Technology of Controlled Nuclear Fusion (Report on the First Topical Meeting, San Diego, 16-18 April 1974)

The recent optimism about controlled thermonuclear fusion has produced an ever increasing series of national and international meetings on the technological problems of this energy source. For example, in the one-year period between November 1973 and November 1974, there are three major meetings scheduled for fusion technology (the Fifth Symposium on Engineering Problems of Fusion Research at Princeton, New Jersey, November 1973; the First Topical Meeting on the Technology of Controlled Nuclear Fusion, San Diego, California; and the Eighth European Symposium on Fusion Technology, Jutphaas, the Netherlands, June 1974). These meetings are in addition to the major IAEA-sponsored meeting on Plasma Physics and Controlled Nuclear Fusion Research in Tokyo in November 1974 and several smaller sessions in American and European Nuclear and Physical Societies. Such a high frequency of meetings and the large number of papers presented at these meetings (e.g. 132 papers at Princeton, 113 papers at San Diego and 77 papers at Jutphaas) is the sign of a fast moving and maturing field.