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KMS Fusion
KMS Fusion was the only private sector company to pursue controlled thermonuclear fusion research using laser technology. Despite limited resources and numerous business problems KMS successfully demonstrated fusion from the Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) process. They achieved compression of a deuterium-tritium pellet from laser-energy in December 1973, and on May 1, 1974 carried out the world’s first successful laser-induced fusion. Neutron-sensitive nuclear emulsion detectors, developed by Nobel Prize winner Robert Hofstadter, were used to provide evidence of this discovery.
==Early History==
In 1968, Keith A. Brueckner, a theoretical physicist, was working at a KMS Industries subsidiary in southern California. He also spent several days a year consulting for the Atomic Energy Commission's (AEC) magnetic confinement program, which allowed him to observe first hand the interest in laser fusion in the Soviet Union. He came back to the states and worked out “a new idea” that involved compression and implosion. He proposed the idea to Kip Siegel, the founder and monetary force behind KMS Industries Inc. Siegel had founded KMS Industries, a company whose name was his own initials, on February 8, 1967 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He did so after disagreeing with the direction in which his previous company, Conductron Corporation, was headed when McDonnell Douglas Corporation absorbed it. Siegel continuously sought out investors to fund the exploration of holography and production of other high tech electronic equipment, but investor interest had peaked by 1969. With Brueckner’s new idea, Siegel turned his ambitions to what he had hoped would be a more realistic future: using powerful lasers to heat and compress deuterium pellets.〔Johnston, Sean. ''Holographic Visions: A History of New Science''. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. Print.〕 KMS Fusion was created in 1969 with the dream of developing fusion power.
However, the AEC had considered laser fusion to be directly related to weapons development, and the news of KMS Fusion’s entry into the field raised many eyebrows. The commission directed KMS to stop its laser fusion research on these grounds. Siegel hired lawyers and even wrote a letter to President Nixon to refute these issues. In February 1971, two years after the proposed idea, KMS was granted a contract from the commission that would allow the company to work in laser fusion.〔Gene Bylinsky, “KMS Industries bets its Life on Laser Fusion”, Fortune December 1974, Box 1, K.M. Siegel, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan〕 KMS Fusion was under government control; however, the firm was without government funds and access to government information. This meant that they could not hire anyone who had worked in a weapons laboratory, and had to be completely privately funded. The delays that the commission were causing placed financial strains on the company before it even really began. KMS was required to hire guards and take other precautions to protect ideas that the government had decreed to be "secret" for reasons of national security. Siegel had to mortgage his other enterprises and enlist other private companies in order to secure funding. KMS’s confidence did stimulate public support for laser fusion research, but also put pressure on magnetic confinement technologies.〔Bromberg, Lisa Joan. ''Fusion: Science, Politics, and the Invention of a New Energy Source''. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1982. Print.〕
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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