Pellet fusion with heavy‐ion beams attracts attention

Heavy‐ion fusion, a late entry in the inertial confinement sweepstakes, has been gaining a good deal of ground lately. Accelerator people as well as those involved in inertial confinement, have been thinking for several years that if a beam of energetic heavy ions at sufficiently high current could be delivered to a deuterium–tritium pellet in ultrashort bursts, a successful fusion implosion could occur. In particular, during the past few years Alfred Maschke of Brookhaven National Laboratory and, independently, Ronald Martin and Richard Arnold of Argonne National Laboratory did some calculations that made the prospects for using heavy ions appear to be within reason. Interest in the possibility has become more widespread: In July 1976, the US Energy Research and Development Administration (now the Department of Energy) sponsored a two‐week study of heavy ions for inertial‐confinement fusion, attended by about 90 people. Money for research was put in the ERDA–DOE budget, and early last spring funding and experiments began at several laboratories in the US.