ustxtxb_obs_1974_04_26_50_00009-00000_000.pdf

I. F. STONE’S WEEKLY A 60-minute film by Jerry Bruck, Jr., narrated by Tom Wicker Wednesday April 24 Dobie Screen/21st & Guadalupe Austin showings at 8, 9 and 10 p.m. $5 Donation “A Highly Enjoyable Film! Do the next generation a favor and show them this film. Show them that, despite what’s all around them, human beings can survive, possibilities do exist.” STANLEY KAUFFMANN, The New Republic David Levine Copyright 01968 NYREV Come early or stay late to meet with Observer editors and readers at NEW YEAR’S EVE, a watering hole located in Dobie Center adjacent to the theatre Dobie Screen’s seating capacity is limited; so please write or phone for advance tickets, indicating time of showing preferred. Send your order to The Texas For those who won’t be able to attend the screening and partying the evening of the 24thor those who can’t afford $5, even for a cause as worthy as the ObserverI. F. STONE’S WEEKLY will be shown the afternoon of the 24th at it will begin a regular commercial run at the same location. Information regarding bookings in other areas may be obtained by writing THE I. F. STONE PROJECT. P. 0. Box 315, Franklin Lakes, N.J. 07417. of gasoline. Consider how such a fact startles, interests, and alarms executives charged with making profits out of billion-dollar investments in the generation of electric power. And Drummond and other specialists in the field believe that this revolutionary new energy source will be available in the 1990s. The basic discovery is the large energy release that occurs when the nuclei of heavy hydrogen combine. To make them combine \(that is, fuse: ergo, gas must be confined and heated within one second’s time to a temperature hotter than the surface of the sun. The Russians invented the best machine for doing this so far, the Tokamak; the Texans call their version of it the Texas Tokamak, turning something that sounds Siberian into something that sounds like a weapon, or a peace pipe, of Texas Indians. Friendly, helpful, and quick of mind, Drummond explains the theory, the chemistry, and the technology for hours, absorbed and absorbing. His enthusiasm for the Tokamak is a passion. He dashes around it, tripping on a wire, explaining the giant magnets, the center aluminum and quartz doughnut, painted red, that contains the gas, the 350 half-ton batteries how this feeds in here and you can see through there this laser beam bends a little extra and you measure how much over here and it all comes out on these jumpy little graphs, $50,000 last year alone on Polaroid film! for all the world he’s like Rube Goldberg explaining his latest marvel, and there is an awe about human beings tapping into the energy of the universe this way that nothing can dispel. “Here we are, a bunch of physicists we’re doing this essentially because we love the work,” he says. “And it’s kind of a race, isn’t it?” I asked him. “Oh you bet! it’s fun! People care what you’re doing, they really want to know about it, they almost cheer when you make a new breakthrough.” Eleven private Texas electric utility corporations have spent $15 million since 1957 on this race. Their project was launched by a group first working at General Atomic in San Diego with then-classified data made available to them by Glen Seaborg, the head of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. In 1958 the work, in and outside the government, was declassified. In 1963-65 the private utilities’ project was moved from General Atomic, which is a division of General Dynamics, to the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. Norman Hackerman was president of UT, working mightily to build up the physics and chemistry departments. “I said to Governor Connally,” he recalls, ” ‘Look, we’re going to run out of fossil fuels. Fusion is the future in energy. You should start it here and then years later people will TEXAS OBSERVER fund raiser featuring… April 26, 1974 9