FUSION MAGAZINE OF THE FUSION ENERGY FOUNDATION Vol. 3, No. 2 November 1979 Features ISSN 0148-0537

30 The Theoretical Impasse in Inertial Confinement Fusion Uwe Parpart EDITORIAL STAFF

Editor-in-Chief 41 Some Reminiscences About the Origins Dr. Morris Levitt Of Inertial Confinement Fusion Dr. Friedwardt Winterberg Associate Editor Dr. Steven Bardwell 48 The Fallacy of Scalar Elementarily Managing Editor Lyndon H. LaRouche, jr. Marjorie Mazel Hecht

Fusion News Editor 58 How Technology Made the American Farmer Charles B. Stevens David Diehl, jr. Energy News Editors William Engdahl Marsha Freeman News Editorial Assistant Christina Nelson Huth

Art Director SPECIAL REPORT Christopher Sloan 8 Antinuclear Croups Plan Violence at Seabrook

Assistant Art Director 13 The NRC Report on TMI: Refusal to Investigate Sabotage Deborah Asch NATIONAL 16 Gov't Drops 'H-Bomb Case/ Tightens Classification Graphics Assistants Gillian Cowdery 16 Pioneer 11 Yields Data on Saturn Gary Genazzio INTERNATIONAL 18 Third World Resolves for Development Business Manager Kenneth Mandel 19 Terror Wave Set for Persian Gulf WASHINGTON Subscription and 20 Carter Synfuels Program on Rocks Circulation Manager Cynthia Parsons 21 Agnew, Panofsky Receive 1978 Fermi Award 21 House Temporarily Supports Breeder FUSION is published monthly, 10 times a year except FUSION NEWS August and March, by the Fusion Energy Foundation (FEF), 23 House Panel Calls for Fusion Plant by 1995 888 7th Ave., Suite 2404, New York, New York 10019. telephone (212) 265-3749. CONFERENCES Subscriptions by mail are $18 for 10 issues or $34 for 20 25 Putting a Hydrogen Economy on the U.S. Agenda issues in the USA and Canada. Airmail subscriptions to other countries are $36 for 10 issues. 28 UN Conference Pushes Appropriate Technology' Address all correspondence to Fusion, Fusion Energy Foundation, 888 7th Ave.. Suite 2404, New York, New York 10019. Second class postage paid at New York. New York. The FEF publishes a variety of material for the benefit of decision makers and the interested public. The views Departments of the FEF are stated in the editorials. Opinions ex­ pressed in signed articles are not necessarily those of the FEF directors or the scientific advisory board.

Copyright © October 1979 Fusion Energy Foundation Printed in the USA All Rights Reserved

Note to Readers The Fusion Energy Foundation and Fusion magazine have moved to more spacious quarters. Please address all correspondence to 888 Seventh Avenue, Suite 2404, New York, N.Y. 10019. Recent investigative work by the Fusion magazine staff has revealed a Stop Killing pattern of Department of Energy actions to contain and bleed the fusion program to death. Consider the following items: Fusion (1) The Department of Energy insists on an absurd 20- to 30-year scenario for fusion test reactor development, when an immediate engineering project Research could cut this time schedule to as little as 10 years. So far, there has been no appropriate reply from the DOE to the request by Congressman Mike Mc- Cormack for an analysis of why we cannot meet the accelerated timetable. (2) The DOE is withholding publication and has classified key sections of the Foster Committee recommendations for beefing up laser fusion develop­ ment. The Foster Committee is an independent fusion review committee appointed by the DOE. (3) Cuts in the budget of the basic plasma physics program are wreaking havoc at important university-based fusion research and training programs. Taken together with point (1), this means there will likely be no fusion scientists left when the DOE timetable is completed. (4) At the same time that the DOE is preventing an industrial gear-up to build a tokamak test reactor, it is talking out of the other side of its mouth in designating the Elmo Bumpy Torus tokamak at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a "mature" experiment that must now be farmed out to industry for development. This inconsistent though calculated move has tied up fusion managers in bureaucratic and legal red tape instead of project management and threatens to destroy the outstanding scientific team in the Oak Ridge fusion division. (5) The top posts of the DOE have been flooded with former Defense Department officials who have no scientific or research management compe­ tence. This group has no interest in promoting fusion breakthroughs. Its sole concern, like that of its predecessor, former energy secretary James Schlesin- ger, is promoting the most costly and inefficient energy technologies and playing the game of crisis management. (6) The government has used the contrived dropping of the Progressive magazine "H-Bomb Secret" case to tighten its grip on basic research through continued abuse of classification. The entire fusion scientific community has been chilled by government threats to investigate whether scientists at Los Alamos and Livermore laboratories leaked classified information to "inquiring" reporters. (See national news, this issue.) A casualty of this climate was the director of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory who recently resigned, charging interference with laboratory functioning from high DOE officials.

2 FUSION It is probably true that the nation will not get the Apollo-style fusion Calendar program it needs until a new administration and Congress take office in 1980. The pronuclear forces in the present Congress, however, can provide a NOVEMBER , valuable service to the nation by stopping the antifusion shenanigans now. 5-9 It is past time to put the investigative spotlight on misuse of the classification 7th Water Reactor Safety Research system and other bureaucratic harassment of basic research. It is also necessary Information Meeting to maintain the funding levels and visible support for all the vital research Gaithersburg, Md. projects that are now threatened. 7-9 16th International Thermal Conductiv­ ity Conference & 7th International Victory at Seabrook Thermal Expansion Symposium Chicago As this issue goes to press, the forces of decency in the country have scored a major victory at the Seabrook nuclear plant in New Hampshire. Midday 11-16 reports Oct. 6 from the site indicate that barely 1,400 of the originally projected 1979 ANS Winter Meeting 10,000 antinuclear demonstrators appeared on the scene. With police forces San Francisco from five states and the New Hampshire National Guard on duty, the integrity of the plant's perimeter has been maintained. 11-15 This is a victory that the pronuclear coalition, including the Fusion Energy 1979 AIF Annual Conference Foundation, can take pride in. San Francisco How It Was Done The main lesson of Seabrook is the method used to defeat the would-be 13-16 antinuclear stormtroopers. A number of crucial ingredients went into the 8th Symposium on Engineering Prob­ recipe for victory. lems of Fusion Research For many weeks, organizers representing the pronuclear presidential can­ Livermore, Calif. didacy of Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. reached practically every voter in New Hampshire with the reasoned arguments for nuclear power. The intelligence 19-23 arm of that same organization uncovered the plans for a violent occupation 5th International Conference of Seabrook and its shutdown. (See special report, this issue, for details.) This on Laser Interaction and background work provided the basis for two crucial tactics. Related Plasma Phenomena The first was widespread dissemination in New Hampshire and many other Troy, N.Y. parts of the country of a dossier on the anti-Seabrook operation—its funders and political controllers as well as its links to the European terrorist movement. 26-29 Second, LaRouche announced that any political figure, such as presidential International Symposium on the aspirant Senator Ted Kennedy (whose organization showed significant overlap Scientific Basis for Nuclear with the Seabrook plotters), would be held politically accountable should a Waste Management violent demonstration and occupation occur. Boston, Mass. The tactics worked. Local press throughout New England, including press reports in the Manchester Union Leader, covered the news that the environ­ Readers are invited to submit calendar mentalists planned violence at Seabrook. And despite the drug-infested crowd items. Address correspondence to Fusion, of 200,000 that showed up in New York City for an antinuclear rock concert Suite 2404, 888 7th Ave., New York, N.Y. 10019. I Sept. 23, within the next few days every big name associated with the Seabrook demonstration was forced to publicly dissociate himself or herself from the Seabrook event. With the "respectable" Fonda-Hayden types gone, only the hard-core fanatics remained. The final stiffening of pronuclear resolve was furnished on the eve of the demonstration by a half-hour prime time television briefing and call-in show Celebrate the on the Manchester ABC affiliate station WMUR on the necessity of nuclear American Tradition energy versus the Seabrook demonstration. The show featured candidate LaRouche, FEF director of nuclear engineering Jon Gilbertson, and Sten of Science Caspersson, a nuclear engineer and expert in reactor core design. and Progress LaRouche introduced the discussion by saying that 55 percent of the with a contribution population is pronuclear, with another 20 percent generally in favor of nuclear to the power but confused. "Nuclear power must be a top issue in the 1980 election," LaRouche said, noting that the cost of electric power per kilowatt must come Fusion Energy (Continued on page 4) Foundation

FUSION (Continued from page 3) down, not up in the next few years. As LaRouche has pointed out in his energy program, this can be accomplished by constructing thousands of nuclear plants for domestic use and export and developing more advanced nuclear technologies in the transition to fusion—all financed by a new gold-backed monetary system based on real production. The Lesson of Seabrook Letters The lesson of Seabrook? Don't pull your punches on the necessity for nuclear power and a nuclear-based energy policy. Focus on the role of nuclear power in making possible both international development and a revitalization of the U.S. economy. Don't try to compromise with the 20 percent antinuclear minority. (Our ideas work and theirs don't; our principles are right and theirs are wrong.) And, finally, don't depend on or play to the corrupt national media. If proprogress industrialists, trade unionists, scientists, and representative local political machines of both major parties adopt this winning strategy, the nation's majority can have nuclear power as a by-product of taking back the country for the American System in 1980.

This is not civil treatment, to endeav­ or to deprive me of my very being and The reduce me to a nonentity in the opin­ ion of the public. But so long as I know myself to walk about, eat, drink and sleep, I am satisfied that there Lightninj really is such a man as I am, whatever they may say to the contrary. And the THE GREAT DDT HOAX world may be satisfied likewise; for if To the Editor: there were no such man ds I am, how Just a note to tell you how much I Rod is it possible I should appear publicly appreciated your "The Great DDT to thousands of people, as I have done Hoax" in the June 1979 Fusion. for several months past, in print? I Having been employed in the pes­ need not, indeed, have taken any no­ ticide industry for 13 years and now a tice of so idle a report, if it had not farmer for the past 7 years, I have My dear friends, been for the sake of my printer, to never read such an in-depth analysis whom my enemies are pleased to as­ on the DDT ban. Your kind acceptance of my former cribe my productions; and who it Moreover, I have never read an in­ labors has encouraged me to continue seems is as unwilling to father my off­ telligent article by a nonagricultural writing, tho' the general approbation spring as I am to lose the credit of it. publication until I read this article you have been so good as to favor me Therefore to clear him entirely, as by Tim Pike. He certainly did his with has excited the envy of some and well as to vindicate my own honor, I homework. . . . drawn upon me the malice of others. make this public and serious Declara­ I was in the pesticide business be­ These ill-willers of mine, despited at tion, which I desire may be believed: fore, during, and after the DDT ban the great reputation I gained by exact­ to wit, That what I have written here­ and it's been several years but I can't ly predicting another man's death (tho' tofore and do now write, neither was remember reading or hearing about owing to a delay at the printer's that nor is written by any other man or any deliberate attempt by the govern­ announcement of Dr. Schlesinger's po­ men, person or persons whatsoever. ment to distort the facts about DDT. litical demise appeared but tardily on Those whose are not satisfied with this, The industry fought back to save DDT, your doorsteps)—these ill-willers, as I must needs be very unreasonable. but this article makes me wonder if say, have endeavored to deprive me the pesticide industry didn't succumb of my credit all at once in the most Yr. obt. svt. to the Environmental Protection Agen­ effectual manner, by reporting that I cy by accepting their facts and figures myself am no longer alive. They say in (at least some of them) without short that there is no such a man as I doublechecking them. For example, I am; and have spread this notion so had accepted the "fact" that the half- thoroughly in the country, that I have life of DDT is 50 years—somewhat been frequently told it to my face by longer than you report. those that don't know me. I'm sure time has eroded my mem-

4 FUSION ory as to all the pro's and con's of the be one. Certainly petroleum produc­ cost in quantities so massive that there furious battle over DDT. But my point tion will be enhanced by financial in­ is no need to revert to the costly and is: As well as the pesticide industry centives just as nuclear or any other inefficient coal synthetic programs now fought back (and I'm sure well versed form of energy will be, but the days of being promoted by the administration. on the subject), I wonder if because practically total dependence on petro­ Over the medium term—by the end they were out-financed to disprove all leum are numbered .... of the century—and into long term, government "data" they may have Lee P. Morris we must eliminate the wasteful diver­ been forced to accept them since they Medford, Oregon sion of these valuable petrochemical had neither the allotted time or money feedstocks into transportation fuels by to disprove them. To the Editor: developing and substituting hydrogen If you need new recruits, get that ... I know something about the and hydride fuels. issue delivered to all agricultural in­ energy business and believe your ar­ It goes without saying that in the terests. It will win you some friends, ticle [July 1979] is pure fantasy. There short and medium terms we must ac­ support, and money. is a real shortage of oil. Oil is a finite, celerate the use of nuclear power for Allen Kime not renewable, resource. U.S. produc­ power generation and rapidly devel­ Wilcox, Arizona tion has topped out and is in decline, op and phase in fusion power as the while our imports have increased. The main power source for the 2000s. The Editor Replies main reason that nuclear power is Second, the facts my article was Bulk reprints of "The Great DDT needed is to replace energy growth based on are irrefutable and in the Hoax" article are available from the FEF, that would have come from imported public domain. It is sad to say, but and a few agricultural publications have oil. If oil is plentiful, as you suggest, true, that there are men guilty of crim­ reprinted the article in full or excerpted there would be no need for nuclear inal collusion in the top positions of it. Readers who have the means to power. Oil is cheaper and poses less some of our leading corporations. At mass distribute the article to agricul­ severe problems of safety and waste the same time, it is also true that the tural groups should contact the FEF. disposal. Your failure to see this, and overwhelming majority of engineers, to publish such shallow analysis of a petrogeologists, and others employed serious problem appalls me. by Exxon and the other "Seven Sister" OIL HOAXED D.C. Aubrey multinationals—many of whom I have To the Editor: Wilton, Conn. recently talked with in a tour of the It's really incredible! I subscribed Southwest—are dedicated, hard­ to Fusion magazine because I thought To the Editor: working, and committed to supplying I would at last get an accurate report I subscribed to Fusion because I am America with energy; they simply are on the nuclear industry. I read it avid­ pronuclear power and profree enter­ not being informed of the treason ly, totally convinced I was getting the prise. I did not expect to read the going on in the board rooms. true facts. That was until I read "How anti-oil company type of article such A careful reading of the article in James Schlesinger Set Up the Oil as that by William Engdahl in the July question would make it clear that I in Hoax" in criminal collusion with the 1979 issue. I had hoped to read fac­ no way support the populist, liberal, Seven Sisters by your Energy News tual, objective, and unbiased com­ antibusiness demogogy coming from Editor William Engdahl [July 1979]. mentaries on the energy situation. spokesmen like Ted Kennedy. How­ The article is all the more incredible Charges such as, "criminal collusion," ever, it's time to let the chips fall where because you, a proponent of one kind "diverting other supplies in such a way they may. We have to get this country of energy which has been maligned as to create the appearance of short­ moving behind an industrial devel­ and discredited by the news media, ages," and "unexplained and conve­ opment policy. We can't let inflated are castigating another form of ener­ niently timed accidents" cause me to energy prices manipulate the U.S. gy which is also under the gun of the seriously question your objectivity and economy and world economy into the news media. your credibility as a proponent of nu­ worst depression in history. Disliking James Schlesinger is your clear power. Among other accounts documenting prerogative, but accusing the oil Dorr H. Etzler the manipulation of an oil shortage, majors of "withholding supplies se­ Moraga, Calif. read the report published by the Gen­ lectively, diverting other supplies in eral Accounting Office. Or talk—as I such a way as to create the appear­ The Editor Replies have—to some of the honest indepen­ ance of shortages, thus enabling the First of all, to analyze the oil prob­ dent petroleum producers who are companies to drastically increase lem properly, one has to consider it in fighting an uphill battle against prices" is hogwash. It's been shown the short, medium, and long term. In the deliberate morass of regulatory time and time again that you are dead the short term—the next 5 to 10 years strangulation developed by former wrong. —there is an abundance of oil here in energy secretary Schlesinger and his Petroleum is a finite resource. If the United States, in Mexico, and in collaborators. there is no shortage, please in your in­ Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Mid­ William Fngdahl finite wisdom tell me when there will east. This oil is easily accessible at low Energy News Editor

FUSION 5 NEW YORK TIMES ATTACKS FEF TAX-EXEMPT STATUS The New York Times featured a front-page article Sunday, Oct. 7 that reiter­ ates an earlier slander by William F. Buckley's National Review magazine aimed at crippling the Fusion Energy Foundation financially. The Times article alleges that FEF revenues are used for political purposes that violate the foundation's tax-exempt status. In a press release issued Oct.9, FEF executive director Dr. Morris Levitt stated: "The New York Times charges are all lies, as the Times editorial board well knows. All contributions and payments to the FEF are used strictly for foundation business. Our activities include a variety of educational and scien­ tific research efforts and the publication of Fusion magazine, which informs tens of thousands of readers monthly on developments in the energy field. The foundation's activities and finances are a matter of public record." "The point is that the New York Times is not interested in the truth of the matter," Levitt continued. "The slander article reflects the Times's growing fear about the FEF's growth in size and influence among the nation's scientific and technological communities on the issue of nuclear development." Levitt noted that the Times had simply republished lies previously circulated in the National Review March 29 by editor William F. Buckley and writer Gregory Rose, whom the FBI had previously characterized as a pathological liar. "While the New York Times told its liberal audience that the FEF was funding the U.S. Labor Party, which the Times characterized as "right wing," the National Review told its conservative audience the equally untrue line that FEF contributions were funding the Palestine Liberation Organization," Levitt said. The FEF is initiating a libel and defamation action against the National Re­ view magazine.

MEXICAN PRESIDENT CALLS FOR WORLD ENERGY PLAN The power of human reason is mankind's most powerful weapon for solving the international energy crisis, and the building of a new world economic order cannot be separated from a solution to the pressing problem of world energy supplies, Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo told the United Nations General Assembly Sept. 27. This crisis, the Mexican president said, has brought humanity to a branch point from which either a world war or a new era of development dedicated to the "continuity of progress" will result. "1 therefore propose the adoption of a world energy plan that covers all nations, both the haves and the have-nots . . . and has as its fundamental objective the assurance of an orderly, progressive, integrated, and just transi­ tion from one age of man's history to the next," Lopez Portillo told the UN delegates. Programs under the plan, he said, must guarantee full sovereignty, increase exploitation of both conventional and nonconventional sources of energy; allow the means for national energy programs to be compatible with world policy; promote developing sector industries of importance for energy devel­ opment, particularly capital goods; set up short-term relief for poor importing nations; and provide new financing for transfer of technology from the indus­ trialized sector to the Third World. Solenoidal coiK^

LLL TANDEM MIRROR REPORTS ENCOURAGING RESULTS The Lawrence Livermore Laboratory's Tandem Mirror Experiment reported encouraging results at the completion of its initial shakedown series of tests. In this experiment, a central cell plasma, which is confined between two mirror plasmas shaped like a baseball seam, must be kept stable and attain significant temperatures and densities. The main objective of the experiment is to dem­ The tandem mirror design adds mag­ onstrate the scientific principles on which it is based. netic field coil configurations in the Although further tests will be needed to corroborate the first measurements, shape of the stitching on a baseball at it appears that the central cell plasma is achieving reasonable temperatures as each end of a solenoidal magnet coil. well as densities greater than those obtained in the 2X11 single mirror experi-

FUSION ment several years ago. (The 2X11 achieved very high densities and peak betas greater than 100 percent.) The tandem mirror approach promises to provide the basis for economical and technologically feasible fusion electric power plants, with the possibility of running on an advanced all-deuterium fusion fuel cycle.

NATIONAL ANTI-DRUG COALITION FORMED One-thousand representatives from 15 states and several nations met in Detroit's Cobo Hall Sept. 29 for the founding of a National Anti-Drug Coalition. The conference was hosted by the Michigan Anti-Drug Coalition, whose work has spread into 17 other states since its formation in December 1978. Dozens of trade union, religious, law enforcement, community, and youth leaders represented their organizations at the day-long conference. At the initiation of Michigan Anti-Drug Coalition President Juan Torres, the confer­ ence resolved to set up task forces for, among other purposes, fundraising, the defeat and repeal of all marijuana decriminalization legislation, and support of efforts toward the November 1979 founding of an international antidrug coali­ tion in Bogota, Colombia. Representing the Fusion Energy Foundation at the conference was Ned Rosinsky, MD, of the FEF's biological sciences staff. Speakers included Michi­ gan Anti-Drug Coalition officials Juan Torres and Salahuddin Mohammed, world-renowned drug expert Dr. Gabriel Nahas, Highland Park, Mich. Mayor Jesse Miller, Colombian antidrug leader Fausto Charris, 1980 presidential can­ didate Lyndon H. LaRouche, Kena Moreno, a deputy in the Mexican House of Representatives, and Ganesh Shukla, editor of the Indian weekly newspaper New Wave. Dr. Gabriel Nahas

BRITISH TURN DOWN JOINT FUSION WORK WITH U.S. British authorities recently canceled a joint fusion program proposed by the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico and Culham Laboratory in Britain for work on the donut-shaped reverse field pinch fusion approach. Both laboratories had completed successful programs with smaller experi­ ments, and the joint project, proposed last year, was to pool resources and build a major $8 million experiment that could demonstrate the scientific feasibility of this approach to magnetic confinement. The British turned the project down reportedly because they wanted the experiment to be designed solely according to their own criteria. The reversed field pinch is based on a unique scientific approach that forces the plasma in a tokamak-type machine to virtually turn around and form a reversed field closed magnetic structure. The results clearly demonstrate the existence of force-free plasma field structure.

LOUSEWORT AWARD TO ONTARIO GOVERNMENT This month's lousewort laurels award goes to the provincial government of Ontario, Canada for its $26,000 grant to the Lake of the Woods hospital in Kenora to hire a "medicine man" to help serve Indian patients. Indian culture has "a more holistic approach to health and spiritual prob­ lems than we would have," explained the medical advisor to the hospital's community mental health program in an interview with the New York Times, and he cited "a number of areas where the doctors don't feel comfortable when working with native people." According to the Times report, the medi­ cine man is guided by spirits that appear to him in visions after he has poured tobacco and whisky over an open fire as an offering. The lousewort committee notes that the March 1979 lousewort award went to Senator Ted Kennedy for his Jan. 29 speech to a Washington conference on pharmaceuticals for the Third World that laid out the "appropriate medicine" philosophy. The senator said: "The American industrial, high-technology model [of health care] has hurt medical care in the United States and we cannot allow it to be established elsewhere .... We need primary care facilities . . . that will be run by local people to solve local problems . . . ."

FUSION The recent announcement by lead­ for implementing what it calls a "pre­ Antinuclear ers of the U.S. antinuclear movement ferred world order." that they will adopt tactics of violence The CFR's environmentalist machine Groups Plan makes it imperative that every Ameri­ has set its sights on a violent Oct. 6 can citizen understand the how and occupation of the Seabrook, New why of the well-publicized environ­ Hampshire nuclear power plant, now Violence mentalist cause. Contrary to its popu­ under construction. Organized under lar image as a "spontaneous" protest the auspices of the same left-wing At Seabrook against the alleged dangers of nuclear forces that are defending the Italian technology, the environmentalist terrorist Red Brigades in the United movement was deliberately created to States, and modeled on the tactics of carry out a preplanned policy of zero the antinuclear movement in Europe, growth, deindustrialization, and the the violence scheduled for Oct. 6 is destruction of advanced science in the intended to be the trigger for a series United States. The environmentalists of antitechnology civil disturbances at are actually the lowest level of a care­ nuclear plant sites across the country. fully structured political machine Falk's Mobilization for Survival and its whose hierarchy can be traced to the associated Clamshell Alliance are in patrician circles of the New York the forefront of planning for the Oct. Council oh Foreign Relations. 6 Seabrook action. It is no accident that the current A special investigative report on the activities of the environmentalists con­ blueprint for violence at Seabrook, the form to what the Council on Foreign Council on Foreign Relations' appara­ Relations has made public as its 1980s tus behind it, and the Italian model of Project blueprint for the "controlled terrorism on which it is based has been disintegration" of the U.S. and the compiled by the Fusion Energy Foun­ world economy. (See the October 1979 dation and the Executive Intelligence Fusion for details on the 7980s Proj­ Review. The report, excerpted here to ect.) Similarly, it is no coincidence that give readers of Fusion the essential CFR member and 7980s Project policy outline of the terrorist plan for Sea­ board member Richard Falk also heads brook, is now circulating among U.S. the Institute for World Order, which law enforcement officials, particularly created the antinuclear Mobilization throughout New England. The full re­ for Survival as one of its action fronts port, with supplementary documen-

8 FUSION Police successfully repulsed the hard-core environmentalists who tried to break through the fence at the Seabrook, N.H. plant site Oct. 6 (left). As a result of the wide­ spread circulation of the material in this special report, jane Fonda and her husband, Tom Hayden (r.), along with several other prominent antinuclearsupporters, were forced to disassociate themselves from the planned violence at Seabrook. tary materials, is available for $50 from brook, until all plans to continue the posed that this be done with the aid the Fusion Energy Foundation ($25 for construction of the plant are perma­ of the Washington, D.C., Vermont, FEF members.) nently called off. New Haven, Conn., Maine, and New­ The Terrorist Plan It was agreed by the people in at­ buryport, Mass. groups. The logistics A planning meeting was held Sept. tendance that all previous peaceful for this operation are complex and 9 to map out the occupation of the means to stop the construction of nu­ dangerous: It entails crossing swamps nuclear construction site at Seabrook, clear plants had failed and that more and fording a river at precisely low N.H. The meeting was held at Mount direct means had to be taken. Two tide, at four in the morning. Holyoke College in South Hadley, groups at the meeting, one from the The details on this military opera­ Mass. under the aegis of the Coalition Clamshell in Newburyport, Mass. and tion indicate that hundreds of man- for Direct Action at Seabrook. The pur­ the other consisting of three com­ hours of time have gone into its plan­ pose of the meeting was to pull to­ munes from Vermont, talked directly ning, including mapping, photo sur­ gether various groups participating in about the need for special opera­ veillance, trial runs, and even the the action, and to settle on the last tions, to be done in secret, most to construction of temporary bridges to few details concerning the scheduled precede the arrival of the demonstra­ cross the river. It envisions crossing Oct. 6 occupation. tors Oct. 6. the river and swamp land to the north There were approximately 125 peo­ There are to be three main areas of of the plant, cutting holes in the ple in attendance, most from Massa­ assault, from the north, southwest and fence, and proceeding to occupy the chusetts, New York City, Binghamton, south, all converging on the construc­ area where the reactor is to be N.Y., Long Island, and Rhode Island. tion site at 4:00 a.m., Oct. 6. Accord­ located. An on-site observer at the meeting ing to the handbook prepared for the The inclusion of the Newburyport has written a detailed document, veri­ occupation and documents described group is significant. They have been fying who was at the meeting and the below, the fences are to be ripped designated as the coordinators of "spe­ content of the discussions. down and the plant taken over. Should cial operations" including secret op­ According to this person, the meet­ the initial assaults fail to immobilize erations that will begin an evening in ing was led by Harvey Halpern, a lead­ police defending the plant, repeated advance of the regular troops' arrival. ing member of the New England Clam­ assaults, over days if necessary, will The document also acknowledges that shell Alliance, and the Coalition for be launched, from numerous staging retreat from the area is nearly impos­ Direct Action at Seabrook, the two areas. sible as the tide rises. groups leading the planning for the The Planning Documents • Rising Free, P.O. Box 852, SUNY Oct. 6 action. People in attendance all • Rhode Island Logistics Proposal, by Binghamton, (607-754-4657): This doc­ agreed on the necessity to forcefully the R.I. Clamshell. This document cen­ ument is similar to material contained take over, and permanently occupy, tered on a proposal to take over the in the handbook issued for the occu­ the nuclear construction site at Sea­ plant site from the north. It was pro- pation by the Coalition for Direct Ac-

