Features SOLAR ENERGY IS A HOAX Eric Lerner Solar power is just plain inefficient It costs 10 times as much as nuclear power and would send energy prices and unemployment skyrocketing SCIENCE IS POLITICS Carol White There have always been two, factions in history the humanist city builders and the oligarchic monetarists Every real scientist is a humanist WINSTON BOSTICK'S APPROACH TO THE FIELD PARTICLE PROBLEM: An Appreciation and Critique An editorial comment on Bostick's unique solution to the fundamental problem of how the electron can exist in a stable state A Nonscientist's Roadmap Some help from the editors to enable the nonmathematical reader to grasp Bostick's conceptions TOWARD UNDERSTANDING EDITORIAL STAFF THE NATURE OF FUSION ENERGY Dr. Winston Bostick Editor-in-Chief The elementary particle, the electron is not a static little Dr Morris Levitt ball, but a dynamic mechanism for energy storage. This energy is self-structured and analogous to plasma and fluid Associate Editor vortices Dr Steven Bardwell Managing Editor News Marjorie Hecht WASHINGTON Art Director House Committee Votes Full Funding for Clinch River Christopher Sloan Supreme Court Rules for Nuclear Power Kintner: 1979 Budget Cuts Threaten Fusion Research FUSION is published monthly 10 times per year except February and April by the Fusion NATIONAL Energy Foundation. 231 West 29th Sun Dav 1978: Umbrella for Antinuclear Terror Street. 13th floor New York New York 10001. , Teller: Fusion-Fission Hybrids Can Be Mass Produced in 10 Years Subscriptions by mail are S14 for 10 issues or $25 for 20 issues in the USA. and Canada. Air­ INTERNATIONAL mail subscriptions to other countries are $28 for 10 issues. Mexico to Use Gas Revenues for Industrial Growth Address ali correspondence to Fusion Energy Foundation. P.O. Brazil-West Germany Nuclear Deal )eopardized Box 1943. New York. New York Colombia to Exploit Uranium Reserves, Nuclear Power 10001 Application to mail at Second British Parliament Endorses Windscale Reprocessing Plant Class postage rates is pending at New York. NY. The views of the FEF are stated SPECIAL REPORT in the editorials Opinions ex­ pressed in signed articles are not FEF Policy Statement: Upgrade the Clinch River Breeder! necessarily those of the FEF directors or the scientific ad­ visory board. Printed in the USA Departments EDITORIALS 2 NEWS BRIEFS CALENDAR 3 RESEARCH Copyright April 1978. THE LIGHTNING ROD 4 BOOKS Fusion Energy Foundation LETTERS 5 FEF NEWS growth forces who have been spreading the lie that fusion reactors will cost more than present generators. Along these lines, we applaud the April 14 Calendar Christian Science Monitor editorial backing fusion, and we reprint excerpts of it below: May For more than two decades, physicists who dreamt of taming hydrogen 2 * fusion—the power source of the stars—pursued an ever-receding goal. The Industrial Development Now they have the goal in sight and may soon have fusion running in the. of Southern Africa laboratory. It seems ironic that skepticism should threaten their efforts at Fusion Energy Foundation this point. Washington, DC. Some theoretical studies suggest that the main line of development (see advertisement for details) now being followed will only lead to industrial juggernauts that no utility could afford. Those who accept this reasoning, including some high 8-11 energy officials in the Carter Administration, suggest cutting down on Offshore Technology fusion development and sending it back to the basic research stage... Houston, Texas Throttling back funding and reorienting research could waste much time and money that have gone into the most successful — and most seriously questioned — line of attack.... Energy and Jobs Dr. Edwin E. Kintner, acting director o( the Office of Fusion Research at in an Expanding Economy the U.S. Department of Energy, has warned researchers in this field that Fusion Energy Foundation the threat of cutback is serious. He says he and other supporters of fusion Mary Grove College, Detroit are having trouble persuading responsible officials that it is wise to (see advertisement) continue to pursue the successful magnetic fusion research line vigorously. 9-11 To us, this wisdom seems obvious. We trust President Carter and Vibration Problems Energy Secretary James Schlesinger will listen more to the arguments of in the Nuclear Industry successful experiments than to the doubts of skeptics who prematurely British Nuclear Energy Society prophesy economic disaster. \ Seascale, Cumbria, UK 15-17 Conference on Plasma Science On With Development IEEE Monterey, Calif. he brutal winter of 1978, the prolonged coal strike, and the predicted T brownouts to come should have rubbed in the message that the United 22-26 States cannot continue to careen from one energy crisis to the next. What must Symposium on Nuclear Activation become equally clear to all is that the nation will never be free from the threat Techniques in Life Sciences ot energy disaster until James Schlesinger is removed from his post as secretary IAEA of energy. On