Customer Reviews

Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is mostly about the early history of fusion research, and about the more recent fiascos where lone-wolf researchers have claimed breakthroughs without adequate scientific basis. If you are interested in cold and bubble fusion, and how the press has dealt with them, this is a good book for you. On the other hand, Seife devotes relatively little ink to the scientists and engineers worldwide who are working to develop fusion, on the basis of peer-reviewed, replicable research. He also doesn't systematically review the literature on progress in fusion, on the remaining challenges, and on why it is attractive as an energy source. When I started in this field as a graduate student we made 1/10 of a Watt of fusion heat in a pulse of 1/100 of second. Now the record is in the range of 10 million Watts for a second. That is an improvement by an overall factor of 10 billion. The international ITER project will produce 500 million Watts of fusion heat for periods of at least 300 - 500 seconds. We have further to go, and lots of challenges, but fusion has large advantages in safety, waste and nuclear proliferation. There are relatively few options for large-scale, long-term, steady electric power production, and they all need to be explored.

Seife's book, "Sun In A Bottle", is an illogical attack against scientists working in the modern fields of magnetic fusion energy research or inertial confinement fusion research. Seife uses a deceptive style to argue against government funding for fusion research in his book, "Sun In A Bottle". Seife employs "Fusion research", as an umbrella term to encompass research that spans decades, and yes, has involved some rather nasty characters who have indeed conducted themselves poorly1. But these men to whom Seife devotes much of his book do not represent the community of researchers who work today in magnetic fusion energy research2, which is the relevant category of physics to consider if discussing the ITER project3. If you doubt that "Sun in a Bottle" is an attack on magnetic fusion research and on ITER, I point out that on the last two pages of the book "Sun in a Bottle", Seife concludes his argument that all of fusion research is a failure and will never work due to the "intemperate self-deception" of fusion researchers (page 227) as he concludes with a suggestion to the reader: fission research should be pursued instead of fusion research (page 226). Seife's arguments against pursuing fusion as an energy source are identical to making arguments against cancer research by making a list of attempts to cure cancer that have not worked, by finding a few examples of liars who have worked in the field sometime during the past 60 years, and then generalizing to make a final statement that cancer research funding should be halted. Here is how that argument goes: "Some scientists claim to be able to cure cancer with alternative medicine, herbs, and crystals. These scientists lie and deceive as they push their research forward, they are blinded by their own hubris as they seek the fame and the power that discovering the cure for cancer would bring them. The methods these scientists employ will never be useful to curing cancer. Some other scientists are researching ways to cure cancer in national laboratories and universities around the world, and they receive many millions of dollars from governments to support their research, and they also have failed to cure cancer. Because all cancer researchers lie and deceive, governments should not waste time and money trying to cure cancer." If you find this argument compelling and after reading it you feel we should halt all cancer research, then Charles Seife's "Sun In A Bottle" is the book for you. I believe this book does a disservice to the field of popular science writing. Seife's book should read by all scientists as a warning of the machinations that "popular science" writing may produce. Scientists as a community must find a way to tell their stories to the public clearly, without sacrificing accuracy, and in an exciting manner. No easy task, to be sure. But scientists must take up this challenge. For if they do not, their stories could be told by more books like "Sun in a Bottle". Anyone who believes in critical thinking, honesty and accuracy should be repulsed that that possibility.

1 Physics Today, Volume 61, Number 11, November 2008, pp. 28, "Bubble fusion scientist disciplined"

2 There are many articles about fusion research published in peer-reviewed journals that one can access on-line through library subscriptions: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics and Fusion Research (PPCF), and Physical Review Letters are three example. A volume of PPCF that includes papers about modern fusion research will be available for free online through June 2009 at the site [...]

"Sun in a Bottle" is more of a history lesson than a book of science. The first 75 pages describes the development of the atomic bomb and the hydrogen bomb, which here is more a story of the rivalry between Oppenheimer and Teller that is ultimately won by Teller. My own view is that this portion of the book is unnecessary since the story of bomb development has been told many times before and in much greater detail.

The rest of the book is about the development of fusion as a power source. The author chooses to focus on the missteps and blind alleys of research rather than the progress that has been made. The stories are entertaining, but clearly one sided. He avoids technical information, except for general concepts, perhaps feeling that the reading audience is unable to understand or that the technical information does not have enough pizzazz to make a best seller.

The main problem I have with this book is that the author is ready to give up on a power source that has great promise but great problems to overcome. Development of a commercial fusion reactor is complex and expensive, but so have been other projects that ultimately have been successful. An example is the space program. I am old enough to remember the early days of the US space program with rocket after rocket blowing up on the launch pad. Considering the failures and costs, the author would have likely concluded that successful space travel was the wishful thinking of "scientists, drunk with the promise of personal glory."