FUSION tion but takes the justification for the action much further. Rising Free pro­ claims: ". . . We are no longer going to appeal to.the authorities. We will shut down nuclear power: we will do it ourselves: and we will use whatever means are necessary to see that this happens!" As other documents have stated, this occupation is modeled on the antinu­ clear occupations in Europe, almost all of which have been violent in na­ ture, and many of which either pre­ ceded or shortly followed terrorist bombings. • Affinity Croup Check List: In this document, the military precision of the operation is again laid out in de­ tail. Every contingency concerning the activities of the groups of people in the event (affinity groups) has been mapped out. This not only includes back-up funds and legal and medical assistance, but also positions in which spare military equipment will be hid­ den previous to the assault on the site. The policies this document details make very clear that despite the claims of "nonviolence," it is the intention of the demonstration to provoke a vi­ Drugs, rock music, no nukes, and no industry—the message of the slick olent confrontation. That will be four-color magazine put out by MUSE in support of Seabrqok and other blamed on police, and set up an im­ antinuclear demonstrations. mediate violent reaction from the demonstrators. • Boston Logistical Proposal: This is Rock Concerts for Seabrook perhaps the most detailed of the pro­ The major source of funding for the Oct. 6 occupation of the Seabrook posals, from a military logistical view­ nuclear facility is coming from a nonprofit organization set up in May point. Every aspect of military planning 1979 called MUSE, Musicians United for Safe Energy. The chairman of the from the meeting areas at the Com­ board of MUSE is Sam Lovejoy, the environmentalist who was arrested mons in Boston to the tearing down and indicted in the early 1970s for destroying property on a nuclear plant of the fences at the construction site construction site in Montague, Mass. Other board members include has been planned out. This includes Harvey Wasserman, Tom Hayden, Becky Hardy, Sara Nelson, and Kitty every possible route that leads into Tucker. New Hampshire, and what to do if MUSE is sponsoring a series of rock concerts in New York City's road blocks at any point or other pre­ Madison Square Garden late in September to raise money for the Sea­ emptive actions are taken, as well as brook action. The concerts are organized by Ron Delsner, the largest a great number of preliminary stag­ rock concert promoter in New York, and are receiving the support of the ing areas near the site, including 100 record companies of many of the singers who are scheduled to per­ acres near the plant donated by the form, including Warner Communications. owners of the land, to the shopping At a Sept. 19 press conference in New York City, Lovejoy promised that plaza on Route 1. MUSE would make the shutdown of the Seabrook plant, and nuclear At every stage of the assault, every energy in general, a major issue in the 1980 election campaign. Chal­ possible tactic launched by police, lenged from the floor of the conference on the "poor press coverage to from gas, to water hoses, to dogs, has the movement and to nuclear 'accidents,'" a CBS spokesman assured been taken into consideration, and at the gathering, "We plan major coverage of this event and from here each point an alternative plan or set on out." of options has been laid out to give maximum flexibility to the demonstra-

10 FUSION tors. Detailed mapping has taken into vious terrorist connections of the (bombs at the information pavilion in consideration every group of trees, document. Kaiseraugst, Switzerland in the spring fences, and so on, in the landscape For the antinuclear movement, "Mid­ of 1979). Sometimes bombs were around the plant. night Notes" frankly prescribes tactics placed near nuclear construction sites It is clear that the scope of military that are violent—extending to murder. or plants, not to damage them but to planning goes beyond that associated It states, for example, that: demonstrate their vulnerability. This with amateurs. "The antinuclear movement has not wave of 'violent' acts has triggered an The Italian Model always relied exclusively on nonvio­ intensive debate within the European The violent tactics being mapped lent civil disobedience. It has turned antinuclear movement. At first the 'of­ out for Seabrook, which could lead to to more violent tactics whenever the ficial' nonviolent organizations de­ the death and injury of demonstrators contract of nonphysical behavior could nounced these actions as 'directed and police personnel, are designed to not work. A clear case in point is the against the movement and harmful for create an environment of chaos and antinuclear struggle in the Basque its growth.' But later this 'hard line' antitechnology ferment in the United country of Spain. The nuclear plant weakened and they sometimes accept­ States similar to that fostered in Italy under construction in Lemoniz was ed bomb-attacks, if the bombings over the past decade. In fact, it is the bombed by the ETA la Basque nation­ were carefully and 'cleanly' executed overseers of Italy's environmentalist alist organization] on March 17, 1978, without damage to the environment, movement who are prescribing the and two workers were killed. This ac­ nature, or 'living things.'" turn to violence for the U.S. antinu­ cident did not impede the antinuclear The Kennedy Connection clear forces. movement, but widened its impact. In New Hampshire, the first presi­ Over the last few months, a pamph­ The ETA was not blamed for the death dential primary state in the 1980 race let titled "Midnight Notes: Strange Vic­ of the two workers .... The move­ for the White House, the threatened tories—The Antinuclear Movement in ment, far from losing support after violence at Seabrook has become a the U.S. and Europe," has appeared in the bombing, turned the incident central issue of the campaign. Perhaps "movement" bookstores around the against the plant and continued to most shocking to New Hampshire res­ country. The authors of the slick, ex­ sponsor mass demonstrations." idents are the details of Senator Ed­ pensively produced document repre­ This justification of violence isaimed ward Kennedy's connections to the sent themselves as members of the at whipping up the anarchist-oriented antinuclear planners. "Midnight Notes Collective," but the hippie and student layers who fre­ New Hampshire's "Draft Kennedy" tract was in fact written by a group quent antinuclear affairs and who tend state chairwoman, Dudley W. Dudley, known as the Committee Against Re­ to see any action by police or gov­ was organizing—up until mid-Septem­ pression in Italy, CARL ernments as "repressive." ber—for a major fundraiser for the CARI was formed after the early April "Midnight Notes" adds: "For the environmentalists, scheduled for late arrest by Italian authorities of a group argument that 'violence breeds vio­ September at the Rye Beach estate of of individuals charged with being the lence' distorts the real class relations Clinton Seeley. The event, sponsored controllers of the Italian Red Brig­ and leads them ["certain nonviolence by the Clamshell Alliance, the New ades. The best known of these was ideologists"] to blame the state's bru­ Hampshire Energy Coalition (of which Antonio Negri, the "godfather" of tality on the resistance of the working Dudley is a leader), and the Granite the Italian ultraleft movement, class. Such a logic ends by equating State Alliance—all scheduled to par­ Autonomia, out of which the Red the violence of the Warsaw ghetto ticipate in the invasion of the Sea­ Brigades were formed. fighters with the brutality of their brook plant—is part of a national The address listed for the Midnight Nazi executioners! But who provokes fundraising tour by environmentalist Notes Collective, 491 Pacific Street, whom?" superstar Jane Fonda and her husband Brooklyn, N.Y., is a headquarters of What is meant by "resistance of the Tom Hayden. CARI in the United States and the resi­ working class" is terrorist actions by Other Kennedy connections to the dence of the leader of CARI, Sylvia Fed- groups like the Weathermen, the Ital­ Seabrook event are as follows: erici. "Midnight Notes" author George ian Red Brigades, and now the anti­ William Winpisinger, president of Caffentzis is a member of CARI and nuclear movement. the International Association of Ma­ also serves on the editorial board of a "Midnight Notes" then turns to the chinists, one of the earliest public en­ magazine called Zero Work. Zero Work lessons of the European movement dorsers of the Kennedy candidacy and is Negri's vehicle for contact with U.S. for the U.S. antinuclear movement: the individual responsible for the ultraleft and terrorist networks, and "While a part of the movement went Americans for Democratic Action en­ was the cosponsor with Negri of a ter­ back to legalism, other antinuclear ac­ dorsement of Kennedy, is actively in­ rorist conference held in Britain two tivists experimented with acts of sabo­ volved in the support events building years ago. It is also the base for CARI tage against power lines (France), rail­ toward the Seabrook invasion. staff members. In the view of antiter­ road lines (Switzerland), construction Winpisinger's role is principally rorism experts, the new name, "Mid­ sites (Spain), factories supplying nu­ through two antinuclear groups, the night Notes," is merely an effort to clear plants (Switzerland, France), Progressive Alliance and the Citizens/ steer the credulous away from the ob­ and installations of utility companies Labor Energy Coalition. The Progres-

FUSION 11 The military-like plans of the antinuclear demonstrators to occupy the Seabrook plant site were thwarted by advanced publicity of their plans for violence. Above, illustrations from an antinuclear pamphlet on Seabrook.

sive Alliance includes United Auto endorse the Kennedy candidacy, has will be tracked into paramilitary train­ Workers President Doug Fraser, Ralph been a major funder of the environ­ ing sessions preparing for the before- Nader, jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, and mentalist movement through his 20- dawn assault on the Seabrook site. other prominent antinuclear spokes­ year directorship of the Field Founda­ Preplanning meetings for these train­ men. The Citizens/Labor Energy Coali­ tion. Field awards hundreds of thou­ ing sessions have already occurred on tion was founded in 1978 as part of sands of dollars per year to environ­ the campuses of Mt. Holyoke College the Sun Day festival, and Edward Ken­ mentalist organizations as well as to in Massachusetts, the State University nedy was the keynote speaker at the the left-radical command center, the of New York at Binghamton, and in founding convention in Washington, Washington, D.C. Institute for Policy the East Village section of New York D.C. Studies. City. Both of Winpisinger's groups are list­ According to first-hand observers, Those antinuclear activists who are ed sponsors of a post-Seabrook dem­ during the next several weeks before not psychologically bent toward overt onstration on Wall Street directed the invasion of Seabrook, the entire terrorist acts will be tracked into the at the "right-corporate power struc­ environmentalist movement is to be "Draft Kennedy" operation through ture" that runs the nuclear industry. put through a "selection process." such vehicles as the Progressive Alli­ Morris Abram, the first Council on Those individuals rabid enough to car­ ance, the Labor/Citizens Energy Coali­ Foreign Relations notable to publicly ry out direct acts of terrorist violence tion, and so forth.

12 FUSION manually closed the emergency feed- water valves, one of the two initiating The NRC Report on TMI: events. The FEF continues to contend that Refusal to Investigate Sabotage the two initiating events were caused either by sabotage or by the gross neg­ The Nuclear Regulatory Commission ing events were manually induced. The ligence of the reactor plant operators. released an official report Aug. 3 on report reveals that for several weeks There is no question that the opera­ its investigation of the March 28 inci­ before the incident there had been tors are competent, experienced, and dent at the Three Mile Island Unit 2 significant and continual leakage of qualified personnel who would not nuclear plant near Harrisburg, Pa. Al­ reactor primary coolant water out of have bypassed every single safety pre­ though the report poses sabotage or the electromatic relief valve (EMOV) caution and procedure. Therefore, sab­ criminal negligence as one of six pos­ and/or one or both of the pressuriz- otage remains the most likely cause. sible causes of the initiating events of er code safety valves that are connect­ This contention is supported by a the nuclear accident, the NRC conclu­ ed to the pressurizer tank system. It report produced by a leading nuclear sion stops short of what its findings was the EMOV valve that failed to close safety expert at the Massachusetts In­ dictate: that the Three Mile Island in­ after opening automatically some six stitute of Technology—the Rasmussen cident was caused by a willful act of seconds into the incident in order to Report—that places the probability of sabotage or negligence. Incredibly, the relieve the initial pressure build up. the sequence of events that occurred NRC investigators chose not to pur­ This stuck valve went undetected by at Three Mile Island in the order of sue an investigation of the sabotage the operators for more than two hours, magnitude of one in a million. possibility, even after they eliminated and it eventually caused the damage Until it is determined who closed the other five possible causes of the to the reactor core fuel. the emergency feedwater valves and initiating events. Without visually inspecting the valve, why, an investigator has to presume The several-hundred-page report, ti­ the NRC investigators could not ascer­ that the reactor was set up, waiting tled "Investigation into the March 28, tain whether this coolant leakage con­ for a loss of main feedwater flow to 1979 Three Mile Island Accident by tributed to the valve's failure. How­ initiate at least a very serious abnor­ the Office of Inspection and Enforce­ ever, during the same weeks, the mal operating condition. ment" (NUREG-0600), contains reveal­ valve's temperature was in the range Sabotage or Negligence? ing and important information concern­ of 180 degrees to 200 degrees Fahren­ The NRC report posed six possible ing the two initiating events of TMI heit, up to 70 degrees over its speci­ ways the emergency feedwater valves incident: the loss of main feedwater fied normal temperature of 130 degrees could have come to be closed, but flow and the consequent loss of all Fahrenheit. Considering the fact that concluded that a "review of all possi­ emergency feedwater flow. the valve had a previous history of ble causes revealed no reason to be­ The information presented tends to sticking open and considering the nor­ lieve that any of them was the specific confirm what the investigations of the mal engineering judgment of the ex­ cause of the closed valves" (p. I-4-7). Fusion Energy Foundation and the In­ pected operation of a relief valve that However, the NRC findings do not dependent Commission to Investigate had been operating for weeks well support this general conclusion. In the Three Mile Island Incident, a group above its normal operating tempera­ fact, the findings eliminate four of the initiated by the FEF, charged back in tures, it is quite reasonable to assume six possible causes and, if the opera­ April: Namely, that the evidence indi­ that the valve would have failed. tors' sworn testimony and signed test­ cates that the events initiating the TMI If someone knew this condition (and ing documents are considered, the incident were manually induced; that it was generally known among plant findings remove a fifth cause. Accord­ the loss of main feedwater flow was personnel), that person could reason­ ing to all information available to caused by personnel performing main­ ably expect this valve to stick open, date, including that from the presi­ tenance on the filter system; and that particularly if the emergency feedwat­ dential commission's investigation, the emergency feedwater systems had er system were shut off, which would these valves were manually opened been manually put out of service. ensure a high primary coolant system 42 hours before the incident after Despite the findings that the report temperature and pressure. Further­ a surveillance test of the emergency lays out at length, the NRC conclu­ more, with this valve stuck open and feedwater system. sion (as well as all the press accounts all heat-removal capabilities shut off The report states (p. I-4-7-): "The of the report) focuses on what hap­ because of the closed emergency feed- operators and supervisors responsible pened after the event got started— water valves, plant operators would for conducting the surveillance test not on what caused the initiating have a very difficult time figuring out on March 26, 1979 were interviewed events of the incident. what had happened. .... The operator who actually man­ The Valve Question This is precisely what did happen, ipulated the valves involved stated that The key here is the valve question, as the NRC report points out, and it is he specifically recalled opening that and the report in fact points out new important to investigate why and how valve. The investigation found no basis information indicating that the initiat­ the valve stuck open in terms of who for rejecting his assertion. If his asser-

FUSION 13 THE INITIAL CHAIN OF EVENTS AT TMI (V Both main feedwater pumps were shut down, probably as a result of maintenance work on the feedwater filter system. (2) Plant operators then assumed automatic startup of the emergency feedwater pumps, because they were unaware that someone had shut the block valve in each system prior to the shutdown of the main feedwater pumps. The question of sabotage concerns the closing of these valves. (3) Six to eight seconds into the incident, the electromatic relief valve on the pressurizer tank opened as designed to release small amounts of steam and reduce the reactor coolant system pressure. A few seconds later, as the pressure decreased, this valve failed to close as designed and continued to release steam. In the first few minutes into the accident, the temperature, pressure, and pressurizer level in the reactor coolant system began to return to what the operators normally expected to happen after a main feedwater flow shutdown. This continued to mislead plant operators into dealing with the situation in a way opposite to what they would have done had they known the true situation. General Public Utilities Corporation tion was incorrect and the valves were reasoning on this sixth possible cause, incident at TMI" (p. 1-1-35). The ques­ left closed after the test, the investiga­ it is clear that the NRC staff never tions were asked by a technical NRC tion found no information to explain really investigated the possibility of inspector to a technical plant operat­ how the closed valves would have sabotage, nor did they want to. Yet, or or employee in an informal discus­ gone unnoticed during the 42 hours based on their own information pre­ sion. The report states that the between the test and the accident." sented in the report, sabotage or crim­ "responses ranged from direct nega­ How these valves got closed there­ inal negligence is the only possible tive responses to disbelief that sabo­ fore, remains a mystery to the NRC. cause remaining for the closure of the tage could even be considered" The report then proceeds to the sixth two valves. (p.1-1-36). Under such circumstances, possibility that "the valves were The report does devote a small sec­ who would admit to closing or know­ closed by the overt act of an individu­ tion to the "Possibility of Plant Sab­ ing who closed the emergency feed- al." Using a convoluted argument, otage"—included "as a result of the water valves? the NRC report concludes that this high degree of public concern asso­ The report goes on to note isn't very likely either. The NRC says ciated with the possibility of sabotage (p. 1-1-36): "Vocal antinuclear senti­ it simply does not know how the or adverse human actions having ment appears to have been relatively valves were closed. caused or contributed in some man­ absent prior to,the incident. Relation­ On review of their information and ner to the severity of the March 28 ships between the local governments

14 FUSION and licensee management appear to and 2, auxiliary building, turbine the accident would have been, had have been of a tolerant nature." building and environs). emergency feedwater been introduced Therefore, the report says, "Those "Further investigative effort of the to the OTSCs [once through steam conditions commonly associated or magnitude that would be required to generators] as designed." viewed as causative factors precipi­ specifically identify which of the more Essentially, the NRC is saying, the tating industrial sabotage were not than 600 personnel did access the pro­ closure of these valves caused partic­ identified by the investigation as tected areas during the period March ular pressure, temperature, and pres- being present at the time of the 26, 1979 through March 28, 1979 was surizer level conditions in the reactor incident." deemed unwarranted at this time in that led the plant operators to act es­ Such a statement comes from the view of the absence of any intelli­ sentially the opposite of how they mouths of babes—or of liars. Nuclear gence that adverse human activity was would have acted if the valves had power and the nuclear industry have involved in the accident." been open. In other words, these con­ been barraged with environmentalist Far from being an argument against ditions misled the operators into be­ attacks for years and, particularly since further investigation, the NRC report lieving that the EMOV valve had closed the formation of the Department of outlines the sort of major investiga­ when in fact it remained open. Energy, they have faced budgetary cut­ tive effort that was undertaken a month It took nearly 20 minutes (after the backs, court delays, and program can­ afterTMl by the Virginia Electric Power valves were finally opened) to get feed- cellations. As many in the industry Company, owners of the Surry-ll nu­ water flow completely reestablished admit, as a result of this "antinuclear clear plant whose fuel rods were mys­ in the two steam generators, which sentiment," the U.S. nuclear industry teriously damaged. In one month's had boiled dry, so that decay heat is for all intents and purposes shut time, with the help of the FBI, lie de­ could be normally removed from the down. tector tests for all personnel, and a reactors. Having thus reasoned, the commis­ thorough investigation of the sabo­ The closed valves caused reactor sion then discusses the amount of ef­ tage possibility, the two individuals conditions that misled and confused fort needed to determine who closed responsible for sabotaging the plant the operators for at least the first 30 the valves in question and why the were identified and arrested. minutes into the incident. question is not worth pursuing Contradictions Another question unresolved by the (p. 1-1-37): One might ask at this point why the investigation is just how the loss of "This investigation evaluated the ef­ NRC concluded that it was not worth main feedwaterflow (and turbine-trip) fort that would be required to attempt trying to find out how the valves got was initiated in the first place by the to identify the party or parties who closed. Was it not important in the filter maintenance crew—a question closed the emergency feedwater sys­ chain of events? Would not the elec- that also bears on the issue of sabotage. tem block valves for whatever unde­ tromatic relief valve have stuck open The loss of main feedwater flow is fined reason that may have motivated anyway? expected from time to time because them. The investigation revealed that Again, the NRC is caught in a con­ the reactor plant protective system is the two valves in question were capa­ tradiction. At the same time that it extremely sensitive to the slightest mal­ ble of being operated from three spe­ says the matter is not worth investi­ function or abnormal operating con­ cific locations: the control room, the gating, the NRC's evaluation of the dition. The slightest "mistake" by the 480V Substation panels at the 305 el­ effect of these closed valves is (p. I-4- maintenance crew—intentional or un­ evation of the auxiliary building and 10): "The delay in automatic initiation intentional—during the filter cleaning the physical location of each valve. of emergency feedwater for eight min­ procedures ongoing at the time could "Checks of the licensee's security utes contributed to an early recovery easily have caused the automatic loss access badging records showed ap­ toward normal values of certain RCS of main feedwater flow and trip-out of proximately 470 licensee personnel and [reactor coolant system] parameters the turbine. 260 contractor/vendor personnel upon which the operators concen­ It is not surprising, therefore, that would have had unescorted access to trate. This recovery of key turbine the report's conclusions, upon which one or more of these locations on any trip/reactor RCS parameters misled the the press accounts of the NRC's find­ of the two work days preceeding the operators into believing that their ac­ ings focused, did not even mention March 28 incident. Records exist tions had been successful in limiting the two initiating events of the inci­ whereby the identity of the contrac­ the severity of the transient. This er­ dent: the loss of main feedwater flow tor/vendor personnel entering the pro­ roneous belief led them to initiate the followed by the loss of all emergency tected area could be retrieved. How­ routine subsequent operator actions feedwater flow. ever, the 470 licensee personnel are that were normal for the assumed tran­ Instead, the NRC's conclusions only logged in at the site perimeter sient. These actions occupied the op­ blame the event and its severity pri­ and need only display their photo ID erators' attention and detracted from marily on operator error, misjudg- badge (issued only after psychologi­ their opportunity to establish a cor­ ments, "mind sets," and equipment cal screening and preemployment rect analysis of the plant conditions. failure—conclusions not backed by checks are complete) to secure access "This investigation did not conclude their own findings. to the TMI protected areas (Units 1 what the ultimate course of events of —Jon Gilbertson

FUSION 15 National the planet's composition. There seems to be a rocky core about the size of the Earth, but three time the Earth's mass. Saturn's diameter is about nine times that of Earth. This rocky core is surrounded by a Gov't Drops 'H-Bomb Case' compressed layer of water, methane, and ammonia that extends out to near­ But Tightens Classification ly one-fourth of the planet's radius. Surrounding this is a very interesting The U.S. government dropped ef­ Schlesinger as energy secretary by layer composed of metallic hydrogen forts to block the publication of two Charles Duncan, if anything, the de­ and extending to nearly 60 percent of articles that it said contained secrets partment has tightened its classifica­ the radius. on the workings of the hydrogen bomb tion procedures. Justice Department Hydrogen can be forced into the Sept. 17, but is persisting in efforts to threats to institute criminal prosecu­ metallic state under conditions of high maintain tight classification of basic tion of "H-Bomb" article authors, compression. Earth-based experi­ scientific information, particularly in­ after the government's civil injunction ments with ultrahigh compression of volving fusion energy. failed, are consistent with such a hydrogen give some hope that it can The Justice Department announced hard-line policy. Specifically, the be turned into a high-temperature that it was abandoning a six-month- Justice Department has intimated that super conducting material, which old civil lawsuit barring The Pro­ scientists at the two major U.S. nu­ would have very significant industrial gressive, a Wisconsin-based anti- clear fusion laboratories, Los Alamos and power transmission uses. The nuclear magazine, from printing an and Lawrence Livermore, are "leak­ metallic hydrogen region of Saturn, article titled, "The H-Bomb Secret: ers" of H-bomb "secrets." whose currents produce the planet's How We Cot It, Why We're Telling magnetic field, may prove to be a nat­ It." The government also dropped a ural laboratory for research into the two-day-old suit blocking the Da/7y Cal- properties of this exotic material. ifornian, a Berkeley newspaper, from Pioneer 11 The remainder of the planet's sur­ printing a detailed letter about the H- face consists of a region of less dense bomb by Charles Hansen, described Yields Data liquid hydrogen, then a quite thin layer as an "amateur researcher" on the forming a gaseous cloudy atmosphere. H-bomb. On Saturn Some Banding The Hansen letter, published in full After a six-year journey across 2 bil­ The photographs of Saturn do not in the Sept. 18 Chicago Tribune, as lion miles of the solar system, Pioneer reveal the kind of spectacular banding well as Aug. 30 in a Palo Alto, Calif, 11 passed to within 13,300 miles of and vortical masses of gas seen on paper owned by the Tribune, points Saturn Sept. 1. The U.S. National Jupiter, although there is a faint indi­ out that the key ideas presented in Aeronautics and Space Administra­ cation of some banding in the equa­ The Progressive article were made pub­ tion's spacecraft began transmitting torial region similar to that on Jupiter. lic by "a Soviet scientist in 1976." The information Aug. 20 from a distance of A sharp temperature drop within 8 scientist referred to is L. Rudakov, a 634,000 miles from the second largest degrees north and south of Saturn's leading electron beam pellet fusion planet in the solar system. equator indicates that the banding researcher. Rudakov's 1976 presenta­ Information was transmitted in the could be the result of the same effect tions were first reported in the Fusion form of digital computer-generated that occurs on both Earth and Jupiter: Energy Foundation Newsletter in and computer-analyzed data bits at a The relatively high equatorial temper­ August 1976. rate up to 1,024 data bits per second, atures force gas to higher altitudes Fusion Witchhunt? traveling for about three hours at the than they reach away from the equa­ As more and more material on the speed of light before reaching the tor where they condense into high- design of the hydrogen bomb was re­ Earth. These incredibly faint signals, altitude cool clouds. cently published, the government's about 10-20 watts, represent the most Pioneer 11's infrared measure­ position that it was protecting secret accurate and detailed information yet ments, a technique that uses the spec­ information became less and less de­ gathered in the more than 300 years tral distribution of light below the fensible. However, as the FEF has em­ of Earth-based observations of the visible range to determine the tem­ phasized, the underlying issue in The planet, since Galileo first noticed perature of an object, indicate that Progressive case is not classification Saturn's "cup handles" in 1610. Saturn emits about 2.5 times the of military information but the Energy Composition of Saturn amount of energy it receives from the Department's classification of basic Preliminary analysis of Saturn's sun. The source of this internal heat­ scientific research under the guise of gravitational effects on Pioneer 11 and ing, which was also observed on Jupi­ classifying military secrets. other data now make it possible to ter, is still to be explained. Since the replacement of James verify some previous conjectures about The rings of Saturn have been a

