Fine progress for ITER.

Reflections on fusion history, current events, and predictions for the 'fusion powered future.
User avatar
Chris Bradley
Posts: 2930
Joined: Fri May 02, 2008 7:05 am
Real name:

Fine progress for ITER.

Post by Chris Bradley »

In the back of the latest IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Newsletter are some fine photographs of ITER progress: There are pictures of an enormous area of ground, dozens of football pitches in size, that is being 'milled' to the flatness of a billiard table, a poloidal coil winding hall under construction that could house an entire cathedral within it, and Japanese workers diligently working with a 15' diameter roll of cable that is of staggering size - given that it is all super-conducting material!

Having assembled my own humble experiments only to see a few of the configurations promtly go "pfffut" after devoting many hours of procurement, construction, assembly and days of pump-down (... experiment over... re-build...!) I cannot help but imagine all this $30 billion effort taking the decades of planning and construction only for folks to find that when they power it up for the first fusion run... it goes "pfffut... experiment over...re-build!!!"
Hector
Posts: 158
Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2003 9:15 am
Real name:
Contact:

Re: Fine progress for ITER.

Post by Hector »

Nostradamus here, I predict that after they workout all the bugs they will come to the conclusion that they need a bigger device with more power to achieve break even fusion. Just my prediction. This will buy the Fusor community at least 20 more years to catch up and pass the Tokamak Academic experiment.
User avatar
Chris Bradley
Posts: 2930
Joined: Fri May 02, 2008 7:05 am
Real name:

Re: Fine progress for ITER.

Post by Chris Bradley »

Hector wrote:
> I predict ...they will come to the conclusion that they need a bigger device

This is not a prediction, this is *part of the plan*!!

ITER is not designed to demonstrate useful power can be generated, this will come in the next 'step', called 'DEMO'.

I had the opportunity to discuss this with fusion folks a few years ago and I said to them, directly, that this is a fundamentally flawed piece of science because it means they have no specific objective. (That made me popular in the conversation, I am sure!!)

Either they know they can make a power source, in which case they should just build a power-generating working prototype, or they don't, in which case there is more work that can still be done with the likes of JET (which is being shut down soon) before moving on. ITER is a middling confused experiment with too much inertia to stop, but too inspecific a set of objectives to know its true direction.

ITER was originally planned to be what 'DEMO' is now planned to be (2050), but the pile of cash being asked for was too big for the politico's to swallow in one go.

This is an actual PLAN that has the effect of keeping the tokamak research gravy train running for 5 more decades, before there is even a suggestion of an attempt to put fusion-powered electrons through the grid.

Just consider that for a moment; the existing PLAN says that a fresh graduate researcher coming to work on ITER will have retired before the objectives of the experiment have actually been reached! What sort of motivation is that?!?!
User avatar
Carl Willis
Posts: 2841
Joined: Thu Jul 26, 2001 7:33 pm
Real name: Carl Willis
Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
Contact:

Re: Fine progress for ITER.

Post by Carl Willis »

There are differences between garage science and publicly-funded professional science.

When you presage comprehensive failure of ITER because you had issues on a small-scale home apparatus, you're probably neglecting the processes of peer review, committee oversight, and adherence to methodological standards and quality controls that govern professional research--none of which appeal in a hobby. You're probably neglecting the rigorous reliance on prior findings and benchmarked models. You're probably giving short shrift to the professional training and education in the ITER workforce, the tools at its disposal, and the fact that labor is divided according to expertise. In short, you're probably neglecting the things that make professional science a JOB for which people are PAID. At home, you do whatever you want, do it yourself with whatever limitations you have, hope for the best, and of course accept a high rate of failures that are mostly inconsequential given the small scale and limited scope.

>This will buy the Fusor community at least 20 more years to catch up and pass the Tokamak Academic experiment.

The fusor community--I assume you mean us, the amateur fusion community--has chalked up demonstrable success toward capturing the passion of young engineers and scientists, toward popularizing a better technical understanding of fusion, and toward enriching many of our personal lives in the past 12-13 years of existence. If our history is any guide, though, we won't be giving a god-damn about "catching up" with professional tokamak research in the next 20 years either (other than superficially of course...everyone likes to roar and thump their little white chest). That's not a bad thing. It's just reality. Also, the fact remains that NO data substantiate the idea that the IEC approach is competitive with tokamaks, despite an always-enticing glimmer of plausibility.