If you are looking for entertaining stories, then you might enjoy this book. If you are looking for a balanced evaluation of fusion with accompanying technical information, this is not the book for you.

Sun in a Bottle is intended for an audience who has had no introduction to the subject of nuclear fusion. As such, it lumps three very different subjects into one 200-page account: 1) nuclear weapons history, 2) mainstream fusion research, and 3) fringe-fusion-attempts, and in my opinion only does justice to the latter.

Seife's book is very well written, and he is very skilled at explaining scientific concepts to the lay audience. Those with no knowledge of the science will learn something reading the book.

Seife's greatest success is in describing the comical and dishonest attempts at fusion performed by the so-called lone wolves. His journalistic style is well suited to tell the strange stories of cold and bubble fusion. In particular, his personal association with the bubble-fusion story made it a fairly gripping account. Even specialists may learn something from these sections.

The same journalistic narrative is less effective, however, in casting the complex moral quagmire that was the nuclear weapons program in the 50s. I agree that there are better accounts of this time period, albeit longer (Rhodes "Dark Sun", etc), and Seife dramatizes and simplifies the whole period to a struggle between two men, Oppenheimer and Teller; an engaging narrative, but a historical cheat.

The third section, on mainstream fusion, is sparse at best and deceptive at worst. Seife clearly has an opinion/agenda writing this and he is not afraid to persuade us. His arguments are mainly historical in nature, relying on past failures to preclude future discoveries. Again, the lay person will learn something reading about the different experiments, but it is important to remember the bias.

In conclusion, Seife tries to do 3 things in one book. If you are only interested in one of the three, look for a more focused account. If you know nothing about nuclear fusion, and want somewhere to start, the book will certainly give you a sweeping tour, though with a strong emphasis on the fringe-figures. Specialists will find themselves cringing far too often.

What is most remarkable about this book is that little to no coverage is given to what a researcher would consider the most relevant events in the history of controlled thermonuclear fusion. Instead, the book combines what are effectively a handful of "mini biographies" (of Edward Teller, Rusi Taleyarkhan, and other infamous characters) with a disastrously poor summary of technical issues and historical events. One must surely wear dark welding goggles and -20db earplugs to miss the continuous progress that has been made in fusion performance since the 1960s:

http://www.efda.org/fusion_energy/fusion_research_today.htm

In fact, it is impossible to reconcile Seife's journalistic account of fusion energy research with the figure shown in the link above. It has been a decade since near-breakeven (power-in equals power-out) conditions were reached in both the JET (UK) and JT-60 (Japan) tokamaks. So where, you may wonder, are the subsequent post-Y2K points on the graph? Answer: inadequate funding for next-generation experiments. Why weren't these experiments done in the USA? Answer: inadequate funding for next-generation experiments. Why is there inadequate funding for next-generation experiments? Perhaps, in part, because policy-makers who read books like Seife's believe what they read.

Just imagine how far up and to the right the curve would extend if there was a more serious worldwide commitment to fusion energy research.

I read "Sun in a Bottle" because I have previously worked on tokamak technology in graduate school, and because I read a previous book by this author (Decoding the Universe), which I found to be very good. I was not disappointed because I found, like many others including at least some critics in this review list, that it was difficult to put down. "Sun in a Bottle" is basically a history book, and many of the stories are quite interesting. Probably few readers will have heard all of the details of many of the stories. Like any history book, the author's biases color the stories, but how else could it be? The author does unfairly leave the reader with the impression that there is little hope for fusion power in the foreseeable future. The mainstream magnetic confinement fusion effort has demonstrated that particle and energy confinement times increase with the device size. All indications are that a useful power-producing device will have to be big. Big things are expensive. The author cringes at the price tag of $5-10 billion dollars for ITER, ignoring the fact that the US alone is spending hundreds of billions of dollars over periods of a few years to control the oil production and the profits thereof in Iraq. The point of fusion is to replace oil, so the price tag is hardly outlandish. The indication that power producing fusion devices will have to be big is actually a good thing. Fusion reactions involving deuterium produce a lot more neutrons per joule of energy released than fission reactions. If power production from tabletop fusion were actually possible, it would be relatively easy to convert plentiful uranium 238 into plutonium, and thereafter manufacture an atomic bomb.

