No B-29s land in the USSR

Or perhaps based on the Heinkel 274

It was built in France, its design work (Heinkel He 177 progenitor) was based in France, and I do not see how the Russians get their hands on a live one with an American army sitting on top of it.

If they could get the plans for the Atomic Bomb, a bomber is child's play.

Building an atomic bomb, once the fissile materials and basic physics work is solved is "child's play" (and I see the Russians being able to do that without Manhattan Project input. I mean they got to the H-bomb without US help and got theirs ahead of the Americans. They just did not test it first.) Building a 2500 kWatt piston engine that will operate at 12,000 meters altitude without blowing apart, and designing a pressurized balloon cigar shaped machine with wings with four such engines, with a big set of doors in it to carry a 10 metric tonne load at 150 m/s for 15 hours endurance in the air is what is extremely tough. Look at the problems the nations who attempted it had, and I don't just mean the Americans, British, Germans and the French.

Actually not. They already had the basic research for atomic research, the breakthrough was getting the math right for 'explosive lenses' and realising how that improved the power of a small amount of fissile material. That combined with some basic chemical engineering processing on a massive scale (something the Soviets had proven themselves good at) provided the bomb. The spying helped focus them on the paths that were successful instead of having to figure them out by making mistakes.

Building a B-29 involved taking thousands of drawing of very precise parts and having them made and assembled to very strict tolerances by factories spread across the country. The Soviets usually solved the problem of coordinating production by having large centralized factories such as 'tankograd' that took raw materials and converted it into a finished weapon. COnverting detailed schematics to Soviet standards, making machine tools and production jigs to make the parts and assemblies and then having all the components fit together was either at the very edge or beyond the capabilities of the Soviet Union at the time. The weapons the successfully built were designed to optimize the Soviet production methods.

When they had the B-29 as a reference they could literally take it apart measure and diagram the components then have them built by factories that were given soviet style plans to use. As it was a few components gave them major problems. The landing gear was such a problem that they did attempt to steal the plans of the subassemblies as well as acquire working examples in the late 1940s and early '50s AND WERE CAUGHT trying to get them out of the country.

(^^^) Case in point.

Dealing with UF6 isn't basic chemical engineering.Separating Plutonium from irradiated Uranium isn't basic Chemical Engineering.

by 1942, the US had made more Uranium Metal than Germany would do in the entire War

And look at what it took? Hanford and plutonium was the choice path the US picked (and the Russians in their own effort for similar reasons.) because it was "simpler, quicker, and easier".

Basically looks like this Soviet aircraft was 'inspired' by the Me 264...

Wish it had been. The Me-264 was a dog of a plane that had severe drawbacks. Let's just say the wing-loading and yaw stability problems were "interesting pilot killing events waiting to happen."

About the Tu-4 duplication? It actually took about 4 years to prototype (1945-1949 initial date of service; though first flight was 1947.). The B-29 first flew in 1942 and was in service 1944. Comparable time, though the Americans SOLVED the problems first that the Russians could then short cut by reverse engineering. Looking at the Tu-16... proposed 1950 as soon as the Russians had "decent" turbo-jet engines of a type to build a 4 engine limited endurance jet bomber. They had the basics for a high altitude bomber (Tu-4) solved; so it was applied engineering to introduce their jet. How did they do? Ever hear of the H-6? Still flying. So they did well.

How about the standard comparison, Tu-16 to B-47? About equal with the American carrying a heavier payload slightly farther albeit at marginally slower speed. B-47 was 4 years (1947 first flight-1951 being year of introduction to service). The Badger was 1950 to 1954 (first flight ~1952 with service by 1956) Hard to tell them operationally apart.

Russians and Chinese built a combined ~1500. Boeing built ~2100 of theirs.

I never underestimate anybody. (Current example: the Chinese. They are doing some very interesting things in fusion that people asleep at the wheel will find will surprise them. ITER wake up!). I simply offer this information to keep everything in perspective and to remind people that people who underestimate human beings, whoever, and wherever they are for whatever foolish reasons, deserve the consequences for their blinkered opinions and viewpoints.
 
Reverse engineering is not easy, being able to take something apart and measure it tells you how it goes together it doesnt tell you how to make the parts for that you need the Technical Package. The Soviets had to write their own technical package.

