Timeline of nuclear fusion

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Timeline of nuclear fusion
>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Timeline of significant events in the study and use of nuclear fusion:

1929 - Atkinson and Houtermans used the measured masses of light (light
as opposed to heavy; not as in radiation of the electromagnetic
spectrum) elements and applied Einstein's discovery that E=mc² to
predict that large amounts of energy could be released by fusing small
nuclei together.
1932 - Mark Oliphant discovered helium 3 and tritium, and that heavy
hydrogen nuclei could be made to react with each other.
1939 - Hans Bethe won the Nobel Prize in physics (awarded 1967) "for
his contributions to the theory of nuclear reactions, especially his
discoveries concerning the energy production in stars."
1947 First kiloampere plasma created by a team at the Imperial College,
London, in a doughnut shaped glass vacuum vessel. Plasmas are entirely
unstable and only last fractions of seconds.
1951 - Argentina made a claim that with the Huemul Project they had
harnessed controlled nuclear fusion. This prompted a responsive
research effort in the U.S.
Lyman Spitzer started the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (or PPPL)
which was originally codenamed Project Matterhorn - most early work was
done on a type of magnetic confinement device called a stellarator.
James Tuck, an English physicist, began research at Los Alamos National
Laboratory (LANL) under the codename of Project Sherwood, working on
pinch magnetic confinement devices. (Some people claimed that the
project was named Sherwood based on Friar Tuck)
1952 Edward Teller expanded hydrogen bomb research at Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)
Cousins and Ware built a small toroidal pinch device in England, and
demonstrated that instabilities in the plasma make pinch devices
inherently unstable.

1954-1958: The ZETA -Zero Energy Toroidal (or Thermonuclear) Assembly
device at Harwell
Nov 1,1953, Ivy Mike shot of Operation Ivy: The first detonation of a
hydrogen bomb, yield 10.4 megatons of TNT.
1953 - pinch devices in the US and USSR attempted to take the reactions
to fusion levels without worrying about stability. Both reported
detections of neutrons, which were later explained as non-fusion in
nature.
1954 - ZETA device started operation at Harwell south of Oxford in
England.
1958 - American, British and Soviet scientists began to share
previously classified fusion research, as their countries declassified
controlled fusion work as part of the Atoms for Peace conference in
Geneva
1958 - ZETA experiments ended. Several firings produced neutron spikes
that the researchers initially attributed to fusion, but later realized
were due to other effects. Last few firings showed an odd "quiet
period" of long stability in a system that otherwise appeared to prove
itself unstable. Research on pinch machines generally died off as ZETA
appeared to be the best that could be done.
1965 (approximate) - The 12 beam "4 pi laser" using ruby as the lasing
medium is developed at LLNL includes a gas-filled target chamber of
about 20 centimeters in diameter.
1967 - Demonstration of Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor appeared to generate
neutrons in a nuclear reaction.
1968 - Results from the T-3 Soviet magnetic confinement device, called
a tokamak, which Igor Tamm and Andrei Sakharov had been working on -
showed the temperatures in their machine to be over an order of
magnitude higher than what was expected by the rest of the community.
The Western scientists visited the experiment and verified the high
temperatures and confinement, sparking a wave of optimism for the
prospects of the tokamak, which is still the dominant magnetic
confinement device today, as well as construction of new experiments.
1972 - The first neodymium-doped glass (Nd:glass) laser for ICF
research, the "Long Path laser" is completed at LLNL and is capable of
delivering ~50 joules to a fusion target.
1974 - Taylor re-visited ZETA results of 1958 and explained that the
quiet-period was in fact very interesting. This led to the development
of "reversed field pinch", now generalized as "self-organizing
plasmas", an ongoing line of research.
Construction completes and inertial confinement fusion experiments
begin on the two beam Janus laser at the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory.
1975 - Experiments commence on the single beam LLNL Cyclops laser,
testing new optical designs for future ICF lasers.
1976 - Design work on JET, the Joint European Torus, began.
The two beam Argus laser is completed at LLNL and experiments involving
more advanced laser-target interactions are begun.
1977 - The 20 beam Shiva laser at LLNL is completed and is capable of
delivering 10.2 kilojoules of infrared energy on target. At a price of
$25 million and a size approaching that of a football field, the Shiva
laser is the first of the "megalasers" at LLNL and brings the field of
ICF research fully within the realm of "big science".
1978 - The JET project was given the go-ahead by then EC. The chosen
site was an ex-RAF airfield south east of Oxford, UK.

Progress in power and energy levels attainable by inertial confinement
lasers has increased dramatically since the early 1970's.1982 - TORE
SUPRA[1] construction was started at Cadarache, France. Its
superconducting magnets permitted it to generate a strong permanent
toroidal magnetic field.
1983 - JET was completed on time and on budget. First plasmas achieved.

