From the American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Science Policy News:
The ITER language in the Explanatory Statement accompanying the FY 2008 Consolidated Appropriations Act was completely unexpected. Appropriators zeroed out the U.S. contribution to ITER for FY 2008, and instructed Department of Energy officials not to shift money from within the Fusion Energy Sciences program to restore this money.ITER is a joint international research and development project that aims to demonstrate the scientific and technical feasibility of fusion power. The partners in the project - the ITER Parties - are the European Union (represented by EURATOM), Japan, the People´s Republic of China, India, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation and the USA. ITER will be constructed in Europe, at Cadarache in the South of France.
Comment: This seems like a very short sighted decision. First, fusion power is a hugely important technology for the future, both in terms of meeting energy needs and in terms of clean energy to prevent excessive global warming. But it is also going to tee off our allies, leaving them to pay our share of an expensive collaborative project. JAD
1 comment:
We have better things to spend the money on. Like a fusion design that will produce a working reactor in 5 years instead of 50.
Bussard Fusion Reactor
Easy Low Cost No Radiation Fusion
It has been funded:
Bussard Fusion Reactor Funded
Bussard Fusion Update
The above reactor can burn Deuterium which is very abundant and produces lots of neutrons or it can burn a mixture of Hydrogen and abundant Boron 11 which does not.
The implication of it is that we will know in 6 to 9 months if the small reactors of that design are feasible.
If they are we could have fusion plants generating electricity in 10 years or less depending on how much we want to spend to compress the time frame. A much better investment than CO2 sequestration.
BTW Bussard is not the only thing going on in IEC. There are a few government programs at Los Alamos National Laboratory, MIT, the University of Wisconsin and at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana among others.
The Japanese and Australians also have programs.
If you want to get deeper into the technology visit:
IEC Fusion Technology blog
Start with the sidebar which has links to tutorials and other stuff.
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