Nexus January 2013 interview on nuclear fusion

Empty cathedrals

Published on January 5, 2013

Supplement of January 20, 2013

The magazine Nexus published, in its French edition of January-February 2013, a 6-page interview where I recall the failure of the laser-assisted fusion in the United States. This information, which appeared in the American press six months ago, has been completely hidden in France. The NIF (Nuclear Ignition Facility) project, which represents the culmination of thirty years of efforts and research, includes 192 lasers and would have cost the American taxpayer 5 billion dollars. In view of this information, the French project Megajoule, equivalent to the NIF, with an approximate cost of 6.6 billion euros and currently under construction, should be canceled.

It is impossible to expect anyone, for example a member of the House of Representatives, to ask: "Given the failure of the NIF project, and in the current context of crisis, should we continue the Megajoule project?" Unfortunately, the nuclear lobby is too powerful and this question could cost the said member of the House of Representatives his sacred political career.

Recently, a political figure told me that he wanted me to be the "godfather" of his young political party. This party defends the same ideas as me, although, he said, I could find their program quite incomplete. When we addressed the nuclear issue, I received the following response:

It is a topic that I do not think it is appropriate to address at the moment because the French public is divided.

To address this crucial, urgent, and vital issue, due to simple public health reasons, it may take a good dose of "political guts." And I have not found these guts in any of the contacts I have had with politicians of different colors. To the point that I have developed a nauseating view of the political class. These people make me think of the lawyers who defend with great publicity characters and causes that mean nothing to them, and then discuss among professionals around a good meal when they go skiing together or when they have dinner at the Lipp restaurant.

When we say that these people are "actors of political life," the word actor comes as a ring to the finger. The texts they read, written by others, are nothing more than scripts; the ideas they convey are nothing more than words that the money lobby puts in their mouths. Citizens, internet users, are increasingly aware that the world of politics, like the world of journalism, is nothing more than false characters in a puppet theater. Both of them are driven by ambition. The message could not be clearer.

Make a gesture, say a loud word, and with a simple phone call from our side, your political party will stop supporting you. You will never find a penny to support your next election campaign, and the media under our influence will make your life impossible.

At the highest level, the level of heads of state, the warning would be much more brutal:

Be careful with your life. An airplane or car accident, an attack by a madman, recognized as guilty and then eliminated or committed suicide in his cell, a sudden illness that kills you, any action that we could easily and with impunity manipulate, all of this can happen at any moment. Be careful with your family, your children. Everything is possible, you know.

And this at any level, even a head of state of the most powerful nation on the planet. You only have to remember the elimination of John F. Kennedy, a poor player, who thought he was the President of the United States of America.

Let's go back to laser-assisted fusion, the failure of the NIF (National Ignition Facility) in the United States. The failure is evident, proven, documented, and widely commented on in the press (in a 2012 issue of the New York Times). A report by the American Department of Energy, the DOE (Department Of Energy), which is none other than the organization that controls the NIF, makes a balance and, without any ambiguity, lights the fuse of the powder barrel during the summer of 2012.

****Click here to download this report of July 19, 2012.

This project was doomed for some time. And it is not the magazine NEXUS, which made a commendable effort by being the only media organization to publish this information and to enter into technical-scientific details. This article does not correspond to what the readers of this magazine expected, and from here I salute the courage of David Dennery, its editor-in-chief, for risking losing readers by publishing topics of great complexity. With this article, and I do not doubt in repeating my praise, he has saved the honor of the profession of journalist, while many of his colleagues bow to the pressure of money.

An article, very well written, and sent four months ago by an engineer colleague to the editor-in-chief of the magazine Science et Avenir (Science and Future), Dominique Leglu, who writes strong comments in her blog, has remained unanswered.

I will try to summarize.

In the 1970s, John Nuckolls (whom I had met in Livermore in 1976) published a foundational article, suggesting that nuclear fusion could be achieved in a sample of a few millimeters in diameter subjected to the impact of powerful laser beams. These lasers provide (and provided in 1976) an instantaneous power that goes beyond our imagination: one terawatt (or a million megawatts).

Fluorescent xenon lamp banks pump energy into large blocks of pink glass. You have seen this material before, for example in glasses: when we dope the glass with this rare earth, neodymium, it acquires that peculiar pink color. In this way, 10,000 joules are stored in these cylindrical blocks. This amount of energy is not very large because a calorie represents 4.14 joules and 10,000 joules are no more than 2,400 calories. This amount of energy is enough to boil 30 cubic centimeters of water or the bottom of a tea cup!

But this neodymium-based glass has the property of being able to return its energy in 10 nanoseconds, 10-8 seconds. Hence this power of & . a million megawatts per each "laser line."

The NIF has 192 such lasers. If a shorter discharge time is used, the NIF can provide (it has been operational since the first months of 2010) five hundred terawatts of energy, in the form of ultraviolet light.

500 terawatts is more than a thousand times the instantaneous power supplied by all the electrical machines operating together in the United States.

These ultraviolet light beams penetrate through the holes of a small cylindrical chamber, which has two holes, and which specialists call, opting for the German term cavity, Hohlraum.

The "oven" (hohlraum) that contains the spherical target in the NIF-Megajoule setups

The light beams hit the inner wall of this oven, made of gold, following a triple crown of spots.

