Fusion
Fusion
$76.00
USDThe book abounds with fascinating anecdotes about fusion's rocky path: the spurious claim by Argentine dictator Juan Peron in 1951 that his country had built a working fusion reactor, the rush by the United States to drop secrecy and publicize its fusion work as a propaganda offensive after the Russian success with Sputnik; the fortune Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione sank into an unconventional fusion device, the skepticism that met an assertion by two University of Utah chemists in 1989 that they had created "cold fusion" in a bottle.
Aimed at a general audience, the book describes the scientific basis of controlled fusion--the fusing of atomic nuclei, under conditions hotter than the sun, to release energy. Using personal recollections of scientists involved, it traces the history of this little-known international race that began during the Cold War in secret laboratories in the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union, and evolved into an astonishingly open collaboration between East and West.
- The inside story of the race to build the world's first fusion reactor
- The greatest engineering challenge ever attempted by mankind
- The story of the 'discovery' of 'cold fusion' and the uproar it caused within the scientific community
Reviews & endorsements
"...an informative and lively account of the history and growth of a worldwide, surprisingly unpoliticized, research effort." Trenton Times
"Herman, a former New York Times reporter, has done an excellent job of explaining how politics has repeatedly shaped the nation's efforts to develop nuclear fusion. She is a good storyteller and has woven together many fascinating anecdotes about the bright and bizarre characters who have sought to tame the fury of the sun." The Philadelphia Inquirer
"...an intriguing contemporary history of science as an integrated field of endeavor..." San Francisco Chronicle
" ...a readable and at times exciting account of fusion research from the point of view of a nonspecialist and aimed at the general reader." Philip Davenport, Nature
Product details
March 2006Paperback
9780521024952
280 pages
229 × 152 × 15 mm
0.415kg
17 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1. The invention of Dr Spitzer
- 2. Behind closed doors
- 3. Friends and rivals
- 4. Searching for answers
- 5. Dawn of the tokamak
- 6. Building big science
- 7. Forming the major league
- 8. The political plasma
- 9. The modern fusion lab
- 10. The plasma olympics
- 11. Different directions
- 12. Struggling to sell fusion
- 13. In sight of breakeven
- 14. Fusion's past and future
- Notes
- Glossary
- Appendices
- Index.
