A Review of Lawson Criterion for Nuclear Fusion
Abstract
Les G. Miklosy
In the pursuit for abundant clean energy from nuclear fusion, the Lawson Criterion is cited by fusion researchers and experimentalists as the condition to exceed for fusion of atomic nuclei to occur. In his 1955 paper J.D. Lawson analyzed a fusion plasma conforming to thermodynamic principles at steadystate but with stated omissions and simplifications. Modern fusion researchers developed many incantations of the Lawson Criterion urging their brand leads to fusion ignition, necessarily to sell a rational fusion hypothesis and attract research funding. Others have shown how confined fusion in the laboratory cannot satisfy a positive energy balance due to energy losses from the system. A literature search for "fusion energy balance" shows a suspicious absence of this sanity-check to verify the energy condition was met. This paper applies conservation of energy from classical thermodynamics to a fusion plasma and summarizes eleven modern Lawson-like interpretations in a uniform way, doing so shows the requirements for fusion ignition are not met. Indeed despite billions of speculative dollars spent, sustained laboratory fusion has not been demonstrated in any experimental apparatus built and tested to date worldwide. Heed the warning, in 1955 John D. Lawson wrote: “To conclude we emphasize that these conditions, though necessary are far from sufficient. The working cycle that has been assumed is very optimistic.”