Fusion Energy

In their joint communique at the Geneva summit last November, President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev explicitly called for "the widest practical development of international cooperation in obtaining (fusion energy), which is essentially inexhaustible, for the benefit of mankind." The topic of fusion energy is likely to be up for further serious discussion at the Washington summit tentatively being planned for later this year. Why fusion, and why now?

The story of how I ended up in the basement of a UCLA physics building, getting a tour of a plasma facility with a young scientist working on the development of clean fusion energy, begins with the uprisings in the Middle East. On Monday morning, I headed west on Wilshire Boulevard with a couple of items on the agenda. First, I wanted to see if I could find any demonstrators left over from the weekend. People were still marching in the streets of Cairo, demanding the ouster of longtime U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak, so I thought there might still be a few protesters carrying signs in front of the West L.A. federal building.

U.S.-Soviet relations indeed are changing. But an important question is whether the changes will be fundamental and structural: Will they lessen significantly the threat of confrontation and war, and evolve into a healthy competition in economics and politics, and in cooperation where it is mutually beneficial? To change the relationship, we must work on arms control and reductions, both nuclear and conventional, and we are.

A Purdue University physicist who claimed to have demonstrated a tabletop fusion process that could revolutionize energy production is guilty of research misconduct in asserting that his findings were independently reproduced, a university committee said Friday. The panel did not investigate whether Rusi P.

The story of how I ended up in the basement of a UCLA physics building, getting a tour of a plasma facility with a young scientist working on the development of clean fusion energy, begins with the uprisings in the Middle East. On Monday morning, I headed west on Wilshire Boulevard with a couple of items on the agenda. First, I wanted to see if I could find any demonstrators left over from the weekend. People were still marching in the streets of Cairo, demanding the ouster of longtime U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak, so I thought there might still be a few protesters carrying signs in front of the West L.A. federal building.

After failing in past attempts to attract prestigious science consortia, this city is pulling out all the stops in its bid to become the headquarters of a planned $1-billion fusion energy research project. For the first time in at least a decade of pursuing such projects, civic, business and university leaders from throughout California have joined together to back San Diego's bid.

UC San Diego physicist Marshall Rosenbluth spent the last 38 years trying to unravel the mystery of fusion and he doesn't figure the ultimate solution will be found in his lifetime. "The more we learn, the more there seems left to do," says Rosenbluth, whom colleagues affectionately call the "Pope of Plasma Physics."

A study by a National Academy of Sciences panel last week called on the United States to increase its efforts to develop a high-temperature hydrogen fusion power plant by the late 1990s. The study recommended construction of the Compact Ignition Tokamak, a $455-million experimental apparatus designed to ignite a fusion fire that releases more energy than it consumes. "How soon fusion energy can become a long-term electric energy supply alternative depends on the priority, pace and success of fusion energy research and development, both in the United States and abroad," the study said.

Utah officials voted to free nearly half of a $5-million legislative appropriation to fund research into the University of Utah's cold fusion findings. An executive committee of the state's Fusion-Energy Advisory Council endorsed the university's request for nearly $2.5 million for the first year of cold fusion research. The goal of the research is to develop a cheap, relatively safe and virtually inexhaustible source of electrical energy.

A $10-billion international fusion energy project to be built in San Diego won't work, a new theory indicates, but a government official said the design can be changed if the theory is proved. Researchers at the University of Texas and Princeton say they have computer models showing that the current design of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, will not produce the fusion energy reaction its designers expect.

Seven partners representing half the world's population signed a pact Tuesday to build an experimental fusion reactor in southern France that could revolutionize global energy use for future generations. Construction of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project, or ITER, is expected to take eight years. The site is in Cadarache, near Marseille in the southern region of Provence. It will take decades for scientists to learn whether the long-awaited $12.

Evoking echoes of the cold fusion fiasco more than a decade ago, Purdue University said Wednesday that it was reviewing the work of physicist Rusi P. Taleyarkhan, who claims to have developed technology to achieve tabletop fusion. Purdue's announcement came as the journal Nature released findings Wednesday from its investigation of Taleyarkhan's widely publicized claim and as a UCLA researcher challenged Taleyarkhan's report that he had detected fusion byproducts in a key experiment.

A test at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore has shown that laser pulses shot into a gold-lined cavity called a hohlraum can produce the X-rays necessary to trigger nuclear fusion. The experimental facility, scheduled for completion in 2009, will focus ultraviolet laser beams into the hohlraum to generate X-rays that stimulate fusion in frozen deuterium and tritium.

A tabletop experiment created nuclear fusion -- long seen as a possible clean energy solution -- under lab conditions, scientists reported today. But the amount of energy produced was too little to be seen as a breakthrough in solving the world's energy needs. For years, scientists have sought to harness controllable nuclear fusion, the same power that lights the sun and stars. The latest experiment relied on a tiny crystal to generate a strong electric field.

A claim by a team of engineers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory that they have achieved nuclear fusion inside tiny bubbles has been met with a wave of skepticism and criticism of the scientific journal that released the results Monday. The team says it has created a form of nuclear fusion by zapping tiny bubbles of acetone with intense sound waves, causing the bubbles to expand massively and then implode.

Congress agreed this week to almost triple funding for a controversial laser fusion project at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to partially offset $1 billion in cost overruns at the experimental nuclear weapons effort. The agreement to increase funding for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) next year to $199 million came despite opposition from several members of Congress who are angry over delays, technical troubles and management gaffes at the $4-billion project.

A Purdue University physicist who claimed to have demonstrated a tabletop fusion process that could revolutionize energy production is guilty of research misconduct in asserting that his findings were independently reproduced, a university committee said Friday. The panel did not investigate whether Rusi P.

The Utah scientist who claims to have achieved cold fusion faces a deadline for sharing some results of his work or he will risk losing state money for research. The state Fusion Energy Council wants chemist B. Stanley Pons to produce part of his research data this week and the rest by Feb. 1. "Future funding of his research is contingent on his cooperation," said council chairman Raymond Hixson. "All of us are strong supporters, but can we go on?"

The scramble for funds and strong disagreements over which nuclear fusion technology shows the most promise have left the scientific community splintered by bitter rivalries. The goal of producing electricity through nuclear fusion, and thus providing the world with a virtually limitless source of energy, has proved to be staggeringly difficult, and many experts contend we are not a lot closer today than we were 40 years ago.

Princeton University's Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor, the world's most powerful tool in the effort to harness the form of energy that powers the sun, shut down Friday because of federal budget cuts. Even in its final hour, the 15-year-old reactor was doing cutting-edge experiments. "We've done some truly historic accomplishments," said Rich Hawryluk, the reactor's project director for six years. Fission, the process that powers nuclear reactors, involves splitting atoms.