16 FUSION source of romance and legend since Galileo first observed them and called them "cup handles," because the crudity of his telescope did not give him a clear picture of what he saw. The Pioneer 11 mission has con­ firmed what most researchers thought—the rings are composed primarily of ice. The structure of the rings is quite complex; there may be as many as seven or eight of them, with some overlapping others. Inter­ spersed among them are gaps, the well-known Cassini Division and the previously unconfirmed French Divi­ sion, both of which have been ob­ served from Earth-based telescopes, and a new gap, Pioneer Division, dis­ covered on this mission. Rather than representing distinct entities, though, the rings may be al­ ternating regions of greater or lesser density of the icy material, as evi­ denced by one of the Pioneer experi­ ments. Saturn's magnetic field is about 1,000 times as strong as that of the Earth, although only about one- twentieth as strong as Jupiter's. In this magnetic field, large numbers of high- energy charged particles are trapped, forming radiation belts that would be fatal to human beings. Measurements done by Pioneer 11 show that when Voyager II took this picture of Europa, the smallest of Jupiter's four satellites, the currents of these fast-moving par­ on July 9, 7979. The complex patterns on its surface suggest that the icy surface ticles intersect Saturn's rings, there is is fractured and that the cracks are filled with dark material from below. a dramatic reduction in their intensi­ ty, because of absorption by the ring material. This effect occurs even in cury, Earth, and Mars, the strength of of the moons. Because of the uncer­ the Cassini Division, indicating that the magnetic field correlates with the tainties of Earth-based and spacecraft there is material there although the body's angular momentum, while for observation, Saturn may have any­ region is optically transparent and in­ Saturn, the field strength is too weak. where from 10 to 13 observed satel­ dicating that the rings may have con­ Saturn's Moons lites, and perhaps more that have not tinuous density variations. Pioneer 11 may be the first space­ been yet seen. The Magnetic Field craft to discover a new moon; in fact, The largest moon, Titan, is larger Saturn's magnetic field has some it may have discovered two. This can­ than the planet Mercury and is of striking peculiarities that will send the not yet be confirmed since there are special significance since its chemical planetary theorists back to work. One two moons whose orbits are not very composition makes it a possible can­ of Pioneer 11's major findings is that well known, which may be what Pio­ didate for spawning life. Unfortunate­ the axis of the magnetic field is align­ neer observed. ly, the preliminary data from Pioneer ed with the rotation axis of the planet. The way they were observed is quite 11 that would be useful in determin­ In all previously observed planetary interesting. Just as the rings absorb the ing whether Titan bears more scrutiny cases, there has been an angular dif­ high-energy particles trapped in the were lost as a result of solar electrical ference of about 10 degrees between planet's magnetic field, so do its interference with the signal. How­ the planetary rotational axis and the moons. They leave a trail in their orbit ever, Voyager 1 and 2, having com­ magnetic field axis. of low radiation density, almost as if pleted their missions near Jupiter, are Researchers have long felt that the they were casting a shadow behind hurrying on to Saturn for rendezvous difference in orientation was necessary them. It was these radiation shadows in 1980 and 1981 and may provide to maintain the field; evidently it is that Pioneer 11 saw, in addition to a more data on Titan. not. Furthermore, for the Sun, Mer­ faint photograph of what may be one —Dr. John Schoonover

FUSION 17- "Yes" to nuclear power development: A plenary session at the Nonaligned summit meeting in Havana.

At Havana Summit: Third World Resolves for Development The sixth summit conference of the the generation and growth of aggre­ the old order that have left the devel­ Nonaligned Movement in Havana, gate demand and productive capacity oping sector with the crushing $300 Cuba marked a potential turning point in the developing countries. Any other billion debt burden that the IMF is now in North-South relations. After two approach based on short-term consid­ destroying many Third World econo­ we.eks of discussion, leaders of 94 de­ erations would in the long run oper­ mies to collect. Urgent debt relief for veloping nations announced their ate to the long-term political and ec­ the developing nations was demanded program: The Third World intends to onomic detriment of the developed in the document. rapidly industrialize, will use nuclear countries themselves." Energy Policy: Nuclear power as the means to accelerate the To accomplish the goal of interna­ A powerful section on energy poli­ growth of its cities and economies, tional economic rejuvenation, the Eco­ cy was also written into the final arti­ and wants the collaboration of the nomic Declaration "reiterated the ur­ cles of the summit's Political Declara­ advanced nations in implementing a gent need to create a new, rational, tion. It read, in part: new world economic order to carry equitable, and universal monetary sys­ "... The Conference stressed the out these goals. tem." exceptional importance of interna­ The final Economic Declaration of Debt Relief Demanded tional cooperation among the non- the summit, approved Sept. 9, de­ The Economic Declaration also is­ aligned and other developing coun­ clares: "The Heads of State or Gov­ sued a stern warning to the advanced tries in the field of peaceful use of ernment called on the developed nations that no program of increased nuclear energy .... countries to exercise political will and trade for development can be carried "The Conference affirmed the in­ courage and take steps to seek a solu­ out under the stringent austerity "con- alienable right of all States to apply tion to the problem of recession in ditionalities" forced upon the develop­ and develop their programmes for the their economies through restructuring ing nations by the International Mone­ peaceful uses of nuclear energy for the international economy, based on tary Fund. It is the looting policies of economic and social development in

18 FUSION conformity with their priorities, inter­ stated commitment to go beyond forcing the advanced sector to agree ests, and needs. It deplored the pres­ words and adopt "determined and ef­ with such policies and the political sures and threats against developing fective action," the Havana declara­ courage to carry it out. As observers countries aimed at preventing them tions took the entire Third World way noted, the Havana summit put the from pursuing their programmes for beyond the achievements of the Col­ majority of Third World nations in a the development of nuclear energy ombo Action Program, adopted in 1976 position to ally with the European for peaceful purposes .... at the Nonaligned Movement's last Monetary Fund initiated by France and "It expressed its concern in this re­ summit conference in Sri Lanka. West Germany, spect, regarding the obstacles which At Colombo, the nonaligned nations the developed countries place in the called for debt moratoria and a new This report was compiled from the way of transfers of technologies relat­ international credit institution to fos­ on-the-scene news releases of Execu­ ed to the peaceful uses of atomic en­ ter development. What the Havana tive Intelligence Review reporters ergy by fixing financial and other con­ meeting added was the strategy for Daniel Sneider and Dennis Small. ditions which are incompatible to the national sovereignty of developing countries and the criteria of financial viability .... Terror Wave Set for "Concern for nonproliferation should not be used as a pretext to prevent States from exercising the Persian Gulf Oil Lanes right to acquire and develop peaceful Iran's Revolutionary Council, led by strike by the Iranian oil workers would nuclear technology . . . ." strongman Ayatollah Khomeini, held a exacerbate the climate of violence and The Question of Leadership four-day meeting the last.week of Sep­ turmoil that has been developing in The summit's resounding endorse­ tember to discuss changes in Iran's the Persian Gulf since midsummer. ment of an action plan for the new oil-exporting policy. Among the sub­ Climate for Terror world economic order and its broad­ jects discussed at the meeting was the Since then, a series of incidents has side against the International Mone­ possible firing of Hassan Nizah, the suggested that a terror wave aimed at tary Fund came after the keynote director of the Iranian National Oil stopping the 20 million barrel per day speech by Cuban president and sum­ Company. Nizah, sources say, would (mbd) flow of oil through the Persian mit host Fidel Castro. be replaced by council member Aya­ Gulf may be underway. In late Au­ In his Sept. 2 address Castro told tollah Rafsanjani. gust, two oil tankers exploded and the opening plenary session of the If carried out, Nizah's dismissal could sank within 24 hours of each other af­ conference: "Many governments bring to fruition threats of strikes by ter departing from the loading termin­ making noble efforts to develop their Iran's restive oil field workers. The al at Abu Dhabi. The preceding week countries are overwhelmed and threat­ fighting between the Kurdish minori­ an as yet untraced explosion ripped ened by the unfavorable conditions ty and the Khomeini regime in the through a section of the Saudi oil tank­ forced on them by international mon­ province of Khuzestan, where the er terminal at Ras Tanura, damaging etary institutions. What price have you nation's largest oilfields are locat­ a refinery and killing two workers. had to pay because of the IMF? We ed, has already disrupted Iran's oil As a result, the Saudis have begun to Cubans are excluded from participa­ production. experience a domestic shortage of tion in the IMF, but we are not sure Nazih, a close political ally of the the petroleum products the refinery whether this is a burden or a privilege faction within Iran that opposes Kho­ produced. .... Let us unite for our right to de­ meini's repressive style of govern­ Neither the Saudi nor the Abu Dhabi velop." ment, had been identified by informed governments have pointed to pos­ Under Cuba's leadership, the sum­ sources as a probable target of a new sible sabotage as the cause of the mit plenary brushed aside attempts purge by the Islamic head of state. mishaps. Industry analysts, however, by Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito to soften Nazih has repeatedly warned that believe this is due principally to the its policy stance against the IMF. In Iran's oil workers, a majority of whom oil-producing nations' fear of a pos­ other significant decisions, the body identify with the minority Sunni Is­ sible invasion of the region by the voted to censure Egypt for its partici­ lamic sect, will not tolerate a member United States should major disrup­ pation in the Camp David military pact of the opposing Shi'ite branch of Islam tions be threatened. Both Secretary of with Israel and to refuse a seat to rep­ as the head of the National Oil Com­ Defense Harold Brown and former resentatives of ousted Kampuchea's pany. Another source of the oil work­ U.S. energy secretary James Schlesing- (Cambodia's) dictator Pol Pot, who had ers' resistance to Rafsanjani is their er have endorsed military intervention just been convicted in absentia by a sympathy with the Iranian left, now into the gulf as U.S. policy. Phnom Penh tribunal for the murder under harsh attack from the Khomeini Furthermore, Mideast sources report of 3 million of his countrymen. regime. that the networks around former Sec­ In their scope, determination, and Oil industry sources believe that a retary of State Henry Kissinger, in-

FUSION 19 Washington

Carter Synfuels Program On Rocks Since President Carter's ]uly propos­ al to create an Emergency Mobiliza­ Target for terrorism? Mina al Ahmadi oil-loading depot in Kuwait. tion Board and Energy Security Fund to speed through vast synthetic fuels • projects, the project has been wind­ eluding well-known Anglo-American A high number of kidnap victims in ing through the congressional maze, financial interests, are greasing the Italy were found to be insured by undergoing significant revisions along wheels for a wave of terrorism. Lloyds, leading to suspicion that kid­ the way. In fact, Carter has admitted The Lloyds Connection nappers might have obtained inside that his initial proposal has gone down Less than a month prior to the out­ information on victims' security ar­ the drain and that he will have to com­ break of these incidents, on July 22, rangements available to Lloyds. promise if and when Congress passes the U.S. Mapping Agency of the State Khomeini and the PFLOAG any program. Department predicted an outbreak of Interestingly, since the midsummer More than six House and Senate terrorism in the gulf. Shortly there­ disturbances, Iranian Foreign Minister committees are considering legislation after, Lloyds of London announced it Ibrahim Yazdi, a Khomeini confidant, to implement variations on the syn­ was raising all insurance rates for tank­ has met with members of the Popular fuels program, while environmental­ ers going into the gulf, terming the Front for the Liberation of Oman and ists, protechnology forces, and free area a "war zone." At the same time the Persian Gulf (PFLOAG), a group­ enterprise groups have voiced oppo­ an international conference took place ing that Washington sources report is sition on various grounds. Almost all in Jerusalem where similar predictions preparing terrorist sabotage against oil the organizations testifying before were put forth. In attendance were installations in the gulf region. PFLOAG Congress—including the General Ac­ some of the leading world experts in was active in the rebellion against the counting Office—have proposed a predicting international terrorism— Sultan of Oman five years ago, which go-slow, conservative approach to notably Henry Kissinger, British jour­ was put down when the Shah of Iran synfuels. nalist Robert Moss, Georgetown Uni­ sent troops to patrol Oman's borders. One of the biggest political foot­ versity thinktanker Ray Cline, and There are also questionable links balls is the carbon dioxide issue. The some prominent Israeli leaders. between radical European and U.S. environmentalists have complained Lloyds of London's rate increase was groupings and the more militant fac­ about alleged climatic effects from met with unanimous outrage by the tions of the trade unions that control the increased levels of carbon diox­ gulf oil producers. The head of the Iran's oil workers. These groupings ide expected from the synfuels pro­ Kuwaiti Chamber of Commerce and are clustered under the umbrellas of gram. In early July, the White House Industry termed the move "psycho­ such institutions as the Washington- Council on Environmental Quality re­ logical warfare" designed to build up based Institute for Policy Studies, leased a study showing that the use of anxiety within the oil consuming sec­ Amsterdam's Transnational Institute, synfuels increases the amount of car­ tor over the future stability of the gulf. and the London-based Bertrand Rus­ bon dioxide released into the atmos­ According to European sources, sell Peace Foundation. All these are phere 2.3 times, compared to the level Lloyds's involvement in spreading an institutional centers for the interna­ from burning a comparable amount atmosphere of instability in the gulf tional radical-environmentalist move­ of natural gas. linked to future terrorism is reminis­ ment, and all have a pedigree of ter­ Senator Abe Ribicoff (D-Conn) re­ cent of Lloyds's alleged involvement rorist connections. All, as well, sup­ leased a statement July 27 saying that in Italian terror. The London firm is still ported the takeover of Iran last year a massive coal and synthetics program under investigation by the Italian law by the antitechnology forces of the could double carbon dioxide levels enforcement authorities for alleged in­ Ayatollah Khomeini. by 2010, which might effect global cli­ volvement in murders and kidnapping. —Judith Wyer mate. The Department of Energy then

20 FUSION retaliated with its own report Aug. 8 the leadership of Congressman Mor­ in recognition of exceptional scientif­ claiming that such effects were being ris Udall (D-Ariz), the committee elim­ ic and technical achievement in the exaggerated. inated a waiver requested by the ad­ development, use, or control of atom­ Interestingly, the carbon dioxide ministration to supersede local and ic energy. question, which should receive com­ state laws. Environmental supporter Dr. Agnew was cited for his innova­ petent scientific investigation, has not Udall will not compromise on envir­ tive contributions to nuclear physics brought the environmentalist groups onmental and other laws in order to and weaponry, his dynamic leadership any closer to support for clean nu­ "fast track" the synfuels program. of LASL, and his counsel to the U.S. clear energy. Nor have the environ­ House Commerce Committee: The government in national security. mentalists or the synfuels supporters committee passed a bill Sept. 12 in­ Dr. Panofsky's citation notes his very scientifically examined the damage to corporating the Carter "fast track" to important contributions to elemen­ the economy of a synfuels program. speed nonnuclear priority energy pro­ tary particle physics, his leading role Congressional Actions jects through the federal bureaucra­ in advancing accelerator technology, Some of the congressional activity cy. The bill includes a waiver on state his positive influence on younger sci­ in regard to synfuels includes: and local laws for such projects. Be­ entists, and his scientific advice to the House Science and Technology Com­ cause of the substantial differences in U.S. government. mittee: Ranking Republican member the House Commerce and Interior Other less appropriate awards are John Wydler (R-NY) released a state­ bills, the House Rules Committee will as follows: James Schlesinger was ment Sept. 13 calling for a "limited" now decide in what form the legisla­ given the National Security Medal program in which federal funds, in­ tion will go to the full House. upon his departure from the depart­ cluding those already authorized, do Senate Energy Committee: The key ment, and John Deutch, sworn in Aug. not exceed $25 billion. Carter's origi­ Energy Committee voted Sept. 19 not 8 as DOE under secretary, received nal proposal was for an $88 billion to include the waiver provision in its the DOE's Distinguished Service effort. In addition, rather than new legislation, but chairman Henry Jack­ Medal. agencies to implement the program, son (D-WA) is trying to rework the Wydler called for the DOE to take Omnibus Energy Bill in accordance charge. The Carter program calls for with the administration's proposals. the immediate commercialization of Three bills will be consolidated and House Temporarily fundamentally untried technology for marked up for a vote in late Septem­ Supports Breeder coal liquefaction. Wydler and his staff ber. have recommended that after techni­ Senate Environment and Public Works: The Clinch River Breeder Reactor, cal demonstration is made, a second The committee objects to the "fast whose long-term fate awaits resolution pioneer plant should be built to prove track" program of bypassing existing of the deadlock between the adminis­ economic feasibility. federal guidelines, laws, and proce­ tration and Congress, will be given Senate Banking Committee: The com­ dures that may be passed by Senate immediate continuing operating funds mittee held hearings in July on the committees and is also disputing the by a resolution prepared by the House. Moorhead amendment to the Defense jurisdiction of the committees them­ Indecision in the Congress about Production Act, and in the second selves. what to do with the project has been week in September marked up a re­ —Marsha Freeman fostered by the fear of some support­ modeled bill that includes synfuels, ers that President Carter will once solar energy, and alcohol production. again veto the entire energy budget if The bill proposes $3 billion for no more Agnew, Panofsky it includes funding for the breeder. than 12 synfuels plants, six for oil shale For that reason, the authorization bill processing and six for coal synthetics. Receive 1978 . that should cover the breeder does Senate Budget Committee: In hearings not include any funding for the breed­ held throughout the month of Septem­ Fermi Award er at all. However, the appropriations ber, the committee has heard .testimo­ Dr. Harold M. Agnew, former di­ bill does include full funding for the ny from three consulting firms urging rector of Los Alamos Scientific Labora­ program. In order to resolve this dis­ them not to eliminate the demonstra­ tory and current president of General crepancy temporarily, a continuing re­ tion-plant stage before commercializa­ Atomic Company, and Dr. Wolfgang solution for new programs and those tion. Cameron Engineers, ICF Inc., and K. H. Panofsky, director of the Stan­ not previously authorized will include Booz, Allen and Hamilton all called ford Linear Accelerator Center, are the Clinch River funding. Carter's program "overambitious" and 1978 recipients of the Enrico Fermi The continuing resolution also in­ urged moderation. Award. cludes funding for abortion, salary in­ House Interior Committee: This com­ The award, established in 1954 when creases, and a host of other programs, mittee is riot formulating a synfuels the Atomic Energy Commission pre­ and, therefore, the probreeder con­ program but has passed out of com­ sented a special award to Fermi, is the gressmen are hoping that neither the mittee a bill dealing with the proposed highest scientific award given by the Senate nor the administration will veto Emergency Mobilization Board. Under Department of Energy. It is presented the resolution.

FUSION 21 becomes more and more an eco­ nomic warfare and crisis management operation to control rather than de­ velop energy, it is probable that the Frieman Nominated dwindling number of scientists at the DOE will find it more and more diffi­ For Energy Research Post cult to lead advanced technology pro­ grams, which are clearly not a priority Dr. Edward Frieman, deputy direc­ secretary for nuclear development, the in the new DOE administration. tor of the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab­ program may become both a political Some of the probable appoint­ oratory and professor of astrophysical and budgetary football in an already ments include: sciences at Princeton University, has difficult political atmosphere. Joseph Nye to replace Harry Bergold been nominated to succeed John Putting fusion research and devel­ as assistant secretary for international Deutch as director of the DOE Office opment in the Office of Energy Re­ affairs. As the Carter administration's of Energy Research. Frieman, who has search rather than in a program area, key nonproliferation expert in the State been involved with the fusion program however, implies that it is not consid­ Department, Nye earned the enmity for more than 20 years, may well be ered a commercially viable technolo­ of virtually every advanced and devel­ the person under whose leadership gy in the near term. oping nation committed to the ad­ the DOE fusion program is placed, if The opinion of many fusion scien­ vancement of civilian nuclear power. the pending departmental reorganiza­ tists is that no matter where the pro­ He was a chief architect of the admin­ tion puts magnetic fusion under en­ gram is placed, fusion development istration's programs to attempt to ergy research. will result only from a statement of na­ deny the transfer of nuclear power Frieman joined the controlled ther­ tional purpose from outside the DOE. technology to the Third World. He is monuclear reaction research group at reported to be a personal friend of Princeton in 1952 under Project Mat- both Under Secretary John Deutch terhorn, which was declassified in 1958, Militarizing the DOE and Deputy Secretary John Sawhill. and created the Plasma Physics Lab. In William Lewis to replace Alvin Aim 1953, he was appointed the head of Fusion warned back in July that the as assistant secretary for policy and the theoretical division, and in 1964, DOE would increasingly bring in new evaluation. Lewis served with Duncan was awarded a National Science Foun­ people with military and military-relat­ at the DOD as assistant secretary for dation postdoctoral fellowship. In the ed experience rather than energy or program analysis and evaluation. same year he became associate direc­ scientific credentials as a way of im­ John Shannon to step in as head of tor of the laboratory. plementing a Malthusian energy aus­ the congressional liaison office. He has served as a member of the terity program. With the swearing-in Shannon is a retired Army colonel board of directors of the Aeronautical of former Defense Department assist­ who has been working in the DOD in Research Association at Princeton and ant secretary Charles Duncan as en­ recruitment programs. the NSF Physics Advisory Panel, as a ergy secretary, this militarization proc­ Deanne Siemer as a special execu­ consultant to the DOE laser fusion di­ ess has been accelerated. tive assistant to Duncan. She is now vision, and is a member of the board At a press conference July 20 after DOD general counsel. of editors of the American Physical his appointment, Duncan commented Ruth Davis to replace George Society. that his experience at the Department Mclsaacs as assistant secretary for re­ In addition, Frieman has had expe­ of Defense would help him in his new source application. She is currently rience in military-government advisory position. The DOD has its own energy the DOD deputy undersecretary for groups, including the NASA Nuclear research programs, he said and "fur­ research and advanced technology. Processes Advisory Committee and the ther collaboration between the DOD Another reported shoo-in is George Naval Research Advisory Committee. and DOE on those efforts will be ben­ Fumich, who will be brought in to Reportedly, he became acquainted eficial .... There is already a lot of head the newly created job of assist­ with Deutch during their common synergism between what is going on ant secretary for coal and fossil fuels. scientific advisory experience for the in Defense and what is going on in Fumich, the brother-in-law of Senate military. DOE. I think we need to facilitate those majority leader Robert Byrd (D-W Va), Fusion Options interchanges; we need to encourage is a lawyer and synfuel supporter who Sources in the fusion community that cooperation ...'." has the distinction of running for Con­ are unsure of the effect of either of According to sources within the DOE gress in West Virginia and losing the the possible options being discussed and the energy press in Washington, district to the Republicans for the first for placement of the magnetic fusion Duncan will fill key positions with time since Reconstruction. program. If placed under an assistant underlings from the DOD. As DOE —Marsha Freeman

22 FUSION Deutch was published in the July 26, Fusion News 1979, Congressional Record. I urge the Members of the House to lend their support to an accel­ erated development program for this extremely promising energy technol­ ogy- A copy of the report of the Fusion Advisory Panel follows: The Hirsch Panel Report Rep. Mike McCormack (D-Wash), The Fusion Advisory Panel of the chairman of the House Subcommittee Calls for Energy Research and Production Sub­ on Energy Research and Production, committee of the House Science and entered into the Congressional Record by 1995 Technology Committee met on July Sept. 13 the written report of the find­ 10 and 11. At that time, the panel con­ ings and recommendations of the Fu­ Second, present experimental data centrated its attention on magnetic sion Advisory Panel, reprinted here in indicate that a demonstration of an confinement fusion. Even though you full. The panel, chaired by Robert energy producing fusion reaction in and your colleagues received an oral L. Hirsch, former head of the U.S. the early 1980s is almost assured; and report from the panel on July 11, it magnetic confinement program, is Third, it is none-too-soon for the was deemed important to provide you made up of distinguished fusion sci­ Department of Energy to plan a com­ with a short letter documenting the entists and educators as well as busi­ prehensive strategy for bringing a results of our efforts. The following is ness leaders. tokamak fusion electric demonstra­ provided on behalf of the panel and The panel notes the tremendous tion plant on line by 1995. represents the views of theoverwhelm- progress in fusion research and strong­ The panel also noted that while this ing majority of our group. ambitious plan would certainly require ly recommends that the United States On the basis of the information pre­ added funding in the short term, the plan and build a $1 billion demon­ sented to us as well as the background cost to the country in the long run stration fusion plant by the year 1995. that the panel members have in fu­ would most likely be less than that Such a program corresponds to the sion and related technologies, we have involved in following the Department government's "Logic III" (out of five come to several important conclusions. of Energy's current program strategy. "Logics") timetable for fusion devel­ First and foremost is that the fusion It seems clear that we have no opment developed under Hirsch, and program has to date achieved a very option except to press forward with is 15 years ahead of the Department substantial and impressive measure of development of fusion electric pro­ of Energy's present fusion schedule. success. The magnetic confinement duction as soon as possible, and that The Fusion Energy Foundation is now program has reached, and in many this effort should never be limited by collaborating with science and indus­ cases surpassed, the goals publicly set budgetary considerations. try representatives to draw up federal forth in past years. Magnetic fusion In light of these observations and legislation to move the fusion program research has consistently been on the panel's recommendations, I have forward with the urgency conveyed by schedule and very close to cost, even written to Dr. John Deutch, Acting McCormack and the Hirsch Panel. The during recent inflationary times. On Under Secretary of the Department of December issue of Fusion will report Energy, asking him to prepare a de­ on this legislative package and will tailed program plan—including costs begin a nationwide postcard cam­ —to accomplish the above recom­ paign, to Congress to build support for mended goals. This letter to Dr. a brute-force U.S. fusion energy pro­ gram. Rep. McCormack's Introduction Mr. Speaker, the Subcommittee on Energy Research and Production has received a written report from its newly formed Fusion Advisory Panel, con­ taining findings and recommenda­ tions concerning the fusion energy program.... The essence of the panel's findings is that: First, the tokamak magnetic fusion research program has been highly suc­ A scale model of the TFTR tokamak at the Princeton Plasma Laboratory. Sched­ cessful in accomplishing its goals, on uled to begin operation in 1981, the TFTR is expected to reach breakeven time and within costs; energy conditions.

