Astron (fusion reactor)

The Astron is a type of fusion power device pioneered by Nicholas Christofilos and built at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory during the 1960s and 70s. Astron used a unique confinement system that avoided several of the problems found in contemporary designs like the stellarator and magnetic mirror. Development was greatly slowed by a series of changes to the design that were made with limited oversight, and the Astron was unable to meet the goals set for it by a review committee. Funding was cancelled in 1972 and development wound down in 1973. Work on similar designs appears to have demonstrated a theoretical problem in the very design that suggests it could never be used for practical generation.

Christofilos is best known for independently inventing the concept of strong focusing, a feature used in particle accelerators. He had first started work along these lines in the late 1940s while running an elevator installation company, and in 1948 he wrote a letter to what was then the University of California's Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley outlining several ideas on accelerator focusing. When they returned his letter pointing out several problems, he solved these and wrote them again. This second letter was ignored. In 1950 Christofilos filed a patent application anyway, which was eventually granted in 1956 as US Patent 2,736,799.

Around the same time, Ernest Courant, Milton Stanley Livingston, and Hartland Snyder of Brookhaven National Laboratory were considering the same problem and came up with the same solution, writing about it in the 1 December 1952 issue of Physical Review. When he saw the paper, Christofilos quickly arranged a trip to the US, arriving two months later. Making his way to Brookhaven, he angrily accused them of stealing the idea from his patent. He also met with members of the Atomic Energy Commission, and after meeting with his attorneys, they paid him $10,000 for the patent.

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