter Janeschitz, Raymond Jeanloz, Bob Kaita, Marylia Kelley, Thomas Klinger, Russell Kulsrud, Joe Kwan, John Lindl, Steven Lisgo, Christopher Llewellyn-Smith, Dick Majeski, Guy Matthews, Keith Matzen, Robert McCrory, Dale Meade, Sergei Mirnov, Neil Mitchell, Achilleas Mitsos, Edward Moses, Osamu Motojima, Dennis Mueller, Vladimir Semenovich Mukhovatov, Steve Obenschain, Chris Paine, Jerome Pamela, Richard Pitts, Stewart Prager, Sergei Putvinski, Rezwan Razani, Ksenia Aleksandrovna Razumova, Paul-Henri Rebut, Michael Roberts, Francesco Romanelli, Steven Sabbagh, Ned Sauthoff, Roy Schwitters, John Sethian, Yasuo Shimomura, Jim Strachan, Vyacheslav Sergeevich Strelkov, Edmund Synakowski, Bryan Taylor, Paul Vandenplas, Evgeniy Velikhov, Michael Watkins, Peide Weng, Randy Wilson, Glen A. Wurden, Ken Young, Michael Zarnstorff and Hartmut Zohm. If I’ve forgotten anyone, please accept my apologies. Your contribution was no less valuable.
I’m also eternally grateful to the unsung heroes of science writing: lab and university press officers. My thanks go to Aris Apollonatos, Neil Calder, Chris Carpenter, Mich
el Claessens, Mark Constance, Sabina Griffith, Jennifer Hay, Bonnie Hébert, Judith Hollands, Nick Holloway, Kitta MacPherson, Isabella Milch, John Parris, Paul Preuss, Lynda Seaver, Jeff Sherwood, Bill Spears, Eleanor Starkman, Chris Warwick, Patti Wieser, and Mark Woollard.
Special thanks go to Steven Cowley, director of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, for reading the manuscript and helping me avoid some terrible mistakes, and to my agent Peter Tallack of the Science Factory for nursing this project through to publication.
I’m indebted to my editors, Jon Jackson at Duckworth and Dan Crissman at Overlook, for polishing up the manuscript so nicely, and to everyone there, including Tracy Carns, Michael Goldsmith, Peter Mayer and Jamie-Lee Nardone, for turning my words into such a fabulous book.
I’d also like to thank Adam, Giles, Jeremy, Jo, June, Marek, Megan, Natalie, Philip and Tig of the Ufford House Book Group for their six-weekly doses of encouragement.
And finally, love and thanks to Bernadette Lawrence, Sam Lawrence-Clery and Ellen Lawrence-Clery for your constant support and encouragement and for being the most exceptional family.
INDEX
2XII mirror machine, 274
2XIIB, 274–75
A-bomb (atomic bomb), 32, 52, 53, 74, 86, 110, 190–91, 195; Teller-Ulam design, 191–95, 202
ablator, 197, 222–24
Abraham, Spencer, 266
accelerators, 42, 44, 68, 78, 218, 221, 268, 286, 298, 302; Betatron, 79, 83; Cockcroft-Walton accelerator, 40–41
Adiabatic Toroidal Compressor (ATC), 130
AEC, Britain, collaboration with, 61; and Brueckner, 206–9; budget cuts at, 103; and declassification, 93, 212, 215; and environmentalists, 146; and fusion program, 81, 102–3; and Geneva, 92, 94; and Hirsch, 147; and IFRC, 242; and laser fusion, 212, 222; and McCone, 100; Model C, 129; Ormak, 129; review of fusion program, 106–7; Schlesinger, 147; and Spitzer’s plan, 77–81; and Strauss, 86–88, 98; and vindication of the tokamak, 126; and ZETA, 64–67