The light beams hit the inner wall of this oven, made of gold, following a triple crown of spots. In the center and in white, the spherical target containing the deuterium-tritium mixture

These points on the wall re-emit X-rays, and it is this radiation that will cause the sublimation of the thin shell of the target (ablator) containing the deuterium-tritium mixture. When this material goes into plasma, it expands both inward and outward. This reverse compression will act on the solid deuterium-tritium (DT) layer located on the inner side of the shell, pushing the mixture toward the geometric center of the target at a speed exceeding 370 km/s, thus creating a hot spot from which the fusion or ignition reaction should begin.

The target: a very thin sphere containing the frozen deuterium-tritium mixture.

What is the mechanism that ensures the confinement of this DT ball in the solid and compressed state? Inertia. This is why these laser fusion systems are called ICF (inertial confinement fusion: Inertial Confinement Fusion).

The project started at the end of the 1990s.

****http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility

****http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility

In this report (and this sentence is addressed to scientific journalists to do their job properly), the fundamental passage is called Centurion Halite. At this moment, when the people from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, California, tried to convince the DOE to finance this gigantic project, criticisms appeared everywhere. Do not be deceived by this number with many zeros that is the power (or the amount of energy that must be deposited on the target to obtain ignition), which is effectively science fiction. It is not the fundamental parameter*.

Nuckolls provided the first numbers. That after some time he increased by several orders of magnitude. And later admitted that he had made a mistake in his calculations. The DOE finally asked for experiments to obtain reliable data.

Before anything else, it is necessary to understand that the NIF project, like the French Megajoule project, are 100% military projects. When they tell us that these systems could produce electricity, they are taking us for a ride. The reason is very simple. If these setups could one day be transformed into electricity generators, we would first have to recover the energy produced in the fusion, in the wall. This energy is contained in the flow of helium nuclei and neutrons (80% of the energy released in the fusion is produced in this way). Tritium does not exist in nature, hence this wall has a function of tritium generator to be able to replenish the tritium stock consumed. For this, lithium plates are placed around the chamber, which under the impact of neutrons will create helium and tritium. Since the maximum performance of the reaction is one tritium nucleus per captured neutron, it is necessary to interpose a substance that acts as a neutron multiplier, such as lead or beryllium. At the end of the chain, the released energy can be extracted through a heat exchanger that will serve to produce steam, which will power turbines connected to alternators to produce electrical energy.

It will also be necessary to ensure the replacement of the windows through which the laser enters, since they will be quickly damaged by the neutrons.

You will not be surprised if I tell you that there is no plan, no project to recover the energy from the fusion.

A part of this energy will be used to recharge the capacitors that power the lasers, with the consequent loss of energy. Finally, and taking into account all the parameters and losses, the performance of the neodymium-doped glass lasers does not exceed 1.5% !!

No, the gold cylinder (a heavy material) that re-emits X-rays is not there to simulate the second stage of a hydrogen bomb, where the X-ray flux is produced by a fission device. These experiments would allow military engineers to find the best components for the ablator, thus increasing the performance of the device.

In a thermonuclear bomb, only a part of the fusionable mixture (solid lithium deuteride) fuses. It is also an inertial confinement system. When the target (this time arranged along the axis of the bomb) begins to fuse, it immediately expands. The temperature drops, the distance between the nuclei increases and finally the fusion reaction stops.

What results from the explosion of a thermonuclear bomb (leaving aside the products derived from nuclear fission that are needed to trigger the fusion) is not only helium as the product of the fusion reaction but also a mixture of helium and materials that have not fused. Only 20% of the explosive is converted into energy. Thanks to the laser-assisted fusion systems, the military hoped to have access to a more versatile and less expensive testing installation than underground nuclear experiments, which were in fact banned at the end of the 1990s.

Well, that's the background of these projects.

A bit alarmed by the successive adjustments made by Nuckolls, the financier, the DOE asked to irradiate targets similar to those used in the NIF for laser-induced fusion. For this, underground nuclear experiments were carried out at the Nevada site. These ultra-secret experiments have the code name "Centurion Halite." They were carried out between 1978 and 1988. And the results obtained greatly disappointed the leaders of the NIF project:

**In these experiments, ignition is not achieved until the energy concentrated on the target exceeds 10-20 megajoules. **

The energy needed to boil 30 liters of water.

Let's look at the name given to the French project: Megajoule (Megajoule). It means that the goal is to produce energy through a laser beam of the order of a million joules. The same as in the NIF.

Do the calculation. The NIF managed to produce 1.87 megajoules of laser energy. If we divide by the number of lasers, 192, we get the amount of energy stored in each laser: 10,000 joules.

This is the amount of energy that enters the mini-oven. A part is used to heat the gold of this oven. There are all kinds of losses and in the end, only a tenth of this energy reaches the spherical target, that is, 0.18 megajoules. I remind you that the results of the Centurion Halite experiments prescribe an energy of 10 megajoules.

There is a factor of 55 missing!

Instead of 192 lasers, we would need... a thousand. Unthinkable from a financial point of view (the French have already reduced the number of laser lines to 176, with the consequent increase to 60 of the factor needed to achieve ignition).

