Sun in a Bottle

Posted by Rezwan on Jan 02, 2011 at 10:51 PM
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Sun in a Bottle

by Charles Seife •

The subtitle tips you off to the bias:  “The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking”

Updated review at Fusion Energy League.

This book leads the assault on fusion research and is a handy source of quotes that we counter in our “Reframe Fusion” campaign.  Despite its negativity, the book is easy reading and has a lot of great information.  Just don’t put this guy in charge of heroic quests for breakthroughs on the frontier of knowledge.

I tend to agree with R. Goldston‘s user review:

This book is mostly about the early history of fusion research, and about the more recent fiascos where lone-wolf researchers have claimed breakthroughs without adequate scientific basis. If you are interested in cold and bubble fusion, and how the press has dealt with them, this is a good book for you. On the other hand, Seife devotes relatively little ink to the scientists and engineers worldwide who are working to develop fusion, on the basis of peer-reviewed, replicable research. He also doesn’t systematically review the literature on progress in fusion, on the remaining challenges, and on why it is attractive as an energy source. When I started in this field as a graduate student we made 1/10 of a Watt of fusion heat in a pulse of 1/100 of second. Now the record is in the range of 10 million Watts for a second. That is an improvement by an overall factor of 10 billion. The international ITER project will produce 500 million Watts of fusion heat for periods of at least 300 - 500 seconds. We have further to go, and lots of challenges, but fusion has large advantages in safety, waste and nuclear proliferation. There are relatively few options for large-scale, long-term, steady electric power production, and they all need to be explored.