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* Illustration: Don Clark * Dreams of a utopian future have driven decades of research into fusion power, the explosive union of atomic nuclei that fuels the stars and liberates colossal quantities of energy. Its pursuit has pushed scientists to the abyss, spawned crackpot schemes (nuke the moon!), and given rise to reactors with names like the Stellarator, the Thermotron, and the Perhapsatron. Although no fusion reactor has ever produced more energy than it consumes, every new advance, real or imagined — cold fusion, bubble fusion, microfusion bombs — is met by media frenzy. In his Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking, Charles Seife has no doubt why: "Fusion is as close as science gets to something for nothing. It offers a theoretically clean, perfectly free, inexhaustible source of energy that nothing else offers. As soon as the theory was born — that you could make atoms stick together and get energy — scientists said, 'We have to make it work.'"
As far back as 1905, Einstein's equation E=mc2 established the foundation for fusion power. It suggested that a minuscule amount of mass — say, the mass lost when the nuclei of two hydrogen atoms collide and fuse — could be converted into a massive amount of energy, if those collisions were harnessed on a vast scale. This potential spurred Edward Teller to design the hydrogen bomb in the late '40s, while others dreamed of fusion reactors that could generate limitless energy. "If you had this thing in your hand, you would instantly solve the world's energy problems," Seife explains. Researchers are willing to believe because the prize is so great. "Scientists are human," he says. "They deceive themselves." And others: In 1989, two researchers in Utah claimed to have sparked cold fusion in a jar of heavy water. As with every new fusion discovery, the press pounced on the breakthrough, which turned out to be manufactured from faulty data. "You have people who believe passionately in something amazing, and there are violent and bitter fights," Seife says. "It's a great story. It's like watching a bar fight or a meltdown on reality TV. Editors can't resist."
So, is Seife a fusion atheist or merely agnostic? "Cold fusion is completely bogus," he says. But he's less skeptical about magnetic fusion, a type of hot fusion that mainstream scientists are backing. "The problems with energy are so great," he says, "that we'll eventually turn to a radical solution." Seife writes with cautious optimism about the cash- gobbling multibillion-dollar international magnetic fusion project, called ITER (ominously pronounced "eater"), which is set to start operating in France by 2018. "If you look at our society in 2500," he says, "assuming we have a society — it may well be fusion-based."
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