FUSION 23 this basis, we see the program to be not only viable, but unusually meri­ torious and a source of national pride. Second, as evidenced by recent re­ sults from the Princeton Large Torus, the Alcator, the Impurities Studies Experiment, and Doublet III, we be­ lieve that the magnetic fusion energy program is without a doubt ready to proceed much more aggressively than presently projected by the DOE. A key element in an expanded pro­ gram would be a billion dollar class experimental fusion power system. In our view, this step must be formally initiated in the near term, not only because of the country's urgent need for energy for the future but because a delay would substantially reduce the effectiveness of the ongoing pro­ gram. We wholeheartedly believe that electric power from fusion should be attainable before the turn of the century, and we believe the total programmatic cost for an accel­ erated program will be lower than for the present stretched out schedule. In view of these conclusions and based upon our deliberations, we rec­ ommend that the Subcommittee ser­ iously investigate a more vigorous approach to practical fusion power. Specifically, we recommend that the Department of Energy be requested to prepare a program plan aimed at the goal of operating a demonstration fusion power plant by the year 1995. Such a plan should include a descrip­ tion of technical elements, costs, schedules, industrial involvement, etc. Once this plan is developed, a special hearing should be held to determine the credibility and desirability of such a program goal. We realize this to be an aggressive approach, but we be­ lieve that the recent successes in magnetic fusion research coupled with the energy needs of the nation justify an ambitious magnetic confinement fusion program. My colleagues and I on the Fusion Advisory Panel hope that our efforts thus far have been useful to the Con­ We're Sorry, Elmo gress. We were impressed by the The Elmo Bumpy Torus tokamak at Oak Ridge National Laboratory strong interest in fusion power evi­ (top) was mistakenly identified as the ISX-B tokamak (bottom), also at denced by the large Congressional re­ Oak Ridge, in the September issue of Fusion, pages 30-31. The EBT uses presentation at the panel's sessions. a rippled magnetic field, keeping the plasma from drifting into the walls Robert L. Hirsch of the torus through magnetic drift. Chairman, Fusion Advisory Panel

24 FUSION Conferences 14th Intersociety Energy Conversion Engineering Conf., Aug. 5-10 Putting a Hydrogen Economy on the Agenda

Research in hydrogen production nuclear possibilities were on the en­ by Marsha Freeman technologies began in the mid-1950s gineers' drawing' boards in the late by the National Aeronautics and Space 1960s, there were no breakthroughs At the 14th Intersociety Energy Con­ Administration, out of their need to made on production. version Engineering Conference held use liquid hydrogen fuel for rockets. Hydrogen Production Key in Boston Aug. 5-10, scientists and en­ NASA developed an impressive array The separation of hydrogen from gineers from the United States and of techniques for handling, liquifying, oxygen in water is an endothermic and Europe reported on the most up-to- and storing the fuel, but until the very energy-intensive process. The date results from experimental and maturation of concepts for advanced most cost-effective hydrogen process conceptual design work in hydrogen production, storage, transport, and end-use. This conference report em­ phasizes developments in production technology; a more comprehensive Hydrogen Production Technologies report covering the conference docu­ ments on storage and end-use tech­ Currently Commercial nology will appear in a future issue of re-formation of methane produces nearly all of the 5 million tons of Fusion. hydrogen produced today. Methane (natural gas) is reacted with steam in the presence of nickel catalysts at about 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit, producing carbon monoxide and hydrogen. The carbon monoxide is Between now and the end of the shift-converted with water, producing more hydrogen and carbon diox­ century, the United States must make the transition from a fuel economy ide. Half of the hydrogen is produced from the methane, and half from based on petroleum and natural gas the water. to one that uses the most plentiful resource on earth—water—to fuel electrolysis of water is used today to produce very pure hydrogen for industry, homes, and transportation special uses. Electricity is passed through water that is surrounded by systems. With the commercial devel­ an electrically conductive electrolyte, producing a chemical decompo­ opment of fusion and advanced nu­ sition of the water. This method is expensive because of the relatively clear technologies, hydrogen isotopes high cost of electric power. Researchers are trying to lower the cost by will become the primary fuel for pro­ increasing efficiency in electrolysis through developing increased cat­ duction of electric power, replacing alytic activity of the electrodes, including higher temperature elec­ fossil fuels. Although, contrary to the trolysis (above 200 degrees Fahrenheit) and by using solid polymer Department of Energy statistics, it is electrolytes. not true that the world is immediately running out of these fossil fuels, such Techniques Under Development fuels are finite and must increasingly thermochemical cycles are under development using high temperature be used only as chemical feedstocks and fusion reactors as the heat source. These cycles attempt to extract where, at this point, hydrocarbons hydrogen chemically from water by the use of heat alone. The reac­ have no substitute. tions with the highly corrosive chemical mediators typically take place at temperatures up to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit, which are needed to Hydrogen fuel from water is inex­ regenerate the chemical. Hybrid cycles using both heat and electricity haustible, easily available for all are also under development. nations, nonpolluting, and totally "recyclable." That is, hydrogen can be produced from water by various high-temperature electrolysis is under conceptual development for use methods of thermochemical and elec­ with fusion reactors as the heat source. Using a temperature of up trolytic decomposition; and when it is to about 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit, hydrogen is produced at an effi­ combusted as a fuel, combining with ciency projected between 60 to 70 percent. The heat transferred by oxygen, the end-product is, again, ceramic ducts from the reactor blanket is passed through a series of water. Therefore, hydrogen is a electrolyzers that drop the temperature of the water as each produces closed-cycle fuel whose "waste-prod­ hydrogen. Hydrogen would be used as the fuel source for the reactor uct" is the raw material for producing and would be electrolytically produced as a general fuel. the fuel itself.

FUSION 25 at this time is the steam re-forming of couple the heat of nuclear power ture, iodine reacts with sulfur dioxide methane, or natural gas (see box). Ap­ plants with various kinds of cycles to and water to produce sulfuric acid proximately half of the hydrogen is liberate hydrogen directly from water. and hydrogen iodides. At a slightly supplied by the methane and half from High Temperature Reactors higher temperature of 120 degrees the water. For applications in agricul­ Since the early 1970s a number of the iodides are broken down into free tural, electronics, and semiconductor corporations have been investigating hydrogen and iodine. manufacture, a purer form of hydro­ the linking of high-temperature nu­ The third step, requiring the most gen gas is required and electrolysis of clear reactors with thermochemical energy, is the decomposition of the water is the production technique. processes for hydrogen production. highly corrosive sulfuric acid back to Problems with Coal Impressive experimental work has water, sulfur dioxide, and oxygen. This The need to develop alternate pro­ been done by General Atomic and step takes place in a cracking furnace duction methods stems from the fini- Westinghouse with technology sup­ at about 850 degrees, and is necessary tude of natural gas and the high cost port from Los Alamos Scientific Labo­ to regenerate the chemical reactant of electric power relative to the ener­ ratory, the University of Kentucky, and for the process. General Atomic esti­ gy content of the hydrogen fuel pro­ Brookhaven and Argonne National Lab­ mates that the cycle can achieve an duced by electrolysis. Proposals have oratories. In addition, the Euratom lab­ almost 50% efficiency, in terms of the been made to use heavier fossil fuels oratories in Julich, West Germany and amount of thermal energy input and such as petroleum and coal for hy­ Ispra, Italy and Mitsubishi Heavy In­ the amount of energy released when drogen production. The problem is dustries in Tokyo are investigating ther­ the hydrogen product is combusted that the hydrogen content of coal, for mochemical production. as fuel. example, is less than one-fourth that The nuclear-integrated thermo­ One of the major technological of natural gas, and 83% of hydrogen chemical cycles involve the use of problems in the HTGR thermochem­ produced in processes that depend chemical interactions to convert water ical process is the development of on the partial oxidation of coal (the to hydrogen and oxygen in closed cy­ materials to withstand the corrosive reverse process is coal gasification to cles where a system of linked regen­ nature of sulfuric acid at such high produce methane) is not from the coal erative chemical reactions needs in­ temperatures. To try to ameliorate this but from the steam. puts of only water and heat. Hybrid problem, various hybrid cycles in­ There are additional problems with cycles that use both thermal and elec­ volving both thermal and electrolytic the coal proposal involving the trans­ trical energy are also under experimen­ energy input have been developed. porting and handling of the coal re­ tal investigation. Westinghouse has been doing research quired for a commercial-sized hydro­ General Atomic Company began on a sulfur cycle hybrid process since gen production plant, as well as the thermochemical hydrogen produc­ 1973, with funding from the Depart­ serious environmental considerations tion research in 1972 as a way to use ment of Energy since 1976. The major with high-pressure gasifiers capable the 850 degrees Celsius outlet heat reactions are the thermal decompo­ of high throughputs of coal and ash. from the high-temperature gas-cooled sition of sulfuric acid into water, sul­ The most productive lines of in­ reactors (HTGR) they were develop­ fur dioxide, and oxygen, and then vestigation, therefore, have been to ing. At close to atmospheric tempera­ the regeneration of sulfuric acid by electrochemical oxidation of the sulfur­ ic dioxide, which releases hydrogen. Working Models Westinghouse has a bench-scale model operating and plans a process development unit running by 1983 at performance levels appropriate for a commercial unit. This spring, the sci­ entists at the Ispra Euratom Laborato­ ry operated the world's first hybrid thermochemical system producing 100 pounds of hydrogen per hour. Both the pure thermochemical and hybrid thermochemical technologies will probably be competitive with coal-based hydrogen production and be cheaper than conventional electro­ lytic technology (see box on costs). Although the thermal energy input from high temperature reactors will essentially be "free," since it would be comprised of the waste heat ef-

26 FUSION fluent from the electricity generating ceramic ducts to transfer the heat from in the production process. According cycle, the thermodynamic limitations the blanket to electrolyzers arranged to a very preliminary economic analy­ in the chemical processes and the cost in a temperature cascade. sis done by the Brookhaven team, the of expensive materials and chemicals The Brookhaven design includes a cost of supplying a coal-based hydro­ indicate preliminarily that hydrogen series of between nine and twelve elec­ gen plant with fuel balances the in­ produced from thermochemical pro­ trolyzers at a maximum temperature creased capital cost required for the cesses will cost substantially more than of about 1,827 degrees. The maximum fusion reactor. natural gas or petroleum fuels. temperatures will be fixed by materi­ From design studies that are quite Fusion Hydrogen als limitations, which, in turn, will set tentative (since engineering demon­ At approximately 2,500 degrees Cel­ the limits for the optimum efficiency stration fusion reactors have not yet sius it is possible totally thermally to split water to produce hydrogen. Aside from the problem of developing ma­ terials to withstand temperatures of The Cost of Developing that magnitude, the only heat source that could economically provide that Advanced Hydrogen Technologies heat level is fusion. Even at tempera­ Thermochemical Cycles tures lower than those required for Most thermochemical cycles have been developed to make use of the total thermal splitting, temperatures waste heat from the high-temperature reactors that have been under beyond the range of the HTCR (1,200 development here and in Western Europe since the early 1970s. There­ degrees) are potentially more efficient fore, the remaining development costs are for the thermochemical cy­ and less expensive. The relationship cles themselves. between the thermal and electrical in­ The major problem is the development of materials to withstand highly put required for direct splitting of corrosive chemicals at high temperatures. Researchers in the field have water is linear—that is, the higher the estimated that a $100 million effort would solve all of the remaining temperature, the less expensive elec­ materials and component technology problems and make the technique trical input required. ready for scale-up for commercial deployment. In May 1977, the Department of En­ A number of the organizations now developing thermochemical cycles ergy held a workshop to evaluate already have small units operating and project the cost of hydrogen fuel possible fusion processes for the pro­ to be competitive with production methods used today, in about the $3 duction of hydrogen. The partici­ to $6 per million BTU range. This is still significantly higher than the$1 pants included Mel Bowman from Los per million BTU cost for natural gas and $2 per million BTU cost for oil, Alamos; Bernard Eastlund, a develop­ but will be necessary in integrated nuclear-industrial complexes for agri­ er of the fusion torch concept; James cultural, petroleum refining, and some primary fuel uses. Powell and Meyer Steinberg from Brookhaven National Lab; Henry High-Temperature Electrolysis Gomberg from KMS Fusion; and oth­ Unlike the thermochemical processes, high-temperature electrolysis er scientists in the fusion develop­ depends upon a heat source that is not yet commercially available— ment field. fusion energy. Scientists and engineers have estimated that if a full-scale Five processes were evaluated, and high-temperature electrolysis hydrogen program were undertaken in the most promising was determined parallel with an aggressive fusion program, an experimental production to be high-temperature electrolysis. unit could be developed for use with a commercial demonstration fusion Research in this area, reported on at reactor in a decade. the August Boston conference, has The hydrogen production development cost, excluding the fusion been done mainly at Brookhaven, with reactor research and development, would be in the range of $200 to $500 supporting work at Argonne National million. It is estimated that a large-scale demonstration plant for hook-up Lab. This work involves a thermal input with an experimental fusion power plant would cost about $500,000. At at about 1,500 degrees and use of elec­ this point, the fusion-hydrogen high temperature electrolysis work is not tric power produced in a convention­ limited by technological problems (which researchers are confident can al steam turbine cycle from the fusion all be solved), but by the funding for both the reactor and hydrogen reaction. programs. Projections are for 50 to 70 percent This process is projected to bring the cost of hydrogen fuel down to hydrogen production efficiencies by possibly a 60tf per barrel equivalent of oil prices. This is because of the high-temperature electrolysis and 40 greatly increased thermodynamic efficiency of splitting water at such to 60 percent electric generation ef­ high temperatures, with the resulting minimal need for electrolytic split­ ficiencies using high-temperature ting. The cost of electric power, in addition, will be cheaper per unit of lithium blankets, which breed the tri­ capital cost and fuel cost with fusion compared to either conventional tium needed for the fusion reaction. nuclear or fossil fuel power production. The conceptual design includes using

FUSION 27 been built), the Brookhaven team es­ aged through NASA by the Jet Pro­ aid of the LaRouche-Riemannian eco- timates that the cost of the hydrogen pulsion Lab, was at a funding level of nomic model described in the July fuel from the proposed fusion design about $6.3 million. The DOE's request issue of Fusion. will be approximately half that of a for 1980 cut the budget to $2.4 mil­ Commitment Required Now comparable fission electrochemical lion. This work includes thermochem­ At the point that fusion could be system. In other words, the hydrogen ical cycles, materials development, ready for commercial use near the turn produced from a fusion-hydrogen transmission storage, hydrides, andi of the century, the nation must be plant will be equivalent to an energy other development technologies. ready to switch over to hydrogen fuel cost that corresponds to 45C to 60c The basic problem to be solved for produced with fusion reactors. This per gallon of gasoline. the transition of a hydrogen economyi requires a commitment to do the re- Will We Get There in Time? is the production of hydrogen fuel att search and development now so that With even less than a decade of ex­ costs comparable to the cost of to­ this transition, especially in transport, perimental and design work in the nu­ day's fossil fuels. Research and de­ is not disruptive, but the next step in clear/fusion hydrogen production field, velopment is also needed in tech­ the evolution of energy and resource there are significant results. It is dem­ niques to store, transport, and usei systems that take us to the age of in- onstrably clear that if a serious effort hydrogen, but many are already wellI exhaustible fuel for electric power. were mounted in the critical remain­ known and could easily be engineered. ing areas for both HTCR and fusion Furthermore, the overall economicsi Marsha Freeman is director of in- hydrogen technology, the transition of the transition to a fusion-hydrogeni dustrial research for the Fusion Energy to a hydrogen-based economy could economy has to be evaluated with the' Foundation. begin on a large scale in the early 1990s. The present DOE funding situ­ ation, however, makes this goal im­ Science and Technology for Development, Vienna possible. Although Westinghouse had a small high-temperature reactor development UN Conference Pushes program in the mid-1970s, when the government pulled back on funding, so did Westinghouse. And General 'Appropriate Technology' Atomic had nearly its entire HTGR cretely by the Fusion Energy Foun­ budget eliminated in the 1980 DOE by Jonathan Tennenbaum dation, which distributed a detailed fiscal proposal. Furthermore, the cru­ policy statement at the conference cial area of materials development for One billion people live in darkness; calling for the development1 of nu­ high-temperature and corrosion-resis­ without electricity, little progress can plexes, agroindustrial cities centered tant materials for thermochemical and be made to eliminate illiteracy or to around one or more nuclear plants. electrolysis research is also fighting train a skilled labor force in the Third Controlled Debate for minimal funding, with no coordi­ World. The official sessions of the confer­ nated government priority program in With this declaration, E.P. Velikhov, ence were, in fact, rigged. Tedious view. vice president of the Soviet Academy speeches and debates were directed The demoralization of scientists and of Sciences and a leader of the Soviet to pitting the underdeveloped coun­ engineers put into the position of fusion research program, put the is­ tries against the industrialized nations fighting for every penny of research sue of the advanced technological de­ on the grounds of giving the "poor funding was painfully clear in the pres- velopment of the underdeveloped countries a greater voice in the con­ sentations at the energy conversion countries on center stage at the Unit­ trol of technology transfer." Much of conference. Trying to find a way of ed Nations Conference on Science the proceedings echoed the envi­ "fitting" their research into the up­ and Technology for Development, ronmentalists' cry that the West has side-down priorities of the DOE, sci­ UNCSTD, held in Vienna, Austria, "imposed" its technology on the de­ entists who were developing the Aug. 15-22. veloping sector without regard for integration of nuclear power pro­ Velikhov's remarks to the 4,000 par­ "local customs." duction with chemical and industrial ticipants highlighted an issue that Throughout the conferences, the processes (nuplexes) are now scram­ was only marginally addressed in the British and U.S. delegations, the latter bling to turn out proposals for "solar- course of the official conference ses­ the largest in attendance, acted as en­ driven" thermochemical and other sions, but that was the subject of hot forcers of the International Monetary hydrogen production processes—the debate in private meetings and corri­ Fund and World Bank's policy of "ap­ only growing area of DOE-funded dor consultations outside the main propriate technology"—a policy that R&D. forum—the nuclear-powered indus­ means windmills, hand plows, and In fiscal year 1979, the DOE-funded trialization of the Third World. handicrafts, instead of nuclear power, Energy Storage Systems program, a The high technology, pronuclear mechanized farming, and industry for significant percentage of which is man­ perspective was put forward con- the Third World.

28 FUSION i Paid Advertisement i

United Nations Conference leaders (left to right): Cuy Cresford, conference deputy secretary general; K.K.S. Dadzie, director general for development and international economic cooperation; Kurt Waldheim, UN secretary general; j.F. DaCosta, conference secretary general; Jean Casarian, conference secretary.

In addition to the rigged agenda at research and development into the official UN conference, UN orga­ thermonuclear fusion energy. Fusion, nizers supported a parallel "alterna­ Velikhov said, will be the main energy tive conference" under the auspices source of the future. Those in the ad­ of the UN Nongovernmental Organi­ vanced sector who try to sabotage the zations (NGO) Forum. There, those nuclear effort, he concluded, share a $5 suggested contribution disgruntled with the UNCSTD sessions heavy responsibility for the future ec­ bulk rates on request were subjected to the International onomic collapse and devastation of Make checks or money order payable to: Citizens for LaRouche Radio City Station Monetary Fund's more "radical" ap­ the Third World. P.O. Box 976 New York.N.Y. 10019 proach to Third World development, FEF representatives distributed 500 Authorized by Citizens for LaRouche, Felice with discussion of "alternative life­ copies of a policy statement that called Gelman, Treasurer. A copy of our report is tiled with and is available from the Federal Election styles," "appropriate technology," for using the European Monetary Sys­ Commission, Washington, D.C. and "appropriate psychology." tem as the basis of the new gold- Among the organizations partici­ backed world credit and monetary pating in the NGO forum were the system to replace the IMF and the Washington-based Institute for Policy World Bank. That new system would Studies and its sister organization in provide hundreds of billions of dol­ Amsterdam, the Transnational Insti­ lars of credit to finance the transfer tute, both of which have fostered the of high-technology capital goods to terrorist wing of the environmentalist the developing sector making pos­ movement. sible package deals for the construc­ Velikhov's statement broke through tion of entire new industrial cities the banal stupor imposed on the gen­ —nuplexes. eral session of UNCSTD. What the The FEF statement was illustrated by Third World needs, he said, is a crash maps from the forthcoming book, EXPLORE! electrification program on the order Blueprint for the Industrialization of Every issue of the International Journal of what V.I. Lenin accomplished in Africa, showing FEF proposals for a 1 of Fusion Energy presents the latest Soviet Russia 50 years ago. Velikhov continental railway network for Africa. investigations into this exciting new then challenged the French delegate, The proposal, which takes into account frontier of physics! who—contrary to official French gov­ the need not just for construction of Coming in the INTERNATIONAL ernment policy—had said that nuclear the network but for the nutritional and energy would play only a minor role cultural requirements to raise the JOURNAL of in such developing regions as black workforce's standard of living, will cost FUSION ENERGY Africa. more than $800 billion—far beyond • Fully Developed Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence: Numerical Simulation and No, Velikhov insisted, nuclear en­ anything the International Monetary Closure Techniques A. Pouquet ergy is decisive for the future of the Fund is able, or willing to spend. • Theta-Pinch Description from Classical Electrodynamics E.A. Witalis Third World, and that means that the Subscriptions aref$35 per year ($40 out­ industrial nations, East and West, must Jonathan Tennenbaum, a mathema­ side the U.S.) Mail checks or money orders undertake rapid worldwide expansion tician, is a European representative of to Fusion Energy Foundation, 888 7th Ave., Suite 2404, N.Y., N.Y. 10019. of fission power now, and accelerated the Fusion Energy Foundation.

FUSION 29

The Theoretical Impasse In Inertial Confinement Fusion by Uwe Parpart

Uwe Parpart is the director of research of the Fusion ever, unlike the steam engine case, questions surrounding Energy Foundation. A graduate of the West German Naval the coupling of the laser energy into the target of fusion- Academy, he has taught mathematics, physics, and phi­ able material and the dynamics of the target pellet implo­ losophy and was on the faculty of Swarthmore College for sion are intimately connected with the most fundamental several years. problems in microscopic physics—that is, nuclear and high-energy particle physics—and in astrophysics. There­ * * * fore, they will be resolved only in conjunction with signifi­ cant progress in these domains. ALTHOUGH LEADING U.S. researchers in laser fusion The theoretical impasse in laser fusion thus means that remain outwardly confident that this country's principal what workers in the laser fusion and related inertial con­ experiments at the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos finement fusion efforts define as "theory" is much too Laboratories are on target and will demonstrate scientific narrowly conceived. And this narrowness is further rein­ breakeven during the next three to four years, many of forced by the absurd degree of secrecy and catch-all se­ them will also readily admit that progress in the theoretical curity classification imposed upon the field. comprehension of some of the fundamental problems On the other hand, an impasse can also serve as a point involved in laser fusion has been unsatisfactory and is out of inflection. It presents us with the unique opportunity of of step with laser engineering accomplishments. using the present difficulties as the take-off point for a In one sense, of course, this is a familiar situation and new look at some of the basic physics problems not en­ no cause for great alarm. We built perfectly good steam tirely untouched, but certainly not significantly advanced engines well before we had a full theoretical understand­ since the great quantum mechanics debates of the 1920s. ing of all the principles governing their behavior. How- The attainment of laser fusion would serve as an excellent focal point and most appropriate task orientation for such a broader theoretical effort. In this article I will suggest several Ansatze (approaches) for such a program as well as develop further points al­ ready touched upon in my previous discussion of Bern- 1 Erwin Schrodinger, the last theoretical physicist of note hard Riemann's work on shock waves. The article is also whose ideas on particle physics were in line with intended to serve as something of an introduction to Dr. Riemann's continuum approach. Friedwardt Winterberg's article, "Reminiscences About Photo Pfaundler. Innsbruck, Austria the Origins of Inertial Confinement Fusion," in this issue.