AEI, 51, 54, 58, 68, 95
AERE, 48–49, 50, 52
Airbus A380 superjumbo, 266–67
Alcator A, 128–30, 261
Alejaldre, Carlos, 291
alpha particle, definition of, 139
Amalgamated Wireless, 32
American Chemical Society meeting, 174–75
American Optical Company, 203
American Physical Society, 99; meeting of, 174, 176, 215
Apollo 11, 125, 147
arms race, beginning of, 110
Armstrong, Neil, 125
Artsimovich, Lev, 109–132; Boston, visit to, 127; Culham conference, 120; and Dick Post, criticism of, 119; fusion power, availability of, 307; and Heisenberg chair, 119; and IAEA conference in Novosibirsk, 107, 120, 207; and IAEA conference in Salzburg, 119; and IAEA conference in Vienna, 242; and Pease, invitation to, 122–25; and plasma current flow, 142; and Spitzer, 105, 117; and tokamak, 104
Arzamas-16, 111
ASDEX tokamak, 163–65
Associated Electrical Industries. See AIE
Aston, Francis, 36–38
Astron mirror machine, 148
ATC, 130; and beam systems, 152; and sawtooth instability, 131
Atkinson, Robert, 39–40
atom, splitting of, 40
atomic bomb. See A-bomb
Atomic Energy Act, 92
Atomic Energy Authority. See UKAEA
Atomic Energy Commission (French). See CEA
Atomic Energy Commission (UN), 50
Atomic Energy Commission (US). See AEC
Atomic Energy Research Establishment. See AERE
Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, 58
Atoms for Peace conference. See International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy
‘Atoms for Peace’ speech (Eisenhower), 60, 88, 92
Aymar, Robert, 252–54, 260; and ITER budget, 256, 259; resignation from ITER, 263
bare drop model, 212, 215
Barraclough, S. H., 46
Basov, Nikolay, 199, 206, 210, 212
‘beam alley,’ 181
‘Beard, the.’ See Kurchatov, Igor
Becquerel, Henri, 35
Bell Telephone Laboratories, 199
Beria, Lavrentiy, 112, 113–14
Berkeley Radiation Laboratory, 194, 274
beryllium, creation of, 13, 14, 197
Betatron accelerator, 79, 83
Bethe, Hans, 31, 32, 43
Bhabha, Homi, 61, 92
Bickerton, Roy, 56–57
Bikini Atoll, 78
Birdcage, the, 54
Bishop, Amasa, 88, 126; and declassification, 93; and Geneva, 94; and IFRC, 242; and Hirsch, 147; US tokamak proposals, 128
Bohm diffusion, 104, 105, 118, 120, 130, 136
Bohm, David, 102
boron-11, 304
BPX, 183–84
break-even, 23
breeder reactors, 103, 146, 303
Brezhnev, Leonid, 123, 245
Briscoe, Frank, 288
Brueckner, Keith 213, 214, 219, and American Physical Society meeting, 215; and laser fusion, 206–10
Burmah Oil, 214
Burning Plasma Experiment. See BPX
Bush, George W., and ITER, 262
Cadarache, 25, 143, 252, 260, 263–67, 270–71, 285, 290
Calder Hall, 58
Callaghan, James, 145
Callis, Clayton, 175
Campbell, Michael, 237
carbon dioxide gas laser, 205, 211, 218
carbon lining, 166, 169
carbon, absorption problems, 169; as produced by fusion, 14
Carruthers, Bob, 54, 55
CEA, 133, 135–37, 143, 252–53
Centurion. See Halite-Centurion program
CERN, 134, 157. See also Large Hadron Collider
Chernobyl, 17, 18
Cherwell, Lord, 47–49, 78
Chicago Pile 1, 16, 73
Churchill, Winston, 47, 78
CIT, 183
Civil Rights Act, 122
Clarendon Laboratory, 33, 44, 47, 56, 74, 79
