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