Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking Hardcover – October 30, 2008

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 [...]

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.