U.S. Cancels Fusion Program

Chuck1318 writes "The US is halting its national nuclear fusion energy project, FIRE, and pinning its hopes on the internation fusion research program ITER. However, ITER is stalled over a dispute on where to locate the facility. The dream of fusion power is getting no closer..."

Comments

Good news in a way

[pt99par]

I think that this may get fusion closer becouse now the US can put more money into the international project instead of its own. One good project instead of two half good projects.

Re:Good news in a way

[dave1791]

Or bad news in a way...

Instead of actually building the thing, we can get into a winkie measuring contest about where to build it.

Re:Good news in a way

[Dr. Hok]

Maybe they found out that it wouldn't be good for national security if the US were in control?

Re:Good news in a way

[Daniel Dvorkin]

We could easily fund FIRE, our share of ITER, and a couple of other programs as well. Which is what we should be doing, because there's no guarantee that any one approach is the right one. Why do people always think there's going to be one magic bullet?

They're talking about $5 billion, total, to build ITER. That's miniscule money compared to what we're throwing away on fighting in a certain country known for its oil ...

Re:Good news in a way

[R.Caley]

the US can put more money into the international project instead of its own.

The US wasn't putting any money into FIRE. $2 million for people to sit around tables saying `wouldn't it be nice if we had a fusion programme' (i.e. a pre-conceptual study) is nothing but a fig leaf. It was a place holder to say the US might set up a programme of it's own if it didn't get all it's own way with ITER. Aparently this didn't impress anyone, so there is no point in doing another $2million nothing next year.

Petty

[RU_Areo]

The fact that they are having one giant argument about where to put this thing, to the extent that it halted the process, is pathetic and shows how petty the countries involved are. It is obvious that they are not interested in the science and simply want to be able to say "look what we have".

No closer

[Junior J. Junior III]

Fusion has been "15-20 years away" for something like 30 years now, hasn't it? If it's not something, it's something else. Meanwhile, we have a massive fusion plant in the center of the solar system that's been operating maintenance free for eons and we're barely even exploiting it.

Re:No closer

[MrBruceLee]

"barely even exploiting it"? How about "without the sun the earth wouldn't survive"?

Vested Interests

[tiled_rainbows]

It seems to me that fusion research in the US is never going to get decent levels of funding all the time that the Whitehouse is full of people with millions of dollars invested in oil companies.

And furthermore, it seems to me that fusion research in the EU is never going to get decent levels of funding all the time that people here instinctively equate all nuclear power with dangerous, radioactive evil.

Which is a great shame, because it seems that fusion is the best long-term bet to avoid either:

a) the major cities of the world being swamped in a series of catastrophic floods as the icecaps break up
and/or
b) the world running out of fuels before finding adequate replacement and reverting to a state of pre-industrial, Mad-Max-style savagery.

So, in conclusion, I reckon that if our respective governments aren't willing to fund proper fusion research, then they should at least get working on the Thunderdome.

Re:Vested Interests

[sql*kitten]

It seems to me that fusion research in the US is never going to get decent levels of funding all the time that the Whitehouse is full of people with millions of dollars invested in oil companies.

You might be right, but remember there's really no such thing as an oil company. There are only energy companies. The smart ones recognize that, the dumb ones think it's all about oil. No-one wants oil. What they want is motive power.

Also remember that not much oil goes into power stations - mostly they're natural gas, coal nuclear, hydro, etc. Oil ends up in automobiles of one sort or another. Pitch it to Bush that Texas can provide all the oil the US needs and fusion will supply the rest and he can get the US out of the Middle East for good (barring support for Israel of course), and he'll jump at the chance, I reckon.

Re:Vested Interests

[mehtajr]

Seeing as they're all turning in record profits, I think the CEOs of Shell, BP, etc. would tell you they have no problem with selling fossil fuels.

I wouldn't expect them to want to move to alternative energy sources-- after all, once you've sold someone the Shell branded fusion reactor, they're not going to be filling up their tank every week, paying prettymuch whatever price you demand.

It's a question of taking a large amount of revenue up front, or the guaranteed revenue stream over the long term. I suspect that most businesses would take the latter.

Plus, it necessitates scrapping a giant amount of their infrastructure (drilling operations, refineries, possibly even gas stations), which is expensive to do (buying out employees, etc.).