We can go pound our chests and bruit about kicking ITER's ass and howl at the moon about its perceived shortcomings all we want, including to the researchers' faces, but my guess is that this just looks silly because it probably is.

-Carl
Carl Willis
http://carlwillis.wordpress.com/
TEL: +1-505-412-3277
User avatar
Richard Hull
Moderator
Posts: 14991
Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2001 9:44 am
Real name: Richard Hull

Re: Fine progress for ITER.

Post by Richard Hull »

Fusion power is just not going to go as swimmingly as did fission power which was a process of obtaining energy through the release of stored and not inherent energy. We are hunter gatherers and are good at turning stored potential energy into useful energy. Fission is a stored energy release as much as any chemical reaction. Fusion is not.

Fission is the delivery of a pregnancy. Fusion is a forced copulation in hope of an emaculate conception.

ITER Thermal (MCF), fusor (IECF), NIF (ICF), mirror machines, Stellarators, etc., are pretty much forelorn hopes, at least in anyone's lifetime reading this current posting.

Soon the public treasures will collapse on the most abitious of these professional efforts. The amateur efforts will forever remain amateurish. Hopefully it might create a cadre of folks who can really explain fusion in a public forum with some modicum of backgrounding.

For my money, there is nothing at all wasted in successful amateur fusion done here, even if repetitive and based on previous work.

As the motto at the base of the statue of Thadius Faber at Faber college in the movie "Animal House" quotes,......"knowledge is good"

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
User avatar
Chris Bradley
Posts: 2930
Joined: Fri May 02, 2008 7:05 am
Real name:

Re: Fine progress for ITER.

Post by Chris Bradley »

Carl Willis wrote:
> There are differences between garage science and publicly-funded professional science.

But I don't actually think they are necessarily qualitative differences at the experiment stage. Everyone has limited budgets, limited time and the solutions to overcome these things are by the initiatives of individuals who get tired, make mistakes, then see things go wrong. Hubble's mirrors, LHC magnet quenching circuits, Mars Polar lander, to name just a few well-publicised in recent memory.

Overlooking important specification details is another 'common difference', like the height of how big tsunamis might get compared with how big voltage surges might get.

Overstating the likely outcomes of experiments and chest beating is also nothing unique to either, whether it is a proponent of NIF or a proponent of 'the latest gridless fusor design' talking.

And not forgetting that science is science, and should make no difference to the objectivity of a stated experimental aim just because one is paid for it. (Arguably, being paid to do an experiment may well mean a conflict of interest and the aim becomes *less* objective that amateur work, rather than more so.)

Science started with people doing their own experiments for their own interests, against the 'conventional wisdom' of the day. If the results of an experiment are known, then what's the point of the experiment? So neither professional nor amateurs know what will actually happen with their experiment, again nothing unique to either there.

The amount one can know about a new experiment is only a fraction of what can be known. The professionals have more opportunity to get higher up that ladder, but not knowing what you don't know is, again, par for the course.

Where the difference does begin to show the two apart is turning the results into material of archival value, by comprehensive analysis, discussion and cross-referencing.

I'm sure that ITER will go swimmingly, to a higher likelihood than an amateur effort. Of course! I was just contemplating the sense of how much work is going into this when, after all, it is still an experiment for which the immediate experimental outcome might turn out to be seriously 'sub-optimal'. I still don't understand how ITER is the right experiment for the stated scientific objective, though.
Hector
Posts: 158
Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2003 9:15 am
Real name:
Contact:

Re: Fine progress for ITER.

Post by Hector »

Chris,

First I called it a Fusor because that's what everyone calls it here. In fact I call it IEC research. Second the Pollywell while grossly under funded is making progress and it is a professional effort. I myself have done work in the IEC field and have a very different approach that has not yet been tried, which when I'm finally done with what I'm doing now I will keep working on it.

Also more breakthroughs have their origins in amateur garage type research than most people know. I will NEVER concede that Academics have a clue as to what it takes to make something work and be productive in the real world that is what engineers, Inventors and entrepreneurs do, not Scientist.

