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70-569: The Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft ( LBG ) is an Austrian network of specialized research institutes that are not part of a university. It was founded in 1961 and named after physicist Ludwig Boltzmann . In 1999, the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft comprised 131 institutes in the fields of medicine, humanities and social sciences. After 2006, the number of institutes was greatly reduced. This article about an organisation in Austria

140-496: A Q of 100 to be required for commercial fusion power stations to be viable. ITER will not produce electricity. Producing electricity from thermal sources is a well known process (used in many power stations) and ITER will not run with significant fusion power output continuously. Adding electricity production to ITER would raise the cost of the project and bring no value for experiments on the tokamak. The DEMO -class reactors that are planned to follow ITER are intended to demonstrate

210-428: A chemical reaction such as the burning of coal. It is the goal of a fusion power station to harness this energy to produce electricity. Activation energies (in most fusion systems this is the temperature required to initiate the reaction) for fusion are generally high because the protons in each nucleus strongly repel one another, as they each have the same positive charge . A heuristic for estimating reaction rates

280-481: A cryopump to cool the magnets to near absolute zero . High temperatures give the nuclei enough energy to overcome their electrostatic repulsion (see Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution ). For deuterium and tritium, the optimal reaction rates occur at temperatures higher than 10 kelvin. At ITER, the plasma will be heated to 150 million kelvin (about ten times the temperature at the core of the Sun ) by ohmic heating (running

350-401: A current through the plasma). Additional heating is applied using neutral beam injection (which cross magnetic field lines without a net deflection and will not cause a large electromagnetic disruption) and radio frequency (RF) or microwave heating. At such high temperatures, particles have a large kinetic energy , and hence speed. If unconfined, the particles will rapidly escape, taking

420-547: A desire to reinvigorate the scientific discipline by robust research in order to extract "pure" science from such broad categorisation. This began with research conducted autonomously away from public utility and governmental supervision. Enclaves for industrial investigations became established. These included the Rockefeller Institute , Carnegie Institution of Washington and the Institute for Advanced Study . Research

490-429: A force perpendicular to the direction of travel, resulting in centripetal acceleration , thereby confining it to move in a circle or helix around the lines of magnetic flux. ITER will use four types of magnets to contain the plasma: a central solenoid magnet, poloidal magnets around the edges of the tokamak, 18 D-shaped toroidal-field coils, and correction coils. A solid confinement vessel is also needed, both to shield

560-587: A fusion reactor. My response was 'great idea', but from my position, I have no capability of pushing that idea upward to the President.' This push for cooperation on nuclear fusion is cited as a key moment of science diplomacy , but nonetheless a major bureaucratic fight erupted in the US government over the project. One argument against collaboration was that the Soviets would use it to steal US technology and expertise. A second

630-427: A historic joint statement from Reagan and Gorbachev that emphasized, "the potential importance of the work aimed at utilizing controlled thermonuclear fusion for peaceful purposes and, in this connection, advocated the widest practicable development of international cooperation in obtaining this source of energy, which is essentially inexhaustible, for the benefit of all mankind." For the fusion community, this statement

700-464: A meltdown, and its radioactive waste products would mostly be very short-lived compared to those produced by conventional nuclear reactors (fission reactors). On 21 November 2006, the seven project partners formally agreed to fund the creation of a nuclear fusion reactor. The program is anticipated to last for 30 years – 10 years for construction, and 20 years of operation. ITER was originally expected to cost approximately €5 billion. However, delays,

770-402: A power station would be economical. Tests of such materials will be carried out both at ITER and at IFMIF (International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility). Once fusion has begun, high-energy neutrons will radiate from the reactive regions of the plasma, crossing magnetic field lines easily due to charge neutrality (see neutron flux ). Since it is the neutrons that receive the majority of

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840-592: A separate academy in which graduates could pursue further scientific research. It was the first institution of its kind in Europe to conduct scientific research within the structure of a university. The St Petersburg Academy was established by decree on 28 January 1724. At the European level, there are now several government-funded institutions such as the European Space Agency (ESA), the nuclear research centre CERN ,