Granted, there will still be associated costs with the Shell branded fusion reactor, unless they bundle Mr. Fusion with it, but I think the long-run revenue of fossil fuels would still bring in more money.

Re:Vested Interests

[marcello_dl]

Shell is an established oil company, you are assuming it could become a key player in the business of fusion reactor but that's not certain at all, especially if fusion is left to private funded research.

Re:Vested Interests

[maximilln]

You might be right, but remember there's really no such thing as an oil company. There are only energy companies

Precisely. GW Bush didn't invade Iraq because he wanted the oil. The financial movers and shakers in this nation needed an excuse to drive an American wedge into OPEC. OPEC has had a stranglehold on the US for decades and it wasn't getting any better. The only way that the US could ever break the controlling hold of OPEC was to physical invade their territory. If OPEC had been allowed to continue their trend then their money, money which came from sale of oil, would never be spent on alternative research. By putting an American political wedge into the Middle East we can finally hold some real bargaining power when it comes time to decide where the trillions of dollars in oil revenue get parceled out.

The UN model?

[tetrahedrassface]

Sadly, I see the same same type of international jockying over the site selection for this project as I do when I watch the UN in action. International cooperation sounds good, but seldom is very efficient. Just look at the International Space Station for another example. In my mind, this project has unlimited potential. However, it will most likely never be realized do to such squabbling.
*Yawn.
How long has this project been around now, 3 years? I don't see very much cooperation, and it doesnt look good if they havent been able to even agree on a site placement. I believe that any international cooperation should be tempered by a large dose of realism. Sad but true.....
Peace, Dusty

Re:The UN model?

[R.Caley]

Just look at the International Space Station for another example. In my mind, this project has unlimited potential.

The ISS never had any potential. It was a PR stunt for NASA who needed an excuse for keeping the shuttle flying, an excuse to pump money into the former SU for the white house, and the other `parnters' just saw free money for building bits of high-tech white elephant.

As an example of an international project which does produce results, look at CERN.

Deja Vu...

[Viceice]

This smells like it has the beginings of another ISS type fiasco.

With almost all things 'International' being done for the sake of individual national glory while shifting costs to others, one would wonder if it is wise to depend solely on such an international effort.

The world needs to break free from fossle feuls as a source of energy, and i think competition would drive the effort faster then arguing over stupid things like where to put a building.

Re:Put it on the Moon.

[Nakkel]

Turning our moon to a black hole wouldnt change things much. All we lose is the illumination provided by the surface of the moon as the new black hole would have the same mass as the moon. It would still orbit and cause tidal effects or something...

Put it on the Sun

[PingPongBoy]

Oh. It's already there. Time for lunch.

Re:answer is obvious

[dykofone]

But then what country would want to foot half the bill for something that another country has anyway? The only reason either country is offering that half is to be the exclusive site of international fusion research.

You're idea makes perfect sense, from a "let's get the job done and learn some science" point of view. But that really doesn't seem to be the point here. As many have pointed out, it looks like just another ISS.

I'm kind of interested in who would own the technology once it's completed. Sure, governments subsidize and control energy technologies, but they still have to hire private companies to build and design many of the parts. Most nuclear reactors in this country have turbines built be either GE or Westinghouse, and in EU it's Siemens.

What risks?

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys sound like there is terrible risk with fusion plant... and argue where far away you should put it (moon, North Korea, Iran... "if not already polluted" and so on). You do not seem to understand what you are talking about!

What is the waste that comes from fusion plant? Can it blow up with chain reaction?
The walls of the plant will in time get active. And the problem with fusion is that we can not have a sustainable raction going on - if it gets out of hand it'll just die.

Sad to see USA close their project. I just hope this makes to remaining project that much better with more resources... at least in theory.

Solar power is still vastly underutilized

[MarkEst1973]

I was recently reading about hybrid cars that would be able to sell their excess electricity back to the power grid. Likewise for solar panels on homes. The energy generated would be used to heat water and whatnot, then the rest feeds back into the grid, causing the power meter to run backwards a bit and reduce your bill.

