Nuclear Fusionpostflaviana.org /nuclearfusion/

Jerry Russell

Because of its potential as a remarkably cheap and abundant source of energy, fusion technology has longheld the fascination of nuclear scientists. (The term Fusion encompasses a wide variety of nuclearreactions in which small nuclei are driven together to produce larger ones, as opposed to Fission inwhich very heavy nuclei are split into their component parts.)

Fusion is at the heart of every modern nuclear weapon, as even the smallest 2nd generation bombs usea tiny capsule of tritium fusion fuel to enhance the reliability and efficiency of the fission reaction. Largerhydrogen bombs, of course, rely on fission-triggered fusion energy for a substantial portion of their city-busting power, which is measured in megatons of TNT equivalent.

However, as far as publicly available information is concerned, progress in nuclear weapons developmenthas basically ground to a halt since the invention of special-purpose third generation nuclear devicessuch as bunker-busting shaped charges and neutron-enhanced weapons that were developed during the1970s. Conventional wisdom holds that since the adoption of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963 and theNon-Proliferation Treaty of 1970, it has been difficult or impossible either to develop new weapons or toproliferate their use; and that since the end of the Cold War and the End of History, any need to developnew doomsday weapons technology has totally evaporated.

Meanwhile, research on fusion power for peaceful energy production grinds ponderously onward, withsubstantial progress to be sure, but without any useful results in sight. The old joke that Fusion energy is50 years in the future, and always will be seems to be as true as ever. The 15 Billion ITER (InternationalThermonuclear Experimental Reactor) project is currently expected to reach Plasma Break-Even in 2027,although many engineering challenges must be solved before then. Even if that milestone is achieved, theproject faces daunting challenges in terms of the development of durable materials to contain the highlyenergetic neutrons produced by the deuterium-tritium fusion reaction. Another alternative technology,Inertial Confinement Fusion (laser-driven compression of pellets of deuterium-tritium fuel) has alsobecome an expensive fiasco, as the National Ignition Campaign ended in 2012 after spending over $4Billion without achieving ignition, and the Laser Inertial Fusion Energy program was cancelled in April2014.

Thus, the public is complacent in the belief that nuclear technology has not advanced in any practicalsense since the 1970s. However, in their 1999 book Fourth Generation Nuclear Weapons, AndreGsponer and Jean-Pierre Hurney discussed the prospects for development of weapons that would becompliant with the Test Ban Treaty and non-proliferation treaties, because they are not based on fission-fuelled chain reactions. Their executive summary stated:

These new fission or fusion explosives could have yields in the range of 1 to 100 tonequivalents of TNT, i.e., in the gap which today separates conventional weapons fromnuclear weapons. These relatively low-yield nuclear explosives would not qualify asweapons of mass destruction. Seven physical processes which could be used to makesuch low-yield nuclear weapons, or to make compact non-fission triggers for large scalethermonuclear explosions, are investigated in detail: subcritical fission-burn, magnetic

compression, superheavy elements, antimatter, nuclear isomers, metallic hydrogen andsuperlasers (i.e., ultrapowerful lasers with intensities higher than 1019 W/cm2).

In a follow-up publication, Fourth Generation Nuclear Weapons: Military Effectiveness and CollateralEffects (2008), Gsponer focused on a discussion of antimatter, nuclear isomers and superlasers as themost likely technologies. Each of these technologies seems inherently very promising, although there isnothing in the publicly available literature to indicate that the development of practical weapons isimminent. Gsponer mentions a commonly held perception that the development of such weapons is stillvery far in the future. However, he also quoted a 1994 interview with a Russian nuclear scientist, whobelieved that A new generation of nuclear weapons could be developed by the year 2000.

At this website, we will explore the various technological options that could be in use to create abreakaway nuclear fusion technology.

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