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Hot Fusion Progress Noted
By David R. Lampe
MIT Tech Talk

April 11, 1990

Industrial Liaison Program

Fusion was a hot area of research long before anyone thought that the phenomenon might occur at room temperature.

Since the early 1960s, a major international effort has been under way to harness the enormous energy released when the nuclei of isotopes of hydrogen are made to fuse together at extremely high temperatures and pressures.

Funding for thermonuclear fusion power research got a boost after the oil crisis in 1973 highlighted the need for alternatives to fossil fuels, rising to about $500 million a year in the US in 1980. But with oil prices falling back into line in recent years, support has slipped steadily to just over $300 million.

According to Professor Ronald R. Parker, director of the Plasma Fusion Center (PFC), this trend may have serious long-term consequences for our nation.

"We are on the verge of a new energy crisis that is much more insidious than the last one," he warns. "It takes years for the effects of burning fossil fuels, including pollution, acid rain, and global warming, to produce visible damage to our environment. The sky isn't falling, but we know something is happening out there."

Thermonuclear fusion has extraordinary appeal as an energy source even aside from its role as the process that powers the sun. The deuterium hydrogen isotope required as fuel is found in abundance in seawater, and a little more than three grams of the fuel produce the energy equivalent of 1,000 gallons of gasoline. Furthermore, a fusion plant would give rise to little long-lived nuclear waste and pose no threat of "meltdown." Although cold fusion may indeed exist, Parker explains, it would be a distinctly different phenomenon from "hot" fusion, and it would appear to have little potential as a major energy producer, he believes.

While the debate about cold fusion has raged since last spring, the thermonuclear fusion community has quietly edged closer to the brink of a major milestone. The Joint European Torus (JET), a giant fusion research reactor in England of the "tokamak" variety, is now well positioned to be the first to reach breakevenÑa point where the energy produced by the fusion reaction equals the amount of power used to cause the reaction. This is the first step in the long road to building a commercially viable fusion power plant, a process of research and development expected to take about 20 more years.

Much of the fusion research at MIT today is aimed at the next step: ignition. ALCATOR C-MOD, a prototype for an ignition reactor, is now under construction at the PFC. Its research goal is to prove the feasibility of a relatively small, high-magnetic-field tokamak to produce a self-sustaining fusion reaction.

MIT's involvement in fusion power is an outgrowth of its basic research in the field of plasma physics as well as its work in high-field magnets, which are used to contain the ultra-hot clouds of randomly moving charged particles. Other research at the Center focuses on such diverse topics as space plasmas, free electron lasers, electron beam devices, and materials processing.

At present, major research efforts in the Soviet Union, Europe, the US, and Japan are exploring the potential of thermonuclear fusion. A joint project involving the cooperation of all fourÑthe International Thermonuclear Fusion Engineering ReactorÑhas been proposed to integrate the expertise of these groups and to spur progress toward the goal of commercialization.

But Professor Parker is concerned that slipping US funding may preclude our ability to participate, or even to keep up the pace of research. "If the Japanese or the Europeans develop fusion technology first," he warns, "we will be buying it from them."

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