Firms Take Fusion Bid on Reputation : Science: San Diego cadre’s competition with Japan and Germany for reactor project can be traced back to advances made by General Atomics.
Ask the average San Diegan what type of science is fueling the city’s claim to high-tech fame and, almost universally, the response will be biotechnology.
Almost lost in biotech’s glow is the small cadre of local companies and researchers whose expertise made it possible for San Diego to make a credible bid to serve as host of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) program.
San Diego is competing with Naka, Japan, and Garching, Germany--both of which are home to world-renowned fusion research centers--for the planned $1-billion fusion energy research project. Fusion utilizes intense heat--greater than that of the sun--to fuse atoms and create energy.
The victorious city will benefit from the presence of scientists and administrators, who could spend as much as $250 million in the ITER headquarters city. In San Diego’s case, the headquarters would also generate prestige for the local universities and high-tech communities.
“There’s no doubt . . . that there would be a ‘halo effect,’ ” said Tom Dillon, a senior vice president with Science Applications International (SAIC), a San Diego-based company that hopes to become project site manager for ITER. “There will be very significant prestige associated with the project . . . and a very substantial benefit to the local business community.”
San Diego’s links to fusion research date from the 1950s, when General Atomics, now a privately held firm, assembled one of the world’s largest groups of fusion researchers. At the time, GA, which was owned by a major oil company, served as a think tank that sought “peaceful uses for nuclear energy,” according to David Overskei, vice president of the company’s fusion energy group.
During the 1960s, there was an “intellectual explosion” at General Atomics that produced a number of leading fusion researchers, many of whom subsequently migrated to other fusion research centers around the world, Overskei said.
Researchers who remained at General Atomics continued to make advances at the fusion research laboratory in La Jolla that is one of just half a dozen facilities with major “tokamaks,” the high-tech vessels that researchers use to generate the intense heat needed to produce fusion energy.
By today’s standards, General Atomics’ first research vessel was tiny--just 2 feet tall. The current tokamak, which fills a massive warehouse at General Atomics’ laboratory, is more than 20 feet tall. The first vessel cost about $250,000; the current model is valued at about $400 million.
Researchers hope the ITER project will generate design and engineering plans that will pave the way for construction of a commercial-scale reactor vessel.
San Diego’s attempt to serve as host city for the $1-billion project is possible largely because of General Atomics’ international reputation for first-rate fusion research, observers say.
“There was already the infrastructure in place to support this kind of science, and we’ve got some of the leading talent here at General Atomics,” said
Dan Pegg, president of the San Diego Economic Development Corp.
“General Atomics has a group of very bright people in the fusion business,” said Douglass Post, a physicist at Princeton University, one of the nation’s premier fusion research centers. “They’ve done a lot of nice work.”
Although General Atomics is a private company, it operates largely as a “pseudo-national laboratory,” Overskei said. “We have the same kind of intellectual drive that they do at the national labs . . . but we also have to make money.”
That dual role as basic research center and private company can “occasionally cause problems,” Overskei said. But the General Atomics lab is recognized worldwide for its quality research, Post said.
General Atomics conducts the bulk of its research in a cluster of buildings in the Sorrento Valley, near its signature headquarters building in La Jolla. The company owns the land and building where the huge tokamak sits. GA employees operate the tokamak, although the actual equipment was paid for by the federal government.
Although the company “would like to be on line 38 to 40 weeks a year,” economic realities dictate that the tokamak operate just 16 weeks a year, Overskei said. General Atomics crews spend the rest of the year studying advances in physics and repairing the research vessel.
Researchers are attempting to find ways to “get higher temperatures (in the vessel) but to also improve efficiencies,” according to Vincent Chan, director of GA’s physics division. Research recently led to a significant increase in the core temperature of the tokamak--with a dramatic reduction in the amount of energy needed to fuel the experiment, Chan said.
In addition to General Atomics, at least three other companies with local ties would benefit from having ITER based in San Diego.
* SAIC would “almost for sure have people involved with ITER no matter where it’s located,” Dillon said. “But the appeal of having it here is the much closer contact (scientists) would enjoy.
Dillon declined to discuss the dollar value of the contract his company is seeking, but about 40 SAIC employees would be involved with ITER if the company did snare the contract. SAIC also intends to bid on other ITER contracts, Dillon said.
* General Dynamics’ Space Systems Division, which is based in San Diego, is a member of a team that hopes to build the Superconducting Super Collider project in Ellis County, Tex. General Dynamics builds magnets that are an essential part of both super collider and fusion research.
As is the case with GA and SAIC, having ITER located in the United States rather than Japan or Germany would help speed the latest research to General Dynamics scientists.
* San Diego Gas & Electric Co. has contributed $20,000 to the local ITER site committee that is making San Diego’s case to the ITER site selection team. “In the long term, this could prove to be a practical approach to generating electricity,” said SDG&E; Vice President Richard Manning. “But (ITER) also seems to be a natural fit for San Diego. . . . It will bring some new dough to town and enhance San Diego’s international reputation.”
In addition, the “fame and prestige factor” the ITER project would generate might prompt UC San Diego to “reorient” some of its research, according to Lea M. Rudee, dean of UCSD’s School of Engineering. “We have a strong materials group that’s not involved in fusion, and that might get some involved in fusion,” Rudee said.
Having ITER in town “would be a terrific boon for San Diego as far as fame and prestige,” said Rudee, who is optimistic that San Diego’s ITER bid will succeed. “Our proposal is extremely competitive when you look at the others. It’s first-rate.”
