The Fusion Quest

Posted by Rezwan on Jan 03, 2011 at 12:20 AM
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The Fusion Quest

by T. Kenneth Fowler •

Amazon Review:

Fusion as a source of energy has been a long-sought but never-achieved dream of the scientific establishment. The idea sounds simple enough: create cheap, limitless energy by the same processes that fuel the sun. The problem, however, is scale: how to reproduce the continual fusion of hydrogen atom nuclei in a reactor that is much, much smaller than the sun. This is the puzzle T. Kenneth Fowler describes in Fusion Quest, a book that argues passionately in favor of continued fusion research. Though there has yet been little success in the field, Fowler insists that so much progress has been made that fusion power will likely be possible within the next century. He spends most of the book explaining the challenges that face physicists in realizing this dream. The Fusion Quest is more technical than the average popular science book and will probably appeal more to those readers who have some background in physics and mathematics.

From James Davison:

After reading this book, I have a better understanding of why we failed. The problem is not money—Fowler recounts the millions spent of muscular hardware. The real problem is the inability of our nation to harvest our best minds to work on the promise of limitless energy, and the failure of nerve by our country’s leaders to make fusion a goal. It will take more than this book to revitalize the fusion effort—it reads like a dull college lecture, complete with tests at the end. Nevertheless, fusion students will appreciate a chance to aquaint themselves with the specialized terminology and details of this specialized field of physics.