The Centurion Halite project is a highly confidential project. There is no declassified report where the official figures are exposed. However, we have two sources of information. One is French, based on the indiscretion of an American weapons designer. But it is not the only one. The American military engineers involved in these tests know that this huge difference between the required value and what this laser bank can produce could condemn the project. And they use experts, retired and not subject to the defense secrecy, to provide information indirectly. An article published by the New York Times and published in 1998 is an example of this type of leak.

********New York Times article, by William Broad, March 21, 1988

Where did I find this article? Simply in the reference (39) of the English page of the NIF project!

How was the Livermore lobby able to get funding for its project? By modifying the design of the target. The military had worked with a thick ablator, compressing its content composed of a homogeneous charge of liquid DT. The Livermore researchers, led by John Lindl, imagined compressing a thin layer of solid DT, arranged on the inner layer of the ablator, to reduce the inertia. All of this was based on the results obtained through the LASNEX program, and using the most powerful computers in the world.

The researchers of the NIF project, more than skeptical, wanted to know what was behind that calculation program.

Impossible. They were denied access: the same program had been classified as defense secret! The project thus remained perfectly closed.

Everything worked this way for 3 decades, through an extraordinary lobby. Livermore even managed to place a man working for the laboratory, Steve Koonin, in the DOE commission that follows this project! If you read the DOE report of July 2012, you will see that the first thing the experts ask is to remove Koonin from this commission! You will also find the name of John Nuckolls, the initiator of the laser fusion saga, among the signatories of the article published in the magazine Nature.

Everyone in the world of laser fusion knows what to expect. The ignition will never be achieved in the NIF. Because nothing has worked as predicted by the simulations, which, by the way, allowed John Lindl to win the Teller Prize and receive the Maxwell Prize in 2007. On the occasion of receiving this prize, he gave a lecture whose content is worth nothing.

****Lindl's speech on the occasion of receiving the Maxwell Prize, in 2007

Look at the last page, where the conclusions are:

Translation of this last sentence:

The first ignition experiments will only scratch the surface of the NIF installation's potential.

The House of Representatives has granted the NIF project three years of grace. Since it is a new project, it cannot be closed down overnight. But the responsible people say:

It is still too early to say whether the NIF will achieve ignition or not.

One thing is clear: France will complete ITER and Megajoule. Our military (since Megajoule is funded by the army in France) say to anyone who wants to listen to them:

We have never had the goal of fusion. It is the journalists who insist on saying it. Megajoule will allow us to study the behavior of materials subjected to time-modulated X-ray beams.

Even viewed from this side, it is false. The power emitted by the lasers can be modulated, by acting before the amplification chain. These monstrous lasers are controlled by a small table-top laser, which can be easily controlled. And thus the laser power can be controlled in time and space. But not in the oven. No one is able to describe what happens in the oven or to model the physical phenomena that take place there. No one has been able to predict the amount of gold that turns into plasma. No one has been able to calculate the opacity resulting from stimulated Raman diffusion processes. How these X-rays are absorbed by the ablator is completely unknown. The only thing we know is that the piston mixes with the fuel, through the Rayleigh-Taylor instability. The interface between the ablator and the deuterium-tritium mixture is very complex. How do we know? By measuring the speed of the test atoms that have been previously incorporated into the ablator. The researchers have confirmed that the test atoms are subject to strong turbulence, which is the sign of the strong mixing of the ablator with the DT.

What would be the solution?

Increase the thickness of the ablator? But then the inertia would increase and the possibility of achieving the required implosion speed, 370 km/s, would be lost. - Increase the power of the lasers? Impossible. If the stored energy is increased, the lasers could explode like a grenade. From these huge blocks, only fragments the size of a sugar cube would remain. I have seen with my own eyes what remained of one of the two lasers of the Janus experiment that exploded two days before I arrived at Livermore in 1976.
Gain a factor of ten in energy by direct irradiation: instead of focusing the X-rays (emitted by the hohlraum via direct irradiation) on the target, focus the ultraviolet light of the lasers. No. Three decades of experimentation have shown that the laser-wall interaction is better the shorter the wavelength of the light. The neodymium-doped glass lasers do not produce ultraviolet light, but infrared. The first experiments in the infrared (Janus: two lasers, Shiva: twenty-four) had catastrophic results. There was a preheating of the DT mixture by suprathermal electrons. They had to find a way to reduce the wavelength by two, and then by three at the cost of losing energy. This is how the driver works today, with its 192 lasers emitting ultraviolet light. Returning to direct irradiation, all the problems of creation of suprathermal electrons that were initially appreciated and that led to the choice of the indirect irradiation formula, reappear immediately.
Reduce the wavelength of the laser radiation even more, for example by a factor of four? Also not, because the optics would not withstand it. At these wavelengths and these powers, the optics would explode!

After the failure of the NIC (National Ignition Campaign: the test campaign aimed at ignition, the beginning of a self-sustaining fusion, initiated by a laser shot, between 2010 and 2012), the responsible people told the press:

We are not the only ones working on laser-assisted fusion. There are the French ( ), also the Russians, the Chinese. Many countries have projects to build similar laser banks.

A clarification: there is a big difference between setting up a single terawatt laser line and launching a gigantic project. The Russians and the Chinese have said: we will see what happens with the American NIF bank. If by chance it works, then we will start and do the same.

