An optimist's fusion power timetable, October 1971.
Fusion will be and needs to be achieved. But when? Its primary fuel, deuterium, exists in sufficient quantity to satisfy any conceivable energy demands for thousands of millions of years. The cost of obtaining it from water is less than one per cent the present cost of coal. Is fusion power a distant dream or a near-term possibility? The first applications could come in the 1980s. This report on progress in fusion research was adapted from physicist Richard F. Post’s presentation last April 26 to the National Academy of Sciences Symposium on “Energy for the Future.” Post is head of the magnetic mirror program in controlled thermonuclear research at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, Livermore, California.
>Read more: Fusion power: The Uncertain Certainty
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