FUSION 31 Winterberg's work is rooted in the approach to physics fusion-fission hybrids—will probably be based on the tok- of the Cottingen hydrodynamicist school and his contri­ amak magnetic confinement principle, it will be as a result butions to inertial confinement fusion—from his early sug­ of mastering the principles of inertial confinement fusion gestions on the use of ion beams to the initiation of the that we will be able to progress to advanced fusion sys­ "impact fusion" approach are characterized by remark­ tems and achieve the kind of revolution in energy tech­ able inventiveness and originality. Impact fusion, the bom­ nology that has been accomplished in computer and in­ bardment of a target of fusionable material with high ve­ formation technology over the past 20 years. Specifically, locity macroscopic particles, is now beginning to receive a Velikhov mentioned electronic-beam and fast liner meth­ good deal of attention not only among specialists working ods of fusion. The Soviet program, while by no means with large-scale particle accelerators but among fusion deemphasizing magnetic confinement, therefore, is gear­ researchers in general. ed toward achieving early breakthroughs in inertial con­ It is an outstanding quality of Winterberg's papers that finement to realize that larger goal. they never reflect an otherwise omnipresent self-imposed As the Soviets realize, we need not just another energy narrow professionalism, but explore a concept in all direc­ system fundamentally equivalent to existing ones, but sys­ tions, unafraid of what some might call speculative sug­ tems that can lead to the attainment of energy densities in gestions and conclusions. This is the prerequisite attitude energy production and.use that exceed present densities if we are going to realize the vast potential of inertial of energy throughput by several orders of magnitude. The confinement fusion in the near term. solution to the outstanding problems in inertial confine­ In a recent conversation the point was made to me by ment fusion will make that possible. It is this unique con­ E.P. Velikhov, former head of the Soviet fusion program juncture of opportunities—to propel us into a qualitative­ and now vice president of the Soviet Academy of Science, ly new and more advanced energy future and simulta­ that although the first fusion reactors—in the form of neously provide major new insights into the solution of

equation of state: a mathematical .expression that defines the physical state of a homogeneous substance—gas, li­ Glossary quid, or solid—by relating volume to pressure and absolute temperature for a given mass of the material. Bose-Einstein statistics and distribution: for an assembly of gaslike particles such as photons, pi mesons, and all nu­ electron wave packet: the function of the spin orientation clei having an even number of nucleons and all particles and position of one or more electrons,, specifying the with integer spin (bosons), the quantum statistical me­ dynamical state of the electrons; the square modulus of chanics of the interactions of the particles are those of a the functions gives the probability per unit volume of system of indistinguishable particles for which there is no finding an electron at a given position. restriction on the number of particles that may exist in the same state simultaneously. Such an assemblage is either Fermi-Dirac quantum statistics: the statistics of an assembly noninteracting or weakly interacting; therefore, the dis­ of identical half-integer spin particles, such as electrons or tribution of energy in the assembly is quite different from individual nucleons. Such particles have wave functions that of the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution for normal antisymmetrical with respect to particle interchange, hence gases. satisfying the Pauli exclusion principle, which states that no two particles can have all of their quantum numbers Boltzmann or Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics and distribution: the same. the classical statistical mechanics of identical particles, such as gas molecules. The distribution of energies in an Fermi gas: an assembly of independent particles that obey assembly of particles interacting according to the Boltz­ Fermi-Dirac quantum statistics and, therefore, obey the mann statistics is said to have a Maxwell-Boltzmann distri­ Pauli exclusion principle. This concept is used in the free bution when the assembly is in thermal equilibrium. The electron theory of metals and in one model of the behav­ peak of the distribution identifies the temperature of the ior of nucleons in a nucleus. assembly. Hamilton-Jacobi equation: a particular partial differential degeneracy temperature: a temperature in comparison to equation useful in studying certain systems of ordinary which the gas temperature must be large if no noticeable equations arising in the calculus of variations, dynamics, gas degeneration is to occur. and optics. eigenvalue: in quantum mechanical usage, eigenvalues cor­ Hamiltonian analogy: Hamiltonian mechanics permits opti­ respond to quantum numbers and eigenvectors to sta­ cal and mechanical systems to be treated with the same tionary state wave functions that are solutions to the dif­ method of approach. For example, Hamilton's variational ferential or matrix equations describing quantum behavior. principle includes both the principle of least action and

32 FUSION several of the principal unresolved issues in theoretical work done by Hans Bethe et al. during World War II on physics—that makes inertial confinement fusion the the theory of shock waves for arbitrary equations of state* touchstone of scientific progress today. and the pressure waves* produced by underwater explo­ As is well known and has been discussed in the open sions.3 literature in detail since the early 1970s, fusion ignition by Since a decrease in entropy alone is an impermissible high-powered lasers without precompression of the fu- jump condition across a shock wave, it is entirely conceiv­ sionable material in the target pellet imposes prohibitive able that isentropic compression results from the dynam­ energy requirements and can be regarded as practically ics of strong shock/equation-of-state interactions shaped unrealizable.2 On the other hand, isentropic* or close- by the appropriate kind of target geometry. Conventional to-isentropic precompression of thick-shelled targets wisdom now has it that nothing of the sort will occur, through a sequence of weak shocks delivered by a care­ since at the temperatures and densities we are dealing fully tailored sequence of laser pulses has not yet led to with, once a strong shock has been delivered into the fully satisfactory results.3 target, the fusionable material has been transformed into Thin-shelled targets subjected to strong shocks have a so-called Fermi gas* whose behavior is well understood been tried, but this approach is vitiated by the Rayleigh- and does not conform to the circumstances envisaged in Taylor instability.* In the paper on Riemannian shock waves my suggestion. cited above, I suggested a third line of attack inspired by The Hypothesis certain remarks in Riemann's 1859 paper "On the Propaga­ In more detail, the opposing arguments run as follows: I 4 tion of Plane Air Waves of Finite Amplitude" as well a"s by have argued that we should investigate the experimental hypothesis that strong shocks change the equation of state 'Words and phrases followed by asterisks are defined in the accompanying of the fusionable material in such a way that a certain glossary. measure of decoupling of density and temperature and

Fermat's principle of least time, which was developed to damental physical principle that demonstrates the impos­ determine the path of light. sibility of coherent causality on the atomic scale. Further­ more, the seemingly paradoxical properties of microscopic isentropic: a process that occurs without change in en­ systems, such as so-called particle duality, are not resolved tropy; for example, in isentropic compression, there is no but are simply designated "complementary" aspects of transfer of heat and, hence, of entropy. the phenomenon,

jump conditions: the conditions on both sides of the dis­ phase change: the metamorphosis of a material or mixture continuity formed by a shock wave and their relationship. from one physical state to another, such as gas to liquid, or solid to gas. LASNEX: a computer code developed by Lawrence Liver-' more Laboratory as a modification of the computer simu­ pressure waves: a wave in a fluid in which a compression is lation code NIXON, which is used in the design of H-bombs propagated; that is, a longitudinal wave, like a sound and for laser pellet microexplosions. It attempts to com­ wave, as opposed to a transverse wave, like a waterwave. bine all known physical processes together with empirical experimental results in a consistent, calculable computer quantum jumps: a transition from one stationary state to simulation of inertial confinement. another in a quantized system. The term jump indicates that the stationary states are not adjacent; for example, mean free path: the average distance a particle can travel energy states, but represent discrete differences in quan­ without colliding with another particle. tum values between which the system jumps.

natural number sequence: the sequence of the positive quantization: the restriction of an observable quantity, integers; that is, 1,2,3,4, , , , , such as energy or angular momentum, associated with a Nernst's heat theorem: (The Third Law of Thermodynam­ physical system, such as an atom, molecule, or elementary ics): the theorem expressing that the rate of change of particle, to a discrete set of values. free energy of a homogeneous system with temperature and also the rate of change of enthalpy with temperature soliton: a physical structure observed in plasma physics approaches zero as the temperature approaches absolute and hydrodynamics that forms out of continuous media by zero. It follows from this theorem that no such system discrete properties such as localized energy content and can be cooled to absolute zero. maintenance of its identity throughout interaction and collision with other solitons. positivist Copenhagen School: the logical positivist inter­ pretation of quantum mechanics promoted by Niels Bohr. scale length: the basic unit of measure that cannot be According to his view, the uncertainty principle is a fun- subdivided.

FUSION 33 The laser fusion laboratory at the Lebedev Institute in Moscow, 1978. hence isentropic or close-to-isentropic compression might greater and more efficient energy capture. They conform result. The mechanism I envisage that would lead to such to the ordinary conservation laws in the sense that these a result is closely associated with a variety of phenomena laws define the jump conditions* for the discontinuities. observed when seemingly random small-scale fluid turbu­ Note that for laser fusion, negentropic phase sequences lence leads to the formation of relatively large-scale co­ should be of interest not only for the identification of herent and stable strutures concentrating the energy of efficient isentropic compression schemes, but also to find the system into solitons,* vortices, and so forth. The very better ways of coping with the Rayleigh-Taylor boundary rapid onset of the formation of such structures, the extent layer instability. The existence and quantitative characteri­ to which their existence governs the fluid behavior both zation of deterministic, coherent structures in turbulent globally and locally, and the development of new types of boundary layer flow opens up the possibility of viewing interaction between these structures jointly are best sum­ such turbulence not merely as destructive; manipulation marized by thinking of the fluid as having undergone a of and interference with these large-scale structures could phase change,* where in the new phase the energy ab­ make the turbulence controllable and even potentially sorption characteristics and other relevant parameters no beneficial.6 longer continuously connect with the previous state. The Contrary Argument My hypothesis thus portrays a physical process—exempli­ The contrary argument asserts that as soon as a signifi­ fied by inertial confinement fusion but certainly not ex­ cant degree of compression of the fusionable material is clusively so— that conforms to the crucial epistemological achieved, the accelerated matter is transformed into a requirement that there must be identifiable and experi­ highly interactive Fermi gas7 adequately described by Fermi- mentally replicable processes in nature that Dirac quantum statistics.* In particular, application of the (1) demonstrate the discontinuous transition from given Fermi statistical method yields definite values for the ther­ states to states exhibiting greater degrees of internal or­ modynamic parameters of the gas, and the predicted ganization; and values do not conform to the decoupling hypothesis pre­ (2) accomplish this transition through a kind of "tear­ sented above. The argument presumably can be buttressed ing" of new structures (particles) and of laws governing further through arrays of detailed numerical values tracing their interaction out of and facilitated by the continuous the entirety of the compression process, generated by the modes (waves and so forth) modifying the previous state. LASNEX computer code.* Such processes, first explicitly defined by Bernhard Rie- With the arguments thus stated, it is clear that the dis­ mann, are negentropic in the sense that they evolve new agreement involves no easily settled secondary matter of entities and modes of interaction capable, for example, of fact. LASNEX output is relevant only to the extent that we

34 FUSION TYPICAL WAVE PACKETS A typical wave packet consists of a linear superposition of individual waves with different frequencies. The result is a quasi-localized structure like the two above. The horizontal axis indicates the spatial extension of the packet, and the vertical axis its amplitude as some measure of strength. The dispersion phenomenon, which occurs in linear media or for small amplitudes of the wave packet components, depends on the fact that the wave velocity for each component of the wave packet differs in a frequency-dependent manner. As the packet travels through space, it becomes less and less sharply defined; that is, it disperses. can agree that the code takes into account and correctly onfe cannot from the measure relations in the large models conditions of turbulence as demanded above. Ba­ draw conclusions about those in the infinitely small; sically, what is at issue in the analysis of pellet compression at each point the measure of curvature [of space] can can, at least in first approximation, be defined as involving then have arbitrary values in three directions if only a crucial choice of scale length (or a limited range of scale the total curvature of every measurable portion of lengths) deemed appropriate for the analysis. space is not noticeably different from zero .... The LASNEX code permits description of phenomena of [And since] the empirical concepts upon which spatial macroscopic scales of length, or else it switches you into measure relations are founded, [viz.] the concept of the micro realm employing there the homogenizing scale the rigid body and of the light ray, appear to lose their length assumptions of quantum statistics. In its time evo­ validity in the infinitely small, it is quite conceivable lution the compression process must then be patched that in the infinitely small the measure relations of together from different pieces of analysis obtained by the space do not conform to the presuppositions of [Eu­ generally divergent methods of description governing the clidean] geometry, and this would have to be as­ different realms. sumed in fact as soon as, on that basis, the [observed] This approach, of course, must become hopelessly in­ phenomena could be explained in a simpler manner. adequate whenever the interaction of objects and events The question of the validity of the presuppositions of spanning widely differing scale lengths is to be examined—a [Euclidean] geometry in the infinitely small is connect­ circumstance characteristically satisfied precisely under ed with the question of what constitutes the inner the conditions of criticality and singularity defining the reason and basis for the measure relations of space. shock wave/phase transition hypothesis. i The fundamental point of method involved here, which Riemann's Advice a few changes in LASNEX subroutines cannot address, is So Riemann's counsel to us is quite unambiguous: made by Riemann toward the end of his 1854 paper "On (1) Pursue the phenomena into the infinitely small; only the Hypotheses Upon Which Geometry Is Based":8 then will the essence of causal connections be revealed—a difficult bit of advice to follow if your investigation is Upon the precision with which we pursue the limited to certain preassigned scale lengths! phenomena [from the macroscopic realm] into the (2) As you are pursuing the phenomena make no a priori infinitely small essentially rests the comprehension of assumptions about specific metric relations, scales, modes their causal connection . . . . If [the] independence of of partition, and so forth, but be guided by the evolution bodies from [their] location does not take place, then of the physical process itself so that your "work is not

FUSION 35 proach. For them at least quantum jumps,* natural num­ ber sequences* defining electron behavior, or the applic­ ability of Bose-Einstein* and Fermi-Dirac rather than Boitzmann* statistics to certain types of particles were phenomena to be explained rather than to be accepted as primitive data without further questions asked. Laser fusion researchers, continually forced in their own work to bridge the gap between particle and macroscopic hydrodynamic descriptions of matter under extreme con­ ditions, are uniquely situated to reopen the questions Schrodinger attempted to address and to launch a flanking attack on the wild proliferation of subatomic particles and bad epistemology now making a scandal out of particle physics.

The Significance of Schrodinger's Approach It is a little known fact, obscured somewhat by his own presentation in the groundbreaking 1926 papers on wave mechanics, that Schrodinger arrived at his ideas on "quantization* as an eigenvalue* problem" not so much by formal considerations involving the Hamilton-Jacobi differential equation* or the Hamiltonian analogy be­ tween mechanics and optics,* but as an immediate con­ sequence of his study of certain difficulties in the theory of gases that arise when theorems such as Nernst's Heat Burndy Library, Norwalk, Conn. Theorem* are applied to gases under extreme conditions. j. Williard Cibbs. Schrodinger provided a solution to the Schrodinger's subject matter, when he developed cru­ Gibbs paradox. cial aspects of his theory, was thus the same as that dealt with by laser fusion researchers studying the dynamics of the pellet compression process. His ideas on the theory of hindered by the limitations of the concepts, and progress gases are laid down in four successive papers between in the comprehension of the overall connection of things 1924 and 1926, the last one of March 1926 titled "On is not hemmed by traditional prejudices."9 Einstein's Gas Theory" being by far the most important. Riemann, of course, knew and emphasized time and The type of difficulty in gas theory considered in these again in all of his studies—ranging from the behavior of papers is exemplified by the so-called Cibbs paradox aris­ complex functions to the necessary development of shock ing from the unrestricted application of the classical Boitz­ waves in the propagation of waves of finite amplitude in mann entropy formula compressible media—that it is precisely the evolution of infinities, of points at which a manifold spanned by a given S = k log W, set of parameters becomes singular, as well as the dis­ cernment of invariants defining causal connections across where S is the entropy of a given state of the system such singularities, that such a priori practices obscure and under consideration, k the Boitzmann constant, and W more often prevent entirely. the number of dynamical microstates corresponding to To have ignored—or be ignorant of—Riemann's advice the given thermodynamical state. in this matter is no special distinction of researchers in The paradox develops as follows: For a specific thermo­ laser fusion. If anything, it is workers in this field who dynamical state given in terms of the energy U (or equiva­ among contemporary physicists reflect at least indirectly lent^, the temperature 7"), the volume V, and the particle the Riemannian mathematical physics tradition. A priori number n, the classical theory yields an expression for the space and time categories, homogeneity and elementar­ entropy ily assumptions intrude into inertial confinement re­ search and into plasma physics more generally as a re­ (1) S = nk log V + -^j + log (-2™^ J. sult of the absolute hegemony of such epistemological nk + nk primitivism in high-energy particle physics and much of quantum electrodynamics and the largely uncritical ac­ (where m = particle mass and h - Planck's constant). ceptance and utilization by fusion researchers of the al­ Cibbs now pointed out that if two equal volumes of legedly well-established results in those domains. Erwin different nonreacting gases are joined together, formula Schrodinger and, in a more limited sense, L.D. Landau (1) above gives the empirically observed entropy increase. were the last theoretical physicists of note whose ideas on But, he observed, if two volumes of the same gas are com­ particle physics were in line with Riemann's general ap­ bined, the entropy not merely doubles as expected, but

36 FUSION wrongly increases by the added amount of 2 nk log 2. This In the specific gas theoretic application of this idea, the is easily verified by substituting 2n and 2Vforn and Vin (1). gas is treated as a single system of linear oscillators much It was, of course, widely recognized that subtraction of like a volume of radiation in equilibrium. (Two examples the term k log n! [ = nk (log n-1) by Stirling's formula in are a black body and a rigid body.) The frequency spec­ the form log n! = n (log n-1)] from (1) would lead to an trum of the system (or gaseous body) that replaces the entropy formula energy distribution of the classical molecular model is (Obtained through quantization of the standing waves of constant phase possible in volume V. Since in this single- (2)S nkl + +nkl0 y2+ k = °^ 2lofT s(n?) ^ system treatment of the gas fully individually distinguish­ able molecules no longer exist (although a certain amount of "granular" structure is maintained through the one- yielding correct results. However, finding a convincing parameter frequency characterization of the gas), the k log theoretical justification for the elimination of k log n! n! term in the definition of the entropy drops out quite from (1) was quite another matter. In the first of his four naturally. This is because the number n! referred to the gas theory papers,10 Schrodinger attempted such a justi­ permutations of the dynamical states of the n molecules in fication by proposing that in the theory of gas degen­ volume V, while now we are counting only the dynamical eration the characteristic length, /, in the expression states themselves. Summarizing matters at the end of the article, Schro­ dinger states that if experimental facts make it necessary lc ~ 8m l2k that the Bose-Einstein form of statistics be applied to a certain class of objects: (where m = molecular mass)

We must conclude that this class of objects consists for the degeneracy temperature* be chosen to be of the not of genuine individuals, but of energetic excitation- order of magnitude of the mean free path.* Crucially, / states. Bose's statistics then appear only as a transitory enters into the entropy formula by determining the size of state and can be replaced by "natural" statistics ap­ the cells in phase space all points (representing dynam­ plied to another class of objects. ical states) of which are regarded as equal. From the standpoint here, what is most important about Understanding Determinate Nature this mean-free-path approach is that from the outset Schro­ The reason I have quoted extensively from this 1926 dinger makes it clear that he is looking for a physical Schrodinger paper on gas theory is that today—and this is reason, a physically efficient cause for the elimination of k no compliment to contemporary physics—more than 50 log n! rather than treating the whole matter as a mere years later, it is still by far the clearest, most precise pres­ bookkeeping problem. This is stated explicitly at the be­ entation by any theoretical physicist of the determinate—or ginning of the March 1926 paper in which Schrodinger comments on Einstein's proposal that the difficulties in the theory of gases might be eliminated if an entirely new type of statistics, the so-called Bose(-Einstein) statistics, were applied to the motions of the gas molecules.11 Al­ though accepting the correctness of Einstein's point, Schro­ dinger writes:

Our natural sentiment rightfully balks at the idea of regarding this new [type of statistics] as something primary admitting of no further explanation. Rather, there appears veiled in it the assumption of a certain dependency upon one another or of an interaction of the gas molecules, which, however, in this form can only be analysed with [great] difficulty.

The basic idea (Grundgedanke) of his own analysis of the sought-after dependency and interaction is then intro­ duced:

We must take seriously the de Broglie-Einstein un­ Springer-Verlag dulation theory of the moving corpuscle according to H.A. Lorentz. Lorentz's private correspondence with which the latter is nothing other than a kind of "foam Schrodinger on wave mechanics provides evidence that crest" ISchaumkamm] upon the wave radiation con­ Schrodinger had suggested that particles were identical to stituting the fundamental world-principle. certain kinds of shock waves.

FUSION 37 ness does appear, it arises in the same natural way as it does in the case of the node-numbers of a vibrating string. The new conception . . . strikes, I believe, very deeply at the true nature of the quantum rules [em­ phasis added].

Still, I believe that despite its obvious groundbreaking significance, the presentation of the electron theory in the 1926 wave-mechanics papers is truncated and does not do justice to the full scope of Schrodinger's "Riemannian" approach. At the time, under the full onslaught of the positivist Copenhagen School,* isolated, and with little jfc^ collaborative support even from those who in principle •| agreed with his continuum theory of quantization, Schro­ dinger himself soon abandoned most attempts at extend­ ing his theory to a full-fledged causal, account satisfying the criteria of Riemannian "negentropic" physics as de­ fined above. (These attempts, as I shall show, were clearly §& in evidence in the last gas theory paper and in private cor- • ...«.; respondence with Lorentz.) ^^^^&wH^m$ws Or, in Plato's terms, he remained and was forced to Niels Bohr, head of Copenhagen's Instituteute for TheoreticalTheoretical remain satisfied with the account of the necessary or er- Physics. His so-called positivist school bulliedullied and isolatedisolated rant causes without ascending to the full knowledge of the Schrodinger, contributing to Schrodinger'ser's abandonmentabandonment divine cause that supersedes them and explains their of attempts to extend his theory along ] thethe lineslines ofof Rie-Rie- meaning. mannian physics. The Evidence The evidence for my view on what Schrodinger might have achieved if it were not for the intellectual thuggery of relative, or "ephemeral" in Plato's sense—charactense—character ooff Niels Bohr and his Copenhagen crew is as follows: particulate matter, the space it occupiess,, and the form ofof First, he was familiar with Riemann's works, in parti- its, interactions. Difficulties with the entrop?ntropy definitiodefinitionn cular his work on shock waves, and he postulated the demonstrate that in most interesting caseases gases cannocannott necessarily nonlinear character of the continuous medi- be viewed as made up of independentt individual mole-­ um with respect to which the electron is to be defined. cules together with "Newtonian" interaction:tions correspondcorrespond-­ Second, he identified a kind of mechanism, involving ing to Boltzmann-type statistics. Rather,, ththe gagas iin aa cer­- quasi-periodic motions that could give sufficient stability tain thermodynamical macrostate must bie taken as a singlsingle to his electron wave-packets* and that today we know to collective phenomenon determining the3 type of individu­- be precisely the type giving rise to highly stable solitons, ality and modes of interaction characteristi-isticc of that state. and so forth. The evolution of these modes under giveen boundary concon-­ Third, he at all times regarded the ^-function account of ditions, and including in particular the; developmendevelopmentt of the electron as incomplete, an attitude that in the long run singularities, then determines the transitiotion to successivsuccessive makes sense only if one has had at least a glimpse of an macrostates. overreaching process that might explain that incomplete- It must be stressed again that the definitioition of the "cell""cell"-- ness and associated uncertainty, size, which plays such a uniquely importantantt role in statis-­ These are the details: tical thermodynamics, is to be included among the deterdeter-­ In his summary of the main results of the last gas theory minate rather than the a priori given parametersrameters.. paper, Schrodinger notes that while the frequency spec- Schrodinger's understanding of the determinateterminate naturnature trum of the "gaseous body" is obtained through quantiza- of particularity as I have presented and documented it so tion of the standing waves compatible with the volume V, far, also guided him toward the developmenmentt of his wave- the spectrum is not quite what one might expect, because mechanical theory of the electron, shortllyy after or possiblpossibly the dispersion of the waves must be taken into account.13 simultaneously with the completion of his work on gas And it is precisely because of this dispersion, he notes at theory. In fact, in the very first paragraphi ooff hihis firsfirstt paper an earlier point, that: on wave mechanics in the Annalen der Physik, the epis- 12 temological concern is very much in evidence:'idence:12 The universal radiation as whose "signals" or per­ haps singularities corpuscles are to be defined, is In this paper I wish ... to show thaitt the customarcustomaryy something essentially more complicated than, say, quantum conditions can be replaced by another pos-­ the wave-radiation of the Maxwell theory; and not tulate, in which the notion of "whole numbers"lumbers"mere- mere­ only because it shows dispersion at all, but specifical- ly as such, is not introduced. Rather when integral- ly because the dispersion law of the phase velocity for

38 FUSION \ a wave group additionally depends upon what kind of The classic paper on this subject from which most re­ singularity the group of waves in question generates cent studies of coherence and nonlinearity derive is the through their superposition. In this one is reminded 1955 Fermi-Pasta-Ulam paper.14 In it the authors had at­ of the behavior of "waves of finite amplitude" [em­ tempted to state a simple problem in mathematical phys­ phasis added].... ics that nonetheless could not be solved with pencil and paper because it required very lengthy computations. Here So there is the explicit reference to Riemann's analysis of is Ulam's description of the problem: the propagation properties of waves of finite amplitude, the identification of corpuscle-singularities with Rieman- The question was to find out how this nonlinearity nian compression shocks, and, most important, the as­ [a small nonlinear term added to the usual equation of sertion of the determination of the dispersion law by the a vibrating string] after very many periods of vibra­ kind of singularity generated. tions would gradually alter the well-known periodic Schrodinger's tentative suggestion here that particles behavior of back and forth oscillations in one mode; might be identifiable with certain kinds of shock waves is how other modes of the string would become more paralleled by contemporary attempts at identifying parti­ important; and how, we thought, the entire motion cles with solitons—coherent, highly stable types of struc­ would ultimately thermalize, imitating perhaps the tures that have dispersion as one of the principal process­ behavior of fluids which are initially laminar and be­ es bringing them into existence. Moreover, he assigns to come more and more turbulent and convert their them the exact manifold-connecting causal role demand­ macroscopic motion into heat. ed by Riemannian analysis. Should there be any doubt about the legitimacy of this But nothing of the sort occurred: "The results were en­ interpretation of Schrodinger's meaning, consider the fol­ tirely different qualitatively from what even Fermi, with his lowing portions of his private correspondence with H.A. great knowledge of wave motions, had expected," Ulam Lorentz on wave-mechanics concerned specifically with wrote. It was assumed that the shape would finally be­ the stability of electrons interpreted as coherent wave come "a mess" both in the form of the string and in the packets. Lorentz had written that he had gathered from way the energy was distributed among higher and higher Schrodinger's paper that particulars were regarded as com­ modes (tones). It did not. The string played only several parable to wave packets propagating with the group veloc­ low notes "and perhaps even more amazingly, after what ity. would have been several hundred ordinary up and down vibrations it came back almost exactly to its original sinus­ However, a wave packet can never stay together in oidal shape. I know that Fermi considered this to be, as he 15 the long run and remain limited to a small space. The said, 'a minor discovery.'" smallest dispersion of the mean will pull it apart in the The Right Track direction of propagation, and, aside from any disper­ Of course, in 1926, Schrodinger could not have been sion, it will widen more and more in the transverse expected to carry through in detail this kind of analysis of direction ("diffraction"). Because of this inevitable nonlinear vibrations. But there is no question in my mind smearing out, a wave packet appears to me little suit­ that he was on the right track, and there certainly was no ed to represent things to which we want to ascribe a need to waste 30 or even 50 years before, hesitatingly, somewhat permanent individual existence. some of his 1926 ideas are beginning to be reapplied to the analysis of particles and their interactions.16 Schrodinger's very interesting reply consists of two parts. Louis de Broglie, who developed some of the funda­ He first acknowledges that he, too, has been quite con­ mental concepts upon which Schrodinger's wave mechan­ cerned about the "sticking together" of the wave packets, ics as well as the last gas theory paper were based—unlike, but: I think, Schrodinger in his later work—at no point made any compromises with the Copenhagen School. I was told I am very happy that now at least I can point to a by his present principal collaborator, Georges Lochak, simple example, where, contrary to all reasonable that de Broglie considered the post-1926 developments in expectation, it nonetheless happens. I hope that in quantum mechanics "a virtual coup d'etat in theoretical any case this is so for all those cases in which ordinary physics," and continued to work in almost complete isola­ mechanics speaks of quasi-periodic motions. tion on problems in wave mechanics. Lochak also directed my attention to de Broglie's 1956 This is a most important comment, because quasi-periodic work Une tentative d'interpretation causale et non //'- motions again are precisely motions in which a small, neaire de la mecanique ondulatoire, where in chapter 8 de nonlinear disturbance is superimposed upon a larger pe­ Broglie mentions "ondes solitaires" (solitons) in a discus­ riodic motion and whose extremely surprising coherent sion of corpuscle-singularities of wave groups.17 modes and unexpectedly rapid returns to periodicity were This is mentioned here to indicate that after 1926, an discovered when these kinds of motion became analyz- entirely different course of development in particle phys­ able on a large scale with the advent of electronic com­ ics was possible than the course that led to today's quark- puters. gluon trivia. Joint consideration of macroscopic vibration

