From Anthony Fenwick-Wilson
I was rather surprised that, when discussing ITER (10 October, p 40), no mention was made of ZETA, the Zero Energy Toroidal Assembly that was built at the UK’s Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell.
I remember working at British Thomson-Houston in Rugby on component parts for this experimental fusion reactor in 1957. At the beginning of 1958 it was announced that free neutrons had been produced, and that John Cockcroft, the AERE’s first director, was “90 per cent certain that fusion had occurred”. Unfortunately this was rather premature, and ZETA never did fulfil its promise.
The experience gained with ZETA was nevertheless invaluable in pointing the way to later toroidal fusion reactors. These machines are now given the generic description “tokamak”, but ZETA preceded the original Russian reactor of that name.
No green energy was produced, but ZETA’s contribution shouldn’t be forgotten.
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Swansea, UK