The Japanese spent 2 years trying to build a copy of the M1 Garand if it was as easy as people think they would have done it in a few months yet they never solved the feed problems or got the steel tempering quite right

Uncle and the MG-42? How about the Hispano Suiza HS 404 debacle? Oerlikon and Bofors took British input to fix it. US engineers are good, but there is enough history to suggest that a lot less NIHWDWYH and a lot more "Hey guys, those fellows overseas have solved this problem, so lets ask them for help." , would have really smoothed a lot of those bolos out.
 
I mean they got to the H-bomb without US help and got theirs ahead of the Americans

Their 'Layer Cake" was more Boosted Fission(that the US had done years before)than a radiation transfer 'Super' from the US design. 1953's 'Joe-4' was 400kt. Op Greenhouse Shot 'George' was 225 kt in 1951, and the true Super, the cryonic deuterium of 1952's 'Ivy Mike' was 10 megatons

That said, I'm not taking anything away from them. Of the bomb info they got for free, probably the most useful was the info on the explosive lenses and the accurate to the milli secondtiming and detonation circuit, that made those 32 lenses compress the Pu Core, rather than shooting out like a seed in squeezed grape.

What the Soviets couldn't acquire by espionage, was the infrastructure to mass produce the Bombs. That why it took them years past popping 'Joe-1' to build up a number of cores that the US did in the last half of 1945
 
Reverse engineering is not easy, being able to take something apart and measure it tells you how it goes together it doesnt tell you how to make the parts for that you need the Technical Package. The Soviets had to write their own technical package.

The Japanese spent 2 years trying to build a copy of the M1 Garand if it was as easy as people think they would have done it in a few months yet they never solved the feed problems or got the steel tempering quite right

They had another option before the war...and it's kind of a funny story.

https://www.forgottenweapons.com/early-semiauto-rifles/japanese-pedersen/
 
Their 'Layer Cake" was more Boosted Fission(that the US had done years before)than a radiation transfer 'Super' from the US design. 1953's 'Joe-4' was 400kt.

Just because the Layer Cake wasn’t a Tellar-Ulam design doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t an H-Bomb. Although on the other hand, it also doesn’t necessarily mean it is an H-Bomb. Whether the “layer-cake” is a boosted fission or a genuine fusion weapon is something of a thorny technical-historical debate. This article is a good introduction to the subject, although it does so in relation to a North Korean test several years ago.

What the Soviets couldn't acquire by espionage, was the infrastructure to mass produce the Bombs. That why it took them years past popping 'Joe-1' to build up a number of cores that the US did in the last half of 1945

What are you talking about? The US put together 5 cores between July 1945 and December: the Trinity, Fat Man, and Little Boy plus two more. The USSR assembled six cores between August 1949 and March 1950: RDS/Joe-1 plus another 5. Pretty clearly it did not take the Soviets years to build up the number of cores the US did in ‘45.
 
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What are you talking about? The US put together 5 cores between July 1945 and December: the Trinity, Fat Man, and Little Boy plus two more. The USSR assembled six cores between August 1949 and March 1950: RDS/Joe-1 plus another 5. Pretty clearly it did not take the Soviets years to build up the number of cores the US did in ‘45.
The US had a huge amount of HEU production compared to most nations, from the Start.

Oak Ridge HEU output dwarfed Pu production at Hanford.
That's because at the start, the US knew that a U-235 bomb would work with a gun device, and that was hugely inefficient, since over four critical masses worth in one gun device like Little Boy. So a lot of HEU would be needed

That was a choice for a 'simple' Atomic Bomb, but HEU can be used with implosion, it's far more efficient, 25 to 15kg, depending if you use levitated pit design that was theorized in 1945, but not tested till later

Oak Ridge made 571 kg of HEU over 1945 and 1946, before the postwar expansion plants at Oak Ridge were operational, and output tripled.

That's enough for a lot of implosion cores, had the US needed to mass produce them.

Feel free to list how much Pu and HEU the Soviets made between August 1949 and March 1950.
 
The US had a huge amount of HEU production compared to most nations, from the Start.

