Three years after the Department of Energy mothballed the $246 million Lawrence Livermore lab Mirror Fusion Test Facility in favor of more promising tokamak designs, lab scientists are scavenging choice parts of the huge machine for a new international fusion project. MFTF magnets worth $11 million will soon form the core of a new facility that will test and certify superconducting material for the proposed four-nation International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, still in the planning stages. The magnets represent the first major use of MFTF components since the project was halted at its inception in early 1986, Although lab officials don't expect the MFTF program to be revived, assistant group leader Stewart Shen says, "we were very careful not to damage the magnets in the move, and we think we can put them back" should DOE shift its fusion priorities again. The new test facility, due on-line by early 1990, will test superconductors with currents as high as 50,000 amps and under heat and high-magnetic field stress. The goal is to ensure the superconductors won't "quench"-cease to conduct electricity without resistance-when they are installed.
DOE Accused Of Distorting Panel Report
Problems caused by shifting fusion priorities are not unique to Livermore. In June, Department of Energy office of energy research director Robert Hunter dropped a bombshell on tokamak scientists by asking Congress for a $50 million cut in his magnetic fusion program to allow inertial-confinement fusion—a rival technology that Hunter supports-to catch up. The move, which was reinforced by a subsequent letter to key members of Congress from Energy Secretary James Watkins, has drawn a storm of criticism from the agency's own magnetic fusion advisory panel, which recently issued a report that recommended continued support for the field. "We feel kind of used," says panel chair Fred Ribe. "In all possible cases [DOE] put the most negative spin on our report." The panel found, Rebe says, that the largest proposed magnetic fusion project-the Princeton Plasma Physics lab's proposed Compact Ignition Tokamak–was likely to reach self-sustaining fusion "ignition" if allowed to progress as designed. Yet Watkins told Congress that the panel had concluded that "the CIT, as previously submitted for congressional approval, has only a very low probability of achieving...plasma ignition." Watkins' wording carefully refers only to the low-powered-and less certain-first phase of the CIT that is before Congress, a distinction CIT advocates say misses the point. "There really is no question that it will ignite in phase two," Ribe says. "Watkins is simply being misled."
