Sun in a Bottle - Charles Seife [46]
Finally, the Americans succumbed to the pressure and gave Britain the go-ahead to publish the ZETA findings. When the Harwell scientists announced, in mid-January, that they were publishing their results in Nature at the end of the month, the British press was ecstatic. When they learned that the ZETA papers were to be accompanied by papers about Project Sherwood’s pinch project, the press was absolutely livid. It looked as if Lewis Strauss and the Americans, with their expensive machines, were trying to steal some of the Harwell laboratory’s glory. “Admiral Strauss’ tactics have soured what should be an exciting announcement of scientific progress so that it has become a sordid episode of prestige politics,” blared the British Sunday Observer. Despite the hurt feelings, everyone was relieved that the long wait was about to end.
When the Nature papers finally came out on January 24, the British and American scientists held a joint press conference. John Cockcroft announced that it was “90% certain” that ZETA’s neutrons had come from fusion, and outlined a twenty-year research plan that would lead to fusion reactors. The Americans presented their results, too, but they weren’t nearly as striking as ZETA’s. The press in the United States spun the story as a great British-American achievement. “Gains in Harnessing Power of H-Bomb Reported Jointly by U.S. and Britain,” the New York Times declared; “Nations Called Equal—Many Questions to Be Resolved.” America’s Columbus II machine was given pride of place above Britain’s ZETA, and the newspaper emphasized that the two nations were “neck and neck.” However, the rest of the world’s press ignored the American research and celebrated Britain’s triumphant conquest of fusion energy. In England, tabloid papers blasted the news across their pages, promising “UNLIMITED POWER from SEA WATER”: no more electricity bills, no more smog, no need for coal, power that would last for a billion years. Newspapers around the globe followed suit; they were quick to trumpet the prospect of limitless energy, energy that would be at humanity’s fingertips within two decades. No longer would any nation be held hostage because of a lack of oil. Even the Soviets congratulated the British—pointedly ignoring the Americans—on their “achievement in harnessing thermonuclear energy” and expressed their “admiration.”40 ZETA seemed to have begun a new era of humanity, the era of unlimited fusion energy, and it was the envy of the world.
Other nations began to emulate the British. The Swedes announced that they were building a ZETA-like device that could compete with the one at Harwell. Just two weeks after the announcement, Japanese scientists announced that they, too, had achieved thermonuclear fusion—and they were producing more neutrons than the British were. The Russians also started building a ZETA clone. But the Britons weren’t going to fall behind: by early May, they were busy upgrading ZETA and were planning a more powerful (and more expensive, at $14 million) machine, ZETA II. Its designers thought that ZETA II would heat plasmas to one hundred million degrees and produce more energy than it consumed. It would be the world’s first fusion power plant. On May 7, the New York Times optimistically reported on the characteristics of the new machine: “Britain Indicates Reactor Advance” read the headline. The following week, though, the paper planned a much less adulatory article: “H-Bomb Untamed, Britain Admits.” The dream had come crashing down. Once again, the culprit was those damn false neutrons.
Even while the ZETA scientists were cracking open beers, toasting their first fusion reactions, Basil Rose, a physicist at Harwell, was consumed by skepticism. He was unconvinced that the ZETA neutrons were truly from thermonuclear fusion.