910-644: Is Q = 1.5, achieved in an inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiment by the National Ignition Facility in late 2022. For commercial fusion power stations, engineering gain factor is important. Engineering gain factor is defined as the ratio of a plant electrical power output to electrical power input of all plant's internal systems (tokamak external heating systems, electromagnets, cryogenics plant, diagnostics and control systems, etc.). Commercial fusion plants will be designed with engineering breakeven in mind (see DEMO ). Some nuclear engineers consider

980-568: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Research institute In the early medieval period, several astronomical observatories were built in the Islamic world. The first of these was the 9th-century Baghdad observatory built during the time of the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun , though the most famous were the 13th-century Maragheh observatory , and the 15th-century Ulugh Beg Observatory . The Kerala School of Astronomy and Mathematics

1050-416: Is near 85% complete toward first plasma. First plasma was scheduled for late 2025, however delays were acknowledged in 2023 which would impact this target. In July 2024, ITER announced a new schedule which included full plasma current in 2034, the start of operations with a deuterium-deuterium plasma in 2035, and deuterium-tritium operations in 2039. The start of the project can be traced back to 1978 when

1120-459: Is relatively abundant or can be produced in a fusion reactor. After preliminary tests with deuterium, ITER will use a mix of deuterium-tritium for its fusion because of the combination's high energy potential and because this fusion reaction is the easiest to run. The first isotope, deuterium , can be extracted from seawater , from which it is a nearly inexhaustible resource. The second isotope, tritium , only occurs in trace amounts in nature and

1190-451: Is that nuclei must be able to get within 100 femtometers (10 meter) of each other, where the nuclei are increasingly likely to undergo quantum tunneling past the electrostatic barrier and the turning point where the strong nuclear force and the electrostatic force are equally balanced, allowing them to fuse. In ITER, this distance of approach is made possible by high temperatures and magnetic confinement. ITER uses cooling equipment like

1260-509: The Académie royale des sciences in 1666 which came after private academic assemblies had been created earlier in the seventeenth century to foster research. In the early 18th century, Peter the Great established an educational-research institute to be built in his newly created imperial capital, St Petersburg . His plan combined provisions for linguistic, philosophical and scientific instruction with

1330-624: The European Commission , Japan , United States , and USSR joined for the International Tokamak Reactor (INTOR) Workshop. This initiative was held under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency and its goals were to assess the readiness of magnetic fusion to move forward to the experimental power reactor (EPR) stage, to identify the additional R&D that must be undertaken, and to define

1400-749: The European Southern Observatory (ESO) (Grenoble), the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) (Grenoble), EUMETSAT , the Italian-European Sistema Trieste with, among others, the International Centre for Theoretical Physics and the research complex Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste, the biology project EMBL, and the fusion project ITER which in addition to technical developments has a strong research focus. Research institutes came to emerge at

1470-633: The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor , iter meaning "the way" or "the path" in Latin ) is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject aimed at creating energy through a fusion process similar to that of the Sun . It is being built next to the Cadarache facility in southern France. Upon completion of construction of the main reactor and first plasma, planned for 2033–2034, ITER will be

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1540-759: The United States . In the immediate aftermath of Brexit, the United Kingdom continued to participate in ITER through the EU 's Fusion for Energy (F4E) program; however, in September 2023, the UK decided to discontinue its participation in ITER via F4E, and by March 2024 had rejected an invitation to join ITER directly, deciding instead to pursue its own independent fusion research program. Switzerland participated through Euratom and F4E, but

1610-528: The 1975 Nobel peace prize and internal exile in Russia, which he opposed by going on multiple hunger strikes. The United States National Security Council convened a meeting under the direction of William Flynn Martin to discuss the nuclear fusion project that resulted in a consensus that the US should go forward with the project. This led to nuclear fusion cooperation being discussed at the Geneva summit and release of

1680-559: The EU effectively suspended Switzerland's participation in response to the May 2021 collapse in talks on an EU-Swiss framework agreement ; as of 2024 , Switzerland is considered a non-participant pending resolution of its dispute with the EU. The project also has cooperation agreements with Australia, Canada, Kazakhstan and Thailand. Construction of the ITER complex in France started in 2013, and assembly of

