The Sun on Earth How the Netherlands dealt with the Promise of Nuclear Fusion, 1951-1979 Bron, M. (Michiel) Utrecht University 27-6-2020 Master’s Thesis History and Philosophy of Science (HPS). Utrecht University Student: Michiel Bron Student Number: 4076281 Word Count: 40539 Date: June 26, 2020 Supervisor: Dr. D.M. Baneke Second Supervisor: Dr. F. Hoeneveld Picture on frontpage: C.M. Braams (right) and D. Palumbo (middle) discussing the foundations of JET. Shaw, Europe’s Experiment in Fusion, 8. 1 Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 1. Introduction 1.1. Promises of Nuclear Fusion 4 1.2. Balancing Between Interests: Historiographical Notions 8 1.3. Investigating the Promises of Nuclear Fusion: Method and Sources 20 1.4. Thirty Years of Nuclear Fusion in the Netherlands, 1951-1979 31 2. “Taming the H-Bomb”: The Emerge of Dutch Fusion Research, 1951-1959 2.1. Introduction 33 2.2. Positioning the Dutch Fusion Research 41 2.3. Economic Applicability or International Politics: Who Invests in Fusion? 50 2.4. Dutch Media about the Developments in Fusion Research 55 2.5. Promises of Inexhaustible and Clean Energy in the Public 59 2.6. Emerged Dutch Fusion Research 60 3. Cold War Fusion: Establishing International Contacts During the Cold War, 1959-1968 3.1. Introduction 63 3.2. The Ghost of Bohm: Dutch Thermonuclear Research in the 1960s 69 3.3. To European Corporation: Dutch Fusion Policy During the Cold War 77 3.4. Declining Interest and Different Themes: Dutch Media in the 1960s 82 3.5. A Scientific Wish Dream: Fusion Energy in the Public 85 3.6. Dutch Fusion Research During the Cold War 88 4. Rise of the Tokamak: New Debates on Fusion as Alternative Source of Energy, 1969-1979 4.1. Introduction 90 4.2. A Renewed Scientific Belief in the Promise of Fusion 100 4.3. Investors’ Change of Minds? 110 4.4. New Fusion Hypes 120 4.5. Social Unrest: Nuclear Fusion and Anti-Nuclear Activism 125 4.6. The Tokamak Decade 128 5. The Sun on Earth: Concluding Observations 5.1. The Dutch Promise of Nuclear Fusion, 1951-1979 131 2 5.2. A Small Country in a Big Word: Dutch Fusion in Relation to other Countries? 136 6. Epilogue 6.1. Fusion: A Road into the Future 145 6.2. European Minded and More Realistic: Dutch Fusion Scientists in JET and ITER 148 6.3. Foremost European Cooperation: Dutch Investors After the 1970s 150 6.4. Great Promises: Dutch Media and Popular Culture 152 7. Abstract 156 8. List of Abbreviations 157 9. Overview of Archives Consulted 159 10. Bibliography 160 3 1. Introduction 1.1. Promises of Nuclear Fusion 1.1.1. Hitting the Sixty-eighth Post “Nuclear Fusion: A new era in the history of a centuries-old mansion,” headed the Dutch newspaper Het Parool on February 1959, announcing the new research institute for plasma physics in the Netherlands, FOM-Rijnhuizen, that would be opened later that year.1 On the Rijnhuizen estate, located in Jutphaas, new constructions were Figure 1: Official opening of FOM-Rijnhuizen. Minister Jo Cals hits the sixty-eighth pile. Photo archive DIFFER. built outside the manor, with the old stables making way for large laboratory halls and workshops. The country house itself accommodated the theorists, management and the library of the institute. On 17 November 1959, the Minister of Education, Arts and Sciences, Jo Cals, knocked Figure 2: Minister of Education, Arts and Sciences Jo Cals during a debate in the House of Representatives on 12 July 1961. the sixty-eighth pile into the ground and opened the research Wikimedia. institute festively.2 In the next decades the scientists in these buildings would try to bring the sun to earth. The sun, which derives its energy from a process of nuclear fusion, provided the inspiration for countless physicists all over the world to try to imitate this fusion process on earth to control this source of energy. The opening of FOM-Rijnhuizen marks the definitive establishment of the promise of controlled nuclear fusion in the Netherlands. This thesis 1 ‘Kernfusie: een nieuw tijdperk in geschiedenis van eeuwenoud herenhuis’, Het Parool (14 February 1959). 2 There is some debate as to exactly which pile Jo Cals hit into the ground. In the later memo from his own ministry it was claimed that it was the first pile on the construction site. However, the scientists of the old FOM-Rijnhuizen claim to know for sure that it was the sixty-eighth pile and the builders had already started earlier. ‘Kernfusie, thermonucleaire reacties, plasmafysica en FOM-activiteiten op dit gebied’ (2 January 1967), 2. NA 2.14.5168, Inventory number 8608. 