Project Sherwood

Project Sherwood was the name given to the United States program in controlled nuclear fusion funded under the Atoms for Peace initiative during the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The name Sherwood hints that it "sure would" be nice to achieve practical fusion power.

A string of funding helped to organise the efforts of several national laboratories, universities, and private endeavers into a loose progression of R&D that focused attention on plasma containment schemes as a first order of business.

The project also helped to align and document some of the theoretical (and rhetorical) problems of the new science from the US perspective and present it in a declassified manner to the international effort.

Unlike other nuclear projects such as the Manhattan Project and perhaps Project Pluto, Sherwood was less intense and treated as more of a novelty. With only very long-term economic implications and very remote military significance, the project attracted very little attention, but has its place in the Nuclear fusion saga.

References

ee also

* Timeline of nuclear fusion
* Stellarator
* Magnetic mirror