Tokamaks are a dead end trail and ITER has no redeeming qualities, it has no practical use in vehicular application nor will it ever be a practical power solution and time will prove me right.

You believe whatever you want to believe but I guarantee you that the final solution to practical fusion will be simple and elegant and will come from a non Academic source.

An stop telling the people here that they can't make a contribution to the effort, that is for them to decide not you or me. You are the one that has the over simplified facts on how things are really accomplished in the world.
User avatar
Carl Willis
Posts: 2841
Joined: Thu Jul 26, 2001 7:33 pm
Real name: Carl Willis
Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
Contact:

Re: Fine progress for ITER.

Post by Carl Willis »

>Tokamaks are a dead end trail

Because a guy known only by his first name says so on a public Web forum, I'm utterly convinced. The voice of authority has spoken. That settles it! Or not.

>I will NEVER concede that Academics have a clue

According to you, you have a clue (i.e. that Tokamaks are a dead end), and academics don't have a clue. So one of the pieces of information you're sharing is you're not an academic. That I can believe. The rest of it I take with a grain of salt. It does seem you have a serious chip on your shoulder about "Scientists" and "Academics." Oddly, it seems that a person cannot be both an academic and an engineer, or a scientist and an entrepreneur, in your world.

>An stop telling the people here that they can't make a contribution to the effort

I never have said that. I simply make the observation from time to time that despite all the jawbone and hee-haw about fusion power plants and despite the occasional raspberry blown at ITER, that's not the direction that the community of hobby fusioneers has shown much tangible bona fide interest in exploring. Accordingly, such discussions tend to be dominated by stuff that's indistinguishable from pseudoexpertise and low-grade sycophancy. My point's quite simple, really. The day may come when you understand it.

-Carl
Carl Willis
http://carlwillis.wordpress.com/
TEL: +1-505-412-3277
David Geer
Posts: 136
Joined: Wed Nov 24, 2010 7:51 am
Real name:
Location: Colorado Springs, CO

Re: Fine progress for ITER.

Post by David Geer »

Richard Hull wrote:
> ITER Thermal (MCF), fusor (IECF), NIF (ICF), mirror machines, Stellarators, etc., are pretty much forelorn hopes, at least in anyone's lifetime reading this current posting.
>
> Soon the public treasures will collapse on the most abitious of these professional efforts. The amateur efforts will forever remain amateurish. Hopefully it might create a cadre of folks who can really explain fusion in a public forum with some modicum of backgrounding.
>
> For my money, there is nothing at all wasted in successful amateur fusion done here, even if repetitive and based on previous work.

One of the nice things about amateur work though, is someone might get lucky. Pretty much the basis of all groundbreaking discoveries is being accidental or an out-in-left-field attempt. Even with a lot of scientists (young and old) trying the same experiments over and over, they are all trying slightly different things to change the approach. The law of averages dictates that at some point, no matter the number of attempts, there will be a success.

With your statement of amateur efforts will forever remain amateurish... professionals stick within guidelines and protocols with limited freedoms beyond the budget, whereas, amateurs can test whatever they like when they can and take great pride in both positive and negative results.

I know I'd like to see an amateur get a bunch of funding like ITER or NIF to just try out their ideas on whatever scale they are comfortable with. Might get better or more promising results than the orthodox big leaguers.
- David Geer
chad ramey
Posts: 107
Joined: Tue Apr 28, 2009 10:45 pm
Real name: Chad Ramey
Location: Georgia
Contact:

Re: Fine progress for ITER.

Post by chad ramey »

I'd perhaps like to throw in my "two cents" as they say..

I think the best argument for amateur small-scale fusion efforts is that they are quick and nimble. I can wake up with a new idea for IEC fusion, walk down to my garage, and test the idea out. If the idea happens to be really tasking it might take months or perhaps a year to get the engineering aspect just right but, any idea I am likely to come up with will not take 20 years of my life or several billion dollars. With tokamaks you have the best plasma physicists, engineers, and physicists in the world collaborating but, a single project takes up the span of their entire career and tons of money. Those guys (and gals) get one idea, and thats it.

Even if the idea is a failure, I can collect (hopefully) significant data from the experiment and use it to make an educated guess as to where to go next.

