Atlanta 4/27/2010
Remarks on
The Quest for a Fusion Energy Reactor
W. M. Stacey
Fusion is the energy source of the universe. The sun and the stars fuse light nuclei—
hydrogen, helium, carbon and so on---together to make heavier nuclei and to convert a
small fraction of the mass into nuclear energy in the process. Fusion will be the ultimate
energy source for mankind because of the virtually unlimited fuel supply.
Since the middle of the last century, scientists have been working to reproduce the
same processes at work in the stars in a controlled fashion to produce energy on earth.
By the late 1970’s, solar temperatures had been achieved in high-pressure gaseous
plasmas confined magnetically in donut-shaped configurations known as tokamaks, and
physicists and engineers were beginning to think seriously about the first experimental
fusion energy reactors. A few exploratory reactor studies were carried out in the USA,
Russia, and Japan. I organized and led one of the first such studies at the Argonne
National Laboratory in the mid-1970’s.
The leading countries in fusion research at the time—the USSR, the USA,
England, France, Japan, and a few more---exchanged information through international
meetings and journals and a limited number of cooperative projects, many of these
associated with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a United Nations
Agency. The government fusion program directors of those nations engaged in fusion
research met together as an advisory committee to the IAEA. In 1978, the USSR
advisory committee member, Yevgeny Velikhov, proposed that the IAEA form a
Specialist Group of leading physicists and engineers from the major fusion programs in
the USSR, USA, Europe and Japan to assess if fusion research had reached a stage at
which it was technically feasible to design and construct an experimental fusion energy
reactor and, if so, to identify the features of such a reactor by a conceptual design.
His fellow government fusion program directors, who made up the IAEA’s fusion
advisory committee, were wary for various reasons. The American fusion program
director had already decided to try to persuade the US government to build such an
American reactor. The Japanese were interested in working with the Americans, but
were wary of working with Russians because of the lingering hard feelings over the
USSR occupation of the Kurile Islands. The European fusion program manager was in
the early stages of consolidating the various national fusion programs in Europe into a
coherent European fusion program, and he viewed the suggestion as a threat to his
consolidation efforts. The compromise negotiated by the chair of the advisory
committee, Bas Pease of the UK, was to ask the IAEA to form such a Specialist’s
Committee for one year to assess the technical feasibility of undertaking the design and
construction of an experimental fusion energy reactor. To underscore the absence of any
implication of a commitment to proceed with such a reactor, the European program
director insisted that this first year be designated the “Zero Phase”.
I was asked by the Dept. of Energy to organize and lead the American
participation in this new activity. I met with my counterparts, the technical leaders of the
USSR and Japanese fusion programs and a German fusion physicist representing Europe,
in Vienna over Thanksgiving of 1978. There was agreement with the American
suggestion to organize the activity as a Workshop with a series of three or four 2-4 week
sessions during the coming year in which 4-5 people from each Party would meet
together in Vienna to discuss results, make decisions, and define common homework
tasks to be analyzed in detail between the Workshop sessions by physicists and engineers
in the fusion research labs of the home countries. About 150 physicists and engineers
were organized into teams in each home country to assemble the information and perform
the calculations agreed upon for comparison at the next Vienna session. We named our
Workshop INTOR for INternational TOkamak Reactor.
During the first year, we learned to work together and to make technical decisions
on the best choice among several competing technologies being developed in the various
fusion laboratories worldwide. We initially came together as nationalistic competitors,
but by the end of the year we had become an international team. We learned to
accommodate the elaborate Japanese consensus building process and the very
conservative European attitudes about how much of an advance could be expected from
future research with the common American and Russian view that INTOR must be a
major advance along the path to a fusion energy reactor. By Christmas 1979, we had
agreed that it was technically feasible to undertake the design and construction of an
experimental fusion energy reactor to operate by the end of the century, had identified the
additional supporting R&D that would be necessary, and had documented this work in a
report that would be widely circulated.
We were asked by the IAEA, upon recommendation of their fusion advisory
committee—the government fusion program directors--to continue the INTOR Workshop
into Phase 1 to perform a conceptual design of an experimental fusion energy reactor.
The same Workshop mode of operation, working sessions in Vienna interspersed with
detailed work in the home country laboratories and industries, was continued. The
number of scientists and engineers working in the home countries was increased to about
200 in each country. By summer of 1981, a conceptual design had been completed and
documented in a report. It was clear that it would be possible to build at least a primitive
version of a fusion energy reactor, although it was equally clear that this would be a
difficult undertaking and would require an increase in fusion R&D.
The next logical steps at this point in the summer of 1981 would have been to
initiate the $1B supporting R&D program that had been identified and to prepare for
implementation of the detailed engineering design of the INTOR experimental fusion
energy reactor. This would have required governmental commitments at a higher level
than the government fusion program directors. Only the USSR was prepared to go
forward to this level of commitment. The American fusion program director was trying
2
to obtain government authorization for an American version of INTOR, and a national
experimental reactor was being investigated in parallel with INTOR. Japan was having a
financial crisis and a major cost overrun and delay in their domestic fusion program. The
idea of building a fusion energy experimental reactor had not been discussed in Europe
before the issue was raised by INTOR, and a major review of the European science
program was coming up, so the European fusion program director was not willing to
bring up such a large commitment to fusion with the new European government. The net
result of all of this was that moving forward with the detailed design and supporting
R&D for a fusion energy reactor was not discussed at the highest level in governments
where a decision could be taken (except possibly in the USSR), but was stymied at the
senior bureaucrat level of the governmental fusion program directors.
The INTOR Workshop was continued into Phase 2 in summer 1981 in order to
prepare for a detailed design phase by analyzing and resolving the critical technical issues
that had been uncovered in the conceptual design activity just completed. During this
period, the leaders of the INTOR Workshop met frequently with the governmental fusion
program directors, who served as the fusion advisory committee to the IAEA, and
worked within their own governments in an effort to move the INTOR Workshop
forward to an R&D and detailed design phase, without much scuccess. The Workshop
members, who had been exhilarated by the prospect of a fusion energy reactor in their
lifetimes, were becoming frustrated with the inability to move the process forward.
Then, at the 1985 Geneva Summit meeting, Secretary Gorbachev proposed to
President Reagan that the two countries undertake the R&D, detailed design and
construction of a fusion energy experimental reactor based on the INTOR concept. This
proposal was subsequently accepted by the USA and expanded to include Japan and
Europe, and over the next three years an international design and R&D project for the
International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) was formed. Following years
of negotiation over the site, construction of ITER started in 2009 at a site in France, and
ITER is expected to begin operation in 2019. China, South Korea and India have joined
the collaboration, and the USSR has been replaced by Russia.
My book draws on the working journal that I kept over the course of the INTOR
Workshop (1978-88), providing a historical record of that activity. It also attempts to
describe the technical issues and personalities involved in the INTOR Workshop, the
atmosphere and attractions of Vienna where it took place, the interaction of the
Workshop leaders with government fusion program directors in an effort to make INTOR
happen, and parallel efforts to launch an American experimental fusion energy reactor.
The Quest for a Fusion Energy Reactor: An Insider’s Account of the INTOR
Workshop, Oxford Univ. Press, New York (2010). www.oup.com/us.
3