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Don Midwest's avatar

How things change. When I joined AT&T Bell Labs in 1978, it was said to be the best R&D lab in the world. AT&T at that time had 1 million employees.

Bell Labs is now completely gone. Some of their military work at Whippany NJ did contract work for several years but that is gone now. AT&T is a marketing company so I don't suspect any remnants of the innovative Bell Labs remain in AT&T

Even before I joined, say in the 60's, 70;s and early 80's, places like Bell Labs and Boeing had a strong technical focus and an engaged workforce. These days finance and management are in the saddle.

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Loam's avatar

The word Tokamak is the Russian acronym for "тороидальная камера с магнитными катушками".

The advantages of fusion over fission (which is used today in nuclear power plants) are: a) it does not produce direct radioactive waste and b) it does not require a non-renewable fuel as scarce as uranium. On the other hand, it is much more difficult to start: To date, the balance point between the energy needed to accelerate and confine the plasma and that obtained by the fusion of some particles has not been reached. However, there are no theoretical reasons for this, only technical reasons.

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