Plus IEC fusion does have (or once had) a group of individuals collaborating to improve the design as a whole. So all in all you get:

many ideas+ability to test ideas quickly=lots of data available for improvement


Either way, tokamaks should not be viewed as evil. At the very least the are cool looking, massive plasma machines; what's not to love about them? We as a fusion community should support their efforts......while supporting our own as well.

Live long, and prosper
-Chad
Hector
Posts: 158
Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2003 9:15 am
Real name:
Contact:

Re: Fine progress for ITER.

Post by Hector »

Like I said Carl time will tell which one of us is correct.
Hector
Posts: 158
Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2003 9:15 am
Real name:
Contact:

Re: Fine progress for ITER.

Post by Hector »

A couple of problems with doing breakthrough work inside government funded circles is that for example, DoE alternative fusion research is strictly Academic, that's their mandate by Congress. Nothing in the DoE research budget for fusion involves any attempt at achieving a power producing machine.

If that were to happen it would be by accident not a goal. All alternative fusion project funding from the DoE is strictly for accepted magnetic confinement concepts and some very minor funding for some other non-magnetic concepts, that's a fact. Call the director of the program at the DoE and ask him yourself like I did.

Power production is not the goal of any DoE funded fusion effort. It's simply curiosity that might bare some fruit towards achieving a power generating device.

If a breakthrough comes it will have to come from a non government funded source.

Someone is going to have to do the initial funding out of their pockets and ignore all the doomsayers and critics. It's that simple.
User avatar
Carl Willis
Posts: 2841
Joined: Thu Jul 26, 2001 7:33 pm
Real name: Carl Willis
Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
Contact:

Re: Fine progress for ITER.

Post by Carl Willis »

You mean time will tell if YOUR prognostications are correct. I haven't made any.

You're obviously adamant about your views, but consider this: If and when the fusion energy nut is cracked, do you think anyone is going to look back on your pronouncements here--right or wrong--with a moment's interest? I know I won't. There's nothing to distinguish your opinion on the fusion future from a spring tide of similarly-unsupported editorial flotsam on the Intertubes.

You said you're working on a new IEC direction. Why don't you do something useful for a change and go open a thread to explain that?

-Carl
Carl Willis
http://carlwillis.wordpress.com/
TEL: +1-505-412-3277
Hector
Posts: 158
Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2003 9:15 am
Real name:
Contact:

Re: Fine progress for ITER.

Post by Hector »

Sorry Carl I have no need for your kind of input on my concept.
User avatar
Carl Willis
Posts: 2841
Joined: Thu Jul 26, 2001 7:33 pm
Real name: Carl Willis
Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
Contact:

Re: Fine progress for ITER.

Post by Carl Willis »

I only asked because you brought it up in your earlier reply to me. I take it you want to un-bring it up now?
Carl Willis
http://carlwillis.wordpress.com/
TEL: +1-505-412-3277
Hector
Posts: 158
Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2003 9:15 am
Real name:
Contact:

Re: Fine progress for ITER.

Post by Hector »

No just don't have a need to get your input at this moment.
User avatar
Carl Willis
Posts: 2841
Joined: Thu Jul 26, 2001 7:33 pm
Real name: Carl Willis
Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
Contact:

Re: Fine progress for ITER.

Post by Carl Willis »

OK, I understand. You can certainly become a contributor whenever you feel like it, but don't be surprised if, every time we get mired down in a throwaway discourse like this one, I keep pestering you with little tiny requests for the juicy details of the project you mentioned. I think that kind of discussion would garner a lot more respect than a rough-shod slurfest against scientists, academics, and ITER. Onward and upward!

-Carl
Carl Willis
http://carlwillis.wordpress.com/
TEL: +1-505-412-3277
Hector
Posts: 158
Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2003 9:15 am
Real name:
Contact:

Re: Fine progress for ITER.

Post by Hector »

Carl I can respect that. My work is still in the preliminary stage so there is no working prototype, however the fundamental concept behind it is sound according to the people that I consulted with at UI, Purdue and at the University of Wisconsin.

