Fusion: The Search for Endless EnergyThe book abounds with fascinating anecdotes about fusion's rocky path: the spurious claim by Argentine dictator Juan Peron in 1951 that his country had built a working fusion reactor, the rush by the United States to drop secrecy and publicize its fusion work as a propaganda offensive after the Russian success with Sputnik; the fortune Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione sank into an unconventional fusion device, the skepticism that met an assertion by two University of Utah chemists in 1989 that they had created "cold fusion" in a bottle. Aimed at a general audience, the book describes the scientific basis of controlled fusion--the fusing of atomic nuclei, under conditions hotter than the sun, to release energy. Using personal recollections of scientists involved, it traces the history of this little-known international race that began during the Cold War in secret laboratories in the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union, and evolved into an astonishingly open collaboration between East and West. |
Contents
The invention of Dr Spitzer | 16 |
Behind closed doors | 33 |
Friends and rivals | 54 |
Dawn of the tokamak | 82 |
Building big science | 98 |
Forming the major league | 110 |
The political plasma | 126 |
The modern fusion lab | 143 |
The plasma olympics | 161 |
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American Artsimovich Atomic Energy breakeven Britain British build C-Stellarator called cold fusion conference confinement controlled fusion create Culham decade density Department of Energy deuterium Edward Teller electric electron engineering European experimental experiments fission fuel fusion community fusion device fusion energy fusion power fusion program fusion reactor fusion research fusion scientists Geneva giant tokamak Goldston Guccione Harold Furth Harwell heat Hirsch inside Japan Japanese Joint European Torus Kurchatov laser fusion Lev Artsimovich Lidsky Livermore Lyman Spitzer magnetic field magnetic fusion Mel Gottlieb ment mirror machine Moscow neutral beams neutrons nuclear fusion nuclei numbers particles Pease pinch Plasma Olympics plasma physicists plasma physics political Post Princeton lab Princeton Plasma problems produced radioactive reaction Rebut Russian Sakharov scientific Soviet Union Stellarator Stodiek Technology temperature test reactor TFTR theory thermonuclear tokamak took toroidal Torus tritium United uranium vacuum vessel weapons Zeta