POWER August 2018 - 46

NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY
1. Multibillion-dollar project. This
aerial view of construction of the International
Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER)
in France shows the large footprint of the
project. The project was proposed in 2003,
and construction began a decade later. More
than $15 billion has been spent on the ITER,
though its first full plasma experiments are
not expected until at least 2035. Courtesy:
ITER
Fusion Frauds, Fantasies, and Fanatics
On March 24, 1951, Argentina's President
Juan Peron made a startling announcement
in Buenos Aires: " On February 16,
1951, in the atomic energy plant on Huemul
Island at San Carlos de Beriloche,
thermonuclear experiments were carried
out under conditions of control on a technical
scale. "
The announcement, 18 months before
viet Union pioneered the technology as it
launched a major fusion energy program in
the Stalin regime in 1951. The Soviets created
a magnetic donut known as a " toroidal
kamera magnetic, " or tokamak. Tokamaks
would dominate worldwide fusion research
for the next 60 years.
Britain was also pursuing fusion energy,
coming up with the same notion of using the
geometry of the torus to control the fierce
forces, building partly on ideas supplied by
Russian émigré George Gamow, who eventually
ended up in the U.S. The U.S. government
soon adopted tokamaks as its major
focus in fusion R&D, largely centered at
Princeton University.
Eventually, the U.S. soured on magnetic
fusion in its domestic R&D program. An international
consortium, in which the U.S. has
been an on-again, off-again participant, is
building the International Thermonuclear Experimental
Reactor (ITER), a large tokomak
machine in southern France (Figure 1). The
project has cost more than $15 billion since it
was born in 2003. Construction began in 2013
and has suffered considerable cost overruns.
Its goal is to produce " first plasma, " a necessary
milestone but not close to production of
electrical power, in 2021. The project would
begin plasma studies in 2025 with an aim toward
full plasma experiments in 2035.
Last December, the National Academy of
Sciences issued an appeal to the Trump administration
to continue U.S. support for the
ITER. The administration's budget, despite
its major proposed cuts in fusion funding,
proposed continuing $63 million for ITER.
Science magazine quoted an ITER official
saying that the Trump budget would effectively
kill U.S. participation in ITER. " The
46
the U.S. exploded its first hydrogen fusion
bomb, rocked the world and made a hero
of 42-year-old Austrian physicist Ronald
Richter (Figure 2), who had ties to Nazi
Germany. The claims quickly collapsed under
outside scrutiny. The New York Times
commented that what it dubbed " the baloney
bomb " had " exploded with the force
of a bursting soap bubble. " But the Argentine
event had the effect of jump-starting
fusion energy research programs in the
U.S. and the former Soviet Union.
In March 1989, two electro chemists,
Martin Fleischmann of the UK and Stanley
Pons of the University of Utah, through
leaks to the Financial Times in London and
The Wall Street Journal in the U.S., said they
had captured fusion in a bottle at room
temperatures. " Cold fusion " was an instant
international sensation. Only months later,
physicists attempted and failed to recreate
the Pons and Fleischmann claims, giving
them, in the words of Salt Lake City's Deseret
News, " the cold shoulder. "
While thoroughly debunked, there remain
to this day enthusiasts for cold
fusion. Attempts to repeat the original
findings continue, hope springs eternal,
but reality continues to rule.
One offshoot of the Pons and Fleischmann
work came from Rusi Taleyarkhan,
who submitted an article in the peer-review
journal Science, based on his work
as an engineer at the Department of
words don't say 'Withdraw from ITER,' but
for all practical purposes, the numbers do. "
The other major U.S. approach to fusion
energy is using lasers at the DOE's National
Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory in California
(Figure 3). Details of the NIF project, including
budgetary numbers, are scarce as the program
has both military and civilian aspects.
The project studies how matter behaves under
conditions when nuclear bombs detonate.
The key to the technology is " inertial
www.powermag.com
2. Fakery, but it served a purpose.
Juan Peron (right), then-president
of Argentina, in 1951 made a stunning
announcement about nuclear fusion technology,
which put a spotlight on Austrian
physicist Ronald Richter
(left). Although
Peron's claim was false, it spurred fusion
research programs in other countries, including
the U.S. and then-Soviet Union.
Courtesy: Wikipedia
Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Taleyarkhan
said he had demonstrated
nuclear fusion in a tabletop device with
tiny, energetic bubbles in a liquid, caused
by sound waves, known as " sonoluminescence. "
Noted physicist Luis W. Alvarez
had speculated on the possibility of " bubble
fusion " decades earlier, but it had not
been demonstrated.
Prior to the publication in Science and
fearing a repeat of the cold fusion fiasco,
Oak Ridge commissioned researchers
to attempt to replicate Taleyarkhan's
work. They failed, but Science refused to
withdraw the paper. It appeared in March
2002, creating only a brief stir in the general
public. In 2005, the BBC produced
a documentary recounting Taleyarkhan's
experiment, hiring sonoluminescence expert
and UCLA physicist Seth Putterman
to advise the BBC on the work. Putterman
had been a peer reviewer of the Science
article and argued against publication. He
failed to find the neutrons expected from
a fusion reaction in Taleyarkhan's work,
debunking the claim.
confinement, " using lasers to heat the outer
layers of a hydrogen atom target to compress
it. That produces plasma to a point where a
fusion reaction can occur. Project construction
began in 1997, but a series of problems
slowed progress. According to a well-sourced
Wikipedia post, NIF has been running years
behind schedule and is more than " four times
more expensive than originally budgeted. "
NIF enthusiasts see it as the best path
toward commercial fusion power. Last October,
a Forbes article touted NIF: " World's
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POWER August 2018

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