In this conversation, Dr. Stephen Dean talks about how he created the 1976 US fusion program plan, how it played out and the history of fusion power in the US, technology program planning and management more broadly, and more.

Stephen has been working on making fusion energy a reality for more than five decades. He did research on controlled fusion reactions in the 60s and in the 70s became a director at the Atomic energy commission which then became the Energy Research and Development Administration which *then* became the department of energy. In 1979 he left government to form the consultancy Fusion Power associates, where he still works.

In 1976, he led the preparation of a report called "Fusion power by magnetic confinement" that laid out a roadmap of the work that would need to be done to turn fusion from a science experiment into a functional energy source.

References

• Fusion Power by Magnetic Confinement
  • Executive Summary
  • Volume 1
  • Volume 2
  • Volume 3
  • Volume 4
• Fusion Power Associates
• The notorious fusion never plot
• Adam Marblestone on technological roadmapping
• My hypotheses on program design (which were challenged by this conversation!)
• Fusion Energy Base (a good website on fusion broadly)
• ITER

Transcript 

(Machine generated, so please excuse errors)

[00:00:00 ] 

In this conversation, Dr. Steven Dean, and I talk about how he created the 1976 S fusion program plan, how it played out in the history of fusion power in the U S technology program, planning and management more broadly, and even more things. Steven has been working on making fusion energy a reality for more than five decades.

He did research on control, fusion reactions in the 1960s and seventies, he became a director [00:01:00 ] at the atomic energy commission, which then became the energy research and development of administration, which then became the department of energy in 1979. He left government to form the consultancy fusion, power associates, where you still want.

In 1976, he led the preparation of a report called fusion power by magnetic confinement that laid out a roadmap of the work that needed would need to be done to turn fusion from a science experiment, into a functional energy source. And if I can sort of riff about this for a minute, the thing is. Unlike what I sort of see as modern roadmaps, it lays out not just the sort of like plan of record to getting fusion, to be a real energy source, but lays out all the different possible scenarios in terms of funding, in terms of new technology that we can't even think of being created and lays everything.

Yeah. In a way that you can actually sort of make decisions off of it. [00:02:00 ] And I think one of the most impressive things is that it has several different what it calls logics of funding, which is like different, different funding levels and different funding curves. And it actually, unfortunately, accurately predicts that if you fund fusion below a certain level, even if you're funding it continually you'll never get to.

An actual useful fusion source because you'll never have enough money to build these, these demonstrator missions. And so in a way it's sort of predicts the future. This, this document is super impressive. If you haven't seen it you should absolutely check it out there. There are links in the show notes and it's sort of, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to Dr.

Dean is because this, this document. Is one of the pieces of evidence behind my hypothesis. That to some extent, program design and program management for advanced technologies is a bit of a lost art. And so I wanted to learn more about how he thought about it and built [00:03:00 ] it. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Steven Dean.

To start off, what was the context of creating the fusion plan? Well, I guess I would have to say that it started a few years earlier in a sense that in 1972 the I was in the fusion office and in the atomic energy commission and the office of men and mission management and budget at the white house put out instructions to, I guess, all the agencies that they should prepare an analysis of their programs under a system, they called management by objectives.

And this was some, this was a formalism that was, had a certain amount of popularity at that time. And I was asked to prepare something on the fusion program as a part of the agency, doing this for all of its programs. And [00:04:00 ] in doing that I looked at our program and I Laid out a map basically that showed the different parts of the program on a map like a roadmap and what the timelines might be and what the functions of those of facilities would be.

And when the decisions might be and what decisions would work into into, into what, and that was never published in, in a report, but it w except internally, but the map itself was published and widely distributed. And I have it on my wall and it's in my book. So that was the first, my first venture into.

Into doing something that resembled plan, it was not a detailed plan, but it was an outline of decision points and flow this sort of a flow diagram, but it did connect all the different parts of the [00:05:00 ] program and the identified sub elements, you know, not in great detail and, and budgets were not asked for at that time.

So that's how I got into this idea and a little experience in, in the planning area. And then a few years later, we had the gasoline crisis in the U S where there were long lines and we couldn't get gas and people were sitting in their cars over overnight. And the, the white house at that time said that you know, we had to become energy, independent oil you know, the OPEC.

And, and so Bob Hirsch, who was at that time about to transition from the director of the fusion program to an assistant minister traitor of Urdu in, I think it was 74, late 74, 75. The, the government decided to Congress decided, or the [00:06:00 ] administration decided to abolish the atomic energy commission and transition it into something called the energy research and development administration or arena.

And the reason for that was to. It create an agency whose function was clearly for all of energy and not just for atomic energy in order to respond to the energy crisis and to get us off of the dependence on foreign oil imports for, for vehicles and things. And so when, when, when that happened, my boss, who was Bob Hirsch at the time he became, he was actually appointed in assistant administrator of errata for basically all the long range energy programs, which included fusion.

And as he was at transition, he, he came up with the idea that we should create a detailed long range plan for the, [00:07:00 ] for the program. And he, he was obviously becoming sort of a senior manager for the many things and he wasn't certainly going to try and do this himself. And so he and I were very close.

I was at that point he had three divisions in the fusion program and I was the director of the largest division, which had all of the main experimental programs. And so he asked me to prepare this plan. And if you look at the plan at the very beginning, there's this there's a chart that shows Bob's basically guidance, which was to note that that there needed to be a multiplicity of pathways because no one organization or, or group or division or program was in response could be in full control.

And that in order to have a plan that might have some hope of [00:08:00 ] Last thing that you had to take into account a number of policy variables he said, and technical variables, which meant that he said, because need for the, for the, for fusion and the intent of the government and the funding is all in control by other people in the government.

We had to have a number of plans by which the program could be conducted. So he came up with the idea that, well, let's have five plans, which he called logic. So he basically created that framework and turned it over to me at the beginning, I guess, of 1975, I think it was. And to, to create this. This plant.

So that's how it all got started. And I had been doing a number of things with the program in terms of the major [00:09:00 ] experiments that were under my control as a director of the confinement systems, division magnetic confinement systems. I was forcing all, all the people that were that whose budget I had to control over to, to tell me what they were doing and what they needed to do.

And so on. It's all right though, I had already been and working on a lot of