Anyway, the Russians have carried out underground nuclear tests comparable to those carried out in the Centurion Halite project. In addition, they know this threshold value of 10-15 megajoules. And it is not by chance that this value is exactly the one set as the goal for the construction project of the machine Z (called Baikal). The big difference is that with Z-pinch technology it is possible to multiply the energy by a factor of ten or more. With neodymium-doped glass lasers, this is impossible.

I believe that if we could transform human stupidity into energy, we would have no problem with supply. The first gesture of the President of the Republic, François Hollande, was to sign the authorization to start the construction of the Astrid reactor, a fast neutron super-generator, successor of SuperPhenix (which, by the way, is estimated to take 30 years to dismantle!!!)

Bataille and Vido, two pro-nuclear deputies, continue to support the mega project of exploiting the 300,000 tons of Uranium 238, waste from the extraction of uranium ore for almost half a century. If we also had 3,000 tons of Plutonium 239, it would be perfectly possible to fill France with reactors of the fourth generation, also known as fast neutron super-generators and cooled with Sodium. We would then have 5,000 years of energy autonomy. The main reason for the existence of the La Hague factory is not to condition radioactive waste, but to recover the Plutonium 239 created in the reactors. According to Bataille and Vito, a treasure!

What is MOX? A mixture of Uranium 235 and Plutonium. The MOX rods are the fuel of 25% of the French reactors. With respect to the EPR, it is designed to operate with pure MOX!

There is a "small" problem if you want to implement the super-generators: it is a suicide, simply. Greed or recklessness? Both often go together.

My personal position: we must immediately stop the development and progression of nuclear power plants around the world. The development and investment in alternative energy sources is vital for the survival of the human species. If, it will be very, very expensive. This is known as "Great Works."

Sometimes, nations embark on a policy that ultimately leads to a fantastic springboard for all their economies and industries, in all sectors and on a planetary scale. The industry operates at full capacity while social dissent disappears completely. Credits are unlimited, the question of return on investment is postponed sine die, through a general consensus. The most privileged minds feed the world of innovation at an alarming pace. Inventors work at a breakneck pace. The demand for these products becomes unlimited and the market acquires a planetary extension. Many people are ready to dedicate, or even sacrifice, their lives to ensure the preeminence of the products from their activities, proving their superiority on the ground.

These political-economic commitments are called wars.

They are the source of fantastic profits and create a very juicy market for the reconstruction of the defeated's industrial apparatus, an operation that will fill the order books of the victors.

If we were to allocate just one hundredth of the money absorbed in a world war, all the energy problems of the planet would be quickly resolved.

If it is true that we must immediately stop civilian and military nuclear activities, it would be very appropriate that we also embark on the experimentation of energy sources based on aneutronic fusion, through paths such as the machine-Z, which are less dangerous and infinitely less expensive (but go and explain to the anti-nuclear and environmentalists that nuclear activities could be non-polluting, safe for humans and nature!)

To people who would say:

But, you are systematically against nuclear energy, what do you want, to go back to the sail?

I would answer:

I am against your outdated and primitive nuclear energy. You turn your back on concrete, real and achievable scientific advances, of great importance. They have nothing to do with cold fusion or free energy. I have never seen anything concrete in terms of superunitary yields, as claimed by so-called free energy. As for cold fusion, although I think it is theoretically possible, it is still in a very primitive phase, while there are today real solutions.

I think of the Z machines, existing or under construction. I think of the thousands of degrees obtained in 2006, concrete, measured and published by my old friend Malcolm Haines in the Physical Review letters. I think of the recent prospects offered by setups like MagLIF. In 2006 I started a campaign to raise awareness of the Ministry of Research and Industry, which was then directed by Valerie Pecresse (but for this lady, Maxwell must have been the inventor of coffee).

Vox clamant in deserto. Under my arms, I give up. I can no longer play the Don Quixote at my age, 75 years old. Moreover, the disease has settled in my own home. A chronic, incurable disease of which only the evolution can be delayed. One day it will come to me. My friends are disappearing like flies. Others send me messages from the other side of the world, which are farewell messages. Bone cancer, cancer of this and that. Chemotherapy, palliative treatments of all kinds.

I have spent two years of my life exploring the nuclear chessboard. A plasma physicist, I take pride in having acquired a general view of the problems generated by nuclear activity and that few people ask about. A summary of what I have learned

Politicians are useless, and environmentalists are no better. The institutionalized anti-nuclear, three quarters the same. The association "Exit from Nuclear," based in Lyon and bringing together 900 associations and with 14 employees, is scandalously ineffective. Its activities have been reduced to organizing meetings, parties, and actions that lead nowhere.

We make a human chain. We hold hands. We take some photos and end up with a picnic.

Well, very well.

Scientists are below everything. Short-sighted spirits, completely devoted to their lamentable careers, fighting like monkeys in the zoo. I have also found scientists, retired, military and civilians, who have worked in nuclear energy activities.

To the first, I asked:

With what you know at the moment, would you participate, as you did in the past, in the nuclear explosions in Mururoa?
Yes. Where else could I find such experimental means?

Remember the phrase of Enrico Fermi, who died relatively young, a victim of cancer caused by radiation. Asked about his involvement in the development of the first atomic bomb, he replied:

It annoys me with your question. This is nothing more than high-level physics!