1750-650: The ITER machine. In 2017, Kazakhstan signed a cooperation agreement that laid the groundwork for technical collaboration between the National Nuclear Center of the Republic of Kazakhstan and ITER. Most recently, after collaborating with ITER in the early stages of the project, Canada signed a cooperation agreement in 2020 with a focus on tritium and tritium-related equipment. The project began its assembly phase in July 2020, launched by French President Emmanuel Macron in

1820-492: The ITER project, experimental blanket modules will be used to test breeding tritium for fuel from lithium-bearing ceramic pebbles contained within the blanket module following the following reactions: where the reactant neutron is supplied by the D-T fusion reaction. Energy absorbed from the fast neutrons is extracted and passed into the primary coolant. This heat energy would then be used to power an electricity-generating turbine in

1890-788: The International Tokamak Reactor, or INTOR, which had four partners: the Soviet Union, the European Atomic Energy Community , the United States, and Japan. However, the INTOR project stalled until Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1985. Gorbachev first revived interest in a collaborative fusion project in an October 1985 meeting with French President François Mitterrand , and then

1960-654: The Office of Energy Research in the 1980s and the Russian scientist Evgeny Velikhov who would become head of the Kurchatov Institute for nuclear research. The two scientists both supported a project to construct a demonstration fusion reactor. At the time, magnetic fusion research was ongoing in Japan, Europe, the Soviet Union and the US, but Trivelpiece and Velikhov believed that taking the next step in fusion research would be beyond

2030-472: The United States temporarily exiting the project in 1998 before rejoining in 2003. At this same time, the group of ITER partners was expanding; China and South Korea joined the project in 2003 and India formally joined in 2005. There was a heated competition to host the ITER project with the candidates narrowed down to two possible sites: France and Japan. Russia, China, and the European Union supported

2100-465: The assembly phase of the project at a ceremony in 2020. Under the revised schedule, work to achieve the first hydrogen plasma discharge was 70% complete in the middle of 2020 and considered to be on track. One of the ITER objectives is a Q-value ("fusion gain") of 10. Q = 1 is called "breakeven". The best result achieved in a tokamak is 0.67 in the JET tokamak. The best result achieved for fusion in general

2170-417: The beginning of the twentieth century. In 1900, at least in Europe and the United States, the scientific profession had only evolved so far as to include the theoretical implications of science and not its application. Research scientists had yet to establish a leadership in expertise. Outside scientific circles it was generally assumed that a person in an occupation related to the sciences carried out work which

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2240-545: The budget of any of the key nations and that collaboration would be useful internationally. Dr. Michael Robert, who is the director of International Programs of the Office of Fusion Energy at the US Department of Energy, explains that, 'In September 1985, I led a US science team to Moscow as part of our bilateral fusion activities. Velikhov proposed to me at lunch one day his idea of having the USSR and USA work together to proceed to

2310-472: The characteristics of such an EPR by means of a conceptual design. From 1978 to the middle of the 1980s, hundreds of fusion scientists and engineers in each participating country took part in a detailed assessment of the tokamak confinement system and the design possibilities for harnessing nuclear fusion energy. In 1985, at the Geneva summit meeting in 1985 , Mikhail Gorbachev suggested to Ronald Reagan that

2380-575: The choice of Cadarache in France, while the United States, South Korea, and Japan support the choice of Rokkasho in Japan. In June 2005, it was officially announced that ITER would be built in the South of France at the Cadarache site. The negotiations that led to the decision ended in a compromise between the EU and Japan, in that Japan was promised 20% of the research staff on the French location of ITER, as well as

2450-466: The cost of repairing some malfunctioning pieces was estimated at €5 billion. When deuterium and tritium fuse, two nuclei come together to form a helium nucleus (an alpha particle ), and a high-energy neutron . While nearly all stable isotopes lighter on the periodic table than iron-56 and nickel-62 , which have the highest binding energy per nucleon , will fuse with some other isotope and release energy, deuterium and tritium are by far

