Technology and Culture

394 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE the views of the public at large derive largely from editorials, letters to editors, and other sources that are, at best, impressionistic. But this is an unavoidable pitfall of the genre, and there seems no reason to suppose that the reactions of the silent or inarticulate were measurably different from those expressed in print. Boyer’s singular achievement is to outline cogently and comprehensively how people thought about and responded to their jolting introduction to nuclear energy. His book should command the attention of every scholar interested in the interaction between technology and society. J. Samuel Walker* The Man-Made Sun: The Quest for Fusion Power. By T. A. Heppenheimer . Boston: Little, Brown, 1984. Pp. xvi + 347; illustrations, notes, glossary, bibliography, index. $19.95. The mecca of our energy-devouring culture is fusion of light nuclei, the source of the sun’s power. Were it harnessed on earth, the deuter­ ium naturally existing in the world’s oceans would answer all extrapo­ lated energy needs while producing only a small fraction of the nuclear waste that befouls fission reactors. The goal has beckoned since before the wartime work that led to a fission, and later fusion, bomb. The goal of a break-even reaction has not been attained, although much prog­ ress has been made toward it. T. A. Heppenheimer’s book is an excellent semipopular account of the present state of American fusion research, in particular at Prince­ ton and Livermore. It is not detailed and documented history, like Joan Bromberg’s monograph, Fusion: Science, Politics, and the Invention of a New Energy Source (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), but it is a very engaging account, well suited to undergraduate reading. Early chap­ ters lay out the basic conceptual understanding needed for discussion of fusion reactions and the conditions needed for their attainment. This is done with clear and compelling images that should be accessible to any interested person. Heppenheimer discusses recent developments at Princeton on the tokamak (torus) design fusion system with energy injected in the form of neutralized beams of accelerated ions. The “Large Torus” that achieved unprecedentedly high plasma temperatures in 1978 has given way to the TFTR, just now coming on-line and expected to achieve break-even reactions. Particularly interesting is the portrayal of the Princeton scheme to obtain information without actually run­ ning the reaction on the radioactive deuterium-tritium (D-T) interac­ tion that would eventually be used for power generation. *Dr. Walker is historian at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and is coauthor of Controlling the Atom: The Beginnings of Nuclear Regulation 1946—1962. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 395 Two major programs at Livermore also receive attention: the MFTF-B mirror machine and the Shiva/Nova laser fusion project. The former, which has fallen out of favor with the Department of Energy (DOE) and had its budget cut drastically, is allotted but a single chap­ ter. The laser inertial confinement fusion program is treated in more detail, its responses to steadily decreasing funding portrayed well. Of particular interest is the discussion of design of the tiny spherical pellets of deuterium and tritium used as fuel. The rapid compression of the microscopic test pellets by the kilojoules of laser pulse energy is supposed to raise the internal density and temperature of the fuel to the fusion point. The techniques and tools of pellet design and be­ havior are in large part identical with the studies, begun in the 1940s, of the D-T implosion needed to make the hydrogen bomb. Conse­ quently much of this information is highly classified, as is the LASNEX computer model of implosion used for such studies. What I found most useful in the book is not the technical discussions, which are graphic and mostly accurate and avoid unnecessary detail, but rather the portrayal of the relationship between AEC/DOE, the laboratories, and the many entrepreneurial individuals involved in the ventures. Some of these people are heads of programs at the laborato­ ries, but others act individually outside the established centers. Keith Brueckner, for example, did important work on fusion pellet design for the company that Kip Siegel formed on the profits...