FUSION 39 and turbulence phenomena and of microscopic particle of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability published in the open literature. A second structure from the same standpoint of coherent structure unpublished approach was developed by the late Harry Sahlin of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory while he was working on LASNEX simulations of born of nonlinearity in the context of investigations of Soviet scientist L. Rudakov's conical target design. compression and gas and fluid degeneration in laser fu­ The Boris approach to dynamic stabilization is based on varying the sion could reopen the Riemannian path in particle physics input of the laser energy incident on a fusion target. Boris projects that if blocked and buried since the mid-1920s. this variation is carried out at the proper frequency or frequencies it will The second part of Schrodinger's response to Lorentz resonantly dissipate the growth of the most dangerous Rayleigh-Taylor instability mode. Scientists from Livermore point out that while Boris's on electron stability is as telling and worthy of follow-up as work is quite interesting, there is nothing stopping the modulation of laser his first. It reads: energy input from resonantly enhancing other Rayleigh-Taylor modes at the same time it is stabilizing some modes. Even once we take this [the stability of wave pack­ Sahlin's approach is much more interesting. It is based on the target ets] as affirmed and agreed upon, there still always medium itself modulating the input energy. Sahlin noticed while carrying out unpublished studies utilizing the Livermore LASNEX computer code remains the difficulty of the entirely free electron in that 'multilayered Rudakov-type conical targets lead to a situation where totally field-free space. Would you consider it a very the layers of the target communicate with one another through acoustic serious objection to the theory if it turned out that in waves during implosion. According to Sahlin, this communciation not only totally field-free space the electron cannot exist? Or stabilizes the Rayleigh-Taylor instability, but also allows for the stable reflection of the compression shock many times. And as a result, the perhaps that in general even "free" electrons in the fusion fuel is much more effectively compressed and heated. ordinary sense do not retain their individuality per­ 7. For a description of this method of analysis, see Ya. B. Zel'dovich and manently? That to speak of single electrons in a cath­ Yu. P. Raizer, The Physics of Shock Waves and High-Temperature ode ray bundle perhaps only has the meaning: the Hydrodynamic Phenomena, Vol. I, (New York, 1966). bundle possesses a certain "granular" structure . . . and 8. "On the Hypotheses Upon Which Geometry Is Based," Riemann's Habi­ neither the pure wave description nor the pure cor­ tation Paper at Gbttingen University can be found in German in his Col­ lected Works, Gesammelte Mathematische Werke, ed. H. Weber, pp. 254- puscle description are exactly on the mark, but some­ 269. thing in between which we have not as yet adequately 9. "Hypotheses" attained? 10. Physik. Zeitschr. 25 (1924), pp. 41-45. 11. Albert Einstein, Berliner Berichte 1924, p. 261; 1925, p. 3. 12. Ann. d. Physik, 79 (1926), pp. 361-376. Particles conceived as plasmoids of some sort, "free" 13. Following the ideas of de Broglie, the frequency spectrum is computed only in a restricted sense, their behavior "uncertain" on a from the point of view that a molecule of velocity v = pc and rest mass m is particle by particle basis, but not as elements of a collec­ simply a "signal" or the "foam crest" of a wave system whose frequency s tive higher-order structure—these were clearly the kind of is near the value p = mc2/h\1-p2 questions on Schrodinger's mind, and if he had pursued and for whose phase velocity u a dispersion law holds, which is given by them from the strictly Riemannian standpoint there is no the formula for v in conjunction with question that some of the apparent "mysteries" surround­ u = c/S = c2/v. ing particle physics till this day would have been resolved To demonstrate according to de Broglie, v then plays the role of the signal several decades ago. velocity. The problem then consists of counting the number of vibrations of I suspect that one of the problems that tripped up Schro- volume V for a wave motion that is subject to this dispersion law. dinger and ultimately wore down his resistance to Copen­ 14. E. Fermi, J.R. Pasta, and S.M. Ulam, "Studies of Nonlinear Problems," hagen mysticism—at least to the extent that his work lost Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory Report, LA-1940, (1955). 15. S.M. Ulam, Adventures of a Mathematician (New York, 1976), pp. its positive direction—was that his own knowledge of Rie­ 226-227. mannian geometry was insufficient and, as can be easily 16. The natural extension of an avoidance of these fundamental lines of documented by checking the footnotes to his wave me­ inquiry is the present-day perturbative many-body theories—of which the chanical papers, that he relied strongly on Hermann Weyl's Bose-Einstein case of Schrodinger's earlier paper was the first. In these "linearity in the small" interpretation of the Riemannian theories—which now constitute the main line of theoretical inquiry in plasma physics, fluid mechanics, solid state physics, field theory and manifold. This is a fatal epistemological flaw and destroys elementary particle theory—the total interactions of a system are summed the sole basis in physical geometry that can lead to the up out of the pairwise interactions between the modes (or particles in the much-sought-for unified field theory. system), their triples of interaction, etc. Each increasingly complex combi­ nation of "particle interaction" forms a term in the additive series describ­ Notes ing the whole system; the hope being that the series converges (that is, 1. "Riemann Declassified—His Method and Program for the Natural Sci­ only the pairwise interactions are important so that the first term is much ences," Fusion March-April 1979, pp. 24-37. larger than the rest of the series, and so on). 2. See, for example, Keith Bruckner, IEEE Trans. Plasma Sci. ,1:13 (1973). Unfortunately these theories all have been recently found to be plagued 3. John Nuckolls et al, "Laser Compression of Matter to Super-High Densi­ with almost identical problems of proving the convergence of this series. ties," Nature, 239:139 (1972). Although researchers had hoped since the 1920s that a formal proof of the 4. "Uber die Fortpflanzung ebener Luftwellen von endlicher Schwingungs- sometimes numerical result of convergence could be rigorously proved, it weite," in Gesammelte Mathematische Werke, ed. H. Weber (1876), pp. has been shown in the last several years for almost all of these cases that 145-164. This has been translated by the author and will be published in the series does not converge; that higher-order terms are infinite; and that the International Journal of Fusion Energy, Vol. 2, No. 3, 1979. this problem is due to long-range effects (in space or time). 5. Hans Bethe et al, "The Pressure Wave Produced by an Underwater The downfall of these theories is strikingly similar to what Schrodinger Explosion, I, II," National Defense Research Committee, Division B, Re­ foreshadowed: These particles thought to make up many-body systems port Nos. 252, 281 (1942). are not individually identifiable; they act like the "foam-crest" of some 6. See "Dynamic Stabilization of the Rayleigh-Taylor Instability on Laser- underlying continuum phenomena. Imploded Shells," by Jay P. Boris published as NRL Memorandum Report 17. De Broglie's work, A Draft of a Causal and Nonlinear Interpretation of 3427. December 1976, which presents one approach to dynamic stabilization Wave Mechanics, was published in French by Gauthier-Villars in Paris.

40 FUSION Dr. Friedwardt Winterberg

Some Reminiscences About the Origins of Inertial Confinement by Dr. Friedwardt Winterberg

Friedwardt Winterberg is professor of physics at the These Soviet remarks can be considered quite sensa­ Desert Research Institute of the University of Nevada tional, because for the first time they shed some light on System in Reno. In the early 1960s, Winterberg made the the Soviet H-bomb design, and the U.S. design is probably first proposals for impact fusion and light ion and electron not too different. beam fusion, as well as a method for generating an intense This report on the Soviet views brought back into my light ion beam using a magnetically insulated diode. This memory the early ideas we had in postwar Germany about year Winterberg was awarded the Hermann Oberth gold inertial confinement fusion. These ideas arose from the medal for his pioneering work in thermonuclear propul­ work of three German scientists whose work was done sion. The award, present annually by the Hermann Ob- during World War II—G. Guderley, Busemann, and Walter erth-Wemher von Braun International Foundation for Trinks. The work by Guderley and Busemann was theoreti­ Space Flight, is considered the most distinguished scien­ cal. Trinks was already working both theoretically and ex­ tific award in astronautics. perimentally on the possibility of releasing thermonuclear energy by the use of high explosives. Prior to 1945,1 did not participate in these early studies, and I can relay only what others have told me, but I can give a first-hand report about AN ARTICLE in the February 1979 Fusion by Dr. Steven the theoretical efforts after the war. Bardwell and Charles B. Stevens discloses for the first time that Soviet researchers give great scientific credit for the Initial Ideas physical principles of inertial confinement fusion to the The idea of thermonuclear fusion.goes back to a paper German hydrodynamic school of Ludwig Prandtl.1 In partic­ published in 1928 by two young physicists, R. Atkinson, an ular, the article states that Adolf Busemann's work laid the Englishman, and F. Houtermans, a German, who tried to groundwork for the U.S. and Soviet hydrogen bomb pro­ explain why the sun and stars keep shining for billions of grams.2 years.3 They suggested that in the stellar interiors, which have temperatures of about 50 million degrees Celsius and Author's Note pressures of many billion atmospheres, a nuclear fire is I dedicate this article to the memory of Harry Sahlin, who died in taking place that slowly converts hydrogen into helium. At May 1979. His personal idealism and dedication for the achievement these temperatures the ions have energies of several keV; of inertial confinement fusion will be remembered by all his friends. therefore, it was clear that for nuclear reactions to be

FUSION 41 possible at such low energies, Gamow's wave mechanical ideas came up in the totally unrelated field of supersonic tunnel effect* would have to play an important role. fluid dynamics and shock wave physics. Problems of this Even though this early study did not correctly identify the kind were extensively studied by the school of Prandtl in particular thermonuclear reactions considered nowadays Gottingen, and there were two important papers pub­ as the right ones, its principal idea is still valid. At that time, lished—one by Guderley4 and the other by Busemann.5 however, nobody thought it would ever be possible to Guderley had recognized that the temperature and pres­ realize such thermonuclear reactions on earth; the temper­ sure in a convergent spherical symmetric shock wave would atures and pressures appeared to be beyond reach. rise as r~0-8, where r is the distance of shock wave* from the This negative outlook dramatically changed overnight center of convergence.* Guderley's solution thus predicted with the discovery of nuclear fission by Otto Hahn and Fritz for a convergent spherical shock wave the attainment of Strassmann in 1938. This discovery, of course, led to the very high temperatures and pressures. The question arose, atomic bomb. The temperatures and pressures that were therefore, whether this effect could reach the ignition theoretically expected to occur in an exploding fission temperatures for thermonuclear reactions. The suggestion bomb turned out to be just high enough to reach the lowest was to start a convergent spherical shock wave from some ignition temperatures for thermonuclear reactions. How­ initial radius using a chemical explosive. However, since ever, because an atomic bomb does not work below a the r~°-8 dependence in the temperature rise would ulti­ critical mass, this approach could lead only to a bigger mately stop if the distance of the shock wave from the explosion and, therefore, seemed unsuitable for commer­ center of convergence became smaller than the mean free cial energy production. path* (at thermonuclear temperatures this path can be Parallel to these developments, some other important rather large), it was clear that this approach would require starting the convergent shock wave from a quite large initial •Expressions followed by an asterisk appear in the glossary. radius.

Ofto Hahn and Use Meitner, pioneers in work on the splitting of the atom. Brown Brothers

42 FUSION Because of this shortcoming, Trinks proposed a new that with a hollow sphere having an initial diameter of 1 approach in 1942 which he also tried out experimentally. meter it should be possible to reach a final temperature of Trinks enclosed deuterium gas inside a hollow silver sphere. 4 X 106 degrees Kelvin at a pressure of 2.5 X 108 atmos­ The silver sphere was surrounded by a layer of high explo­ pheres. The final inner radius of the shell was computed to sive, which was surrounded by a tamp, and the high explo­ be 3.5 millimeters, a quite realistic value. sive was simultaneously ignited at many positions on the Experiments conducted by Trinks around 1942 were sphere. By the confining action of the outer tamp the silver looking for neutron-activated silver from neutrons set free sphere was spherically symmetrically imploded. in thermonuclear deuterium-deuterium reactions but It was clear that because of the high initial pressure, the none was found. The probable reason was that the size of silver would behave like a liquid. During the implosion the the spheres actually used in his experiments was much too radius of the silver sphere would shrink and its thickness small. fatten. This fattening would be accompanied by a rapid At the end of the war, the work by Trinks and other acceleration of the inner surface of the hollow sphere German explosive experts was confiscated by Dr. Samuel toward the center of convergence. As a result, the deuter­ Goudsmit, an editor of Physical Review who was working in ium gas trapped within the silver sphere was adiabatically the Alsos Mission for the U.S. government. Then it was compressed to high densities and temperatures, approach­ classified for several years by the U.S. Atomic Energy Com­ ing those existing in the center of stars. mission as "Secret Restricted Data"! Trinks's method promised the attainment of much higher temperatures than those possible with the Guderley solu­ Postwar Research tion if both experiments started from the same initial radius. After the war, experimental thermonuclear research was However, a price was paid; the configuration by Trinks was forbidden in Germany and Austria. However, this fact did subject to Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities.* Trinks had shown not deter physicists in these countries from thinking. One

Glossary

adiabatic compression: a mode of compression in which mean free path: the average distance a particle can travel the temperature and pressure of the compressed medium without colliding with another particle. will increase as a result of the compression, but no addi­ tional heat energy is transferred. neutron multiplier: an ingredient in a nuclear cycle that produces more neutrons than it consumes. center of convergence: the focus of a "mirror" used to concentrate a set of shock waves. particle beam: beams of electrons, protons, or heavy sub­ atomic particles used for heating and compressing fusion closed chain reaction: a set of nuclear reactions in which targets. there are no net neutrons produced; the neutrons pro­ duced in one reaction are "consumed" in the other. prolate ellipsoid configuration: a technique for focusing shock waves that uses an approximately elliptical surface cyclotron radiation: radiation given off by electrons in in­ to reflect the shock waves to a point. tense magnetic fields. Rayleigh-Taylor instability: the tendency for a thin shell to Camov's wave mechanical tunnel effect: a theoretical result ripple when it is compressed (for example, the "insta­ in quantum mechanics that predicts that certain nuclear bility" that occurs when a balloon is compressed). reactions can occur at much lower energies than conven­ tional theories predict. shock wave: the final state of a strong pressure wave that propagates in a compressible medium like a gas; this isentropic: a process that occurs without change in en­ pressure wave will develop an extremely sharp leading tropy; for example, in isentropic compression there is no edge, giving it almost explosive properties. A sonic boom transfer of heat and, hence, of entropy. is a shock wave.

large amplitude Riemannian wave: a one-dimensional (that supersonic: any velocity greater than the velocity of sound is, going only in one direction) Shockwave. in that medium; the Mach number for a supersonic velo­ city is greater than 1. Mach number: the ratio of the speed of the shock wave to the speed of sound in the gas; the higher the Mach num­ z-pinch: a plasma containment device that uses strong ber, the stronger the shock wave. axial currents to confine a plasma or fusion fuel.

FUSION 43 H - BOMB EXPLOSIVE CHARGE

ATOMIC BOMB

REFLECTED SHOCK WAVE Figure 1 THE WINTERBERG H-BOMB DESIGN This simplified diagram describes five stages involved in bomb design: CI) CURVED WALL FISSILE MATERIAL Assembly and detonation of a "gun- SHAPED ACCORDING TO type" fission device. (2) Formation of THERMONUCLEAR FUSE BUSEMANN'S THEORY a shock wave from the fission bomb explosion and its shaping through re­ flection in a "whispering-gallery-type" chamber. The ellipsoidal shape of this chamber leads to a focusing of the reflected shock waves onto the sec­ ond foci point of the ellipsoid, where the thermonuclear fuse is located. (3) The focused shock implodes and ig­ nites the thermonuclear fuse, which U238 consists of an outer layer of fissile ma­ terial and an inner layer of fusion fuel. The outer layer of fissile material acts both as a tamp to permit more effi­ cient implosion of the fusion fuel and as an aid to thermonuclear ignition. (4) The ignition of intense fusion re­ actions in the fuse leads to the form­ ation of a thermonuclear burn wave and a copious amount of neutrons. (5) These neutrons then induce fissioning © F. WINTERBERG in the uranium-238 tamp, which fur­ (Design of author around 1952) ther multiplies the total energy output of the device.

of these scientists who did think was Professor Hans Thir- for their opinion. From these interviews he learned that ring, an eminent Austrian physicist. In 1946, Thirring pub­ simply by bringing a thermonuclear explosive in contact lished a book on the history of the atomic bomb that with an exploding fission bomb, the thermonuclear explo­ contained a chapter about the theoretical possibility of sive would be blown aside by the large radiation pressure igniting a thermonuclear explosion by a fission bomb. He of the fission explosion long before the thermonuclear called it the superbomb and estimated that its explosive material could catch fire. power could be easily 1,000 times larger than the explosive The problem of igniting a thermonuclear fire, therefore, power of an atomic bomb. As possible explosives Thirring could be aptly described as similar to the problem a person suggested both deuterium and lithium hydride. In particu­ has lighting a cigarette in a storm. Long before the cigarette lar, he proposed Li7H, but we know today that this does not can catch fire, the wind will have blown out his match. work because the cross-section for the thermonuclear re­ However, he may know that he can overcome this problem actions between Li7 and H is much too small. Nevertheless, by forming a curved shield with his hand around both Thirring's ideas stimulated further thinking. I was still in cigarette and match. This suggests that one might solve the high school when I read Thirring's book, parts of which problem of thermonuclear ignition by a similar trick, except were published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists several that the "wind" would come from an exploding fission years later. bomb and is supersonic,* unlike the subsonic wind of a Around 1948, I read an article about the superbomb in storm. the U.S. Information Center in Stuttgart. The article was In course of his search, the reporter had also interviewed written by a reporter who had interviewed several scientists a famous physicist—I think it was Ernest Lawrence—who

44 FUSION Figure 2 PROLATE ELLIPSOIDAL FOCUSING OF SHOCK WAVES In a 1976 article in the journal of Plasma Physics, Winterberg showed the above use of focused shock waves in the prolate ellipsoidal configuration. Each ellipsoid focuses the energy from the shock waves produced by the preceding microexplosion (shown as Pi, P?, and so forth). The shock waves emanate from these points and are reflected on toward the next fusion pellet in the direction shown by the arrows. It is a unique property of the prolate ellipsoid that it can focus these waves to a point. In Winterberg's application, a small amount of initial energy, En, is used to ignite a small pellet, P1: whose explosion is focused (using the ellipsoid B) onto the next pellet, P2. The energy from the explosion of P2 is then focused (using C) onto P3. Each step in this process greatly amplifies the energy and then uses the ellipsoid to concentrate that energy for the next step of amplification. apparently was unaware about the technique everyone an otherwise little known physicist. Titled "The Super­ uses to light a cigarette in a storm. Therefore, the physicist bomb," the paper contained an entirely new suggestion believed that the only answer to the problem was tritium, that changed the outlook overnight. This was probably the and he showed the reporter a tiny bottle of T20, which he same idea independently arrived at by Edward Teller in the had kept in his closet. (The story with the T20 bottle in United States and Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union. Lawrence's closet is interesting in itself because it would Jetter suggested that it might not be necessary at all to not conform to presently acceptable safety standards re­ breed tritium in a reactor since the production of tritium garding radioactive materials.) Lawrence's idea, of course, could take place during a thermonuclear explosion itself. was the deuterium-tritium bomb. However, tritium is ra­ The idea was to use Li6D directly as the explosive with a dioactive with a half-life of 12.3 years, and since it must be sufficient number of neutrons acting as a catalyst for the generated in nuclear reactors by neutron bombardment of conversion of Li6 and D into He'* under the closed chain lithium, it would be necessary to continuously reproduce reaction:* the decayed tritium. The larger the DT superbomb capabil­ ity, the larger the tritium factory would have to be. A further T+D -. He4+ n + 17.6 MeV impediment for a weapon based on a DT explosive would 'T have been the need to liquify a mixture of DT, which can be 4.8 MeV + T + He4 < Li6 + n. done only with a large refrigeration system. In 1950, an interesting paper appeared in an obscure One important consequence of this emerged immedi­ German Physical Society magazine by a Dr. Ulrich Jetter,6 ately. Since Li6D is a salt and solid at room temperature,

FUSION 45 American Institute oTPhysics, Niels Bohr Library Where the Riemannian hydrodynamicist tradition flourished: The physics division at Cottingen University, 1907. Ludwig Prandtl is at the far left, row one.

there would be no need for an expensive refrigeration terium. One way out, of course, would be to use some system. The initial neutrons required to set off the reaction tritium first to ignite a DT detonation. This would raise the could be provided by the fission explosion. However, since temperature that would then ignite a DD detonation. some neutrons would always be lost, the thermonuclear Around 1952, I came up with some ideas about how an reaction would have to be coupled to a neutron multiplier.* H-bomb might actually work. To overcome the above- For this purpose, ordinary uranium offered itself and could mentioned difficulty of having the thermonuclear material be simultaneously used as a tamp. blown away by the radiation pressure of the exploding Samples taken from the fallout of the 1954 H-bomb tests atomic bomb, I thought it might be possible to solve this showed large quantities of U-238 fission products, confirm­ problem by putting several atomic bombs at the corner of ing, in fact, that the United States chose such a concept. a polyhedron with the thermonuclear fuse positioned in the Soviet tests showed the same. The first thermonuclear test center. The minimum number of atomic bombs required in 1952 known as the Mike test did not produce a fission would be four, occupying the corners of a tetrahedron. fallout. The explosion had a yield of 20 megatons, and since This, of course, was a configuration that would approach it seemed unlikely that the necessary quantities of tritium Guderley's spherical convergent shock wave in the limiting could be easily produced for such a large yield, this had to case of an infinite number of atomic bombs placed on the be a pure deuterium explosion. surface of a sphere. Furthermore, since the Guderley solu­ At the time, many people did not think that a thermonu­ tion predicted an r~°8 temperature rise, a 20-fold increase clear detonation in pure deuterium would be possible. in temperature from 5 X 107 degrees Kelvin, the tempera­ However, calculations show that a detonation in pure deu­ ture of an exploding fission bomb, to 109 degrees Kelvin ai terium, in fact, is possible because the DD reaction pro­ 100 keV could be reached by a convergent shock wave duces tritium and He3, both of which react strongly with beginning at a radius of 1 meter down to ~ 1 centimeter. deuterium. This two-stage thermonuclear combustion in Therefore, if a deuterium fuse were put in the center of deuterium makes possible a detonation as violent at that of convergence, it would become possible to have a deuter­ DT. However, in contrast to a DT detonation, the ignition ium deflagration going into an adjacent deuterium horn. temperature here is several 100 keV—roughly 10 times Since the use of many atomic bombs seemed impractical, higher than for the DT reaction. Therefore, it is much more I thought the same effect might perhaps be possible with difficult to ignite a thermonuclear detonation in pure deu­ just one bomb, using the generalization of a prolate ellips-

46 FUSION oid configuration* for large-amplitude Riemannian The approach proposed by Gottingen was similar to the waves.* For small-amplitude acoustic waves,* a disturbance stellarator concept. At that time the optimism for magnetic originating in one focus of a prolate ellipsoid is refocused confinement fusion was very great and everyone believed into the second focus. The so-called whispering galleries that DD fusion would be possible with it. With chemically make use of this effect. The same effect still occurs for driven shock waves, DD fusion was certainly out of reach. large-amplitude Riemannian waves but with an important (Today, of course, we know that DD fusion is also out of difference: the wall shape differs from a mathematical reach for magnetic fusion, but this was not known until the ellipsoid and dependson the Mach number.* Soviet scientist Trubnikov showed in 1958 at the Geneva The exact theory of how the wall has to be shaped is Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy that the found in Busemann's classical paper cited above. In a su­ reason for this is cyclotron radiation.*) perficial sense, then, the theory tells us how to "curve our Therefore, the only criticism Dr. von Weizsacker raised hand," if the match is an atomic bomb and the cigarette the against the convergent shock wave approach was that it thermonuclear explosive: Busemann's theory has a fore­ could work only with DT and then only in form of a runner in a 1908 theory by Prandtl and Meyer describing minibomb. When I replied that we should not fail to think isentropic* supersonic flow along a curved wall. about this possibility, Dr. von Weizsacker interrupted me In 1952,1 suggested how one could incorporate this effect and said, "That is where I stoo thinking." into an H-bomb design using the explosive proposed by After this remark, nobody dared say anything more, and Jetter. (This concept is shown in Figure 1). When the United the minibomb was "dropped" in favor of magnetic fusion. States exploded a large thermonuclear device in 1954,1 was During the same meeting I also discussed the imploding at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Gottingen. The shell approach by Trinks, but nobody gave it much cre­ experiments quite naturally attracted our interest and curi­ dence. Because of this setback we were condemned to osity about how the Americans did it. Most physicists then continue to work only theoretically. At one time the Krupp knew of the possibility of using Li6D as an explosive. Not Company showed some interest through Dr. Dieter Pfirsch, known, of course, was the confinement and ignition con­ then working at Krupp and today one of Europe's most cept. During an institute tea I mentioned to Werner Heisen- eminent plasma physicists. berg that I belived this could be done by the shock wave Because it appeared very difficult to start a uniform ellipsoid configuration. After thinking for a moment, Hei- implosion with a shell made up of high explosives that were senberg replied, "Yes, I can quite well imagine that this is simultaneously ignited at many points, I reconsidered the the way it is being done." But he added with a smile, "it is old idea of using a shock wave focusing ellipsoidal cavity. better not to think about these horrible things." The idea was to put the chemical explosive into one focus and the exploding wire into the other focus, but no exper­ Atoms for Peace iments were ever done. These ideas were borne out of a purely intellectual curi­ Around 1958, I began thinking about using particle osity and really did not excite me very much. At that time, beams* for microexplosion ignition, including the possibil­ the other highly hypothetical alternative possibility for ig­ ity of beams composed of microparticles. But this is an niting a thermonuclear microexplosion was infinitely more entirely different story, eventually involving many other interesting, because if it could be done it would open the scientists. This was also at the time that laser fusion began. prospect for an unlimited clean source of useful Looking back, the principal difference in our early think­ energy. ing compared to the large-scale U.S. weapons research From 1956 on, I was in Hamburg to help set up a nuclear program was the quest for controlled thermonuclear fusion research reactor under President Eisenhower's Atoms for by inertial confinement. This quest has not yet been Peace program. It was there that I met Dr. Diebner, under achieved, which, of course, shows that it is by orders of whom Trinks had worked during the war. Together with magnitude more difficult than the fission-triggered H- Professor Bagge, we began to think how we could possibly bomb first demonstrated by Teller and Sakharov. ignite a thermonuclear miniexplosion using chemical high explosives. Our idea was to use Guderley's solution in Noteg _—, __,—„ , ,—- - - . -—- conjunction with a superfast z-pinch* or exploding wire. 1. "12th European Laser Conference: Soviets Propose International Laser About a year later, Dr. von Weizsacker called for a meet­ Facility." Fusion, Feb. 1979, pp.11-14. ing of specialists in Gottingen where the major approaches 2. Busemann. now 78, is professor emeritus at the University of Colorado. He holds many distinguished honors from various countries and Is a to controlled fusion would be discussed. The purpose of member of the U.S. Academy of Engineering, an honor that has not been the meeting was to identify the research areas that in his given to many German scientists who came to the United States after opinion deserved funding. Before I went to the meeting 1945. In a letter written to me, Busemann says that when the Allied forces came to Germany, they showed great interest in his papers, some of Diebner warned me, "If Weizsacker learns that we want to which at that time were not published. make fusion in little bangs, he will immediately be against 3. R. Atkinson and F. Houtermans. 1928. Zeitschrift f. Physik 54: 656. 4. G. Guderley. 1942. Luftfahrtforschung 19: 302. it." 5. A. Busemann. 1942. Luftfahrtforschung 19:137. The way the meeting went, all approaches—other than 6. See for example, D. Irving, The German Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon the one proposed by Gottingen—were presented and shot and Schuster, 1967), p. 216; also "Habilltation Paper," University of Gflttingen, 1947; and German Patent No. 977825, Aug. 13,1952. down one after the other with the exception of ours. 7. U. Jetter. 1950. Physikalische Blatter 6:199; and ORNL-tr. 842.

