Cold-Coil Fusion

The physicists convening in New York heard an elaborate progress report on controlled fusion power. The consensus--practical H-power is still decades, perhaps generations away.

Biggest problem remains how to contain the reacting material (usually deuterium), since the star-hot temperatures generated by fusion would melt any known substance. Physicists have tried magnetic bottles, in which the particles are forced together by powerful magnetic fields and held there without touching the walls of the apparatus. But present magnetic bottles are unstable. They bulge and flutter, permitting their contents to escape. More current would produce stronger magnetism. But if coils are fed too much current, they get too hot and melt.

Newest notion is to use magnet coils cooled by liquid hydrogen to 10DEG or 20DEG above absolute zero ( -- 459.6DEG F.). At this temperature the conductivity of metals is enormously increased. Supercold coils carrying monstrous currents might produce magnetic fields strong enough to do the job.

All U.S. fusion laboratories, and presumably the Russian ones too, are working on this idea. The practical difficulties are formidable. The heat must be carried away by refrigerating machinery as fast as it is formed. Neutrons will shower thickly through the coils as soon as a fusion reaction starts up inside. They will contribute more heat, and they may do worse. Neutrons often change a metal's structure in such a way that its electrical resistance increases. If this should happen suddenly to a hydrogen-cooled coil while a monstrous current is flowing through it, much of the apparatus is apt to vaporize on the spot.

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