Another was the inventor of the "Castor" wagons, which transported nuclear waste to the treatment center in the Hague.

Would you do this again?
Of course!

How to question 35 years of a career rich in every respect? The same goes for our scientists. Arriving at the highest levels of honors, notoriety, what can they fear? Yes, they can fear, I still wonder.

Journalists are sold to the system. Or as one of them wrote:

There are two types of journalists. Those who write or say they write what someone told them to write and & . those who are unemployed.

The nuclear fanatics are incurable. I would like to say to them, to shout at them "your children, your grandchildren, will spit on your graves."

An academic, a specialist in hot plasmas, 76 years old, told me a week ago:

One has to wait for the first results of ITER before judging (&).

Another illustrious figure of nuclear physics says:

Nuclear waste, that can be managed&

What a bunch of nonsense.

The height of nonsense, of inconceivable stupidity, is this sentence by Pascale Hennequin, Research Director at CNRS, the lady of hot plasmas at CNRS (interview from 2010 in the magazine Science et Vie).

The proof that ITER will work is& .. that we are building it.

What I can't stand anymore is my inefficiency. My website, my videos and interviews reach one French person out of fifty thousand. It's like preaching in the desert. I'll end up writing a book, printing it myself and selling about a thousand copies through my website. But I won't sell them all, as happened with L'Ambre et le Verre. You will never see them on television or in the publications of the scientific world. It's a miracle that a magazine, and only one, NEXUS, publishes this totally accurate, documented information that no other magazine or television wants to publish in France.

Laser-assisted fusion is a failure in the United States and the same will happen in France with Megajoule (remember this prediction)

There isn't a single day that goes by without me receiving messages of gratitude "for all my efforts." But I have to stay alive, keep a minimum of balance, take care of my loved ones, their health and mine. If I had to respond or process everything that comes to me daily, I would spend most of my nights awake.

Another thing I can't stand anymore: this ostracism of being the only high-level scientist who dared to touch the "UFO phenomenon" and none of my colleagues would dare to face me, hand to hand, in a seminar. And this has been going on for 35 years. Here it is a definitive and irreversible excommunication. A friend told me, "How do you want to change this situation? Type J.P. Petit on Google and then UFO or UMMO, and you will see what is said."

Dozens of videos, of which I don't regret a single word or phrase written or spoken, but that make me appear as an unmanipulable person, or excommunicated.

Against this, I can do nothing.

I remember an anecdote that happened six years ago. The editor of the magazine Palais de la Découverte allowed me to publish an article about the Z machine, a novelty at the time.

In the following days, he attended a meeting where the editors of different science popularization magazines were present. One of them said to him, in an inciting tone:

Why did you publish his articles? You know very well that we have the order not to publish anything from him.

When my book "We Have Lost Half the Universe" was published, fifteen years ago, a scientific journalist, breaking the silence, interviewed me on the radio, saying "I know that this will be blamed on me"

I created the association Savoir sans Frontières (Knowledge without Borders). http://www.savoir-sans-frontieres.com. 450 books and translations in 36 languages. Media coverage: zero. A coincidence? Of course not.

I tried to publish my own books recently L'Ambre et le Verre. One thousand copies remained unsold. Currently, one is sold per month. Completely discouraging. I know my readers precisely. One French person out of 50,000. Last year, the publication of a book was a complete failure due to the editor's inaccuracy. My readers know what I am referring to. The person was an idiot, both opportunistic and & . multi-incompetent.

I'm going to calm down a bit. I have archived the nuclear + fusion file, which is 15 centimeters thick and represents 1,500 pages.

After contacting certain high-level scientists, I received many praises from them. One of them, very well known and one of the main figures of nuclear energy in France, told me:

I have immense admiration for you. You are one of the few scientists who go to the bottom of things; instead of staying on the surface. It is important that you continue the fight.

These praises caught me a bit off guard. Then I said to him:

Then help me. Get one of my articles published in a science popularization magazine, with your support.

The matter was launched on January 2nd. I have already written the article and sent it to him. We will soon see the result. Its title is "Worlds out of Balance." Theme: on the inefficiency of conducting expensive and heavy research due to total lack of reliability, except for rare exceptions, in the field of fluid mechanics, material resistance, computer simulations, and in particular everything related to plasma physics (ITER, Megajoule).

This man, of a certain age, will make the effort? In any case, he has the intellectual stature and can impose this writing. We won't have to wait long to find out. If in the following months no article signed by me appears, we will once again know if the windmills have been able to defeat Don Quixote, who has nothing more than one life.

I found the pdf file of an article sent to the magazine Pour la Science (Science for the People) in November 2011 and that remained unanswered:

****The Hidden Side of ITER

Have I become picky and uncontrollable, as some think? No, I am very angry and tired. I want to distract myself a bit and I have many options.

| U | rgeons discuss and give their opinion

on their patients, on which one is the easiest to operate. | E | n first | said: | are the electricians? Inside everything is assembled following

a color code. | N | o, said the second, they are the

librarians. There everything is classified alphabetically. | E | n third | : | I prefer the mechanics because they come with their own spare parts. | O | u are completely wrong, said the last one.

