In 1974, some confusing results from the British ZETA research device from 1958 were re-examined and it was concluded that something interesting was revealed. What emerged from the new look at the ZETA results was something called a reverse zeta pinch (rzp) effect. In this type of magnetic confinement, the toroidal magnetic field and the poloidal field are equal strength while in a tokamak the toroidal field is much stronger. The rzp has requires much less energy to confine the plasma. The direction of the radial toroidal magnetic field reverses moving out from the center which is where the “reverse” part of the name comes from. One of the problems with this configuration is that it is more susceptible than a tokomak to turbulence and non-linear chaotic effects. While this would make practical fusion production difficult if not impossible, it is useful in modeling some astrophysical plasma processes. These ideas have come to be knows as self-organizing plasmas.

         In 1974, construction is completed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) on the two beam “Janus laser”. New inertial confinement experiments are carried out following the end of construction. Also in 1974, the first successful laser-induced fusion in a deuterium-tritium was carried out by a private company named KMS Fusion.

         In 1975, researchers decide that heavy ion beams generated by high energy accelerators could be the route to commercial fusion reactors. A mathematical model of energy required to achieve a particular nuclear event called the Livingston Curve is extended to show the amount of energy that sustained nuclear fusion will require. Inertial confinement experiments with the new Cyclops laser are carried out at the LLNL. This new laser was designed to study nonlinear focusing, novel amplification techniques and spatial filtering with the goal of assisting in the design of practical fusion reactors.

        In 1976, the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA)held an informal two week workshop on inertial confinement with fifty senior energy research scientist in attendance. Dr. C Martin Stickley, director of the ERDA Office of Inertial Fusion, announced that the conclusion of the experts at the workshop was that there was no theoretical barrier to the realization of controlled and sustained nuclear fusion. The two beam Argus laser is completed and used for fusion experiments at LLNL. The Argus laser was used to study laser-target interaction. Powerful laser beams can modify the optical characteristics of the materials they pass through interfering with beam focus and potentially damaging the materials. Experiment with the Argus laser employed successive stages of amplification and spatial filtering to improve beam coherence.

       In 1977, the twenty beam Shiva laser is finished at LLNL. This laser is able to deliver ten thousand joules of energy to the target. The Shiva is the first of what are referred to as “megalasers.” The laser installation approached the size of a football field. Also, in England, the Joint European Torus design is finished and approved. A site is chosen for construction.

Shiva laser target chamber:

Shiva target chamber.jpg

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             In 1965, Lawrence Livermore Laboratories worked on a 12-beam “4 pi laser” with a twenty centimeter gas filled chamber. They had been working on the theory of “inertial confinement fusion” (ICF) during the 1950s. The basic idea of ICF is to initiate fusion in a pellet of 2H (deuterium) and 3H (tritium) by heating and compression. Lasers are used create a spherical configuration of laser beams to heat the surface of the pellet so that it explodes. The explosion produces a burst of x-rays which compresses and heats the inner part of the pellet to the point where fusion occurs. The pellets are about the size of a pin head and contain about ten milligrams of fuel. Only a small portion of the fuel actually fuses but a significant amount of energy is released.

          In 1967, a fusor was demonstrated that produced neutrons which indicate a fusion reaction. The fusor was the work of Philo T. Farnsworth, an American inventor and Robert L. Hirsch a senior energy program advisor. In a fusor, ions are injected into a chamber where a high voltage potential accelerates the ions. Oscillating magnetic fields help confine the ions to the center of the chamber. If the voltage potential is high enough, the ions can be made to fuse. Farnsworth referred to this as inertial electrostatic confinement.

          In 1968, the Soviet scientists reported on their work with the tokomak design. They reports temperatures in their devices which were ten times what the global fusion research community expected. Scientists from other countries visited the Soviet Union and verified the high temperatures. This ignited new interest in magnetic confinement and the tokamak remains the main research tool for this type of fusion to the present day. Friedwardt Winterberg proposed bombarding a 2H-3H pellet with relativistic electrons from a Marx generator. The Marx generator was designed by Erwin Otto Marx in 1924. This type of generator produces a very high voltage pulse from a low voltage DC power supply.

        In 1972, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories created the first neodymium-doped glass laser intended for inertial confinement fusion research. This powerful infrared laser was called the Long Path laser. It was able to deliver fifty joules of infrared light in a ten nanosecond pulse to the target. Because it did not use special optical devices called spatial filters to smooth the beam after amplification, the beam it produces was of low quality.

       In 1973, design work was started on the Joint European Torus (JET) for magnetic confinement research at Oxfordshire, U.K. The construction of the buildings, the tokamak type fusion device and the power supply for the JET occupied about a decade. Two onsite generators are needed to supply power to the toroidal and poloidal coils because the U.K. electrical grid cannot supply the current needed.

