What do you think?
Rate this book
Firebird
The world is moving towards alternative energy. Two giant laboratories, one in France, one in Texas, are engaged in a contest to give mankind a limitless source of energy-fusion, the energy source of stars. In France, the European Union is constructing the colossal ITER project. At CFRC, the Controlled Fusion Research Center near Austin, a scientists have constructed a machine they call Prometheus to challenge ITER. When the director of the Austin lab attempts to achieve fusion on the day of Prometheus' dedication, a near-fatal accident ensues, and in an instant the rivalry between ITER and CFRC becomes a race to change the future of the world. But was it an accident, or sabotage?
ebook
First published February 7, 2013
12 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
Read
February 8, 2020Firebird review
I barely made the end of this tale
Poor charactisation long meandering sentences
Sadly for the author there are many better stories out thete
I barely made the end of this tale
Poor charactisation long meandering sentences
Sadly for the author there are many better stories out thete
May 22, 2013
Fireball, a new novel by author/cosmologist Tony Rothman, takes place in the world of magnetic fusion energy research – where scientists and engineers labor to provide humanity with a safe, inexhaustible form of nuclear energy. Fusion is considered by some to be the greatest scientific and technological challenge undertaken by humanity.
As a youngster, Rothman spent a substantial amount of time hanging around his father’s workplace, the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, one of the world’s leading magnetic fusion labs. The author also spent time there as an adult leading to his writing Firebird. This, coupled with his education as physicist, has enabled him to portray an accurate picture of the climate, subculture, science and technology of fusion.
In existing nuclear power plants, electricity is produced by the splitting of uranium or plutonium atoms, a process known as fission, with its downside of catastrophic meltdowns (Chernobyl), and its extensive release of long-lived radioactive materials (Fukushima). Fusion, the joining of hydrogen atoms, could provide abundant, everlasting energy, without these problems.
In Fireball the action surrounds a fictitious magnetic fusion experiment, Prometheus, built in Texas with private funding. It’s a large complex, tokamak-type device that employs magnetic fields to confine a hot ionized gas, plasma – the fusion fuel – comprised of deuterium and tritium, the heavy isotopes hydrogen.
Large fusion facilities run in the billions of dollars, so only governments can afford to build and operate them. Generous corporate dollars for fusion is only a pipe-dream for real-world fusioneers, but in Firebird it is reality for the Controlled Fusion Research Center (CFRC) in Austin, Texas. With support from a consortium of private sources, their Prometheus tokamak was built to challenge a device called ITER in a race to achieve ignition, a self-sustained plasma -- the holy grail of fusion power. The ITER tokamak is a real-world fusion experiment now under construction at Cadarache, France with billions in funding from a consortium of governments. The lion’s share of ITER’s funding is coming from Europe, so portraying it as a European device is not unreasonable.
As Firebird unfolds, we are introduced to a cast of scientists and others with vagaries not unlike some of the individuals found working in large scientific facilities. Accurately, one of Rothman’s characters describes a tokamak as “a device too complex to allow you to make it into a sensible whole.” Throughout the novel, the author employs his first-hand knowledge of the myriad of subsystems essential to the operation of a real tokamak. Beyond this, readers familiar with the history of the U.S. magnetic fusion program will no doubt enjoy references to many real events thrown in by Rothman during the story, including the extraordinary worldwide hoopla over the 1989 Cold Fusion claims.
Early on we are introduced to the main characters of Firebird, the lanky CFRC physicist Nathaniel Machuzak and his cohort, Yaroslav Archangelsky, with a beard and bedraggled hair worthy of Rasputin. Mac and Slava are embroiled in a series of attempts to sabotage Prometheus, allowing ITER to snatch the ignition prize. Mac and other CFRC staff have serious doubts regarding Prometheus’ability to reach ignition. Added to their troubles is an ultimatum from the mysteriously androgynous Moravec, the head of GlobeTex, CFRC’s principal investor. Moravec’s primary interests are wind, solar and bio. In a nutshell, he demands “that they achieve the most difficult technological feat ever attempted by the human race, a task so intractable that it had eluded fusioneers worldwide for eighty years – and that they do it in six months with a machine that might not be capable of it. With a loose saboteur thrown in for good measure.”
The pressure on Machuzak is heightened when he is appointed acting director of CFRC replacing the founding director, Leonard Rasmussen, who has, over time, taken mysteriously ill. Mac’s new role greatly offends the Lab’s deputy director, the aggressive, dictatorial Cyrus Krieg-Zuber, who was injured in a lab accident later deemed sabotage.
Early on, into all this trouble comes a young, colorful, lady police officer T.J. D’Abro. To Mac, at first site, “she might have been Sally Skull or Calamity Jane walkin the streets of the old west.” Determined to nab the saboteur at all costs, D”Abro is convinced at one point that Mac and his buddy Slava are the culprits.