Like distributed computing, I think distributed power generation would work amazingly well. If there were millions and millions of homes generating power alongside our power plants (nukes, not dirty fossil fuel plants), we could achieve energy independence from foreign nations, reduce fossil fuel dependence, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from oil/coal buring powerplants.

The challenges are difficult to overcome, however.

The big oil and gas companies, of course, would lobby against any distributed power generation. I'm sure they don't want millions of solar powered homes. There is no money in it for them.

Solar panels are, I think, relatively inefficient and expensive. Their efficacy would need to be boosted and the price would have to go down.

I can see a day, though, when everyone is generating everyone's power through distributed generation. It's cheaper, greener, and it just makes sense... which is probably why it will never happen.

Re:Solar power is still vastly underutilized

[MarkEst1973]

1. No tin-foil hat thinking in my post. That fact is that there are many billions of dollars tied up in coal/oil power plants. The owners of these would not want distributed solar power generating the bulk of the electricity for the people. And to be fair to the "evil corporations", lots and lots of jobs are created with those billions of invested dollars in these plants. These are natural incentives to lobby against distributed solar power.

2. The technological challenges are not "minimal" if we've nearly tapped out how far our solar materials can go. If we've reached the peak of what it can do, then the cost per kW of electricty if way too high. The huge technological challenge of boosting the efficiency of solar panels while simultaneously bringing down the price is a requirement before any advances in this field can be made. Like you said, it may take many years for a solar investment on my house to pay off. That would need to change before I did it, and I'm part of the masses.

3. Your last paragraph is entirely FUD. I never blamed anything on Bush or cronyism, nor did I allude to raising taxes to subsidize solar research.

I do agree with you that oil/coal powerplants are currently the easiest and cheapest way to generated kilowatts. That's why it's still producing the bulk of our electricity. NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) prevents greater use of nuclear power in the U.S. In this single instance, the U.S. can learn a lot from France (I can't believe I actually said that...), a country where 80%+ of the power is generated by nukes.

Re:Solar power is still vastly underutilized

[bullitB]

In the real world, upwards of 40% of a given barrel of oil ends up as gasoline, and maybe up to 60%. Gasoline.

Firstly, grandparent's point stands. A huge amount of oil is used for stuff other than gasoline. Furthermore, a lot of that gasoline does stuff other than fueling cars and homes, so, yeah, 25% sounds reasonable. We have no replacement for making plastics, nor for powering the turbines in jets, nor making asphalt. The point here is that even if we all stopped driving petrol-powered cars and switched to electric cars powered by big fusion generators, the oil industry wouldn't disappear; the stuff still has lots of uses.

Besides, we've already got the technology to move beyond fossil fuels, it's as safe or safer than burning coal, pollutes a helluva lot less, and has enough fuel sitting around to last us practically forever: fission. The only thing lacking is the political will, and the only problem is that people are stupid.

I'm a proponent of fission power. I know it's pollution-free, the reactors are vastly safer than any other method out there, and the anti-nuke crowd is very much to blame for a continued reliance on coal. However, fission is not an end-all solution. Uranium is not a limitless resource and reactor-safety, while not as critical as some have made it out to be, is an issue that needs to be regulated, which adds to inefficiency.

It's my personal belief that until we get fusion working, someone ought to do a re-branding effort on fission. Resell it to the public as "SafePower(TM)". Yes, with a small PR-manuver nuclear power could once again be our answer. The money from the t-shirt sales from SafePower(TM) would go to fusion research.

Yeah,"Energy companies" that own lots of oil wells

[Paul Crowley]

"Energy companies" that own a lot of oil wells tend to be "energy companies" that are quite keen on protecting the value of their investments.

And if fusion delivered what fission failed to - energy too cheap to meter - you can bet it wouldn't be long before significantly less oil was going into automobiles of one sort or another.

The Grip of the Oil Companies Tightens Even More

[Cryofan]

Follow the money, people. Who is going to be hurt if fusion becomes viable?

Re:Fusion = Waste of Money, Time, etc

[k98sven]

Projects that have proven future potential such as Zero Point Energy should be pursued far more vigorously,

Proven how? Zero-point energy as an energy source is pure psuedoscientific bullshit.
And that's a fact. They have yet to produce any reproducible experiment proving their bogus hypotheses, or any valid theory to give reason to believe any of this stuff.

and railroaded past those hopeless 'scientists' who still think such things aren't possible.

