Theory of a Magnetic Thermonuclear Reactor

Abstract

"In the autumn of 1950, I. E. Tamm together with A. D. Sakharov proposed mag-netic thermoisolation of plasma to carry out a controlled thermonuclear reaction. I. E. Tamm introduced the name magnetic thermonuclear reactor for the installation which was then under development, or, in abbreviated form, MTR. In the very first weeks of work on the new idea Tamm performed many important calculations and derived, in particular, expressions for the heat conductivity, diffu-sion, and thermal diffusion coefficients in magnetized plasma. These expressions are contained in this first paper. In these papers, for the first time in the literature, collisionless movement in given perpendicular magnetic and electric fields is used as the zero approximation. This treatment, which now seems trivial, at that time turned out to be not merely a methodological godsend but also played a definite role in forming the basic qualita-tive concepts of MTR. Simultaneously with I. E. Tamm a calculation of the same quantities was per-formed by D. N. Zubarev and Yu. A. Romanov, who used more traditional (and in this case more cumbersome) methods. The numerical value of 4: 1 for the ratio of diffusion to thermal diffusion co-efficients was found by I.