Clark, G. H., 46
Clean Air Act, 146
CLEO, 130, 138, 152
CNO cycle, 43
Cockcroft, John, and AEC, 61; and AERE, 48, 50; classifying of research, 53; Cockcroft-Walton accelerator, 40, 41; Kurchatov’s visit, 60; and Plowden, 62–63; and press, 64, 67; and Thonemann, 49, 51, 56; and Tuck, 79; and ZETA, 57–58, 68
cold fusion, 171–77
Colgate, Stirling, 91, 95
‘collective effects,’ 84
Columbus (pinch), 90, 95, 97, 99, 100, 107
Compact Ignition Tokamak. See CIT
Conductron, 208
Conference of Experts, 201
Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy (Geneva), 60, 133
Coppi, Bruno, 128, 261–62
Cousins, Stanley, 51, 52
Cowhig, W. T., 49
Critchfield, Charles, 43
cryostat, 251
Culham laboratory, 71, 103–4, 140
Curie, Marie, 35–36
Curie, Pierre, 35
Cyclops (100-J), 212
cyclotron, 68, 162
D-T, 141, 150–51, 153, 155, 179, 182–83, 185; and capsules, 195–98, 212, 214; and Lisky, 303
dark matter, and early universe, 11
Darwin, Charles, 34, 35; On the Origin of the Species by Natural Selection, 34, 35
Davies, Anne, 253, 254, 257
DCX, 97, 127
declassification, 61, 92–94, 97, 99, 212
Delta (1-kJ laser), 211, 215
DEMO, 303
deuterium-tritium. See D-T
deuterium, 18, 19, 20, 27, 41, 43, 44
deuteron, definition of, 13
diffusion cloud chamber, 68
diffusion, Bohm, 104, 105, 118, 130, 136; classical, 98, 101, 102
DIII-D, 165, 166, 287
diodes, 293–94
Direct Current Experiment. See DCX
direct drive, 225, 234, 284, 297
‘disruption,’ 131, 141, 182, 183
distributed phase plate, 228
divertor, 165–171; and ELMs, 186, 287; and ITER, 250, 251, 287, 288; and JET, 178, 180, 185
Division of Plasma Physics, 99
‘Doppler broadening,’ 122, 125
Doppler effect, 121–22
Dorland, William, 254–55
Doublet II, 130
doughnut-shaped ring, 46–48
driver, 195–98, 223, 226, 230, 231, 234, 298, 299
Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrotest Facility (DARHT), 234
Dubček, Alexander, 122–23
Dyson, Frank Watson, 37
e-beam fusion, 218
Eastman, Jay, 226
Eddington, Arthur, and Atkinson, 40; and relativity, theory of, 37; and sun, energy source of, 38
edge-localised modes. See ELMs
EEC, 133, 134, 140, 143, 146
Einstein, Albert, 32, 35, 37
Eisenhower, Dwight D., ‘Atoms for Peace’ speech, 60, 88, 92
Eklund, Sigvard, 242–43
Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), 301
electrolysis, 172
electromagnetic induction, 47
electromagnetic trap, 111, 114
ELMs, 186, 287, 288
ELMy H-mode, 186, 187
Elugelab, 189, 191, 202
Emmett, John, 212
Energy Research and Development Administration. See ERDA
Environmental Protection Agency, 146
ERDA, 215–20, 222, 226; and 2XIIB, 275; and MFTF-B, 276; and TMX, 276
Euratom, 134–37, 139, 140, 143, 157–58, 185, 187, 242, 243, 247, 264
European Coal and Steel Community, 133
European Economic community. See EEC
experimental ignition threshold factor. See ITFX
Farnsworth, Philo T., 147
Fasella, Paulo, 247
fast ignition, 298–99
Fermi, Enrico, 16–17, 67, 73, 190, 217
fission, definition of, 16
Fleischmann, Martin, 171–77
Forrest, Michael, 123
Piece of the Sun : The Quest for Fusion Energy (9781468310412) Page 29