2520-534: The development of the project. The year after, in March 1987, the Quadripartite Initiative Committee met at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) headquarters in Vienna. This meeting marked the launch of the conceptual design studies for the experimental reactors as well as the start of negotiations for operational issues such as the legal foundations for the peaceful use of fusion technology,

2590-580: The end of that year. When ITER becomes operational, it will be the largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment in use with a plasma volume of 840 cubic meters, surpassing the Joint European Torus by a factor of 8. On 3 July 2024, ITER director-general Pietro Barabaschi announced the first plasma production in the project will not take place until, at least, 2033. The energy from magnets will be produced no earlier than 2036, rather than 2033, as previously planned in 2016. He additionally said

2660-427: The energy with them, cooling the plasma to the point where net energy is no longer produced. A successful reactor would need to contain the particles in a small enough volume for a long enough time for much of the plasma to fuse. In ITER and many other magnetic confinement reactors, the plasma, a gas of charged particles, is confined using magnetic fields. A charged particle moving through a magnetic field experiences

2730-416: The energy, they will be ITER's primary source of energy output. Ideally, alpha particles will expend their energy in the plasma, further heating it. The inner wall of the containment vessel will have 440 blanket modules that are designed to slow and absorb neutrons in a reliable and efficient manner and therefore protect the steel structure and the superconducting toroidal field magnets. At later stages of

2800-442: The estimated world's supply (mainly produced by the heavy-water CANDU fission reactors) is just 20 kilograms per year, insufficient for power plants. ITER will be testing tritium breeding blanket technology that would allow a future fusion reactor to create its own tritium and thus be self-sufficient. Furthermore, a fusion reactor would produce virtually no CO 2 emissions or atmospheric pollutants, there would be no chance of

2870-612: The fore in driving specific research developments. After the Second World War and the atom bomb specific research threads were followed: environmental pollution and national defence . ITER Members via EURATOM : [REDACTED]   India [REDACTED]   Japan [REDACTED]   South Korea [REDACTED]   Russia [REDACTED]   United States Partners: [REDACTED]   Australia [REDACTED]   Canada [REDACTED]   Kazakhstan ITER (initially

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2940-514: The head of the administrative body of ITER. In addition, it was agreed that 8% of the ITER construction budget would go to partner facilities that would be built in Japan. On 21 November 2006, at a ceremony hosted by French President Jacques Chirac at the Élysée Palace in Paris, an international consortium signed a formal agreement to build the reactor. Initial work to clear the site for construction began in Cadarache in March 2007 and, once this agreement

3010-676: The idea was further developed in November 1985 at the Geneva Summit with Ronald Reagan . Preparations for the Gorbachev-Reagan summit showed that there were no tangible agreements in the works for the summit. However, the ITER project was gaining momentum in political circles due to the quiet work being done by two physicists, the American scientist Alvin Trivelpiece who served as Director of

3080-492: The largest of more than 100 fusion reactors built since the 1950s, with six times the plasma volume of JT-60SA in Japan, the largest tokamak operating today. The long-term goal of fusion research is to generate electricity. ITER's stated purpose is scientific research, and technological demonstration of a large fusion reactor, without electricity generation. ITER's goals are to achieve enough fusion to produce 10 times as much thermal output power as thermal power absorbed by

3150-404: The magnets and other equipment from high temperatures and energetic photons and particles, and to maintain a near-vacuum for the plasma to populate. The containment vessel is subjected to a barrage of very energetic particles, where electrons, ions, photons, alpha particles, and neutrons constantly bombard it and degrade the structure. The material must be designed to endure this environment so that

3220-420: The most attractive for energy generation as they require the lowest activation energy (thus lowest temperature) to do so, while producing among the most energy per unit weight. All proto- and mid-life stars radiate enormous amounts of energy generated by fusion processes. Deuterium–tritium fusion releases, per mass, roughly three times as much energy as uranium-235 fission, and millions of times more energy than

3290-640: The most complicated engineering project in human history, and one of the most ambitious human collaborations since the development of the International Space Station (€100 billion or $ 150 billion budget) and the Large Hadron Collider (€7.5 billion budget). ITER's planned successor, the EUROfusion -led DEMO , is expected to be one of the first fusion reactors to produce electricity in an experimental environment. Fusion aims to replicate

3360-562: The net production of electricity. One of the primary ITER objectives is to achieve a state of " burning plasma ". Burning plasma is the state of the plasma when more than 50% of the energy received for plasma heating is received from fusion reactions (not from external sources). No fusion reactors had created a burning plasma until the competing NIF fusion project reached the milestone on 8 August 2021 using inertial confinement. At higher Q values, progressively bigger parts of plasma heating power will be produced by fusion reactions. This reduces

3430-588: The organizational structure and staffing, and the eventual location for the project. This meeting in Vienna was also where the project was baptized the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, though it was quickly called by its abbreviation alone and its Latin meaning of 'the way'. Conceptual and engineering design phases were carried out under the auspices of the IAEA. The original technical objectives were established in 1992 and

3500-547: The original Engineering Design Activities (EDA) were completed in 1998. An acceptable, detailed design was validated in July 2001 to complete the extended EDA period, and the validated design then went through a Design Review that began November 2006 and concluded in December 2007. The design process was difficult with arguments over issues such as whether there should be circular cross sections for magnetic confinement or D-shaped cross sections. These issues were partly responsible for

3570-434: The plasma for short time periods; to demonstrate and test technologies that would be needed to operate a fusion power plant including cryogenics, heating, control and diagnostics systems, and remote maintenance; to achieve and learn from a burning plasma; to test tritium breeding ; and to demonstrate the safety of a fusion plant. ITER's thermonuclear fusion reactor will use over 300 MW of electrical power to cause

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3640-442: The plasma to absorb 50  MW of thermal power, creating 500 MW of heat from fusion for periods of 400 to 600 seconds. This would mean a ten-fold gain of plasma heating power ( Q ), as measured by heating input to thermal output, or Q ≥ 10. As of 2022 , the record for energy production using nuclear fusion is held by the National Ignition Facility reactor, which achieved a Q of 1.5 in December 2022. Beyond just heating

3710-465: The plasma, the total electricity consumed by the reactor and facilities will range from 110 MW up to 620 MW peak for 30-second periods during plasma operation. As a research reactor, the heat energy generated will not be converted to electricity, but simply vented . ITER is funded and run by seven member parties: China , the European Union , India , Japan , Russia , South Korea and

3780-428: The power needed from external heating systems at high Q values. The bigger a tokamak is, the more fusion-reaction-produced energy is preserved for internal plasma heating (and the less external heating is required), which also improves its Q-value. This is how ITER plans for its tokamak reactor to scale. The initial international cooperation for a nuclear fusion project that was the foundation of ITER began in 1978 with

3850-564: The presence of other members of the ITER project. ITER is supervised by a governing body known as the ITER Council that is composed of representatives of the seven signatories to the ITER Agreement. The ITER Council is responsible for the overall direction of the organization and decides such issues as the budget. The ITER Council also appoints the director-general of the project. There have been five directors-general so far: Bernard Bigot

3920-482: The process of nuclear fusion produces 90,000-kilowatt hours of energy, or the equivalent of 11 tonnes of coal. Nuclear fusion uses a different approach from traditional nuclear energy. Current nuclear power stations rely on nuclear fission with the nucleus of an atom being split to release energy. Nuclear fusion takes multiple nuclei and uses intense heat to fuse them together, a process that also releases energy. Nuclear fusion has many potential attractions. The fuel

3990-412: The process that takes place in stars where the intense heat at the core fuses together nuclei and produces large amounts of energy in the form of heat and light. Harnessing fusion power in terrestrial conditions would provide sufficient energy to satisfy mounting demand, and to do so in a sustainable manner that has a relatively small impact on the environment. One gram of deuterium-tritium fuel mixture in

4060-421: The project has aims to: The objectives of the ITER project are not limited to creating the nuclear fusion device but are much broader, including building necessary technical, organizational, and logistical capabilities, skills, tools, supply chains, and culture enabling management of such megaprojects among participating countries, bootstrapping their local nuclear fusion industries. As of April 2022 ITER

4130-504: The rising price of raw materials, and changes to the initial design have seen the official budget estimate rise to between €18 billion and €20 billion. The reactor was expected to take 10 years to build, and ITER had planned to test its first plasma in 2020 and achieve full fusion by 2023. In 2024, ITER published a new schedule with deuterium-deuterium plasma operations starting in 2035. Site preparation has begun near Cadarache center, France, and French President Emmanuel Macron launched

4200-403: The tokamak began in 2020. The initial budget was close to €6 billion, but the total price of construction and operations is projected to be from €18 to €22 billion; other estimates place the total cost between $ 45 billion and $ 65 billion, though these figures are disputed by ITER. Regardless of the final cost, ITER has already been described as the most expensive science experiment of all time,

4270-519: The two countries jointly undertake the construction of a tokamak EPR as proposed by the INTOR Workshop. The ITER project was initiated in 1988. Ground was broken in 2007 and construction of the ITER tokamak complex started in 2013. Machine assembly was launched on 28 July 2020. The construction of the facility was expected to be completed in 2025 when commissioning of the reactor can commence and initial plasma experiments were scheduled to begin at

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4340-513: Was Tycho Brahe 's Uraniborg complex on the island of Hven , a 16th-century astronomical laboratory set up to make highly accurate measurements of the stars. In the United States there are numerous notable research institutes including Bell Labs , Xerox Parc , The Scripps Research Institute , Beckman Institute , RTI International , and SRI International . Hughes Aircraft used a research institute structure for its organizational model. Thomas Edison , dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park",

4410-571: Was a breakthrough, and it was reinforced when Reagan evoked the possibilities of nuclear fusion in a Joint Session of Congress later in the month. As a result, collaboration on an international fusion experiment began to move forward. In October 1986 at the Reykjavik Summit , the so-called 'Quadripartite Initiative Committee' (Europe through the Euratom countries, Japan, USSR, and the US) was formed to oversee

4480-537: Was a school of mathematics and astronomy founded by Madhava of Sangamagrama in Kerala , India . The school flourished between the 14th and 16th centuries and the original discoveries of the school seems to have ended with Narayana Bhattathiri (1559–1632). In attempting to solve astronomical problems, the Kerala school independently discovered a number of important mathematical concepts. The earliest research institute in Europe

4550-400: Was advanced in both theory and application. This was aided by substantial private donation. As of 2006, there were over 14,000 research centres in the United States. The expansion of universities into the faculty of research fed into these developments as mass education produced mass scientific communities . A growing public consciousness of scientific research brought public perception to

4620-459: Was appointed to reform the management and governance of the ITER project in 2015. In January 2019, the ITER Council voted unanimously to reappoint Bigot for a second five-year term. Bigot died on May 14, 2022, and his deputy Eisuke Tada took over leadership of ITER during the search process for the new director. ITER's stated mission is to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion power as a large-scale, carbon-free source of energy. More specifically,

4690-437: Was necessarily "scientific" and that the skill of the scientist did not hold any more merit than the skill of a labourer. A philosophical position on science was not thought by all researchers to be intellectually superior to applied methods. However any research on scientific application was limited by comparison. A loose definition attributed all naturally occurring phenomena to "science". The growth of scientific study stimulated

4760-609: Was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large-scale teamwork to the process of invention in the late 1800s, and because of that, he is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory. From the throes of the Scientific Revolution came the 17th century scientific academy. In London, the Royal Society was founded in 1660, and in France Louis XIV founded

4830-532: Was ratified by all partners, the ITER Organization was officially established on 24 October 2007. In 2016, Australia became the first non-member partner of the project. ITER signed a technical cooperation agreement with the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), granting this country access to research results of ITER in exchange for the construction of selected parts of

4900-458: Was symbolic and involved American criticism of how the Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov was being treated. Sakharov was an early proponent of the peaceful use of nuclear technology and along with Igor Tamm he developed the idea for the tokamak that is at the heart of nuclear fusion research. However, Sakharov also supported broader civil liberties in the Soviet Union, and his activism earned him both

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