Fusion Power

Civilian applications, in which explosive energy production must be replaced by a controlled production, are still being developed. Although it took less than ten years to go from military applications to civilian fission energy production,[2] it was very different in the fusion energy field, more than fifty years having already passed without any energy production plant being started up.

Magnetic Approach

Registration of the first patent related to a fusion reactor by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, the inventors being Sir George Paget Thomson and Moses Blackman, dates back to 1946 . Some basic principles used in ITER experiment are described in this patent: toroidal vacuum chamber, magnetic confinement, and radio frequency plasma heating.

The U.S. fusion program began in 1951 when Lyman Spitzer began work on a stellarator under the code name Project Matterhorn. His work led to the creation of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, where magnetically confined plasmas are still studied. The stellarator concept fell out of favor for several decades afterwards, plagued by poor confinement issues, but recent advances in computer technology have led to a significant resurgence in interest in these devices. A wide variety of other magnetic geometries were also experimented with, notably with the magnetic mirror. These systems also suffered from similar problems when higher performance versions were constructed.