HOW CLOSE ARE THEY TO FUSION?

By now, Kapitsa reported in his lecture, the Russians can continuously maintain temperatures of 50 million degrees K at a pressure of 25 atmospheres; by scaling up their present reactor, they might achieve controlled thermo-nuclear fusion. Moreover, unlike the Western approaches, which have not yet given very detailed thought to turning the liberated energy (neutron radiation) to work, Kapitsa described a method by which the hot gas can directly expand through a turbogenerator and return to the reactor without additional artificial cooling.