Sandia and Kurchatov groups claim electron‐beam fusion Available to Purchase

Experimenters at Sandia Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M. believe they have produced about a million neutrons per pulse from thermonuclear fusion induced by bombarding a pellet with an electron beam. Last year Leonid I. Rudakov and his collaborators at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow had reported the production of similar amounts of fusion neutrons produced by electron beams. However, Gerold Yonas, who heads the Sandia Fusion Research Department, believes that his group is the first to use the so‐called “magnetic thermal insulation” principle, which allows relatively low power to be used in the electron beams. The electron‐beam yields are about a factor of 1000 less than that achieved thus far with lasers.