Preface 5
Prologue: Toward a Sustainable World 7
Contents 11
Part I: Why Fusion Is Indispensable 19
Chapter 1: The Evidence for Climate Change 20
Is Global Warming Real? 20
Physics of Temperature Change 23
Quantifying Global Warming 24
Evidence for Climate Change 26
Paleoclimate 26
Computer Modeling 28
Modern Data 29
Global Temperature Rise 29
Disasters and Catastrophes 34
The Gulf Stream 37
The One-Degree Effect 38
Floods and Droughts 39
Box 1.1 Effect of Temperature Rise on Birds and Flowers 40
Effect on Oceans 42
Weather Extremes 43
Hurricanes and Typhoons 46
Box 1.2 Why Do Northern Hurricanes Rotate Counter-Clockwise? 47
Slowing the Inevitable 49
Box 1.3 How Can CO2 Weigh So Much? 56
References 58
Chapter 2: The Future of Energy I: Fossil Fuels 60
Backbone Power 60
The Energy Deficit 61
Energy Units 61
Energy Consumption 63
Energy Forecasts 65
What Drives the Increasing Demand? 66
Where Does the Energy go? 68
Energy Reserves 70
Box 2.1 Conversion of Energy Units 62
Coal and Carbon Management 75
Cap and Trade 76
Carbon Sequestration 77
Oil and Gas Pipedreams 81
Deep Drilling 82
Arctic Drilling 83
Shale Oil 84
Tar Sands 85
Oil from Algae 87
Gas Hydrates 88
Chapter 3: The Future of Energy II: Renewable Energy 91
Introduction 91
Wind Energy 92
The Birds and the Bats 93
The Growth of Wind 93
When is a Megawatt Not a Megawatt? 96
Size Matters 98
Offshore Wind Farms 101
Blade Design 103
How Turbines Work 105
The Fossil Footprint 106
Energy Storage 108
Meshing with the Grid 108
The Bottom Line on Wind 110
Box 3.1 How Much Sunlight Does the Earth Get in 1 hour? 111
Solar Energy 110
The Nature of Sunlight 110
Ways to Use Solar Power 112
Panels on Every Rooftop 114
Dangers 117
Central-Station Solar Power 117
Solar Thermal Plants 117
Solar Photovoltaic Plants 121
Box 3.2 Price of Solar Cells for \u201cGrid Parity\u201d 121
Box 3.3 Covering the Desert with Glass 122
Storage and Transmission 123
Is Large-Scale Solar Power Really Feasible? 124
How Photovoltaics Work 125
Box 3.4 Doped and III\u2013V Semiconductors 129
Silicon Solar Cells 128
Thin-Film Solar Cells 137
Fossil Footprint and Environmental Issues 139
Ideas on the Horizon 142
Organic Solar Cells 143
Geoengineering 148
The Bottom Line on Solar Power 149
Box 3.5 The Story of Silicon 135
Energy for Transportation 150
Hydrogen Cars 150
A Hydrogen Economy? 150
How to Carry Hydrogen [29] 151
Anatomy of a Fuel Cell 153
Sources of Hydrogen 154
Bottom Line on Hydrogen Cars 156
Electric Cars and Hybrids 156
Efficiencies of Gas and Electric Cars 157
Gas\u2013Electric Hybrids 158
Plug-in Hybrids 159
Batteries 162
How Batteries Work 163
Supercapacitors and Pseudocapacitors 165
Summary of Electric Cars 168
Biofuels 168
Box 3.6 Carrying Compressed Hydrogen in a \u201cGas\u201d Tank 152
Box 3.7 Kilowatts and Horsepower 156
Nuclear Power 172
Importance of Nuclear Power 172
How Nuclear Reactors Work 172
The Cast of Characters 172
The Chain Reaction 173
Moderation is the Key 174
Isotope Separation 174
Inside a Nuclear Reactor [41] 175
Types of Reactors [41] 175
Reactor Control 177
Fuel Reprocessing 177
Radioactive Waste Storage 177
Nuclear Proliferation 178
Nuclear Accidents 179
Future Reactors 181
Fission\u2013Fusion Hybrids 182
Other Renewables 184
Hydroelectricity 184
Geothermal 185
Wave and Tide Energy 186
Biomass 186
Wild Schemes 187
References 190
Part II: How Fusion Works and What It Can Do 192
Chapter 4: Fusion: Energy from Seawater 193
Fission and Fusion: Vive La Diff茅rence! 193
Binding Energy 193
Fission and Fusion Reactions 194
How Fusion Differs from Fission 196
Box 4.1 What is Binding Energy? 195
The Size of Energy 197
How Fusion Works 198
Plasma, the Shining Gas 200
Designing a Magnetic Bottle 203
What Is a Magnetic Field? 203
How Can a Magnetic Field Hold a Plasma? 205
The Hole in the Doughnut 207
Why the Field Lines Have to Be Twisted 209
Mappings, Chaos, and Magnetic Surfaces 212