Besides being highly entertaining and engrossing, Firebird is unique in its effective marriage of fiction with the accurate ambience of a real scientific laboratory. This is undoubtedly attributable to the author’s real world experiences, his passion for science and his ability to both amuse and inform his readers.
As a youngster, Rothman spent a substantial amount of time hanging around his father’s workplace, the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, one of the world’s leading magnetic fusion labs. The author also spent time there as an adult leading to his writing Firebird. This, coupled with his education as physicist, has enabled him to portray an accurate picture of the climate, subculture, science and technology of fusion.
In existing nuclear power plants, electricity is produced by the splitting of uranium or plutonium atoms, a process known as fission, with its downside of catastrophic meltdowns (Chernobyl), and its extensive release of long-lived radioactive materials (Fukushima). Fusion, the joining of hydrogen atoms, could provide abundant, everlasting energy, without these problems.
In Fireball the action surrounds a fictitious magnetic fusion experiment, Prometheus, built in Texas with private funding. It’s a large complex, tokamak-type device that employs magnetic fields to confine a hot ionized gas, plasma – the fusion fuel – comprised of deuterium and tritium, the heavy isotopes hydrogen.
Large fusion facilities run in the billions of dollars, so only governments can afford to build and operate them. Generous corporate dollars for fusion is only a pipe-dream for real-world fusioneers, but in Firebird it is reality for the Controlled Fusion Research Center (CFRC) in Austin, Texas. With support from a consortium of private sources, their Prometheus tokamak was built to challenge a device called ITER in a race to achieve ignition, a self-sustained plasma -- the holy grail of fusion power. The ITER tokamak is a real-world fusion experiment now under construction at Cadarache, France with billions in funding from a consortium of governments. The lion’s share of ITER’s funding is coming from Europe, so portraying it as a European device is not unreasonable.
As Firebird unfolds, we are introduced to a cast of scientists and others with vagaries not unlike some of the individuals found working in large scientific facilities. Accurately, one of Rothman’s characters describes a tokamak as “a device too complex to allow you to make it into a sensible whole.” Throughout the novel, the author employs his first-hand knowledge of the myriad of subsystems essential to the operation of a real tokamak. Beyond this, readers familiar with the history of the U.S. magnetic fusion program will no doubt enjoy references to many real events thrown in by Rothman during the story, including the extraordinary worldwide hoopla over the 1989 Cold Fusion claims.
Early on we are introduced to the main characters of Firebird, the lanky CFRC physicist Nathaniel Machuzak and his cohort, Yaroslav Archangelsky, with a beard and bedraggled hair worthy of Rasputin. Mac and Slava are embroiled in a series of attempts to sabotage Prometheus, allowing ITER to snatch the ignition prize. Mac and other CFRC staff have serious doubts regarding Prometheus’ability to reach ignition. Added to their troubles is an ultimatum from the mysteriously androgynous Moravec, the head of GlobeTex, CFRC’s principal investor. Moravec’s primary interests are wind, solar and bio. In a nutshell, he demands “that they achieve the most difficult technological feat ever attempted by the human race, a task so intractable that it had eluded fusioneers worldwide for eighty years – and that they do it in six months with a machine that might not be capable of it. With a loose saboteur thrown in for good measure.”
The pressure on Machuzak is heightened when he is appointed acting director of CFRC replacing the founding director, Leonard Rasmussen, who has, over time, taken mysteriously ill. Mac’s new role greatly offends the Lab’s deputy director, the aggressive, dictatorial Cyrus Krieg-Zuber, who was injured in a lab accident later deemed sabotage.
Early on, into all this trouble comes a young, colorful, lady police officer T.J. D’Abro. To Mac, at first site, “she might have been Sally Skull or Calamity Jane walkin the streets of the old west.” Determined to nab the saboteur at all costs, D”Abro is convinced at one point that Mac and his buddy Slava are the culprits.
Besides being highly entertaining and engrossing, Firebird is unique in its effective marriage of fiction with the accurate ambience of a real scientific laboratory. This is undoubtedly attributable to the author’s real world experiences, his passion for science and his ability to both amuse and inform his readers.
November 29, 2023
I listened to this as part of The 10th Science Fiction Megapack. Part 1 2023
I listened to this as part of The 11th Science Fiction Megapack. Part 2 2023
I listened to this as part of The 12th Science Fiction Megapack. Part 3 2023
I listened to this as part of The 11th Science Fiction Megapack. Part 2 2023
I listened to this as part of The 12th Science Fiction Megapack. Part 3 2023
May 14, 2013
Science is not as pristine as people might believe in this bold, dynamically written thriller set in a fusion lab. Fascinating and frightening that though it's fiction, it may not be so fictitious. The stuff that goes on . . . You start out thinking it's political or corporate greed or competition with ITER, but it becomes more internal. The real reason for the sabotage? Hard to read because you don't want to know it runs that deep, yet hard to put down because maybe it really does.
June 15, 2014
Tony Rothman so delightfully describes the Fusion World I have lived in for the last 40 years, it's almost eery.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews