Abstract
It was soon realised that magnetic fields offered the best chance for confining a plasma. The early history of this approach is reviewed, starting with the pinch devices of the 1940s in the UK, the early efforts in the US (Project Sherwood) with stellarators, mirror machines and other devices, and the early development of the tokamak in the Soviet Union. The lack of success led to global declassification of research, coinciding with the second Geneva conference in 1958, marking the first pivotal moment in fusion’s history.
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Notes
- 1.
Louis-Victor de Broglie (1892–1987), French physicist who hypothesized the dual (particle and wave) nature of the electron in 1924, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1929.
- 2.
Thomson’s father J. J. Thomson (1856–1940) had won the Nobel Prize in 1906 for the discovery and identification of the electron.
- 3.
A facsimile of the original patent application by Thomson and Blackman has been published in Haines 1996.
- 4.
- 5.
Compared to the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters the release of radioactive material was negligible.
- 6.
It is always within ‘twenty years’ that working fusion reactors are predicted. It is unclear what is so magical about this number of years, probably just long enough to be completely forgotten when it does not come true and still within the predictor’s lifetime to reap the glory when it happens to be correct. Cockcroft was 60 years old when he made a fool of himself here.
- 7.
Noteworthy in this respect is a note by Lyman Spitzer in the same issue of Nature that published the ZETA story, in which he pointed out a contradiction between theory and the rate of particle heating reported by the ZETA scientists.
- 8.
Edward Teller was Kantrowitz’s Ph.D. supervisor. Kantrowitz is credited with being the founder of laser propulsion.
- 9.
They would have preferred deuterium, but this was not readily available, having only been discovered in 1932.
- 10.
This laboratory was founded in 1952 and evolved into the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
- 11.
J. Tuck, Curriculum Vitae and Autobiography, https://bayesrules.net/JamesTuckVitaeAndBiography.pdf.
- 12.
The full text of his speech can be found at https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1613/ML16131A120.pdf; see also https://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov/2016/06/03/too-cheap-to-meter-a-history-of-the-phrase/.
- 13.
An element with atomic number larger than 92, the atomic number of uranium.
- 14.
E.g. Seife 2008, p. 75 ff. Another similar story is the cold fusion excitement of the late 1980s; see for this and also for Richter’s saga Close 1990.
- 15.
This model was presented at the second Geneva Conference in 1958 (Fig. 3.18), together with models of Model C.
- 16.
See for this https://pluto.space.swri.edu/image/glossary/pitch.html.
- 17.
General Atomic was acquired by Gulf Oil in 1967, from 1973 jointly owned by Gulf Oil and Royal Dutch Shell, from 1984 wholly owned by Chevron following its merger with Gulf Oil, and in 1986 sold to the Blue brothers (James Neal and Linden Stanley Blue) after which it assumed the name General Atomics.
- 18.
An arc is an electrical breakdown of a gas that produces an ongoing electrical discharge. It originates when an electric charge is led between two electrodes. Since a plasma is formed, the gas between the electrodes lights up.
- 19.
Teller also seemed to have a more realistic view of the possibilities for achieving nuclear fusion, judging from his 1958 statement: “Fusion technology is very complex. It is almost impossible to build a fusion reactor in this century”.
- 20.
Bhabha is known as the father of Indian nuclear power, including nuclear weapons, and it is a little ironic that he, an aggressive and somewhat cynical promotor of nuclear weapons for India, acted as chairman of the very first conference on the peaceful uses of atomic energy.
- 21.
A short American propaganda film about the conference can be viewed at https://go.nature.com/2LP10FD.
- 22.
Bondarenko 2001, p. 844; however, in his biography George Gamow mentions that in 1932 Nikolai Bukharin attended a lecture Gamow gave “on thermonuclear reactions and their role in the energy production in the sun and other stars. After this talk, he (Bukharin) suggested that I head a project for the development of controlled thermonuclear reactions (and that in 1932!). I would have at my disposal for a few minutes one night a week the entire electric power of the Moscow industrial district to send it through a very thick copper wire impregnated with small “bubbles” of lithium-hydrogen mixture. I decided to decline that proposal, and I am glad I did because it certainly would not have worked.” (Gamow 1970, p. 121). So, actually if Gamow is to be believed, Bukharin, not even a physicist, must be given this credit.
- 23.
A four-volume compilation of papers on Plasma Physics and the Problem of Controlled Thermonuclear Reactions, edited by M. A. Leontovich and published in 1958 just before the second Geneva conference within the framework of the declassification of nuclear fusion research (English translation published in 1959 by Pergamon Press).
- 24.
For some more details on the lives and background of both Artsimovich and Leontovich, see Paul R. Josephson 2000.
- 25.
Sakharov says in his Memoirs (p. 147) that he took no active part in later work, i.e. after 1950–1951, on fusion reactors.
- 26.
Published as the first three papers in the first volume of Plasma Physics and the Problem of Controlled Thermonuclear Reactions. Sakharov’s paper has been reprinted in Physics-Uspekhi 34 (1991) 378.
- 27.
NatanYavlinsky was the leader of the T-3 experiment; after he died in a plane crash in 1962, Artsimovich placed the machine under his own direct supervision.
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Reinders, L.J. (2021). Early Years of the Fusion Effort. In: The Fairy Tale of Nuclear Fusion. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64344-7_3
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