The NOVETTE laser at LLNL comes on line and is used as a test bed for
the next generation of ICF lasers, specifically the NOVA laser.
1984 - The huge 10 beam NOVA laser at LLNL is completed and switches on
in December. NOVA would ultimately produce a maximum of 120 kilojoules
of infrared laser light during a nanosecond pulse in a 1989 experiment.

1985 - The Japanese tokamak, JT-60 was completed. First plasmas
achieved.
1988 - The T-15, Soviet tokamak with superconducting helium-cooled
coils was completed.
1988 - The Conceptual Design Activity for the International
Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the successor to T-15, TFTR,
JET and JT-60, began. Participants were EURATOM, Japan, Soviet Union
and United States. It ended in 1990.
1988 - The first plasma was produced in TORE SUPRA[2] in April.
1989 - On March 23, two Utah physicists, Stanley Pons and Martin
Fleischmann, announced that they had achieved cold fusion: fusion
reactions which could occur at room temperatures. However, they made
their announcements before any peer review of their work was performed,
and no subsequent experiments by other researchers revealed any
evidence of fusion.
1990 - Decision to construct the NIF "beamlet" laser at LLNL is made.
1991 - The START Tokamak fusion experiment began in Culham. The
experiment would eventually achieve a record beta (plasma pressure
compared to magnetic field pressure) of 40% using a neutral beam
injector. It was the first design that adapted the conventional
toroidal fusion experiments into a tighter spherical design.
1992 - The Engineering Design Activity for the ITER began. Participants
were EURATOM, Japan, Russia and United States. It ended in 2001.
1993 - The TFTR tokamak at Princeton (PPPL) experimented with 50%
deuterium, 50% tritium, eventually producing as much as 10 megawatts of
power from a controlled fusion reaction.
1994 - NIF Beamlet laser is complete and begins experiments validating
the expected performance of NIF.
1996 - A record was reached at TORE SUPRA[3]: a plasma duration of two
minutes with a current of almost 1 million amperes driven
non-inductively by 2.3 MW of lower hybrid frequency waves (i.e. 280 MJ
of injected and extracted energy). This result was possible due to the
actively cooled plasma-facing components installed in the machine. This
result opened the way to the active control of steady state plasma
discharges and the associated physics.
1997 - The JET tokamak in the UK produced 16 MW of fusion power - the
current world record for fusion power. Four megawatts of alpha particle
self-heating was achieved.
Groundbreaking ceremony held for the National Ignition Facility (NIF).
Combining a field-reversed pinch with an imploding magnetic cylinder
resulted in the new Magnetized Target Fusion concept in the U.S.. In
this system a "normal" lower density plasma device was explosively
squeezed using techniques developed for high-speed gun research.
1998 - The JT-60 tokamak in Japan produced a high performance reversed
shear plasma with the equivalent fusion amplification factor Qeq of
1.25 - the current world record of Q.
1999 - The United States withdrew from the ITER project.
The START Experiment was succeeded by MAST.
2001 - Building construction for the immense 192 beam 500 terawatt NIF
project is completed and construction of laser beamlines and target bay
diagnostics commences. The NIF is expected to take its first full
system shot in 2010.
Negotiations Meeting on the Joint Implementation of ITER begins.
Participants were Canada, European Union, Japan and Russia.
2002 - Claims and counter-claims were published regarding bubble
fusion, in which a table-top apparatus was reported as producing
small-scale fusion in a liquid undergoing acoustic cavitation. Like
cold fusion, it was later dismissed. However, in 2004, new claims of
replication were made.
European Union proposed Cadarache in France and Vandellos in Spain as
candidate sites for ITER while Japan proposed Rokkasho.
2003 - The United States rejoined the ITER project, and China and
Republic of Korea newly joined while Canada withdrew.
2003 - Cadarache in France selected as the European Candidate Site for
ITER.
Sandia National Laboratories began fusion experiments in the Z machine.

2004 - The United States dropped its own project, the Fusion Ignition
Research Experiment (FIRE), to focus resources on ITER.
2005 - Following final negotiations between the EU and Japan, ITER
chose Cadarache over Rokkasho for the site of the reactor. In
concession, Japan was made the host site for a related materials
research facility and was granted rights to fill 20% of the project's
research posts while providing 10% of the funding.
The NIF fires its first bundle of 8 beams achieving the highest ever
energy laser pulse of 152.8 Kj (infrared).
2006 - China's EAST test reactor is completed, the first tokamak
experiment to use superconducting magnets to generate both the toroidal
and poloidal fields.
Construction of ITER was originally planned to start at the end of
2005, but will probably be delayed until 2007.