Power engineering is an area of modern science and technology which is of vital importance for the future of our civilization. A decisive proof of the half a century of studies in this field will be the implementation of a project of an international thermonuclear research reactor. As experts point out, the total cost of these studies has already been in excess of 30 bin dollars - a fact that suggests the obvious questions of what will be the outcome and how soon can we expect the "happy end", if at all. Nuclear scientists, sharing broad views on the philosophical problems of Mother Nature in general and human society in particular, have always realized that problems of this kind and magnitude can and should be resolved by our combined efforts, irrespective of the social, political, cultural, religious and other distinctions between countries and nations. As for ourselves, we take pride in the fact that as far back as in 1956 our distinguished compatriot Acad. Igor Kurchatov took the first historic step in this direction with his report at the British Nuclear Center in Harwell, tearing off the veil of secrecy from the Soviet thermonuclear studies and experiments and urging colleagues in various countries to pool their efforts in working on this challenging and truly global problem. WHY THERMONUCLEAR POWER INDUSTRY As experts point out, there is a wealth of statistics today demonstrating a clear connection between percapita incomes, living standards and people's longevity and the quantities and quality of their energy consumption. In our day and age the optimal kind of energy is electricity most of which (over 70 percent) is obtained by burning of organic fuel-concentrated solar energy accumulated by vegetation over the millennia. And it was back in 1900 that the genius of Russian science, Dmitry Mendeleev went on record as saying that: "Burning oil for heating is like heating by burning banknotes!" And he knew what he was talking about-we procure and turn into as ... Read more