They are the politicians. They have no heart, no guts, no balls. And when they change their mouth for the hole in the ass, no one sees the difference.

| U | rgeons discuss and give their opinion

on their patients, on which one is the easiest to operate. | E | n first | said: | are the electricians? Inside everything is assembled following

a color code. | N | o, said the second, they are the

librarians. There everything is classified alphabetically. | E | n third | : | I prefer the mechanics because they come with their own spare parts. | O | u are completely wrong, said the last one.

They are the politicians. They have no heart, no guts, no balls. And when they change their mouth for the hole in the ass, no one sees the difference.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/nuclear_power/2013/01/fusion_energy_from_edward_teller_to_today_why_fusion_won_t_be_a_source_of.2.html

http://www.slate.com/authors.charles_seife.html

| January 2, 2013. | A very critical article by

Charles | Seife | , journalism professor at the

New York University

Published in the magazine Slate, and discovered by François

Brault

If someone wants

To translate the article of

Seife

into French

Translate

article

into English

| January 12, 2013: | H | e received a phone call from the

In this consortium, the title of communications officer automatically makes him

someone | important : | ITER is a

99% communication and 1% science. This data may surprise more than one

but one should not confuse science and technology. In fact, many projects are subcontracted in ITER and | Megajoule | . For

example, the company | Bertin | is developing

for | Megajoule | a very precise system for aiming the 176 lasers and has obtained a large contract to assemble the superconducting cable winding for ITER. How many companies, all over the world, are

involved in these big projects | ? | T | his is very nice. Like the | NIF |, the lasers of | Megajoule | will be well aimed, and the superconducting elements of ITER will work very well. But they will be nothing more than empty cathedrals. The scientific spirit is missing. Nothing of this will work. You already know. In the case of NIF, it is already, it is official. For

ITER, we will have to wait several decades, which will be very expensive,

marked by innumerable reports resulting from the numerous unknowns that will appear over these decades | H | ards a catastrophe like

Fukushima in Europe for people to become aware. Perhaps the

Europeans will be less passive and resigned than the Japanese, where

discontent is considered an anti-social behavior. Imagine a catastrophe similar to Fukushima in the Lyon region, where the toxic emissions would be carried by the wind (Mistral) that strongly blows in the Rhône Valley. The entire valley would be contaminated. | H | ards to wait for this to happen for

the people to | revolt | against the ignorant and greedy fools who govern us. | I | n vain to wait for people in France to

raise the possibility of a possible emergency of a | aneutronic | fusion. The mere fact of thinking about it would make people doubt

have sold their souls. What did they get with | it ? | Probably money. A good salary. Robert has been on all the study trips of the group. | Le | consults | for | any | change in the | policy | -

Robert, what do you think this or that will be perceived by the | public ? | & | - Well,

he added: | - I will come to see you one | day | .... | I | f he does, bring his wife and his

daughter. I will tell them what their husband, their father does. | H | as been a few months | Arnoux | gave a press conference at the Marseille Academy, on the occasion of the

approval by the ASN of the ITER installation project. Finally, green light | ! | And of course this deserved a press conference.

the answer to your questions about disruptions ». | T | his dinner was supposed to be

confidential. | Arnoux | gave his press conference, visibly uneasy, and wanted to clarify that he

after having | co | -written a book with | Jaquinot | (founder of the Institute for Research on

the scientist who best knew the subject of instabilities in ITER, had

bought a nice house in the region, did not go to the US to work

on another | Tokamak | . Like many other scientists of his stature, he does not believe that this formula for achieving fusion is

viable. | T | his data slightly confused Robert, who represented the

giant tokamaks. | A | fter receiving an email from an American scientist

in charge of one of the largest fusion teams in the | tokamaks | on the other side of the Atlantic. He has more than thirty years of experience. He concluded his message: | - Never

reassure your bosses. I will not bother them anymore, and you can sell your

lies about ITER without any problem. I give up the game. ITER and | Megajoule | will be built, I have no illusions

about that. And you are quite smart enough to know that they will never | work | . For two years you have been reading what I

have written, it's your job, and you know what will happen. | P | araphrasing a famous book by Robert | Merle | , I could conclude this comment by proposing a

formula, which summarizes quite well the second phase of his career (and that of

many journalists and politicians) :

Lie

Work

Rivasi Duflot Cadarache jan 2013

| We would be crazy to deprive ourselves of

the | ITER | project! | - | Because the

global energy demand is constantly | increasing : | it will increase by a third by 2035. Here we have the opportunity to

produce clean and reliable energy& | So yes, we will conquer the Sun | ( | Ndlr | ,

the fusion reaction occurs naturally in the center of the | SOl | ). But we are

realistic | and we had to make sure; today we are. This project will benefit us in terms of employment. | And

it will also advance humanity in a way, undoubtedly comparable to

the conquest of | space ! | Hence the words

of the Director General of the ITER organization, | Osamu | Motojima | : | Today,

fusion is not only a dream, it is in the process of becoming a

reality . | It's about time. | R | esume extracted from the article published in

the regional newspaper « la | Provence | »,

Public Inquiry Commission was known, in the summer of 2011. I proposed that he come back

and give all the necessary explanations and clarifications. | He promised to take everything into account. And

he did not and | never will | . | He lies by omission, in each of his

articles. | T | he statement of our new minister of higher education and research is nothing more than the testimony of a manifest ignorance of the dossier. She has taken over from those who

about the competence and ability of the successor of

Nicolas

Sarkozy (who was sold to the Americans),

Francois

Hollande

Michèle** Rivasi. To her left, Cécile Duflot, at a demonstration on January 17, 2013, in front of Cadarache, at the opening of the base nuclear installation ITER**

