The issue of the development of thermonuclear fusion energy has again been brought to the attention of the American public after nearly 40 years of deafening silence; an issue which once upon a time was on the front burner of American interest. The Magnetic Fusion Engineering Act of 1980, introduced by U.S. Rep. Mike McCormack (D-WA) and spearheaded by the organizing of the Fusion Energy Foundation, which economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche had helped to establish for the explicit purpose of promoting an Apollo-like program for bringing fusion online in 20 years, passed both Houses of Congress and was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter. But Congress’s refusal to fund the bill (roughly $1 billion per year for 20 years) and instead push toward “privatizing” R&D, along with belief in the “laws/magic of the market,” left the legislation to die on the vine. The recent establishment of an Office of Fusion Energy Sciences in the Department of Energy and the publication last October of a “Fusion Science & Technology Roadmap,” has again sparked interest in the United States in what could become a revolutionary and almost endless source of energy for mankind.
What has made fusion once again a “front burner” issue is the fact that, while the United States has neglected fusion research since the 1980s, other countries have not. The Soviet Union, which had been the leading nation in fusion, began working with the People’s Republic of China in the 1970s, which was just beginning to get its bearings after a long period of policy dilemmas that had left the country immersed in poverty.