every count —from his near foul-up of the coal strike settlement, Vienna, Austria his ongoing attampts to scuttle advanced nuclear technology, his outright lies about energy reserves, his outlandish proposals to turn off oil imports from 22-23 Saudi Arabia in favor of alleged new supplies from the People's Republic of Industrial Power Conference China —Schlesinger's removal is justifiable on the basis of his premeditated Atlanta, Georgia actions against the vital interests of the nation. The removal of this White House saboteur is all the more urgent now that an June export and development-oriented faction has emerged in the administration 11-14 The grouping includes Secretary of State Vance, Special Trade Representative Canadian Nuclear Association Robert Strauss, Assistant Secretary of Commerce Frank Weil, and Director of Annual Conference the Export-Import Bank John Moore. Although it by no means has acted in Ottawa, Canada concert or coordinated its activities, the grouping has put forward the basis of a t sound alternative policy to Schlesinger's madness: a strong nuclear-based 12-16 domestic energy program combined with incentives for nuclear exports and Symposism on Molecular Spectroscopy financial backing from the Exim Bank and commercial banks. Ohio State University There are those who would rather wait until 1980 to attempt a change in Columbus, Ohio energy policy. By then, however, the nation could have been destroyed either by the collapse of the dollar or by nuclear confrontation with the Soviets. We 18-23 can't wait. Leaders of business, science, and labor must speak out now for a Annual Meeting nuclear development and export policy to guarantee world peace and American Nuclear Society economic prosperity. San Diego, Calif FUSION 3 My Dear Triends, I was pleased you enjoyed my last letter, which no doubt you have forgotten, having read it so long ago. To those of you who remember, it came as no surprise that the ensuing weeks brought a rapid end to the rain of nuclear satellites, although no end to the British efforts to wreck the SALT negotiations and our friendly relations with the Soviet government. Hut let us leave that for another time, and consider instead an equally amazing stupidity being promoted by our American government with the assistance of the Eastern press, the universities, and even some labor unions throughout the Nation: the environmentalist Sun Day near them fear their electric and of banshees rises up to brand these Lord knows, I am a strong supporter magnetic fields. One farmer has phenomena occult and demonic — of Sundays — agreeing with the suggested they might fry birds in "fear their electric and magnetic Creator that six days' work require a midair. fields" or "intensity of illumination." minimum of one day's reflection I Doesn't the New York Times know, as have strong regard for the Sun, also, As it happens, I know this farmer in every schoolchild knows, that these as the primary source of the radiant upstate New York, and a sorry fellow electromagnetic fields are the sum energy upon which life on our planet he is. To this day he refuses to eat total of radio and TV transmissions depends. But I am not about to enter tomatoes, claiming they are and, in fact, power everything some heathen ritual of sun worship, if poisonous. Why, it was only several electrical, including the Times's type­ only one day a year, having seen years ago that he permitted electric writers? enough of the superstitions of the lights to be installed in his farmhouse This banshee cry, a kind of religious Indian tribes to know that someone (still not in the barn — he doesn't observance with the environmentalist will shortly propose we extend our want to frighten the animals), because movement, arises with such regularity genuflections to some other animal or he read a similar warning in the New that it should be given its own name, vegetable species. York Times way back in 1878 that: and I would propose the "First Law of A recent editorial last month in the "the retina of the human eye is Them Paranoics." In deference to the New York Times bears directly on this habituated to a certain given intensity dictionary-writers of the Royal problem. According to The Times: of illumination which is many degrees Society, I define the law thus: below that of electricity. (This) raises the point whether the properties of New extra-high voltage power FIRST LAW OF THEM electric light are such as to render it lines will soon traverse more PARANOICS: The magical safe..." than 2(X) miles of upstate New power of an object of human York ...In bad weather, they It is astonishing that whenever the understanding increases ex­ may glow, and crackle like forces of Nature are brought more ponentially as it approaches bacon frying...People who live fully under man's control, some fear comprehension* 4 FUSION Our British foes, who have held measurable quantities of neutrons by seances and dabbled in the black arts Letters focusing the explosion on a target of since the days of Newton and Locke's deuterium gas.