Environmental effects of thermonuclear fusion power reactors

Abstract

In March 1973, with the energy crisis dominating the political scene, the British government agreed to an expansion of the country's thermonuclear fusion research programme. This work, at the Atomic Energy Authority's Culham Laboratories, is a truly international project financed partly from Euratom resources. Similar programmes exist in France and Germany, while laboratories in the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union appear to be devoting even greater effort to the problem of harnessing the hydrogen bomb reaction than do those of Western Europe.