FUSION ON FILM
Since my post 2023-08-20Fusion.txt, where I talked about fusion
energy research following my reading of "Fusion: The Search for
Endless Energy" by Robin Herman, I have, true to form, been digging
into all too many old documentaries about fusion research. They're
all at an introductory sort of level because unlike most topics
that I look for films about on the Internet Archive and similar,
fusion hasn't made it into the practical world where it's widely
useful for someone to understand things properly without first
spending years jumping through obscure academic hoops deep in a
university somewhere.
The book made a lot of the 1958 Atoms for Peace Conference, which
was aimed at bringing together fusion science from across the
globe, while also making sure that the US had the most incredibly
cool science exhibits to show off to everyone. The book describes
how they came up just short of setting up a working fusion reactor
as one of the displays, but it's facinating that they did have
working fission reactors there, including one that was contructed
in public view through the course of the conference. Anyway this
original film, which really only pays atention to the american
exhibits, is really facinating (at least after coverage of the
conference itself, although the scale of that is really impressive
too):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqQ0c6UAsMk
The BBC's Horizon series has made a few films about fusion. Maybe I
just like 70s-era Horizon more than later incarnations, but I think
this old episode is their best work on the topic. It quite
entertaingly condenses much of the history described in that later
book, albeit with a particular focus on research from the UK. It
also ends with some early predictions about the consequences of
global warming, albeit a little mixed compared to understandings
today, but certainly an aspect of the fusion race that's gone from
an end-note to the main, somewhat desperate, attraction.
https://archive.org/details/HorizonFusionTheEnergyPromise
Of course that documentary was made a bit early to cover the
biggest reactors built in the 1980s, and predates the subsequent
discussion of what has become the ITER project. ITER have
themselves a rather massive video index on their website, although
it's mostly short flashy videos which seem popular these days but
are of near zero interest to me. There are also some old films from
the depths of their archives, but nothing that special. This talk
does do a good job of describing the main aspects of the ITER
project, and impressing the scale of the challenge:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn1SJOPgewo
On the other hand, the Horizon episode does further back up the
statement in the book about there being fusion reactors here in
Australia prior to the one built in the 90s which was given away to
the Chinese. These earlier reactors seem to be resolutely unknown
to the internet, but I did find an episode of the television show
Catalyst, from back when it actually covered a broad range of
science topics instead of mainly health and lifestyle related
stuff, where they showed that Australian H-1NF stelarator reactor
at the ANU, as well as early construction of ITER:
http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/tv/catalyst/catalyst_10_11_02.mp4
http://web.archive.org/web/20151119043447/http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2823772.htm
One rare discussion of some vaguely technical aspects is this tour
through the ITER construction site a few years ago, where in
particular the scale of the electrical systems is truely mind
blowing to someone like me who understands the units:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvsj0nqHwic
Rather shockingly, I actually caught a fusion documentary on TV
last week, which showed ITER in its current state of
partial-assembly, as well as the work of the oldest of the fusion
start-ups. It's quite a good look at the current state of play,
which is nice because on the web everything in fusion research
looks about to change tomorrow, but on webpages that often haven't
been updated in years.
Apparantly it can be streamed from the links here:
https://hannahfry.co.uk/the-future-with-hannah-fry/
Or Australians might be able to watch it online here as well:
https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-series/the-future-with-hannah-fry/season-1/the-future-with-hannah-fry-s1-ep4/2270617667510
Of course this is all from the boring sane end of fusion research.
Who can resist digging into the bonkers world of cold fusion? This
is a wonderful place where you can enter from a rational curiosity
about some genuine science and walk out believing that the reason
you can't get your $10,000 free energy plugpack to work is that the
government has implanted reality-altering devices in your brain at
the demand of the major energy companies. The fact that one of the
writers of this 1998 documentary, also the creator of the first
cold fusion magazine, was murdered a few years later, does kind-of
help the point. Altogether it's quite quirky as docos go, but if
you stick with it you can really believe that we might have cold
fusion working in just a few years time. Say 2005, or 2010 maybe.
In fact I did a little looking around and it seems most of the
people and companies shown have long since gone silent about cold
fusion research. There's something to it, but not enough to
generate useful amounts of energy. But in many ways this is exactly
the same case as for mainstream fusion research, which is also
largely led by experimentation rather than a solid confidence in
theory. It's hard to rule out the right breakthrough coming through
and making either path successful.
Cold Fusion - Fire From Water
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZae1KCLdOY
Cold fusion also made its mark on 90s popular culture in a way that
conventional fusion research somehow never has. There were a few
90s movie plots born out of this, and although the science was at
best a side-show to all of them, I've got to say I can't really
complain about The Saint from 1997. A hot scientist gushing fusion
mumbo-jumbo so sweetly that the cold-fusion nuts couldn't even
resist putting a clip of her in their documentary, corrupt
post-communsist Russia full of evil gangsters, constantly
alterating action and sexual tension, really what more could I have
asked for in a movie?
gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/The%20Saint%20%281997%20film%29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Saint_(1997_film)
- The Free Thinker