Oak Ridge HEU output dwarfed Pu production at Hanford.
That's because at the start, the US knew that a U-235 bomb would work with a gun device, and that was hugely inefficient, since over four critical masses worth in one gun device like Little Boy. So a lot of HEU would be needed

That was a choice for a 'simple' Atomic Bomb, but HEU can be used with implosion, it's far more efficient, 25 to 15kg, depending if you use levitated pit design that was theorized in 1945, but not tested till later

Oak Ridge made 571 kg of HEU over 1945 and 1946, before the postwar expansion plants at Oak Ridge were operational, and output tripled.

That's enough for a lot of implosion cores, had the US needed to mass produce them.

Feel free to list how much Pu and HEU the Soviets made between August 1949 and March 1950.

Here. HEU.

Here. Plutonium.

Data supplied for discussion purposes only.

McP.
 
The USSR had gifted and competent scientists and engineers, albeit they worked in a basically dysfunctional system. Following WWII the USSR demonstrated that it could produce generally competitive and sometimes innovative military systems, of course this meant that an overly large percentage of the USSR's scientific/engineering pool and economic resources were devoted to the military. Note actual dollar/ruble numbers are irrelevant, it is the percentage of total capacity in these areas that counts. During WWII and subsequently, the USSR put a lot of effort in to espionage related to American/Western military/technical data, as well as clandestinely acquiring technology to duplicate western industrial techniques (an example getting tech from Japan to make better propellers - quieter - for their subs).

If reverse engineering the B-29 only gained them six months in deploying a heavy, it seems as though the better move would have been to blank paper their own design, perhaps with lessons from the interned B-29s. If the effort of the atomic spies was merely the cherry on top, well it seems a lot of effort for very little. The reason "industrial" espionage and covert purchasing of advanced western tech was done on such a large scale was because the Soviets themselves thought that by doing so they could significantly accelerate development of desired systems and/or reduce their "costs" in doing so. If all of this effort was "irrelevant" than the leadership of the USSR was even more incompetent than we think.

If time and time again, over a period of fifty years, the USSR felt that these sorts of efforts would significantly advance both their capabilities and their time tables, I have to feel they consistently believed this. Now for a specific project or system this may not have been true, but if it wasn't deemed so overall, why bother. FWIW the B-29 was not the only "western" item from WWII reverse engineered or copied - radar systems are another example.

As a side point, it seems pretty clear that industrial/military technical espionage as well as the demanding of proprietary technology as a price for doing business has been a Chinese practice for quite some time. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
 

DougM

Donor
Let’s not over exaggerate the difficulty of reverse engineering a B29. It is not like having to reverse engineer a computer chip.
When I was in school they had me taking a physical complex object and creating the technical drawings for the part. Add in a Metallurgist to tell me what to make it from and that part could have gone to a factory to start the process to get it into manufacturing.

In WW2 technology level aircraft it is knowing what to build that takes the time. Once someone else figures out all that then you basically just need to duplicate it.

That being said the USSR would probably be better off if they HAD designed the whole thing as they would have developed the skill to know WHY the B-29 was built the way it was. Remember engineering is as much about how weak to build something as anything else. You want that wing string enough to hold but not so strong it weights to much.

But the technology of the B-29 was such that pretty much any competent company could build most of it. This is why Ford could build B-24s in 1944 but would not be able to build B-2s today.

Back in that time frame they assumed that the skilled labor could figure out what to do with minimal instructions. A metal caboose built in 1940s was built with only two sheets of drawings, Because they assumed the builder new how to build it and just needed to know what to build.
The Bridge between Detroit and Windsor Canada was built with less drawing sheets then it takes to build a modern gas station.

Back then you told them to flush rivet with size X rivets space so far apart, today we would take three sheets with a dozen details to tell them that because we don’t trust anyone
 
The USSR had gifted and competent scientists and engineers, albeit they worked in a basically dysfunctional system. Following WWII the USSR demonstrated that it could produce generally competitive and sometimes innovative military systems, of course this meant that an overly large percentage of the USSR's scientific/engineering pool and economic resources were devoted to the military. Note actual dollar/ruble numbers are irrelevant, it is the percentage of total capacity in these areas that counts. During WWII and subsequently, the USSR put a lot of effort in to espionage related to American/Western military/technical data, as well as clandestinely acquiring technology to duplicate western industrial techniques (an example getting tech from Japan to make better propellers - quieter - for their subs).