I have not found any photograph of the full demonstration. In the style we make a chain and take some photos ». Strategy that you will find on [the website of Exit from

Nuclear.](http://www.sortirdunucleaire.org/)

I had the opportunity to meet Michèle Rivasi, European MP, in 2011, at a conference she gave in a small town near Pertuis (where I live), the Tour d'Aygues. She came along with a CNRS Research Director, Jean-Marie Brom ("pillar of the association Exit from Nuclear") and a researcher specialized in particle accelerators.

Jean Marie Brom, particle physicist. Works on particle accelerators and knows nothing about fusion.

I came to listen to this conference after being invited by a local association: « Mediane ». The two lectures were not very good and had little content. Brom plays the Hubert Reeves of the atom, insisting that the audience make the difference between fission and fusion.

I intervened for a few minutes at the end of their conferences. Michèle Rivasi suggested that Brom and I prepare a text that could be co-signed by other scientists, opposed to the ITER project. I then tried to contact Brom, who was evasive, always busy. In the end I wrote a rather extensive report, which was published, with great difficulty, on the website of Exit from Nuclear (I challenge you to find it on that cumbersome site). I decided to send the text to André Gregoire, President of the Commission responsible for the Public Inquiry, linked to the creation of the site of ITER, in Cadarache. Not having been able to exchange with Brom, I ended up writing the text myself. Before sending it to Gregoire, I sent it to Brom to co-sign, which he did. So the document was sent to Gregoire, by urgent mail, before he gave the green light for the installation of ITER.

In the following days, Brom told me "if I had read the text I would not have signed it" (& ). If you manage to get the text, you will wonder why this last-minute reaction. And 24 hours after receiving this document signed by four scientists, Gregoire received a letter from Brom, confirming that he wanted to distance himself from our request. It would have been better if he hadn't signed

Months later, Rivasi sent a text inspired by this last document to the Budget Committee of the European Parliament, in French and in English (she had the document translated). She also informed me that, at the request of Bernard Bigot, general manager of CEA, Brom was called by the General Directorate of CNRS in Paris, where he received a good reprimand.

After a few months, the situation with CEA became tense. I found the first elements of criticism of ITER well argued (plasma instability) in the [doctoral thesis

of Cédric Reux](http://pastel.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/59/92/10/PDF/Manuscrit_Reux_final.pdf), defended in 2010. And these informations were confirmed by another thesis, [the

Englishman Andrew Thorton](http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/1509/1/AT_thesis_FINAL.pdf), at the beginning of 2011.

Reux wrote and sent a letter to Rivasi, asking for an interview. At the same time he sent me an email saying that I had distorted his conclusions by taking phrases from his manuscript out of context. It became clear that he had contacted a lawyer and that he was going to file a complaint for professional prejudice (the letter probably comes from the legal services of CEA). I reacted immediately by transforming the 16-page report into a more solid document, with multiple citations of Reux's thesis, saying over and over again, regarding this question, give the word to Mr. Reux. There are so many citations that no one can believe that I had taken phrases out of context.

Bigot wrote to Michèle Rivasi (and he tutored her, she made me read the letter) proposing a meeting at the CEA premises in Paris to clarify everything, in the presence of Reux and fusion experts. Rivasi replied that the confrontation should be carried out in one of the offices on Boulevard Saint-Germain made available to European parliamentarians by the National Assembly.

I went to Paris. We agreed, with Rivasi's agreement, that the confrontation would be filmed by Jean Robin. I took the TGV and arrived two days early in Paris. I was still recovering from a relapse of my back pain and also came very loaded. The weight of the paper was heavy. Books, reports, the two theses (Reux and Thornton): several tens of kilograms. Also, once in the TGV station of Gare de Lyon in Paris, I realized that there were no escalators to go up from the platform and ended up with a broken back. The next day, I slipped on the sidewalk, a sharp pain shot through my spine and I fell to the ground, in the middle of the street. I had never had such violent pains before. It was no longer just back pain but a sudden reaction of the spinal cord. Passersby helped me get up.

Nothing, it will pass...

I entered my hotel and spent two days in bed, waiting for the pain to subside, canceling other appointments, to be able to go to the meeting at the offices on Boulevard Saint Germain, not far from the Congress of Deputies.

On the morning of the confrontation with Bernard Bigot, General Manager of CEA, flanked by fusion specialists, of ITER, I received a call from Jean Robin, who was to film the meeting.

An aside. Here we have another person for whom the words honesty and respect for one's word are empty. A man who continues (and we have the proof) to market the 9 DVDs of one and a half hours that he recorded in my house in 2011, and to keep the profit of these sales for himself (150 euros, plus shipping, for the 9 DVDs) without giving the 3 euros per DVD to the Association [Saber

without Borders](http://www.savoir-sans-frontieres.com/), as we had agreed.

