The FEF Story, Or How the US Establishment Pulled the Plug on Fusion Energy is now available on Amazon Kindle. The book, by the EIR’s Bill Jones, goes through the political history of the attempt to develop controlled thermonuclear fusion energy in the midst of the Cold War, beginning with the early-1970s call for a crash program for developing fusion by the National Caucus of Labor Committees. It traces the importance of fusion as a reflection of Lyndon LaRouche’s concept of a “science driver” for economic growth as well as an unlimited energy source. Together with some leading scientists, LaRouche helped create the Fusion Energy Foundation in 1974 as the primary lobbying organization for a crash program for fusion.
Over a period of just a few years, the FEF had helped create popular support for legislation calling for an Apollo-like program for fusion. The Magnetic Fusion Energy Engineering Act of 1980, sponsored by Washington State Representative Mike McCormack, was passed by Congress and signed into law by the anti-nuclear President Jimmy Carter. While the bill, which called for a commercial fusion reactor by the year 2000, passed both houses of Congress, it was never given the sufficient funding to become an Apollo-like program.
As fusion dwindled on the vine through the short-sightedness of Congress and several administrations, the FEF would later take up the banner of the Strategic Defense Initiative, a proposal by LaRouche for a joint U.S.-Soviet program to develop frontier laser and other technologies which could make nuclear weapons obsolete. In his mind this presented another possibility for a “science-driver” program as well as a peace proposal for ending the era of mutually assured destruction. This program was taken up in that form by President Ronald Reagan, but was never accepted by the Soviet leadership. During this particular political fight, corrupt elements of the U.S. government, including the FBI, which had conducted harassment against the FEF since the early 1970s, swung into action together with SDI opponents in the Soviet Union around Mikhail Gorbachev, with a “dirty tricks campaign” to jail LaRouche on trumped-up charges, and shut down several of the organizations connected to him, including the Fusion Energy Foundation.
While LaRouche and his political organization would continue to operate in spite of the political “railroad,” the FEF was never reconstituted, and now 26 years after the intended 2000 date, we are still waiting to “light the first lightbulb” with a commercial fusion reactor. This will inevitably happen, since many countries now, including China, are working hard on the task. But the story of this “lost opportunity” can perhaps shed a light for Americans on the tremendous damage done to American science and American society by the actions of a corrupt political clique. The paperback edition will be available on Amazon on June 8.