this is a fairly entertaining book. As many have pointed out in the reviews, it spends a lot of time on the development of fusion bombs and Dr. Teller and then quite a bit of time on spectacular claims that led to spectacular failures. Still, I think this book does portray a couple hard realities of fusion. First of all, fusion research has been a long hard road that has promised much and fallen short. Second, any usable fusion technology is still quite a ways off. Third, fusion has fallen on somewhat of hard times when it comes to government funding. I suppose none of these things really mean that fusion-generated electricity is an impossibility, and the author doesn't really suggest that either. I think the problem with fusion at this point is that there does not appear to be any easy way to get around the difficulties such as the requirement for high temperatures and pressures. One theme of this book is that in the end, any real progress is more likely to come with bigger and better versions of hot, magnetically-confined plasma reactors and not some miraculous discovery like cold fusion or bubble fusion. I am sure that those who are actually involved in fusion research might find this book to be lacking from a scientific perspective and in the sense that it seems to sort of sell the idea of fusion short. However, I don't think the point of this book is to give a strong scientific treatise on the topic. Rather I think the author's goal is to give laypersons a realistic assessment of the chances of fusion becoming a quick-fix for energy problems. Between the technical hurdles that remain and the political-economic problems facing fusion research, I don't think it's unrealistic to claim that a functional fusion reactor that can produce energy is probably at least 30 years away. With all of the spectacular claims for things like hydrogen, domestic drilling and wind energy as solutions for the country's energy problems, I don't think it's bad to have a book once in a while that throws a bit of cold water on the euphoria, even if it is a bit unduly pessimistic and slanted towards spectacular failures rather than solid, ongoing research.

The book's dust jacket correctly describes the various personages involved in the turbulent history of nuclear fusion as the many "geniuses, villains and victims of fusion science." This history is shown to be "frustrating" because controlled nuclear fusion (useful power plants) always seemed (and seems today) just out of reach, and with just a little more push, and with just a little more money.... The number of "justs" mounts up. Useful fusion, like the philosopher's stone of medieval times, contains such huge rewards that people pursue an illusive goal feverishly, usually to their detriment. The possibility of making lots of money, and the dead certainty of becoming instantly and permanently famous is so irresistible. Certainly, coming up with a way to control fusion will reduce the problem of supplying power to the entire world to a minor matter. But it must be actually made practical. The author defines that practical threshold as a fusion reaction creating more power going out, than power put in to make the reaction go. Simple, understandable explanations like that make this an interesting book to read.

Perhaps the core of all problems in designing controlled nuclear fusion can be best summed up by the "Rayleigh-Taylor instability," a phenomenon very well described and illustrated by the author. In fact, the reader is encouraged to open the book to the drawing of the upside-down glass of water, in the first third of the book (easy to find by flipping pages), and reading quickly about this instability. This explanation can be kept in mind through the rest of the book as an excellent way to visualize the fusion-engineering problem.

Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, of course, receive a good part of the book. These are the unfortunate and foot-shooting scientists caught in that infamous 1989 bollixed announcement about their "successful cold fusion" discovery. After being proved an example of bad experimental data, the two continued more or less covering up their mistakes. Their careers plummeted right after that and never recovered, maybe reminding other scientists to check and recheck their data. The author dislikes Edward Teller. Sort of. The reader is encouraged to take the Teller-bashing with some suspicion. Nevertheless, "Sun in a Bottle" is a fine recent-history work, well worth reading.

I was glad to read a nice history of both hot and "cold" fusion for both the bomb and as a potential energy source. I was sad, though, to see how pessimistic the author is about the future of fusion energy. Maybe the future for fusion energy really is that bleak, especially with the track record of fusion being 30 years away for the past 60 years.

"Sun in a Bottle" is an apt description of an inherently difficult and possibly impossible task. Like the Grail Quests, many desire it, most would do anything to have it, and it may be impossible to achieve.

There are reviewers here who fault the author's science. The author is a journalist writing for a general audience. He does a good enough job of presenting the story of nuclear energy from crude bombs and fission reactors to the seemingly always promised but never delivered fusion reactors.

It makes no difference that someone here did graduate studies on a tokamak reactor. That doesn't mean it's any more, or less, viable as a workable solution. It is unimportant that people in these fields believe that a workable reactor is just a few years away (that's what they always say). Science is full of time wasters. Unfortunately, we live in a period when funding is everything and science takes a back seat to reputations. The quest for fusion funding has become a career in itself.

I suspect a lot of the criticism is because of Seife's less than flattering view of the peer review process. He relates an incident (with his own involvement) where the peer review process, though followed in the usual manner, resulted in junk science being published in a peer review periodical. Those in scientific circles rely on these magazines and journals to disseminate new ideas and knowledge. Finding fault with it is not likely to garner friendly feelings for the author. But he has a point: The process is not perfect, and there are always those who will exploit any weakness in the system.