Nuclear Fusion - Sharon Ann Holgate ****

Nuclear fusion should, in principle, be the perfect addition to renewables as we move away from greenhouse gas generating energy sources. Yet, more than 60 years after it was first suggested, we still don't have a single working nuclear fusion power station. (If, as the subtitle suggests, this has been a race, it has been a walking backwards three-legged race.) Sharon Ann Holgate provides a compact introduction to what nuclear fusion is, the various steps along the road that have been made so far, and why it has taken so long.

Starting with fusion as the power source of the stars, we discover the difficulty of keeping the tricky, twisty ultra hot material in the fusion reactor under control when using magnetic confinement, look at the two main technical approaches (and variants), the sheer scale of the engineering challenge, what is underway with ITER and more, along with the potential for the future.

Although this is an area beset with disappointments, one where we always seems to be decades away from practicality, Holgate balances the slightly depressing realities with the genuinely interesting science and technology involved and the still-real promise of the approach for the future, including the latest novel approaches.

Fusion is sometimes mistakenly attached to the 1954 statement from US AEC chairman that ‘It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter,’ which seems to have been about nuclear power in general. It's certainly an ironic prediction given the rise in electricity prices - and it's likely that nuclear fusion will never be cheap, but it should provide a useful way to iron out the variation in renewable sources, and as such is still an important technology for the future. Read this book and you will have a good picture of how that is going to come about.

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Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here