If reverse engineering the B-29 only gained them six months in deploying a heavy, it seems as though the better move would have been to blank paper their own design, perhaps with lessons from the interned B-29s. If the effort of the atomic spies was merely the cherry on top, well it seems a lot of effort for very little. The reason "industrial" espionage and covert purchasing of advanced western tech was done on such a large scale was because the Soviets themselves thought that by doing so they could significantly accelerate development of desired systems and/or reduce their "costs" in doing so. If all of this effort was "irrelevant" than the leadership of the USSR was even more incompetent than we think.

If time and time again, over a period of fifty years, the USSR felt that these sorts of efforts would significantly advance both their capabilities and their time tables, I have to feel they consistently believed this. Now for a specific project or system this may not have been true, but if it wasn't deemed so overall, why bother. FWIW the B-29 was not the only "western" item from WWII reverse engineered or copied - radar systems are another example.

As a side point, it seems pretty clear that industrial/military technical espionage as well as the demanding of proprietary technology as a price for doing business has been a Chinese practice for quite some time. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

1. Some dispute about where the Soviets received the scimitar screw tech.

Los Angeles Times

Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — Sep 10 1987 12AM

Toshiba Corp., fighting to keep from being thrown out of a $2.3-billion share of the U.S. electronics market over the sale of sensitive submarine technology to the Soviets, said Wednesday that its workers had found similar equipment made by a French company in the Soviet Union.

The equipment in question enables the Soviets to manufacture submarine propellers that are virtually noiseless, a key factor in anti-submarine warfare.

According to an investigative report issued Wednesday by Toshiba at a news conference, a company named Forest Line, a subsidiary of the French firm Machines Lourdes Francaises, may have been the first to sell the Soviet Union milling machines that grind and shape submarine propellers.

U.S. government sources noted, however, that the Soviet submarines did not become “silent” until after the sale of the eight high-technology milling machines made by a Toshiba subsidiary, suggesting that the French technology was not sufficiently sophisticated to make the specially engineered, virtually noiseless propellers.

“The French equipment was already there, but the submarines started to get silent only after the Toshiba stuff went in,” a government source said.

Toshiba employees said they saw Forest Line machines when they installed equipment in the Soviet Union in 1983, according to the report, which was prepared by Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexandre & Ferdon, an American law firm hired by Toshiba.

When questioned recently about the possibility of Forest Line’s involvement in the sale of submarine equipment to the Soviets, Machines Lourdes Francaises officials said that they had no knowledge of such transactions. However, they did not rule out the possibility that such a sale could have been made by one of the firms that make up MLF before they merged to form the corporation five years ago.

“If there was any irregular activity by one of the companies that became MLF in 1982, then it could only have involved equipment that was ordered and delivered in the 1970s,” MLF Managing Director Gerard Borgneit said. “I have no knowledge of this, since I joined MLF at the time it was created.”

-----------------------------------------------------------

Toshiba said in the report that no Toshiba Corp. employee “either played a role in or had any knowledge of the illegal sales (by the subsidiary firm) of any of the eight propeller milling machines to the USSR.”

The Senate, angered by disclosures that the Soviet Union had obtained technology to design and build a new group of quietly operating submarines, has included in its trade bill a provision forbidding the importation of Toshiba goods for as long as five years. House members share the Senate’s concerns, but their chamber has no pending legislation calling for Toshiba penalties.

A House-Senate conference called to reconcile the two chambers’ differing trade bills will decide this month whether to retain the tough sanctions against Toshiba, which sells television sets, microwave ovens, video-cassette recorders, copying machines, computers and equipment for hospitals and power companies.

If children do something wrong, “we don’t punish the parents or the siblings or the cousins,” said Burton Wides, an attorney for Toshiba America Inc., the U.S. subsidiary that is leading a campaign by Toshiba employees, customers and suppliers against the proposed congressional ban on the parent company’s merchandise.

Three of Toshiba’s four principal U.S. business units are headquartered in Orange County. At its manufacturing facility in Irvine, Toshiba makes telecommunications devices, sophisticated medical equipment and laptop computers. The company employs about 500 Orange County residents.

Toshiba, which has $13 billion in annual sales worldwide, gives considerable autonomy to its subsidiaries and said that it had no knowledge that one of them, Toshiba Machine Co., was violating Japanese law by selling the propeller milling machines to the Soviet Union. The United States, Japan and other allies have a policy of restricting sales of militarily useful equipment to Communist countries.