FUSION 47

The Fallacy Of Scalar Elementarity

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., well-known internationally as This cited prejudice, sometimes identified as reduction- an economist, is a 1980 presidential candidate and is run­ ism, appeals for its authority to the most naive sort of ning in the New Hampshire Democratic Party primary. This popular prejudice. It not only asserts that the universe must article was initially presented at the Fusion Energy Foun­ be an aggregation of discrete building-blocks; it also asserts dation's June conference in Paris on the industrialization that the intrinsic character of such self-evident, "elemen­ of Africa as a supplement to LaRouche's main presenta­ tary" particularities must be of the simplest conceivable tion, "The Myth About Equilibrium Economics." The text quality. It asserts, furthermore, that the comparison of the of the LaRouche speech, as well as a summary of the relations among such elementary particles must be of the questions and answers will appear in a forthcoming book simplest quality—that is, scalar. of conference papers titled Blueprint for the Industriali­ In the crude British materialism of the late 17th through zation of Africa. mid-19th centuries, the image of the universe was broadly Newtonian. One started with a priori notions of visible * * * space and of time and measured action in such space-time geometries by the standard of homogeneous, scalar exten­ THE PRINCIPAL MENTAL blockage against comprehend­ sion in both a priori space and a priori time. Mass was ing Bernhard Riemann's 1854 Habilitation theses "On the included within space-time as another scalar, whose a priori Hypotheses Upon Which Geometry Is Based," is the wide­ relationship in space was action-at-a-distance. To the extent spread prejudice that insists that the quantification of phys­ that the British faction considered itself obliged to take ics must be ultimately premised on scalar-metric compari­ notice of Lagrange, it degraded Lagrange from a represent­ sons of relations among so-called elementary particulari­ ative of the "hydrodynamicist" currents of Continental ties.1 The same mental blockage, the same axiomatic folly, Science to an heir of Newton, and it treated rotation merely must tend to prevent some specialists from comprehending as an added, a priori scalarity. competently the deeper implications of my contributions Admittedly, this British "materialist" viewpoint under­ to economic science. went some painful adjustments during the 17th century. As the Edinburgh-Cambridge faction associated with Charles Babbage noted with public alarm, beginning the 1820s and The formation of these highly ordered plasma vortex fila­ 1830s, the level of science achieved in the United States (for ments, photographed in a plasma focus device, cannot be example, Joseph Henry, et al.), France, Germany, and Russia explained by conventional theories. not only had far outdistanced British science, but only a Photograph courtesy of Dr. Winston Bostick handful of British specialists were competent even to teach

FUSION 49 the new qualities of mathematical physics being developed among the continental heirs of Descartes, Leibniz, and Carnot. This clash between the Edinburgh-Cambridge and Oxford factions within Britain led to such work as the famous project associated principally with the Cambridge faction's James Clerk Maxwell. Maxwell was the leader among those British specialists who syncretized, Delphi- cally, key aspects of the accomplishments of a plagiarized Continental Science, without tolerating any influence counter to the reductionist methodological tradition of Locke, Newton, Boyle, et al.2 Although Maxwell and his successors generalized British reductionist physics into a form more appropriate to de­ scribe the accomplishments of Continental Science, there was no other quality of methodological improvement over the reductionism of Newton. The same a priori assumptions embedded in Newtonian schemas were merely extended into the case for a more generalized number of degrees of freedom, to achieve a mere, Delphic descriptive power with respect to modern experimental inquiry and proce­ dures of instruction.

A Crucial Flaw A related flaw afflicted the Einstein-Weyl program. Al­ though both Einstein and Hermann Weyl were gifted per­ sons, Albert Einstein's importance, relative to some among his leading scientific contemporaries, not only was exagger­ ated but this exaggeration tended to assist lack of proper regard for other important currents of scientific thought during the first decades of this century. More specifically, although Einstein's program was described as Riemannian, that program was poor and defective from the standpoint represented in its most concentrated expression in Rie- mann's cited 1854 theses on underlying hypotheses. Ein­ stein's universe was determined by a scalar principle of fundamental action. Therein lies the crucial flaw and limi­ tation of the Einstein-Weyl program. As lone as we tolerate the embedding of reductionist notions of elementarity and scalaritv or relativistir space, we have nhli^ed niirsplves to continue—in one disguise or another—to look at the universe mathematically as an Aggregation of particles undergoing action-at-distance. Al­ though we may superimpose additional assumptions posit­ ing the existence of a physical-spatial field, these additional assumptions improve the power of physics by means of introducing an insoluble contradiction among the totality of the axiomatic assumptions so aggregated. Those additional assumptions concerning the efficiency of some form of "unified field" are a considerable improve­ ment in physics. Such assumptions bring mathematical physics toward greater agreement with the experimental evidence bearing upon the actual constitution of our uni­ verse. Unfortunately, the fact that such assumptions are Photographs courtesy of Dr. Winston Bostick irreconcilable with particularate elementarity and scalarity "The central feature of the physics of Riemann is a preoc­ has been largely avoided, if not exactly overlooked. We cupation with those cases of continuous action, ostensi­ move in the proper directions, but most among us so far bly according to a characteristic of action, n, in which there refuse to cut ourselves free from the anchor of inherited is a discontinuity. . . that brings the results of continuing reductionist errors. causal action into a domain of characteristic n +1. . . ." The direction of a true solution to such contradictions is

50 FUSION the crux of Riemann's cited 1854 theses. I refer now to characteristic corresponding to n+2. It is the characteristic portions of The Theory of the European Monetary Fund.1 that orders the succession of the three domains, "Inferno," In that, cited location, with the aid of Dante Alighieri's "Purgatory," "Paradise"—n, n + 1, n+2—that is N. Commedia and other pedagogical devices, we communi­ In respect to the succession of cantos, we adduce n+1 or cate the sensuous reality of a multiply connected Rieman- n+2 from the characteristic subsuming all advances from nian manifold. Each subsumed domain of such a manifold c(n) to c(n+1). That yields either n +1 or n+2. The transition is characterized in and for itself by a characteristic analo­ from n, to n + 1, to n+2, defines characteristic N. Character­ gous to the notion of invariance. The successive domains istic N is thus proven to be embedded also within the unit are then ordered, using the denotations of n, n+1, n+2 ... of action leading from each c(n) to c(n + 1). to identify as transfinites such characteristics of action In other words, Riemann's physics is coherent with Plato's within the respective domains. Treating causally connected case for the "hypothesis of the higher hypothesis."4 With emergence of such mutually efficient domains as the pri­ respect to the physics, the actual ontology of the universe mary focus of our inquiry, we investigate the ordering of as a whole is that implied by the implications of the "hy­ the series n, n + 1, n+2... . The transinvariant correspond­ pothesis of the higher hypothesis." ing to such an ordering we may denote by the capital letter We focus now on the provable connection between the N, with the added specification that the characteristic ac­ hypothesis of the higher hypothesis, as a matter of the tion associated with N is the passing-over from a given do­ internal characteristics of human knowledge, to the actual main of reference, n, to a successor domain, n + 1. ontology of that universe that human activity is willfully What is "elementary" in such a manifold? It is the charac­ mastering. teristic action represented by a going-over from n to n + 1. In general, the proof is this. As we show in other pub­ This means that that same characteristic of N is also lished locations and as we identify the proof in The Theory embedded, over and above n as such, within the action of the European Monetary Fund, two interconnected con­ occurring in n's subsumed domain. In other words, the siderations prove that no fixed level of human knowledge assumption of simple, particularate elementarily is proven satisfies the requirement for continued human existence. to be an absurdity in any universe within which the succes­ First, assuming a fixed population corresponding to a sive emergence of biosphere and man from "inorganic" fixed mode of production, the relative finiteness of the planetary existence occurs. man-altered primary resources defined by suth a technol­ That, in first approximation, is the conception embedded ogy means that the continued existence of man in such a in Riemann's cited 1854 theses. fixed form is not possible. Only advances in technology, by cheapening the cost of exploitation and maintenance of The Problem of Knowledge old forms of resources and by defining new, added ranges Once we have gone so far as that, we are immediately of resources, can enable even a culture of a fixed popula­ confronted with the need to treat the problem of human tion-scale to survive. knowledge more rigorously. Second, the possible population-density for any quality The proof of man's knowledge of the universe is man's of per capita existence is immediately a function of the level demonstrated willful mastery of the universe. This is not a of technology. Furthermore, in the final analysis, the abso­ question of whether some individuals are enabled to exist lute size of the human population is determined by extant from year to year. It is not a matter of individual experience technology of productive and related practice. Finally, in or small-group experience. Can man expand his population the same vein, man's progress from lower to higher levels in such a way that the> reflected per capita power of the of culture occurs through elimination or simply depletion average individual member of that population over nature of those conditions that represent primary resources for also advances? Those kinds of advances in knowledge that lower levels of culture and smaller scales of the human enable such a result supply the basis for proof of what is to population. It is not possible to return from a higher to be considered valid scientific knowledge. lower level of culture. Rather, any course of action to such This proof is not associated merely with particular bits of an effect must produce new forms of genocidal famine, knowledge. The proof is associated with advances from one epidemic, and probably also sylvatics and other devolutions "level" of knowledge to a more-perfected form of knowl­ of the environment and a plunge of such a society into edge. It is the advancement of new knowledge over old bestialized savagery. knowledge that represents the datum of our inquiry. We Therefore, the ostensibly fixed level of knowledge cor­ must abstract the advancement as such from the particular responding to any one moment in human culture does not knowledges within whose succession that advancement is represent a continuous mastery of nature. Therefore, no immediately situated for abstraction. fixed form of existent knowledge can embody or ade­ If we identify the characteristics of the "Purgatory" quately reflect the- actual lawful ordering of the universe. succession of cantos in the Commedia as n+1, and the Human mastery of the universe's lawful ordering is em­ succession characteristic of the "Paradise" cantos as n+2, bodied, uniquely, in those creative-mental processes that we have the following. The advancement represented by subsume successive revolutions in scientific knowledge the succession of cantos in the "Purgatory" is the ordering and technology. Man's knowledge of the universe is lo­ principle, the characteristic corresponding to n + 1. Simi­ cated uniquely in those modes of creation of hypothesis larly, the succession of cantos in the "Paradise" is the that provably generate successful, successive scientific rev-

FUSION 51 olutions—not any momentary state of formal scientific human mind that is uniquely proven to be in continuously knowledge, as prejudice defines existing, mathematical efficient correspondence with the lawful ordering of the physics or an equivalent today. universe. The ontology of our universe can only be that ontology that is in agreement with the adduced principles Successive Scientific Revolutions - of self-improving generation of higher hypotheses. Therefore, the lawful ordering of the universe is not in That is nothing but an updated restatement of Plato's correspondence with what we regard generally as the proof: the proof that the fundamental lawful organization existing internal (mathematical-logical-ontological) orga­ and ontology of our universe is Riemannian—not that of nization of present-day schoolboy physics. Human knowl­ Newton, Maxwell, et al. edge efficiently, continuously maintains willful mastery of The central feature of the physics of Riemann is a the lawful ordering of the universe only through succes­ preoccupation with those cases of continuous action, sive scientific and technological revolutions. We must ostensibly according to a characteristic of action n, in abstract, therefore, a continuously revolutionary principle which there occurs a discontinuity—from the standpoint of hypothesis-generation from successful branches of hu­ of characteristic n+1. That, for example, is the driving man cultural development. That principle of self-improv­ insight behind Riemann's treatment of shock waves as ing generation of higher hypotheses is the activity of the well as the problem that confronts us today in assessing

52 FUSION The fact that the investigation begins with counting of calories does not imply we have succumbed to the reduc­ tionist assumptions, in which energy is a quantum suscep- " tible of elementary definition in scalar terms. Our proce­ dure, our method is the same that we apply to Dante's Commed/a, in The Theory of the European Monetary Fund, and other locations. Although, like the reduction­ ists, we begin with crude empirical measurements of actions on the macroscale of everyday or analogous ex­ perience and experiment, we proceed in a direction exactly opposite to that of the reductionists. Contrary to Goethe's friend, G.W.F. Hegel, we cannot and must not order societies in a post hoc ergo propter hoc sort of time-series of assumed causal action. Human history is studded with cultural sewers, with degenerated cultures -such as Ptolemaic Egypt and the late Roman Republic and Roman Empire, that are hideous retrogres­ sions. Contrary to Hegel, chattel-slavery was never a nec­ essary characteristic of the human condition. Nonetheless, beginning with reconstruction of the char­ acteristic modes of existence of our ancient ancestors, working forward from the Pleistocene, we can construct a time-series for those moments of human development in which progress did occur. By successful, we mean a culture whose advances in mode of production and life permitted an expansion of population within that culture, under correlated conditions of a rise in the per capita power over nature and conditions of life in that culture. The first characteristic of such progress is an increase in the per capita ratio of useful calories of energy. Animal husbandry, for example, increases per capita control over calories of animal life, and hence of vegetable life. De­ velopment of agriculture increases per capita calories at a society's disposal. Tools increase the number of calories of the biosphere and other resources controlled per calorie of human activity. However, it is not merely the number of calories per capita throughput which is decisive. If the value of-the expression s'/(c+v) approaches zero, even though the per capita caloric values of c and v rise, the society is doomed to a Malthusian crisis and collapse.5 The continued devel­ opment of society requires, as we show elsewhere, that the social rate of profit s'/(c+v) must rise as the combined the appearance of so-called anomalies within intensified, per capita caloric throughput of c and v rise. controlled plasmas. Karl Weierstrass's treatment of the The advancement of a society demands a higher level determination of discontinuities and the treatment of of per capita culture, which means higher per capita discontinuities within the framework of Georg Cantor's caloric values for v. The combined effect of marginal notion of transfinites are complementary aspects of the resources and advances in technology requires a higher same line of inquiry. • rate of rise of magnitude of c than of v. So a constant rate The most direct approach to solving the essential ques­ of expansion of the culture requires that the magnitude tions subsumed by this is obtained not in experimental of allocable "free energy"—over and above maintaining physics as such, but within the framework of economic the society on an existing scale, in an existing technolog­ science of the condition to which my work has advanced ical mode—not only must rise per capita, but must rise that science. per capita in respect to the doubly rising, per capita That is grounded, as I have elaborated the matter combined caloric values of throughput for (c+v), the elsewhere, by successive corrections of a simple sort of latter for the energy density condition of (v) proportional thermodynamic analysis of economics along the lines of to (c + v). our foregoing outline of the problem of defining human This is not the end of the proposition. knowledge. The advances in technology are the results of inventions,

FUSION 53 throughput consumed as v is rising. This condition, satis­ fying those constraints, is a condition approximating—in first approximation-—what we term negentropy.

Negentropy This must be qualified further. To the extent that there is continuous progress in a culture satisfying the require­ ment of negentropy, creative-mental innovations in one moment are mediated through development of the tech­ nology of production and conditions of life. This gives empirical reality to the discoveries that are represented and alters the material experience of the society in such a fashion as to provide the conditions favoring further advances in technological discoveries and in scientific knowledge. Thus, a general line of advancement in scientific knowl­ edge mediates its self-development through technological progress in an expanding society. This absolutely distinguishes man from the beasts. Man willfully evolves both his knowledge and conditions of life to higher levels of negentropy. It is this creative-mental power of mankind which is the source of wealth-creating powers, and thus the source of all wealth. The source of the negentropy of cultural development is the negentropy springing from the self-development of man's willful mas­ tery of the universe. Since man continuously masters the universe in this negentropic way, and in no other way, man's knowledge is in efficient correspondence with the lawful ordering in the universe only when that knowledge is in correspond­ ence with the indicated appreciation of the negentropic functions associated with s'/(c+v). It is such self-devel­ oping, self-subsisting negentropic transformations to higher "free energy" ratios for s'/(c+v) that corresponds to the unit of elementary action we must define. It follows that the universe as a whole is a primary reality as a whole—not an aggregation of elementary particular­ ities. For reasons we have summarily outlined here, any other ontological conception of the universe must nec­ essarily be arbitrary and absurd, since this is the only conception that corresponds to the actuality of human experience. This universe is not only a primary elemen­ tarily with respect to itself; it is a self-subsisting being, creatively elaborating itself in a negentropic way—as Plato insisted, and as Riemannian physics requires. Consequently, from the standpoint of contemporary physics, the most elementary unit of action to be encoun­ inventions that are in aggregate advances in technology tered in the efficient mastery of physical processes can not and hence in the qualities of scientific knowledge subsum­ be anything but a unit of action defined in respect to self- ing qualities of technological advance. These advances are subsisting, self-developing—self-reflexive—negentropy as realized through free energy (s1), and have the categorical the fundamental unit of action of reference. Correspond­ effect of raising the caloric throughput per capita of v ingly, those experimental expressions that correspond to while increasing the ratio c/v, and also either maintaining the most elementary feature of action in physical processes a constant or rising value for resulting social values of s'/ must be nonsimple and must consequently defy scalar (v+c). In general, therefore, a rising social value of s'/(v+ metrics for their interpretation. c.) under conditions of rising energy-density of v is the These conclusions are rigorously necessary and are precondition for the continuous, successful existence of rigorously proven, on condition that we define science as a culture. , man's coherent knowledge of his continuing successful The constraints are rising values for s'/(c+v), under the mastery of the lawful ordering of the universe for present condition that c/v is rising, and that the per capita caloric and future human existence.

54 FUSION As Friedrich Schiller correctly understood Immanuel the case, as Ibn Sina, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, and Plato Kant's key error, Kant misdefined duty as a state of self- have shown, that the universe as a whole is properly imposed wretchedness of spirit, a condition of unhappi- viewed by man as a self-subsisting, intelligent, creative ness, self-denial, of "unfreedom." Although Kant was being. If one calls that being God, then one defines sensible, in an undefined way, of the reality and univer­ oneself as different from the mere beasts exactly to the salizing efficiency of creative powers, Kant despaired of a extent one, oneself, acts and develops as a mortal being knowable form for such efficiency within the domain of in such an image of God. To master the lawful ordering the understanding of mortal man. Kant's understanding of the universe is to perfect one's knowledge and practice could not escape the mechanistic misconception of ne­ in atonement with the lawful ordering of the universe. cessity. Kant could not understand that there is no proper One's creative powers oblige one to conduct one's mortal conflict between Necessity and Freedom. Freedom, con­ life not merely in imitation of divine, creative powers, but trary to Kant's view of unhappy service to duty, is not as a conscious instrument of the continuing, creative violation of law, but the initiation and realization of those development of that universe—a universe that is self- creative discoveries that correspond to man's continuous subsisting, creative being. willful mastery of—and thus atonement with—the lawful Furthermore, insofar as one is merely mortal, one is ordering of our universe. Scientific discovery is the ephemeral. Yet, as one is creative in conformity with the exemplar of the realization of true Freedom by the universalist principles of perfection, one also divine. The individual. mortal and the divine are thus consubstantial. Schiller's refutation of the Kantian paradoxes was bril­ One may interpret this as theology or as science. So far liant on this point, but not otherwise an original concep­ in this account, the two are the same. There is no possi­ tion. Philo Judaeus of Alexandria had refuted the Aristo­ bility of a competent science that is not consistent with telian school on the same grounds nearly two millennia such a theology. Perhaps for those whose self-estimation earlier. and development locates them yet in the condition Dante In the Aristotelian schema, God, by creating a world of Alighieri associates with "Inferno" and "Purgatory," permanent laws and, presumably, conservation of a scalar where they cannot comprehend science, theology in the notion of energy, made himself impotent in face of such ordinary sense is their access to truth, to the divine. So, I a predetermined lawful ordering within his creation. ally myself ecumenically with the Neoplatonic Judaism of Hence, either God is dead or as good as dead, or the Philo, with Apostolic Christianity, and with the Neopla­ material universe must be brought to an end so that God tonic theology of the Koran. might once again become efficient. Thus, the folly of From the standpoint of Neoplatonic ecumenicism, that Aristotle was clear to Philo Judaeus. is as far as science as science is obliged to intrude upon In the full scope of the Aristotelian system and tradition, essentials of theological matters. there are included those two, contradictory elements For me and my collaborators, the creative potentialities otherwise associated with Manichean cultism. The Horus of mankind, the potentialities we exemplify in our image of the Ptolemaic version of the Isis-cult is both Apollo and of successive, successful revolutions in scientific knowl­ Dionysius, both the Son of God and Satan. So, Toynbee is edge and practice, are the exemplification of the divine. an exemplary Manichean, an exemplary Isis-cultist, and We are the instruments and servants of that self-subsisting, also a true Aristotelian. However, in ordinary discussions creative being that is our universe as a whole, in which of Aristotelianism during modern times, we emphasize service it is our duty, the meaning of our ephemeral, the "apollonian," as opposed to the irrationalist-existen- mortal lives, that we perfect the human species, that the tialist aspects. We are speaking of the kind of Aristoteli­ species may advance to the fullness of its task as the anism that requires a "Big Bang" dogma respecting the instrument for mediating the greater creative develop­ origins of the universe, the same "Big Bang"—or "equilib­ ment of our universe as a whole. So, we must live; to that rium economics"—theology rightly denounced as folly by end we must know, must discover, and must so guide our Philo Judaeus. informed practice. Admittedly, we have turned abruptly to an aspect of the To*that end, our task is clearly defined by the circum­ matter that most observers would tend to associate with stances of the worfd today. theology, rather than science. This is no extravagance, no digression on the writer's part. The British doctrines of a The Human Condition "pulsating" or Toynbeean universe and the alternative What is the human condition? "Big Bang" account are not judgments that originate in Approximately three-quarters of the human population astrophysical evidence, but in the overtly or shamefacedly live in regions of the world we euphemistically call the theological prejudices British astronomers bring to the developing sector. In a very large part, they are con­ interpretation of the evidence. demned to live proximate to the condition of beasts, so Therefore, without calling attention to the Isis-priestly very often in a worse condition than a farmer of the robes worn under the agnostic or atheistic smock of industrialized nations would tolerate for his cows, his today's anglophile scientists, we cannot bring to light the swine. In the industrialized nations, we count ourselves true source of the controversies that continue to beset fortunate if a bare majority of our adult populations have science to this date. reached midway through the upward course of Dante's It is provable, and conclusively so, as we have outlined Purgatory. Accompanying the economic and moral stag-

FUSION 55 "Human mastery of the universe's lawful ordering is embodied, unique­ ly, in those creative-mental processes that subsume successive revolutions in scientific knowledge and technol­ ogy. ..." Left: Milling wheat by traditional method; Right: A top view of the PDX tokamak at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. United Nations nation and decay we have tolerated, notably during the man beings. In each such mind there is the potential of past two decades, ever-larger portions of our populations, the divine. especially our youth, are being plunged into dionysian Our task, as the servants and instruments of that creative cults or some other reflection of Dante's Inferno. being that is our universe, is not such miserable degra­ We are at the verge of war. We are informed by some dation as I am obliged, to my regret, to have so accurately that it is a war whose radioactive cesium might conceivably summarized. Our business is to bring this planet into eliminate both human life and higher animal life during order, as a garden for mankind's existence, and then to its course and early aftermath. We tolerate "International begin our broader duties in the solar system and the Monetary Fund conditionalities" and analogous policies. universe more generally. Through the realization of such policies, we tolerate the That true task before us is not some ineffable dream of engendering of the spread of famine and epidemic and a distant time to come. It is an order in human affairs that murderous social chaos among especially the most vul­ could be brought within sight of new generations a nerable of the so-called developing nations. Not only quarter of a century to 50 years hence. To bring such a have the leading perpetrators of these policies estimated state into being by such a future point is our task. We that such policies mean reducing the human population must rise above continuing to tolerate the cultist refuse in the order of three-quarters during two decades. It is associated with British ideologies and their like. We who probable that such a process of large-scale and intensive accept our responsibilities as creative instruments of cre­ devolution of entire continents might unleash new com­ ation, must proceed from the kind of knowledge agree­ binations of epidemics and sylvatics, whose consequences able to the work of the coming century and use that could be as certain a destruction of our species through knowledge today to make such a coming century a pos­ biological catastrophe as through the most pessimistically sibility. estimated consequences of general nuclear warfare. Science and morality are, properly conceived, one and Yet, nearly all of those persons facing such threatened the same matter. We must bring to an end the influence destruction, each person living in such depraved forms of of that British materialist doctrine, misnamed "science," assorted moral and material conditions, are precious hu- that is suited variously only to the baboonlike existence

56 FUSION PPPL outlined by Thomas Hobbes, the tamed baboons of John Notes 1. Bernhard Riemann's 1854 Habilitation Paper, which qualified him as an Locke's doctrine, or the chattering, or the tmbecilic ape- instructor at Gottingen University, can be found in the 1876 edition of men of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's neurotic fantasies. We his Collected Works (Gesammelte Mathematische Werke), ed. H. We­ must cease to equate "scientific objectivity" with an ab­ ber, pp. 254-269. The Fusion Energy Foundation expects to publish a new English translation of this foundational treatise in the near future. sence of morality. 2. The term Delphi is used here to indicate a deliberately misleading This is not to propose the superimposition of some effort. The Delphi Technique was developed by the Rand Corporation as part of a postwar project to control scientific work, especially work arbitrary directive exogenously upon scientific inquiry. on the frontiers of science. For a full description of the Rand project, The most seminal single influence in the development of see "The Delphi Technique: Writing Off Scientific Discovery" by Mary modern science was the 15th century Cardinal Nicholas of Gilbertson in Fusion (May 1979), pp. 40-47. 3. The Theory of the European Monetary Fund, written by LaRouche, was Cusa. In this matter, one ought not to merely extract published in Oct. 1978 as a supplement to the Executive Intelligence certain influential, isolated conceptions from Cusa, but Review. rather examine his methodology—the true source of his 4. For a discussion of the "hypothesis of the higher hypothesis," see the author's "A Theory of Development for African Labor," Fusion (June influence on Kepler, Gilbert, Descartes, Leibniz. We stand 1979), especially pp. 54-56. today on the continent of Europe, whose scientific heri­ 5. The terminology used here—s, v, and c—is discussed in the author's tage runs through Desccartes and Leibniz, through the "Theory of the European Monetary Fund." It can also be found in "Economics Becomes a Science," by Steven Bardwell and Uwe Parpart hydrodynamic school of Euler, the Bernouillis, Lazare in Fusion (July 1979), pp. 32-50. Carnot and his heirs, and great Gdttingen. Bernhard Rie- In brief, v= variable capital, the portion of the total product produced mann, the greatest 19th century representative of Conti­ through a given production-consumption cycle representing the cost of reproducing the productive labor force at the same cultural-material nental Science, like Leibniz before him, was able to level; c = constant capital, the portion of total product representing the succeed in his scientific contributions because his creative- cost of replacement of plant, equipment, and raw materials at current level and quality of production; s=surplus product, the portion of total mental powers were governed by those Platonic/Neopla- product exceeding the quantity (c+v); and s'=absolute surplus, the tonic conceptions with which I have associated myself portion of total product available for reinvestment after deducting from here. the surplus product the cost of reproduction of nonreproductive labor in the private and public sectors at current levels. A moral science and a fruitful science are one and the The expression s'/(c+v) equals the rafe of surplus production. same thing.

