FUSION'S ROCKY ROAD TO REALITY

摘要

In 1958, just six years after the detonation of the first H-bomb, the Scylla reactor at Los Alamos National Laboratory unleashed the same fusion reactions in a controlled manner by bottling hydrogen plasma with a magnetic field. A decade later Soviet scientists demonstrated the tokamak, a doughnut-shaped magnetic trap that can hold these million-degree plasmas in a stable way. But the energy revolution that was supposed to follow has been slow to materialize. Incremental successes have been repeatedly offset by flawed research and chronic false optimism.