As part of a $17-million transaction in 1983 and 1984, Toshiba Machine provided the milling equipment to grind and shape the submarine propellers, and a Norwegian firm, Kongsberg Vaapenfabrik, made the computer-driven controller to run the equipment.

A small group of top officials at Toshiba Machine decided to carry out the sale and arranged for false reports to be filed with Japanese government agencies, according to the Toshiba Corp. report. The employees filed more false reports when the Japanese government began an investigation.

In a related development, two executives of Tokyo Aircraft Instrument Co. resigned after one of their subordinates allegedly sold company technical information to Soviet officials, a spokesman said Wednesday in Tokyo. Kosaku Shibata, executive director of the firm, and Nobuo Itakura, head of its operations department, resigned Aug. 31.
0

2. Several things...

A. Without computer numeric controllers, no milling machine can cut the complex log function 3-d shapes a scimitar screw requires.

B. No-one at this date has positively ascertained that the Forest Lines milling machines were not instrumental in steering the Russians in the proper direction for solving the scimitar screw problem as an industrial process.

C. Solving the scimitar screw problem for each submarine hull is an unique art form each nation must develop natively. Outside help is not going to matter much in the physics of a specific flow problem of fluid (fluid dynamics) around a specific hull shape. It is more than a pure science. LOTS of tank testing is required with lots of mistakes to be expected before a "feel" for what works manifests, given a nation's technology base and maritime design idiosyncrasies. The Chinese, for example, keep trying to close the noise gap with the Russians. Not quite there yet, the Chinese.

BTW, just so you know... Forest Line' as it can be seen from the name, got its start in MINNESOTA. A French company bought it up and it has gone global with plants in France and Sweden among other locations.
 
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I never underestimate anybody. (Current example: the Chinese. They are doing some very interesting things in fusion that people asleep at the wheel will find will surprise them. ITER wake up!). I simply offer this information to keep everything in perspective and to remind people that people who underestimate human beings, whoever, and wherever they are for whatever foolish reasons, deserve the consequences for their blinkered opinions and viewpoints.

Could you expand a little more on the Chinese fusion research? That would really be something if somebody can figure out how to build a practical fusion reactor.
 
I bow to your research here. It actually does not matter which company sold the critical gear to the Soviets, the point is that they could not have even begun to go through the design and testing process and the learning curve for making the props until they had the machines that could make them. Sadly, US corporations have been involved with such technology to transfer to the USSR and subsequently China, sneaking around laws against such things to make a fast buck. While the actual quote is subject to question, the statement attributed to Lenin that the capitalists would sell the communists the rope with which to hang them (the capitalists), seems to have been true in reality.
 
Just for the record, the USSR Engineers were **not** happy about having to reverse engineer the B29. They wanted (as some have suggested in this thread they should have done), to use lessons learnt from the ‘29, in furtherance of their own designs.
But, the powers that be ordered them to. Stalin and Beria wanted a proven nuclear delivery bomber.
The Soviet’s absolutely could make advanced designs in house and incorporate lessons learnt in them. While the Tu-4 project was ongoing, Tupolev design bureau worked on 2 advanced in-house designs.
The Tu80
The Tu85.
 
Here. HEU.

Here. Plutonium.

Data supplied for discussion purposes only.

McP.
Saved me a little digging.
At Sverdlovsk D-1 gaseous Diffusion plant could make 65kg of 70% HEU, that was then enriched to 90% at the SU-20 Electromagnetic Separation plant.

Much smaller than K-25 and Y-12 at Oak Ridge.

On to Pu.
The A (1948)and AV-1(1950)reactors at Chelyabinsk-65
A did 16.5kg in 1949,19kg in 1949.
AV-1 did 71kg in 1950
AV-2 was building, would not go live til 1951. These was roughly the size of 'B' reactor at Hanford, while A was 40% as powerful.

Now over to Hanford.
By February 1945, the first 3 of eight reactors B,D, and F, were online and ramping up production, to where by October, the three combined output was 21kg of Pu a month.

So see, it was years, and the Soviet were far behind in production.
 
Wish it had been. The Me-264 was a dog of a plane that had severe drawbacks. Let's just say the wing-loading and yaw stability problems wer9e "interesting pilot killing events waiting to happen."

German support of long-ranged bombing died with Weaver in 1936. And the specs on the Me 264 mirror some on the ANT64.

