The timing of the announcement that scientists have achieved a second successful test of fusion reaction, which produces a net energy gain, could not have been better, and it could not have been worse. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory reported on August 6 that its scientists at the California-based lab had repeated the fusion ignition breakthrough that they had previously produced last December in experiments in the National Ignition Facility. The test on July 30 produced a higher energy yield than the previous one, the laboratory reported, noting that final results are still being analyzed.
Making the announcement on August 6 is good news, coming as other scientists with Copernicus, the European Union’s climate change authority, report that ocean temperatures have exceeded all previous temperature records, averaging near 70 degrees. Those scientists say those temperatures are likely to keep rising, with dire consequences for marine plants and animals. While some climate change occurs naturally, the burning of fossil fuels has accelerated the warming; therefore, the prospects of obtaining energy from nuclear fusion instead of fossil fuels is good news.
The timing is bad for those who remember August 6 as the day that the United States dropped its first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. The release of the much-hyped and critically acclaimed film “Oppenheimer” has served as a reminder of the horrors resulting from the scientific experiments with nuclear fission. Although the bombing helped to end World War II (which was about to end, anyway), it left the scientists behind the work scarred with the enormity of what they had done.
Still, the fusion breakthrough is encouraging work. Lawrence Livermore scientists using lasers and advanced technology achieved a net energy gain, fusing two light atoms into a denser one, generating 3.15 megajoules of energy from 2.05 megajoules channeled to the target. Fusion powers the sun, and such a breakthrough may help to curb climate change in the coming decades — if we have that long. Practical use of fusion remains in the future.
A diary entry by Dr. Michihiko Hachiya recounts his literally bare survival of the Hiroshima blast on August 6, 1945, on a morning that began “still, warm, and beautiful”. As he lay on his living room floor, exhausted from a sleepless night on duty as an air warden at his hospital, he was startled by a strong flash of light.
“Through swirling dust I could barely discern a wooden column that had supported one corner of my house,” he wrote. “It was leaning crazily and the roof sagged dangerously.” As he tried to escape through the rubble, “A profound weakness overcame me, so I stopped to regain my strength. To my surprise I discovered that I was completely naked. … All over the right side of my body I was cut and bleeding. A large splinter was protruding from a mangled wound in my thigh, and something warm trickled into my mouth. My cheek was torn, I discovered as I felt it gingerly, with the lower lip laid wide open. Embedded in my neck was a sizable fragment of glass which I matter-of-factly dislodged, and with the detachment of one stunned and shocked I studied it and my blood-stained hand.”
Seeking his wife, the two made their way to the hospital, although she finally had to go ahead because he continued to collapse. As he slowly made his way toward the hospital, he encountered others shuffling along and noticed “one thing was common to everyone I saw — complete silence.”
Soon the hospital and other buildings would be in flames, with fires springing up on every side. He lost consciousness and, when he awoke in a safe location, “The entire northern side of the city was completely burned. … The streets were deserted except for the dead. Some looked as if they had been frozen by death while in the full action of flight; others lay sprawled as though some giant had fluing them to their death from a great height. Hiroshima was no longer a city, but a burnt-over prairie.”
Dr. Hachiya later summoned his resolve to provide medical assistance to the wave of survivors who made their way to his hospital, finding time to record it all in what became published as Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of a Japanese Physician, August 6 - September 30, 1945. Published in English by the University of North Carolina, it is available at bookshop.org and the publisher’s website.
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