FUSION 57 How Technology by David Diehl, Jr.

David Diehl, with other members of his family, owns and runs a 5,000-acre grain farm in Dansville, Mich. A past president of the Michigan Corn Growers Association, Diehl is one of the best known farmers in the state. On Aug. 3, he spoke at a Southfield, Mich, forum on the energy crisis sponsored by the Fusion Energy Foundation and the Inde­ pendent Voters League of Michigan. This is an edited ver­ sion of Diehl's speech to the audience of 250. * * *

WHAT IS A FARMER? He's a plumber. He's a carpenter. He's a welder. He's an electrician, a machinist, a mechan­ ic, a financier, and a statesman. One of the advantages to being a farmer is that you have to become conversant in many different areas. Most of them are technological. Many of them may be over your head. But it's a fun game to be in. Farmers in this country comprise a relatively small pro­ portion of the population. The Department of Agricul­ ture's definition puts it at around 4 percent. Twenty per­ cent of that group produces somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of all the food and fiber in this country. To a large degree, the productive capacity of U.S. agriculture stays in the hands of 1 percent of the population. Farmers are a very small segment of the population; yet because of us, somewhere around 40 percent of the popu­ lation derives its livelihood directly. I'm talking about the people that build agricultural machinery, that produce the fertilizer and the transportation systems that are needed. I'm talking about the grocer down the street and the truck-drivers that have to deliver the products to the gro­ cery stores and the processors that produce the food as you know it in the grocery store. American agriculture uses more steel than the automo­ tive industry. It uses more rubber than the automotive industry. On my farm, I wear out—in replacement parts— enough steel every year to produce 1,000 automobiles. Made the American Farmer

The value of farms in this country exceeds that of all the have never seen a city. Today, by the time he gets out of stock listed on the New York Stock Exchange and the high school he has been in at least one and probably two American Stock Exchange. That makes us sound like we're or three of our leading urban centers. He's been exposed a pretty wealthy group of people. Let me counter that with to what happens in the outside world. He has the same the statement that in my operation, which is considered a opportunities of education and has acquired many of the well-run farm, that wealth is jointly owned among a cou­ same attitudes that city dwellers have. ple of banks and production credit associations. A very The big thing that made this possible is cheap, abundant small portion of it actually remains in family hands. energy. The farmer got out of the field and out from behind the horse when he had the gasoline engine and The American Farmer the gasoline to run it. The farmer got into town when he America's farmers are a unique group of human beings. had the car that made that 20-mile trip possible. He made Fierce independence is almost a prerequisite for being a it only occasionally with a horse; but when he had a car he farmer. Most farmers, because of the type of work they could make it every week. do, tend to have very strong moral or religious beliefs. For When he got the telephone, he could call his neighbors many years, farmers have been sort of a low man on the and find out what was going on. The radio brought the social totem pole. The typical impression of a farmer has world into His living room. All of a sudden America's been a man in overalls and a straw hat with a weed sticking farmer realized that there were a lot more things available out of the corner of his mouth. He usually had dirty hands than what he had—and he wanted them. So he went to and dirty feet, and normally a very distinct odor. work and got them. All of this happens to be necessary to the job. If you Cheap energy brought electricity into his home. This happen to be in a livestock operation, if you work around meant that he no longer had to rely on a windmill. When animals, it's pretty hard not to acquire the smell. My fami­ the wind didn't blow, he no longer had to pump water by ly's operation happens to be a grain farm. Every once on a hand for 20 thirsty animals. He could milk his cows with an while we goof and some of the stuff gets a little rotten. We electric milking machine. A lot of the labor and drudgery have to clean it up, and there is nothing—I mean absolute­ was gone. ly nothing—that stinks worse than rotten soybeans. However, in a given day, you could well find a farmer Energy and Agriculture getting dirty shoveling manure or cleaning up around the These changes mean something else as well. Today we soybeans and half an hour later sitting across the desk in a are at the point where if somebody shuts off the flow of suit and tie negotiating a million-dollar loan with a friendly diesel fuel, gasoline, natural gas, or electricity to Ameri­ banker. ca's farms, our food production is gone. In Michigan, for Farmers in this country started out as a basically self- example, a farm fuel shortage could hurt us very badly. sufficient lot. They had to be. They didn't have access to For every day after the 10th of May the corn planting is implement dealers as we know them today. If they used a delayed, for whatever reason, it costs us one bushel to the plow point, chances are they had to make it themselves. acre. Ten days without fuel could lose us 10 bushels to the As we improved our transportation network and our ed­ acre. When it comes time to harvest the crop, after the ucational system, as we developed the modern communi­ 15th of October we lose a bushel to the acre of what we've cations system we have today, farmers came closer to their already grown if we don't have it in the barn. city cousins. One-hundred years ago a young farmer may Concerned? Yes, we're very concerned. To the point of

FUSION 59 U.S. agricultural production is more energy-efficient overall because it uses intensive methods of mechanization and chemical inputs. As the table shows, increased irrigation and fertilizer energy per hectare and reduced manual labor lead to dramatic increases in rice production. Most important, such increased productivity requires the qualitative develop­ ment of the most important natural resource—the human mind. And as the graph shows, the small farm model uses more—not less—fuel.

asking for 100 percent allocations? No. If we've got a One of things American farmers take pride in is, the fact problem right now, we'll take our share of it along with that we are capable of putting on the American table a diet everyone else. What concerns me is that it isn't necessary. that is rivaled nowhere in the world. We've got some There are solutions and we ought to be working for them. problems doing this, however. An example: Michigan has One solution people are talking about is gasohol. There a fairly healthy fruit industry. DDT, which was widely used are some real moral, political, and economic issues on this by fruit growers, was banned several years ago. This hap­ question. I've seen enough to be convinced that we can pened although there is not one documented case of produce alcohol pretty effectively cost-wise. But are we human injury or death from DDT anywhere in the world. willing to sacrifice food for liquid fuel when that fuel may The chemicals that we've been using to replace DDT ser­ not be necessary? I'd lay even money right now that within iously injure or kill at least one person in Michigan every the next two or three years we'll have an alcohol plant on year. I have a hard time with the moral judgment of possi­ our farm. I can take the corn stalks out of the field— bly killing a few birds as opposed to very probably killing basically waste material—and convert them to alcohol to several human beings. If I had my choice about using run my own machinery. This means that I won't be de­ some of these chemicals, I'd be tickled to death to do pendent on diesel fuel and gasoline, as I am now. away with them. If U.S. farmers have a better option, But the economics don't work to bring that form of they'll use it. alcohol to Detroit. Corn stalks are a bulky item and expen­ Government has a tremendous effect on agriculture. sive to transport. We need to look for other solutions, and One of the areas important to me as a grain farmer is the there are other solutions to be found. export potential of the industry. Without these exports, One of the things I look to is cheap electricity. Since American agriculture would be dead. With the proper Three Mile Island, the nuclear potential for electricity pro­ government support, exports could go to a level un­ duction has been stepped on pretty hard. That bothers me dreamed of now. We can produce food more cheaply because I can see down the road to the potential of fusion than anywhere else in the world, and that's not going to energy, and with that, an extremely cheap electricity sup­ change. We can produce agricultural technology at a tre­ ply. This could bring the opportunity to convert salt water mendous rate. Let's help some of the other people do into fresh water at a reasonable price, an opportunity to some of the things they don't know how to do yet. irrigate major portions of the globe and produce good One of the unique things about U.S. agriculture is the quality food at a reasonable price. historical role of the cooperative extension service. The

60 FUSION standard for tractors. In our case, we had that system on both tractors. But the second cab had a little sticker, about two inches by one inch, saying that the cab met federal standards. The reason this sticker cost us $2,000 is that the manufacturer had to assume more liability under federal standards. The other example involves the combine, a big, expen­ sive, complicated piece of harvesting machinery. When used in the proper manner, the combine is an extremely safe piece of machinery. But quite a few accidents have happened on combines because farmers have not used good judgment operating them. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration came in and tried to set stand­ ards for this machine. A bright young attorney on OSHA's staff who had never been on a farm, had never seen a combine, had never even seen a picture of a combine, drew up regulations for it. This I find a little bit disgusting, because the way the standard was set, there was no physi­ cal way to get the crop into the machine so that the combine could do its job. It cost a coalition of U.S. farm organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to get these standards changed.

The Family Farm in America One of the other issues in agriculture in recent years is the buying of land by foreign individuals. On this issue I can speak from first-hand experience. We sold 200 of our 5,000 acres plus. The reason we sold it was purely economic. It cost us $100 an acre to own that land, whether we did a thing with it or not. We can lease the land back on a 30-year option for $50 an acre. Your math doesn't have to be any better than mine to see that the sale means quite a role of the extension service has been to disseminate few dollars in my pocket. Although the same thing is technology back to the farmer, and it has been extremely happening in quite a few places in the United States, the effective. In cooperation with agricultural universities and percentage of land being sold to foreigners is quite small. the agricultural research service of the federal government, The largest buyer of American farmland is still the Ameri­ information developed at the academic level is applied can farmer. very rapidly at the farm level. In fact, today techniques One other area of concern for many people—but not to being tested at the federal and state level are being simul­ me—is the takeover of agriculture by corporate opera­ taneously applied on farms. There are a couple of instan­ tions. First of all, you've got to separate corporate farms ces in our operation where we applied a technology be­ from family operations that have become incorporated for fore it had been recommended by the university because tax and liability reasons. I'll be amazed if in a couple of we could see without question that it would work well in years Diehl Fields isn't a corporate farm. But it will still be a our operation. family operation. It's almost impossible for farmers to put together a re­ A second point is that statistics show that fewer farms search and development program like that of General are being sold today to actual corporations than at any Motors or General Electric. So we need the kind of re­ other time in our history. I can tell you why: corporations search that is being done in our colleges and universities can't make money out of farming. The farmer puts in long with the support of the federal government. And I'm sorry hours, and he has to. It's pretty hard for a corporation to to say that this work has been rather dramatically cut back find someone willing to work a 130 hour week and do it for in the past five years. six weeks in a row. There isn't enough money in agricul­ Farming has a tendency to be a dangerous occupation. ture to pay somebody to do this kind of a job, unless it's In general, the accidents that happen are brought on by the farmer who has his family, his money, and his farm on carelessness. The federal government has tried to set up the line. standards that protect us from ourselves. I have a couple This is one of the reasons that the family farm will of examples of the sorts of things that have happened as a remain viable in this country. Farmers are pretty special result. A few years back we bought a new tractor. Six people. In fact, farmers are great. If you ever have a months later we bought a second, identical model. The chance to go out and visit a modern farming operation, second cab cost us $2,000 more. Why? Because the federal you'll find that most farmers will welcome you. You're government had come out with the roll-over protection welcome to come to Diehl Fields in Dansville.

FUSION 61 change observed in the present work Research is a universal characteristic of matter regardless of the scale of the phe­ nomenon, then it might be possible to avoid the absurd conclusions de­ rived from a linear extrapolation of Major Advance Announced present conditions into the remote past. In Particle Research The recent results likewise indicate the necessity for a Riemannian hy­ Erwin M. Friedlander and Richard components transverse to the initial drodynamical theory of nuclear mat­ M. Weiner demonstrate in a recent ar­ direction of motion of the colliding ter, as opposed to the ad hoc quark ticle published in Physical Review Let­ protons, did not follow the pattern theory. ters (July 2,1979, p. 15) that subatomic established from the earlier data. —Dr. John Schoonover matter undergoes a phase change un­ In order to reconcile the experi­ der the impetus of highly energetic mental results with the theory, it was particle collisions. Their analysis has necessary to postulate that the nuc­ important implications on the macro- lear matter underwent a phase transi­ cosmic scale as well as for countering tion in which the velocity of sound the quark theory. jumped by almost a factor of 1.5. AEC Study Shows: Friedlander and Weiner used the so- If one was to compare this situation called hydrodynamical model, devel­ to gas dynamics, the result would be No Mutations from oped by the Soviet physicist Lev Lan­ similar to a gas composed of strongly Low-Level Radiation dau in 1953, to analyze data from interacting molecules suddenly acting head-on collisions of highly energetic as if it were composed of weakly inter­ A 75-generation, 21-year study of the protons from the intersecting storage acting molecules. In the case Fried­ long-term effects of low-level radiation rings at the Super Proton Synchrotron lander and Weiner considered, the ap­ on mice has concluded that the ex­ of the Center for European Nuclear parent laws governing the behavior of treme concern about low levels of ra­ Research, CERN, at Geneva. The inter­ the system seem themselves to be diation in the environment is unwar­ secting storage rings at CERN allow ex­ changed by the lawful evolution of ranted. The experiment, started by the perimenters to achieve collisional en­ the system. Atomic Energy Commission in 1958, ergies previously only observed in The importance of this discovery can was conducted by Jake Spalding at the cosmic ray events, which are so in­ in no way be discounted. In fact, there "Mouse House" at the Los Alamos Sci­ frequent as to make the collection of is a striking similarity to Riemann's ap­ entific Laboratory in New Mexico. accurate data extremely difficult and proach to the propagation of shock The mice were irradiated at the age time consuming. waves and the implications to be drawn of 26 days with 200 rads of X-ray radia­ According to the Landau theory, the from that work for achieving fusion tion, 2,000 times the dosage received colliding particles act like a liquid. by inertial confinement. (See "Rie- in the average tooth X-ray. By the 75th There is an initial phase of rapid com­ mann Declassified" in the March- generation, Spalding found a 33 per­ pression of the nuclear matter, caus­ April 1979 issue of Fusion.) cent increase in the number of prog­ ed by the shock waves generated dur­ Macrocosmic Scale eny in the irradiated group of mice. ing the first instants of the collision. On the macrocosmic scale, signifi­ During that time, there were only two This is followed by the slow emission cant evidence has been gathered in mutations: There was one hairless of new entities, pi mesons, for exam­ recent years to show that star forma­ mouse in the 31st generation of the ple, generated from the undifferentiat­ tion may occur in a manner similar to nonirradiated control group and one ed fluid during the passage of the elementary particle formation in the spastic mouse in the 23rd generation shock waves. Then, as the material hydrodynamic model. (See, for exam­ of the irradiated group. starts to expand, most of the newly ple, Scientific American, Aug. 1979, p. Challenging Spalding's experiment created particles are rapidly emitted. 138.) Shock waves emanating from a on the basis that inbreeding prevent­ Phase Change supernova event can compress an in­ ed deleterious mutations from being During the entire period of the col­ terstellar gas cloud to create the cen­ observed, Dr. Earl L. Green, former lision, the matter can be described ters of attraction around which the director of Jackson Laboratory in Bar using thermodynamic parameters— cloud can collapse into stars. Harbor, Maine, ran a similar experi­ such as temperature and the speed of In a recent interview, Friedlander ment without any inbreeding. After 20 sound—that are familiar from the pointed out that the macrocosmic im­ generations of mice without any mu­ treatment of bulk fluids. However, plications of this work are of even tations, Green concluded, "We were Friedlander and Weiner noticed that greater consequence when applied to not able to find evidence to support the most recent data, representing the evolution of the universe as a what we believe is true—that radiation events involving higher momentum whole. If, in fact, the kind of phase produces mutations."

62 FUSION Books FEF News*.

St Louis Conference on Feeding the Irrational Fear Energy, Transportation

who plans and executes the sabotage "Energy, Transportation, Inland The Nuclear Catastrophe of a nuclear power plant, designed to Waterways—Critical Choices for the Bett Pohnka and Barbara C. Griffin, be West Germany's largest, on the day 1980s" was the topic of a day-long Fu­ Port Washington, N.Y.: Ashley Books, of its inauguration. This tortured story sion Energy Foundation conference on Inc., 1977, line includes fictional descriptions of the St. Louis campus of Washington 295 pp. (no price listed). the terrorist's step-by-step scientific University Sept. 22 that drew 100 par­ planning, a rundown of the safety de­ ticipants. The Accident fects already present in the brand new Calvin Larson, FEF director of agri­ Hans Heinrich Ziemann, New York: plant, and the official mishaps that lead cultural engineering, led the morning St. Martins Press, 1979, to the accident. "The accident," of panel with a description of the 1964 327 pp., $10.95. course, is the "meltdown" of the re­ Parsons Engineering firm plan to trans­ A number of years ago psychologi­ actor's radioactive core, which leads form America's waterways by building cal profile studies of the American pop­ to an atomic explosion, mass evacua­ a new river system that would run par­ ulation revealed that one of the great­ tion, and even the firebombing of the allel to the Mississippi River basin est irrational fears of the average citi­ nearby city of Darmstadt to divert an through the Great Plains states. The zen was to be victimized by incurable oncoming radioactive cloud. Readers system was designed to eliminate the cancer. Since the early 1950s, the anti- are spared no details of the effects of region's chronic water shortages, Lar­ technology movement, led by such "radiation sickness." son said, to boost agricultural produc­ propagandists as Barry Commoner and Both these volumes, examples of tivity, and to increase the use of barge his mentor, Margaret Mead, has fed the antitechnology forces' cynical at­ transport for bulk shipments of com­ these fears by creating allegedly sci­ tempts to manipulate the U.S. popu­ modities for export. The major block entific arguments that prove that ad­ lation against advanced nuclear ener­ standing in the way of this and similar vanced technology and industry cause gy technologies, are not only bad fic­ proposals, Larson explained, has been cancer and other incurable diseases. tion but also a pack of lies. the refusal of Congress to appropriate Both The Nuclear Catastrophe and —Stuart Pettingell funds for feasibility studies. The Accident exemplify the pure fic­ Guy jester, former colonel in the tion end of this fear campaign. In both Army Corps of Engineers for the St. books, the authors have taken an as­ Louis district, followed Larson with a sortment of fictional occurrences, Books Received discussion of the water project fund­ based on alleged scientific fact, and ing problems. "Private corporations stitched them together into a Franken­ The Partnership: A History of the Apollo- cannot make long-term capital invest­ stein's monster to terrify the credu­ Soyuz Test Project. Edward Clinton Ezell ments of the scale needed," he said. and Linda Neuman Ezell. Washington, D.C.: lous. "We need projects that can have 50- NASA, 1978 (NASA-SP-4209). 544 pp.. In The Nuclear Catastrophe, pub­ $8.30. to 100-year payoffs. The federal gov­ lished two years ago but widely publi­ ernment must become involved in cized after Three Mile Island, the au­ Beyond the Age of Waste: A Report to this." the Club of Rome. D. Gabor et al. New thors open their story with the bomb­ Jester, who was speaking for the York: Pergamon Press, 1978.229 pp., $25. like explosion of an atomic power Association to Improve the Mississip­ station on the outskirts of Los Ange­ Science, Technology and Economic pi River, also detailed the battle to les. This actually impossible event, Growth in Developing Countries, ed. upgrade and enlarge the Alton lock they allege, is based in scientific fact G. E. Skorov. New York: Pergamon Press, and dam 26, the link between the Illi­ 1978. 210 pp., $18. on a 1950s incident in a tiny and nois and Mississippi Rivers through primitive research reactor in Idaho. The Wired Society. James Martin. Fort which tens of millions of tons of U.S. The remainder of their volume is de­ Lee, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc.. 1978.289 pp., agricultural products pass each year. voted to endless grisly descriptions $12.95. Other speakers at the conference of the physical and psychological ef­ included 1980 presidential candidate Metals Joining Manual. M. M Schwartz. fects of high doses of radiation on New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., Frank Spin­ the Los Angeles population, using the 1979. 548 pp., $22.50. ner, the president of the Tower Grove World War II Hiroshima bombing as Bank, St. Louis 11th ward Republican the model. Technological and Social Change: A committeeman Conway Briscoe, FEF Transdlscipllnary Model. Jacob Fried and The Accident, a novel released in Paul Molnar. Princeton, N.J.: Petrocelli executive director Dr. Morris Levitt, West Germany, treats its readers to a Books, Inc., 1978. 167 pp., $15. (Continued on page 64) scenario involving a crazed terrorist

FUSION 63 (Continued from page 63) The advantages of impact fusion over American Nuclear Society, was instru­ FEF Midwest director Mel Klenetsky, alternative laser, electron, and ion mental in the development of the gas and Thomas Pierce, chairman of the beam systems is its intrinsically higher turbine. Washington University Students for efficiency, its higher driver efficiencies, LaRouche Committee. its lack of repetition rate problems, Levitt in Maine A full report of the major speeches and its simplified target design. at the conference will appear in the Winterberg was the first scientist to For Pronuclear Tour December issue of Fusion. propose the impact approach to iner- Maine's press corps turned out in tial confinement fusion about 15 years force Sept. 13 in Augusta to hear FEF Winterberg Reviews ago. Originally the idea was rejected director Dr. Morris Levitt report on the by the U.S. scientific community, but environmentalist plans for violence at Impact Fusion today the national laboratories have the Seabrook, N.H. nuclear plant. "We could demonstrate workable become interested in the unique idea Levitt's press conference capped a fusion systems in the very near fu­ because of difficulties arising in the two-day swing through the state, ture; we need nothing more than the laser pellet approach to fusion. which was highlighted by a Fusion En­ will to do it," said Dr. Friedwardt Win­ Since Winterberg first suggested the ergy Foundation fundraising dinner in terberg at the first of a fall series of idea, the technological feasibility of Brunswick, an interview with the Bruns­ FEF seminars Sept. 14. building the type of accelerator need­ wick Times-Record, and a talk show Winterberg, a pioneer in fusion re­ ed for high velocity projectiles has discussion on radio FAU in Augusta. search who now works at the Nevada greatly improved. Recent scientific Desert Research Center, explained papers and a few preliminary experi­ TMI Sabotage Aired on how fusion energy will provide hu­ ments by Euratom indicate that there manity with the means to harness the do not appear to be any insuperable Pittsburgh Radio Show resources of the solar system and then scientific or technological problems Did the nation's press corps act re­ the entire Milky Way galaxy. to building such an accelerator. As sponsibly in shaping its coverage of The main focus of Winterberg's talk Winterberg emphasized, "We need last March's incident at the Three Mile was a discussion of the impact fusion only have the will." Island nuclear plant? approach, which consists of accelerat­ The December issue of Fusion will This question came to the fore Sept. ing a projectile or projectiles weighing feature the impact fusion approach. 3 when FEF executive director Morris between .1 to 1 gram to extremely Levitt outlined the findings of The In­ high velocities of 70 to 200 kilometers dependent Commission of Inquiry on per second (160,000 to 450,000 miles Three Mile Island to a Pittsburgh radio per hour) and directing this projectile Board Member Honored audience. Levitt was interviewed for onto a fusion target. The gigantic ve­ The Fusion Energy Foundation is two hours on radio KDKA's )ohn Signa locity of the projectile is converted pleased to announce that advisory talk show and told listeners that the into a shock wave when it impacts board member R. Tom Sawyer has re­ commission, which the FEF initiated, onto the fusion target. This shock wave cently been named an honorary mem­ had determined that the incident at then compresses and heats the fusion ber of the Gas Turbine Society of Japan. the Three Mile Island plant was caused fuel to ignition conditions. Sawyer, a founding member of the by sabotage.

DO YOU KNOW SOMEONE WHO NEEDS TO READ FUSION? GIVE IT TO THEM. The development of the H-bomb was a spinoff of the theoretical work of a number of leading hydrodynamicists centered at the University of Gottingen in Germany. Most of them approached hydrodynamic problems from the standpoint of shock waves as developed by Bernhard Riemann and Erwin Schrodinger. As this issue's feature articles by Uwe Parpart and Dr. Friedwardt Winterberg demonstrate, the successful H-bomb design provided a stunning verification of their theories, but classification policies have since been used to prevent further scientific CURVED WALL- progress in inertial confinement fusion research. SHAPED ACCORDING TO BUSEMANN'S THEORY Behind the immediate issue of freeing up inertial fusion research lies a more fundamental issue. Phenomena such as shock waves show that neither the quality of physical action nor particles themselves are scalar elementarities. The article by Lyndon LaRouche provides the conceptual basis for a Riemannian physics that can describe the physical universe as it really is—a self-developing pro­ gression of multiply connected manifolds.

The cover: Above, a fusion pellet being irradiated by a carbon dioxide laser at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico. At left, a design of how the H-bomb works that was developed independently by Dr. Friedwardt Winterberg around 1952 (more details inside). The front cover photograph is the fifth Solvay conference of physics in Brussels, 1927. Erwin Schrodinger, a key figure in our lead feature, is the third from left in the top row. Other physicists depicted include W. Pauli, W. Heisenberg, L. Brillouin. P.A.M. Dirac. L.V. deBroglie, M. Born, N. Bohr, and A. Einstein.

© F WINTERBERG Cover design by Christopher Sloan; front cover photograph courtesy of (Design of author around 1952) the American Institute of Physics Niels Bohr Library.