I never underestimate anybody. (Current example: the Chinese. They are doing some very interesting things in fusion that people asleep at the wheel will find will surprise them. ITER wake up!). I simply offer this information to keep everything in perspective and to remind people that people who underestimate human beings, whoever, and wherever they are for whatever foolish reasons, deserve the consequences for their blinkered opinions and viewpoints.

See supercavitation and space travel for further details
 
Could you expand a little more on the Chinese fusion research? That would really be something if somebody can figure out how to build a practical fusion reactor.

This news is 3 years old.

About the same time when MIT was matching this achievement with 1 of their own; the US Congress went nutso and cut the US program funding. Now, being braindead and obtuse such as I am, I would have wondered if Beijing and Washington could have gotten together and compared notes to... ya' know figure out how to combine results?

Not all is lost, Gerbils. ITER will get us there... never. Keep an eye on EAST, the MIT/Italy initiative, and LOCKMART.

McP.
 
This news is 3 years old.

About the same time when MIT was matching this achievement with 1 of their own; the US Congress went nutso and cut the US program funding. Now, being braindead and obtuse such as I am, I would have wondered if Beijing and Washington could have gotten together and compared notes to... ya' know figure out how to combine results?

Not all is lost, Gerbils. ITER will get us there... never. Keep an eye on EAST, the MIT/Italy initiative, and LOCKMART.

McP.

Did they go nutso or go all-in on the High Beta scenario...?
 
Did they go nutso or go all-in on the High Beta scenario...?

I assume you mean the work at JET in the UK and similar work at Max Planck in Germany? Nah, the American Congress filled with BDs just cut funding in 2016, period. Then someone with half a brain pointed out that if the US did not fund at least ITER, then the US physics community would be shut out of the best game going in fusion at the moment. (ITER; that huge money waster and EU pork barrel project.) So funding (surprise) is restored to 2016 levels in 2018. This year has been another disgrace with DOE gutted and the American political parties posturing instead of funding good engineering. Alcator C is cold dead. MIT is looking at startups (Italy for example) for funding to try again with a new generation tokomak (SPARC)


I give them only 1 chance in 4. But that is better than ITER's odds, right now.
 
I assume you mean the work at JET in the UK and similar work at Max Planck in Germany? Nah, the American Congress filled with BDs just cut funding in 2016, period. Then someone with half a brain pointed out that if the US did not fund at least ITER, then the US physics community would be shut out of the best game going in fusion at the moment. (ITER; that huge money waster and EU pork barrel project.) So funding (surprise) is restored to 2016 levels in 2018. This year has been another disgrace with DOE gutted and the American political parties posturing instead of funding good engineering. Alcator C is cold dead. MIT is looking at startups (Italy for example) for funding to try again with a new generation tokomak (SPARC)


I give them only 1 chance in 4. But that is better than ITER's odds, right now.

I was referring to the Lockheed High Beta Fusion reactor as below. This is a company that got a pair of jet engines to fly potentially indefinitely using a closed cycle nuclear reactor in the late 50s/early 60s then literally shut down the lab in 1971 by burying the entrances then turning the whole area into a nature preserve. One of the buildings is still sealed and locked behind triple-chain-link fencing with barbed wire. And there was a movement to turn it into the drinking water reserve for a major city recently...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_Compact_Fusion_Reactor

Nuclear fusion would be nice but the neutron situation seems to be a key missing piece to my limited understanding. ITER is nice but the future may be in a hybrid tokamak design.
 
I was referring to the Lockheed High Beta Fusion reactor as below. This is a company that got a pair of jet engines to fly potentially indefinitely using a closed cycle nuclear reactor in the late 50s/early 60s then literally shut down the lab in 1971 by burying the entrances then turning the whole area into a nature preserve. One of the buildings is still sealed and locked behind triple-chain-link fencing with barbed wire. And there was a movement to turn it into the drinking water reserve for a major city recently...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_Compact_Fusion_Reactor

Nuclear fusion would be nice but the neutron situation seems to be a key missing piece to my limited understanding. ITER is nice but the future may be in a hybrid tokamak design.

I give that project 1 chance in 10. Lockmart does have a good track record for engineering, but I think they are too optimistic. Mirror confinement has an almost insoluble bounce problem.
 
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