Chapter 5: Perfecting the Magnetic Bottle 217
Some Very Large Numbers 217
Instabilities: The Fly in the Ointment 221
Hot Plasma as a Superconductor 221
How Plasma Moves in Electric Fields 222
The Rayleigh\u2013Taylor Instability 224
Stabilization by Sheared Fields 227
Plasma Heating and \u201cClassical\u201d Leak Rates 228
References 231
Chapter 6: The Remarkable Tokamak 232
A Special Kind of Torus 232
Kink Instability and the Kruskal Limit 233
Mirrors, Bananas, and Neoclassicism 235
Turbulence and Bohm Diffusion 240
The Culprit: Microinstabilities 242
The Drift Instability Mechanism 245
Vertical Fields 250
References 251
Chapter 7: Evolution and Physics of the Tokamak 252
Magnetic Islands 252
Sawtooth Oscillations 255
Diagnostics 256
Self-Organization 258
Magnetic Wells and Shapely Curves 259
Evolution of the D-Shape 261
How to Heat a Plasma to Unearthly Temperatures 263
Mother Nature Lends a Hand 268
Bootstrap Current 268
The Isotope Effect 270
The Ware Pinch 271
Zonal Flows 272
Time Scales 275
High-Confinement Modes 276
The H-Mode 276
Reversed Shear 279
Internal Transport Barriers 280
References 284
Chapter 8: A Half-Century of Progress 285
What Have We Accomplished? 285
Fits, Starts, and Milestones 288
Computer Simulation 295
Unfinished Physics 298
Edge-Localized Modes 298
Fishbones 300
Disruptions 302
The Tokamak\u2019s Limits 306
The Greenwald Limit 306
The Troyon Limit 307
Big Q and Little q 307
The Confinement Scaling Law 309
ITER: Seven Nations Forge Ahead 310
References 320
Chapter 9: Engineering: The Big Challenge 322
Introduction 322
The First Wall and Other Materials 324
The First Wall 324
The Divertor 327
Structural Materials 330
Blankets and Tritium Breeding 331
What Is a Blanket? 331
The Role of Lithium 332
Blanket Designs 334
Tritium Management 339
Tritium Self-Sufficiency 339
Tritium Basics 340
The Tritium Fuel Cycle 341
Superconducting Magnets 342
Introduction 342
ITER\u2019s Magnet Coils 343
The Supply of Helium [4] 346
High-Temperature Superconductors 346
Plasma Heating and Current Drive 347
Introduction 347
Neutral Beam Injection (NBI) 347
Ion Cyclotron Resonance Heating (ICRH) 348
Electron Cyclotron Resonance Heating (ECRH) 348
Lower-Hybrid Heating (LHH) 350
Remaining Physics Problems 350
Edge-Localized Modes 351
Disruptions 353
Alfv茅n Wave Instabilities 353
Operating a Fusion Reactor 354
Startup, Ramp-Down, and Steady-State Operation 354
Maintaining the Current Profile 355
Remote Handling 355
Fusion Development Facilities 356
IFMIF: International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility 356
Fusion Ignition Tokamaks 357
High-Volume Neutron Source 357
Fusion Development Facility 358
A Spherical Tokamak FDF 360
Fusion Power Plants 360
Commercial Feasibility 360
Power Plant Designs 362
The Cost of Electricity 367
Methodology 367
Important Dependences 367
Cost Levelization/Discounting 369
The Cost of Fusion Energy 370
References 373
Chapter 10: Fusion Concepts for the Future 375
Advanced Fuel Cycles 375
Stellarators 378
Wendelstein 379
Large Helical Device 381
Benefits of Nonaxisymmetry 382
Compact Stellarators 383
Spherical Toruses 385
Spherical Tokamaks 385
Spheromaks 388
Magnetic Mirrors 391
How Mirrors Work 391
Ioffe Bars and Baseball Coils 392
Mirror Machines 394
Axisymmetric Mirrors 396
Direct Conversion 397
Magnetic Pinches 398
Reversed-Field Pinch 398
Field-Reversed Configuration (FRC) 400
Z-Pinches 403
Plasma Focus 404
Inertial Confinement Fusion 405
Introduction 405
General Principles 406
Instabilities 407
Glass Lasers 409
Other Lasers 411
Target Designs 411
Direct and Indirect Drive 413
Reactor Technology 416
Pulsed Power 417
Hoaxes and Dead Ends 419
Cold Fusion 419
Bubble Fusion 420
Muon Fusion 420
Astron 422
Electrostatic Confinement 422
Migma 423
Ultimate Fusion 423
References 424
Chapter 11: Conclusions 427
Scientific Summary 427
Cost of Developing Fusion 428
Financial Data 428
Conclusion 430
Epilogue 431
Index 433