Diagram from a U.S. patent for a fusor:  

Fusor.jpg

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             In 1954, the ZETA project began at Harwell in the U.K. ZETA stands for Zero Energy Thermonuclear Assembly. The U.K. had built a number of devices to test the concept of the zeta-pinch which used magnetic fields generated by induced electrical currents to compress a plasma. ZETA was the first large scale nuclear fusion reactor built. The U.S. had also been working on pinch devices as well as stellarator machines as a path to nuclear fusion. The construction of the ZETA was seen as a major leap forward in fusion research, putting the U.K. ahead of the U.S. In the same year, Edward Teller, a theoretical physicist gave a talk in which he concluded that most proposed designs for magnetic confinement of plasmas would be unstable.

          In 1956, it was revealed that the U.S.S.R. was working on tokamak systems at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow. Their experiments were encountering problems similar to those found in the U.K. and U.S. experiments. This revelation stimulated discussions on the public release of classified fusion research documents by the U.S. and the U.K. That same year, Friedwardt Winterberg, a physicist at the University of  Nevada suggested that a fusion reaction could be initiated by a convergent shockwave.

          In 1957, ZETA went into operation. Neutrons were generated during each test which was a strong indication that nuclear fusion had occurred. Temperatures reached five million degrees during the experiments with ZETA. The results of the experiments matches the theoretical models of fusion. However, researchers in the U.S. conducted their own experiments and concluded that the temperatures were not correctly measured and that neutrons could be produced that were not indicative of fusion. The enthusiastic announcements of the U.K. ZETA researches had to be withdrawn which resulted in a lack of confidence in the “pinch” route to nuclear fusion. By 1961, most work on using zeta pinch to generate fusion had ended. Although the first ZETA experiments failed to produce fusion, the machine did continue to be used for plasma pinch research and produced a number of important and useful results.

          In 1958, a great number of research documents were shared by the U.K., the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. at the Atoms for Peace conference in Geneva. This was the biggest conference on fusion research held to date. One conclusion of the shared research was that the basic pinch approach was not successful.

           In 1963, Friedwardt Winterberg proposed bombarding a mixture of liquid 2H (deuterium) and 3H (tritium) with micro-particles which had been accelerated to one thousand kilometers per second. Winterberg made many contributions to nuclear fusion theory as well as designing some of the hardware used in fusion research. He also proposed a nuclear fusion propulsion system for spacecraft called the Winterberg/ Daedalus Class Magnetic Compression Reaction Chamber which was built at the University of Alabama. Winterberg continued to be active in fusion research and development for decades.

ZETA machine:

ZETA.JPG

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             In 1946, George Thomson, an English Physicist,  and  Moses Blackman, an English Physicist, were working at the Imperial College in England. They proposed a device that would utilize an electric current in a plasma (a gas of ionized hydrogen) to generate a magnetic field that would compress the plasma and could potentially lead to a fusion reaction. This type of plasma confinement system was referred to as a zeta pinch. The name was taken from the mathematical diagram for the system along with pinch as a reference to the compression of the plasma.

            In 1947, Thomson, Blackman, Cousins, Ware and other physicists meet in Harwell, U.K, to discuss development of the pinch effect. Cousins and Ware create the first plasma energized by kiloamperes of electricity in a glass vessel shaped like a doughnut otherwise known as a torus. The plasma was very unstable despite the pinch effect and only lasted for a few seconds.

            In 1950, the Soviet scientists Andre Sakharov and Igor Tamm proposed a nuclear fusion reactor they called a “tokamak”  based on an original idea by Oleg Lavrentiev. In order to achieve a more stable plasma, the design called for a toroidal electrical field that travels around the torus. A poloidal field that is generated by the circulating toroidal field circulates around the cross sections of the torus. Electromagnets are used to induce the current in the plasma. These two fields at right angles to each other result in a magnetic field that travels around the torus in a helical configuration. (See diagram at end of article.)

             In 1951, Lymen Spitzer came up with the idea for a fusion reactor called a stellarator. Unlike the tokamak design, the stellarator called for a lower density plasma and a longer confinement time. The big challenge was to keep all the plasma particles confined. Winding a wire in a cylindrical shape causes a plasma to be pushed to the center of the cylinder by the magnetic field. However, the plasma can still escape out either end of the cylinder. However, the plasma can still escape out either end of the cylinder. Bending the cylinder around into a torus shape solves that problem but because the windings will be closer together on the inside of the torus than the windings will be on the outside. This results in an asymmetrical confinement field which allows plasma to escape. Lymen came up with a design where the torus shape was drawn out into more of a race track shape with two long sides joined by curved ends. This allowed the cancellation of the asymmetries for the plasmas and extended the confinement time.

         In 1952, Cousins and Ware build a larger toroidal pinch device  and conclusively demonstrate that plasma instabilities make such pinch devices fundamentally unstable. In 1953, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. build pinch devices and try to generate a fusion reaction without concern for the instabilities in the plasmas or long term plasma confinement.

Diagram of electrical fields in a tokomak. The blue arrow is the toroidal field and the red arrow is the poloidal field:

Tokamak diagram.jpg