I will talk about it in detail one of these days, but right now my research is in an area outside of fusion and is eating up all my spare time and resources. I can tell you that for aerospace applications Tokamaks are simply impractical and since the focus of my work is in the vehicular application field devices like an IEC or Polywell are about the only hope for a long term solution.
David Geer
Posts: 136
Joined: Wed Nov 24, 2010 7:51 am
Real name:
Location: Colorado Springs, CO

Re: Fine progress for ITER.

Post by David Geer »

That sadly points out how badly corrupted the government and it's projects are these days. The funding should be for viable equipment and not simply academic experiments. If they were to work towards the goal and create a solution, then the funding for academics would be unlimited. But again, too many doomsayers and average minded folks are in charge of too much of this stuff for any real good to come of it all.

A few of the Veteran amateurs from here leading a team like ITER would more than likely produce a working net gain machine and more than likely, in a couple variations.

-David
- David Geer
User avatar
Chris Bradley
Posts: 2930
Joined: Fri May 02, 2008 7:05 am
Real name:

Re: Fine progress for ITER.

Post by Chris Bradley »

David Geer wrote:
> A few of the Veteran amateurs from here leading a team like ITER would more than likely produce a working net gain machine and more than likely, in a couple variations.


I wholeheartedly doubt that.

However, what I think an amateur could do [and I can't help that this will sound pejorative] is 'play the Court jester'!

This was not just the role of a comic, but one who would jest with the 'elephant in the room'.

ITER is a victim of its own nature - it is on too long a time scale, too great a political mission with too many administrations all feeding into it. But it is unlikely that it could be any other way. Both Russia and US have run down this route and it was too big a hurdle for them alone. A big multi-national project will never run smooth.

But in turn this gives such missions ambiguous aims and objectives. Attempting to observe this 'independently', I'd observe it seems impossible for groups of humans, exceeding certain size criteria, to fix and pursue clear objectives when they all have other and their own motivations and ideas on how to do it.

Back to the Court jester - this is a role which might, at the right moment, make just the right comment to get people to stop and question themselves over the objectivity of their own actions. A simplistic approach to a big project, posing questions for some of the project-wide matters without getting caught in the detail, is useful because very often it is hopeless trying to talk to individuals who have already chiseled out their own niche activity within the whole and have picked up so much 'momentum' that they are no longer capable of objectively taking stock of the project.

Many jesters were executed for raising matters too close to the truth!

I'd like to clarify that in my first post I did not at all seek to sleight or bemoan ITER. I support ITER as an engineering build, though I find it difficult to support its mission because that looks confused to me. I do so because even if a new invention enters public awareness that actually does fusion, it doesn't mean researching other ways of doing fusion should stop. Fusion has a very low specific power, so if you make a device small you make a device with low power. You'd have to parallel up lots of small devices to get useful power, so you should also want to investigate bigger ones, even if someone beats ITER to Q>10.
User avatar
Paul_Schatzkin
Site Admin
Posts: 993
Joined: Thu Jun 14, 2001 12:49 pm
Real name: aka The Perfesser
Contact:

First the Pregnancy...

Post by Paul_Schatzkin »

...the the copulation?

Richard Hull writes:

"Fission is the delivery of a pregnancy. Fusion is a forced copulation in hope of an immaculate conception."

Pardon the momentary use of (implied) profanity but.... that's just f'ing brilliant.

No pun intended?

--PS
Paul Schatzkin, aka "The Perfesser" – Founder and Host of Fusor.net
Author of The Boy Who Invented Television: 2023 Edition – https://amz.run/6ag1
"Fusion is not 20 years in the future; it is 60 years in the past and we missed it."
User avatar
Paul_Schatzkin
Site Admin
Posts: 993
Joined: Thu Jun 14, 2001 12:49 pm
Real name: aka The Perfesser
Contact:

ITER -v- IEC

Post by Paul_Schatzkin »

Yeah, I know... with HEAS coming around the corner I figure it's time I stuck my head in here and see what I've been missing while I've been off jousting at other windmills the past few months...

These discussions of ITER always catch my eye. I am of "both minds" about it.

I have previously expressed my own skepticism of those and similar big-budget efforts on occasion, here in the forums (fora?) and in posts to the front of the site. Every time ITER hits my "fusion" Google alert I hear a cash register ring and another billion dollars has gone up the magnetic confinement chimney.