4 examines the first three decades of the Dutch promise of nuclear fusion. From the first experiments in 1951 to a joint European collaboration on British soil in 1979. During this period, the promise of nuclear fusion was characterized by a tension between the economic potential of an inexhaustible source of clean energy and the actual status of the research as a fundamental science. Nuclear fusion theoretically offered the possibility of extracting an almost inexhaustible amount of energy from relatively infinite resources, without producing radioactive waste. Clean, sustainable, energy which could provide an answer to predicted shortages of fossil fuels in the future. However, there were many technological and scientific problems that prevented a commercially deployable fusion reactor for ever being realised. The fusion reactor was always a few years into the future. Nevertheless, there have been several moments in the history of nuclear fusion when a fusion reactor seemed closer than ever. By investigating how different Dutch stakeholders, such as scientists, investors, media and popular culture, related to the promise of nuclear fusion between 1951 and 1979, much can be learned about the context in which fusion research took place. Responses to the economic potential of nuclear fusion show that the will for European cooperation linked fusion research to the dynamics of the Cold War, that arguments for alternative sources of sustainable energy were already present in the 1950s, and that the believe in the promise of nuclear fusion was an important factor in the failure of the Dutch nuclear energy project. 1.1.2. Inexhaustible Clean Energy from Nuclear Fusion The concept of nuclear fusion was discovered in 1920 by the chemist Francis Aston. Aston demonstrated that hydrogen atoms are relatively heavy compared to other elements. 5 Astrophysicist Sir Edmund Eddington subsequently argued that this meant that the sun fuses hydrogen into helium, converting the residual mass into energy via Einstein’s E=mc2. This was an important step in the debates about the origin of solar energy. For Figure 3: Two atoms, here deuterium and tritium, fuse. the first time serious theories were devised This fusion results in helium, a free neutron and energy. Westra, M.T., Kernfusie: een zon op aarde (Nieuwengein: about mimicking this process on earth to gain FOM-Rijnhuizen, 2006), 2. energy. The first international experiments were carried out before the 1940s, such as the discovery of plasma as a gas mixture of ions and electrons in 1927, the experiments in which tritium was made in Ernest Rutherford’s laboratory in 1934, and the first experiments in the United States with trapping plasma in magnetic fields. International nuclear fusion research, however, really got off the ground after the Second World War.3 The fusion of two light atomic nuclei releases a lot of energy. Because a fusion reaction releases about four million times more energy than a chemical reaction such as carbon combustion, a nuclear fusion reaction requires only a minimal amount of fuel compared to a coal-fired power plant. In comparison, an average coal-fired power plant of 1,000 MW requires 2.7 million tonnes of coal to run for a year. For the same amount of energy, a fusion reaction uses only 250 kilograms of resources. Many kinds of fusion reactions are possible: in stars, such as our sun, the light element hydrogen is converted into the heavier element iron by fusing light isotopes into heavier ones in different takes. Not every kind of fusion is suitable for replicating on Earth. For example, the fusion process that supplies the sun with energy cannot be used on Earth. The fusion process on the sun is slow because the sun burns relatively on a low heat. The energy that the sun 3 Vrouwe, A., Hittebarrière: 50 jaar plasmafysica bij FOM-Rijnhuizen 1959-2009 (Houten: Drukkerij Badoux, 2009), 9-10. 6 produces in spite of the low temperature is due to the enormous size of the sun. This mass causes so much pressure in the centre that a fusion reaction starts. Only fusion reactions that have a reasonable reaction probability at a relatively low temperature and pressure are suitable for use on earth. The fusion reaction between the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium (figure 3) is the easiest.4 This reaction runs according to this formula: 3D + T => 4He + n + 17.6 MeV In this formula, D stands for the stable isotope of hydrogen, deuterium, with one proton and one neutron in the nucleus. T stands for the radioactive isotope of hydrogen, tritium, with one proton and two neutrons in the nucleus. 4He stands for helium, and n for neutron. The energy released is expressed in mega-electron Volt.5 A fusion reaction between two deuterium atoms (D+D) is theoretically possible on earth, making the use of radioactive tritium unnecessary.6 This reaction, however, requires a higher temperature, which in turn raises its own technical difficulties.7 Fusion does not happen by itself.