Friday, 15 November 1991 Washington, DC
1. FIRST SUCCESSFUL D-T FUSION EXPERIMENT CONDUCTED BY
EUROPEANS.
The Joint European Torus took over first place in
the competition to produce power from magnetic fusion. Lost in
most of the press accounts was the fact that JET was not close to
break-even. The Q, which is the ratio of fusion power produced
to the power that went into heating the plasma, was only about
0.1. Nevertheless, the test provided the first results from D-T
fusion. Experiments with D-D fusion are usually described in
terms of "equivalent break-even," or what the Q would have been
if tritium had been in the plasma; that represents an
extrapolation by a factor of about 300. The most encouraging
result is that no unpleasant surprises turned up. The test also
revealed that European scientists, like their US counterparts,
must produce press releases on schedule.
2. FRUSTRATED U.S. SCIENTISTS BLAME BUDGET CUTS FOR LOSS OF
LEAD.
The original mission of the aging tokamak at Princeton
was to do the D-T experiment, but in 1988 Robert Hunter, then
head of the Office of Energy Research and a proponent of inertial
fusion, specifically forbade Princeton to make preparations for
D-T. Last year, the Senate sought to direct Princeton to go ahead
with the D-T test--but without additional funds; the language was
cut out in conference with the House. The test is now set for
July 93. There has always been some ambivalence about rushing to
introduce tritium; an increase in neutrons complicates
maintenance. In the meantime, Europe is outspending the US in
fusion by 2 to 1.
3. COLD FUSION GROUPIES REACT TO NEWS WITH PETITION TO
CONGRESS.
The good news in hot fusion prompted an "urgent
appeal" to the House Science, Space and Technology Committee to
hold hearings to assess the "enormous body of evidence"
supporting cold fusion. The petition carried 132 signatures,
ranging from a retired latin teacher to Nobel Laureate in Physics
Julian Schwinger. They com-plain that funding for cold fusion
dried up as a result of the "untenable conclusions" of the 1989
DOE Cold Fusion Panel.
4. MARSHALL SPACE FLIGHT CENTER TRYS TO CENSOR CRITICAL
HISTORY.
When NASA commissioned histories of its space
flight centers, it specified that they should be independent, but
not even history seems to be immune from NASA snafus. The
contract for a history of the Marshall Space Flight Center in
Huntsville went to the University of Alabama at Huntsville.
After getting a look at the initial draft, the brass at Marshall
cancelled the contract; they think the historians should stick to
technical matters and stay away from political, cultural and
social issues. But an external peer review group says the
history should proceed as planned. The controversy made its way
to the NASA Advisory Council this week. The Council is concerned
that the Marshall action will be seen as an attempt to whitewash
history. Marshall "does not want to reveal its warts," one NASA
official grumbled. NASA Administrator Richard Truly insisted that
NASA must "do the right thing."
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