A vulgar opportunist, endowed with an ambition that goes beyond his talent, who tries to present himself as a polemicist attacking this or that, to be talked about. I close this aside.

Robin:

Mr. Petit, I just received a phone call from Michèle Rivasi's secretary. You won't like it.

And he sends me the recording of the conversation as an attached document.

This secretary tells me, more or less:

Mr. Bigot has canceled the meeting this afternoon. You can inform Mr. Petit, as we don't have his phone number.

False! Rivasi has it and is probably next to her secretary when she speaks with Robin. She tries to get rid of the recording we had planned to make.

So I decided to call her on her mobile phone. Politicians address each other with "you," which I don't like much. I decided to play the card of the one who is not aware of the cancellation:

Michèle? Do you have news from the CEA people for the interview this afternoon? Because if they don't show up, we will come anyway and do the interview.

Upon hearing my message, Rivasi said to herself: "Hum.... if I don't come either, this won't forgive me on his website. Also, he will make a statement in front of Robin's camera that he will distribute on his site.

So she came [and had her part in the

interview with much](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xme89u_jean-pierre-petit-et-michele-rivasi-sur-iter_news#.UPvCaoXO_bk) ease, as if nothing had happened, after having tried to get out of the way.

At the end of the interview I said to her:

I think we have to write a book. Are you agree to sign it with me?
Agree.
I'll write the book and you find us a publisher.
OK.

The months pass. I write 180 pages, in the form of a dialogue between her and me, and as I write it, I send it to her, asking for her opinion. But Rivasi keeps putting me off. I finally tell her:

I can't continue like this. We have to have a work session in Paris to define the main lines of the book.

We set a meeting at the beginning of 2012. I take the TGV, a room in a hotel, all paid by me. Rivasi confirms the meeting by phone three days before, and we set the time. Again, the meeting is at the same offices on Boulevard Saint-Germain, where I arrived at the agreed time, 4:00 p.m.

An hour passes: no one. Finally I manage to contact her, after several attempts.

- Ah, today I'm in Brussels! You know what you're going to do, go to the North Station (Gare du Nord), there is a train every hour, and come to Brussels. I'll pay for your train ticket(...).

As an idiot, once again too loaded, tired, I go to the North Station. The next train leaves at 7:00 p.m. I decide not to go, and let her know, and I go back to my house.

I had "forgotten" our meeting? I doubt it. I'm not sure she wanted to be next to someone like me, who, as they told her, is not easy to be around, you know why.

To others she will say that I am someone difficult.

Internet users will draw their own conclusions

| We would be crazy to deprive ourselves of

the | ITER | project! | - | Because the

global energy demand is constantly | increasing : | it will increase by a third by 2035. Here we have the opportunity to

produce clean and reliable energy& | So yes, we will conquer the Sun | ( | Ndlr | ,

the fusion reaction occurs naturally in the center of the | SOl | ). But we are

realistic | and we had to make sure; today we are. This project will benefit us in terms of employment. | And

it will also advance humanity in a way, undoubtedly comparable to

the conquest of | space ! | Hence the words

of the Director General of the organization ITER, | Osamu | Motojima | : | Today,

fusion is not only a dream, it is in the process of becoming a

reality . | It's about time. | R | esume extracted from the article published in

the regional newspaper « la | Provence | »,

Public Inquiry Commission was known, in the summer of 2011. I proposed that he come back

and give all the necessary explanations and clarifications. | He promised to take everything into account. And

he did not and | never will | . | He lies by omission, in each of his

articles. | T | he statement of our new minister of higher education and research is nothing more than the testimony of a manifest ignorance of the dossier. She has taken over from those who

about the competence and ability of the successor of

Nicolas

Sarkozy (who was sold to the Americans),

Francois

Hollande

As one of my readers wrote to me:

In France, you are burned.

Exactly, and for several decades. Burned by scientists, intellectuals, politicians and the & .academics. My writings are read by some thousands of honest people. Thousands of unknown men and women who send me warm words of encouragement. It is both a lot and little.

To understand what I mean, it is enough to speak French and refer to the numerous videos where I appear, on the internet, to be immediately classified in the "ufologist" category. The scientist looking for a psycho-social-immunological reaction will not read a single line of my works or what I have written. Those who read something, out of intellectual curiosity, will remain silent out of prudence. Politicians will first think about their image, their careers. The last interview I accepted was for the newspaper "Les Incorruptibles." In the article that followed the interview, they describe me as& . conspirator. Great!

A solution would be to address a non-French-speaking audience. By distributing the documents in English, one can immediately reach the majority of scientists and engineers, as well as many intellectuals and foreign politicians.

I don't speak English well enough to write my texts in this language. In the future, if I write a new document, or a synthesis article, I will give it an international form, avoiding French-French references. I hope that the internet users, kindly and quickly enough, will translate my writings into English.

A reader is working on the translation of "Worlds out of Balance" into English. He promised this work for within two weeks, that is, at the end of January. Regarding the French version, destined to appear in a scientific information magazine, it will appear thanks to the support of this French nuclear figure. Let's hope so. If this is the case, I will open a bottle of champagne. But I am afraid that this will go wrong, as many other actions of this kind.

Nexus January 2013 interview on nuclear fusion

En résumé (grâce à un LLM libre auto-hébergé)

Mots-clés