So I agree with Hector's aspersions on the one hand, but I also concur with Carl's suggestion that dumping on legions of well-intentioned scientists and engineers is probably counter productive.

And for what it's worth, I've had more than my fill of people who profess to have brilliant, novel concepts but can only talk about them in the abstract ("I have an idea!") and never in the material ("...and this is the idea:...") See "Brown, Townsend" and all the smoke and mirrors that gather around that sideshow.

But the real reason I'm taking the time to make a post here is because I want to echo what Chad Ramey said:

"many ideas+ability to test ideas quickly=lots of data available for improvement"

...because that so succinctly underscores the whole reason this site is has been here for well over a decade now.

To me, just the fact that there is a coterie of individuals around the world who can actually produce fusion in their basements and garages is nothing short of astonishing, amazing, miraculous - chose your hyperbolic adjective. These people are actually observing and learning things from fusion. I tell friends and colleagues that I host a site for people who can create a "synthetic star" and jaws drop (or eyeballs roll back in their heads).

And so the body of knowledge about how fusion can actually be created and controlled, how it behaves when it is controlled and how such a reaction can be sustained, is valuable in ways that are impossible to measure (especially in the short term).

As I told somebody in a media interview recently, I am not handicapped by the kind of hard-boiled, hands-on experience that some of the senior members of this community possess, so I am not bound to the conclusion that "fusion is 20 years in the future and always will be." With my lack of experience, I still have room to dream...

So I am inspired by the curiosity and daring people like Chad, Taylor Wilson, and the other young Fusioneers who think about these things in their sleep and wake up with new experiments that further grow the body of knowledge here.

There really isn't much we can do about ITER and its ilk, that is how big institutions work. But I think it's true that the brilliant and disruptive ideas that drive civilization forward always come from the fringe, and the initial proof of concept is achieved for pennies on the dollars that monolithic institutions are endowed to spend.

And if it is to be, so will it be with fusion.

--PS
Paul Schatzkin, aka "The Perfesser" – Founder and Host of Fusor.net
Author of The Boy Who Invented Television: 2023 Edition – https://amz.run/6ag1
"Fusion is not 20 years in the future; it is 60 years in the past and we missed it."
User avatar
Richard Hull
Moderator
Posts: 14991
Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2001 9:44 am
Real name: Richard Hull

Re: First the Pregnancy...

Post by Richard Hull »

My small comment noted by Paul was no slight or slap at some supposed impossibilty of fusion for power use, but just a realistic statement that fusion is based on a rather difficult and distant set of probabilities causing a rare reaction that has no inherrently stored potential energy to yield a well understood energy producing reaction. The "immaculate conception" being self-sustaining ignition in spite of all the cross linked near improbables and seeming impossibles involved in the process.

Paul showed that he has been learning some details about fusion, even if by osmosis to see the simple beauty of the comparison I made. I even patted myself on the back on that one.

Not only are fission and fusion different in the physical, scientific sense, but they are diametrically opposed at a fundamental level only those familiar with many details of each can begin to appreciate. Amazingly, fusion was discovered about 14 years before fission, though it was not until the late 40's that anyone really started working on trying to get power from it in a way that they knew they could easily get from fission.

Even more amazing is that, in our universe, fusion had to occur before fission would ever be possible....At least in our current understanding of the physics. Oh yes, the fusion that made fission possible was 100% energy sucking, endothermic fusion.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
User avatar
Chris Bradley
Posts: 2930
Joined: Fri May 02, 2008 7:05 am
Real name:

Re: First the Pregnancy...

Post by Chris Bradley »

It's not an immaculate conception we need, it's an 'immaculate contraption'.
User avatar
Chris Bradley
Posts: 2930
Joined: Fri May 02, 2008 7:05 am
Real name:

Re: First the Pregnancy...

Post by Chris Bradley »

Richard Hull wrote:
> fusion was discovered about 14 years before fission, though it was not until the late 40's that anyone really started working on trying to get power from it in a way that they knew they could easily get from fission.

..and even more confusingly, the first observed fusion reaction was p+Li7, resulting in a 'fission' of 2 x 4He - hailed as 'splitting the atom' rather than 'fusion'!
Post Reply

Return to “Fusion --- Past, Present, and Future”