Science: Soviet-Controlled Fusion

The most exciting current subject in applied physics is "controlled fusion," i.e., getting usable energy out of the nuclear reactions that make H-bombs explode. Industrialists looking forward to atomic power are just as interested in fusion as physicists are. If controlled power can be extracted from hydrogen or other light elements, it may prove much cheaper than power from uranium.

Neither physicists nor industrialists have been learning much about fusion. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission keeps the whole subject rigidly secret. The British fusion program has been kept secret too.

Last week Russian Physicist Igor V. Kurchatov, speaking at Britain's...