Sun in a Bottle - Charles Seife [96]
—THE ODYSSEY, TRANSLATED BY SAMUEL BUTLER
Bubble fusion, like cold fusion, imploded under charges of fraud and scientific misconduct. Though both methods still have their supporters, both have now been swept to the fringes of science. Without a spectacular reversal of fortune, that is where they will remain.
Hot fusion now enjoys a monopoly. Mainstream scientists who hope for fusion energy almost unanimously pin their hopes upon inertial confinement fusion or magnetic fusion. Tabletop fusion and muon-catalyzed fusion are not going to lead to energy production. Bubble fusion and cold fusion were delusions. There are no other options.
Despite that distinction, since the 1990s fusion scientists have had to fight, with increasing desperation, to keep hot-fusion research alive. Now, two multibillion-dollar projects, one in California and one in France, will determine the future of fusion. If the projects succeed, they will allow nations around the world to free themselves from dependence on oil. But if they fail, it is possible that no amount of money will be sufficient to realize mankind’s ambition to bottle the sun.
When it was conceived at the Geneva summit in 1985, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) quickly became magnetic fusion’s best hope of achieving breakeven. Europe and Japan joined in the effort, and along with the Soviet Union and the United States, the four parties, together, agreed to pool their resources to build an enormous tokamak. It was to be the most ambitious international scientific project ever attempted.
Not only was ITER supposed to achieve breakeven; it was supposed to attain ignition and sustained burn. In theory, after the reaction was started, the plasma would heat itself and provide fusion energy as long as it had fresh fuel to consume; it would be like a furnace or a boiler, just needing periodic restoking while it provided continuous power. Though ITER would cost $10 billion, it would finally end the half measures of the individual countries’ domestic fusion efforts. The cooperating world powers were confident that they would finally end the research phase of magnetic fusion. They would finally be building essentially a working reactor. After so many disappointments and failed promises, scientists from around the globe would usher in the era of fusion energy. It was a golden vision, but it wouldn’t last.
A decade later, the USSR was no more. The United States was the only superpower left. Japan was in the throes of an economic crisis. Science budgets everywhere were declining, and in the United States the money available for fusion research was plummeting. ITER was in deep trouble.
In truth, ITER’s trouble began at birth. Nobody had ever pulled off an international scientific project of such an enormous scale. Figuring out how to compress and ignite a plasma was only one of the problems that ITER proponents had to solve. Perhaps even trickier was the problem of distribution and containment of pork.
Politicians like to see direct benefits from the money they spend. This means they want cash to flow into the hands of the people who elect them. That is the law of pork-barrel politics—why Congress so regularly funds ridiculous multimillion-dollar projects like useless bridges in Alaska. New Mexico congressmen tend to be munificent to Los Alamos; California senators back Livermore; New Jersey politicians support Princeton. It’s similar in other countries. Politicians always like to spend money to benefit their constituents.
ITER provided a porky dilemma. No matter where the ITER partners put the reactor, three of the four parties were going to have to spend their money on a machine in another country. Even if these partners managed to build much of the equipment domestically, cash (and talent) would have