Being everyone who actually knows something about these matters.

Dismiss this as lunacy and mod-me down? - just remember this as an 'I told you so' when it turns out to be valid all along...

Sure, it's lunacy. I don't believe in education through moderation though.

Re:Put it on the Moon.

[mwood]

If they can't find anybody Over There willing to take ITER due to it having scary words like "nuclear" in its description, maybe they could site it in the U.S. We probably have a facility already worked out that might be able to house it. :-/

Re:How much more energy do we need?

[FlyingOrca]

Excellent point, and one that is often overlooked. I would add that the most effective way to manage energy demand, environmental impact, and resource sharing on a global scale is to reduce the "demand side". In other words, reduce our population by an order of magnitude.

Sure, it's a political nightmare, and it would require measures that would make China's look Utopian. In the long run, though, I believe it is the only way to achieve sustainability as long as we are constrained to this planet. After all, it's axiomatic: If we don't manage our population, natural forces will manage it for us. :-/

Re:Exploiting the sun

[aldoman]

Because as much as the environmentalists love to peddle the idea it would only take a few square miles to supply the planet, it's just not true in theory.

For one it's extremely expensive to build miles of solar panels. Not only that, the technology is improving all the time - we probably had something like 2.5% efficiency 15 years ago, now we have 10-15% and we'll be up into the low 20's hopefully soon.

To add to all that, the problem of getting the supply anywhere is very hard. You can produce megawatts of the stuff, but it's all coming out as low voltage DC when everyone needs high voltage AC. That means you need huge inverters, which are very inefficient.

Not only that, they only produce when the sun is shining. Maybe in CA this is ok as power demands are exceedingly high with the amount of air con in the daytime.

Another important question is whether the national grid could handle the amount of fluctuations in supply that a solar grid produces - one moment you'll have 1.2MW, next moment you'll have 0.9MW as a cloud passes over - this presents a huge problem for the grid as it's very hard to quickly adjust the major producers (coal, and to some degree fission) to cope with that supply problem.

the ironry? president's support?

[RevAaron]

on the page it reads:
The President has made achieving commercial fusion power the highest long-term energy priority for our Nation.
DOE Office of Science Strategic Plan February, 2004

Heh. Any one else amused by that? That 2 mil/year really shows how important the program is. And cancelling the program is even better.

Think of Bush administration motivations

[kc01]

Of COURSE we're abandoning our fusion research!

1. Producing cheap, reliable energy would take all the profits away from big oil, who have Bush in their pocket.

2. Diverting money from this program will help defray the costs of the war.

3. Saying we'll "rely on the global effort" is brilliant- It shows that we're a "global player," yet they probably believe that it won't happen without U.S. effort. (whether or not it's true)

Re:Yeah,"Energy companies" that own lots of oil we

[mwood]

Oh, "too cheap to meter" never happens. We build better meters faster than we overtake them with falling commodity prices.

I remember when comm. satellites were going to make long-distance telephony too cheap to meter. Look around: lots of telcos meter every call you make, across the globe or over the fence.

What *does* happen is "costs us less to make the same amount of profit."

Re:We already have sustainable nuclear fusion

[Idarubicin]

Solar energy is not reliable, anything less than clear sky and the system isn't running efficently. Photovoltaic energy has expensive delicate solar panels you have to protect. Photothermal has huge arrays of mirrors you have to maintain and protect. Unless you are in a desert or Arizona there's not much hope for solar.

On the other hand, solar tends to provide you with electricity when you really need it. Electricity demand goes up during the day and falls roughly with the sun. Demand is highest in the summer--witness last year's blackout--because millions of people are running air conditioners on sunny days.

Yeah, solar is too expensive right now, except for certain niche markets. (My grandparents' cottage actually runs on photovoltaic panels, because it would cost about thirty grand to connect them to the grid.) It's rather a chicken and egg problem--solar panels will get cheaper when people buy more panels, but people won't buy more panels until they get cheaper. Perhaps this is someplace where government subsidies (*gasp*) might be appropriate?

Arguing that photovoltaic panels are delicate is a bit of a red herring. Yes, I suppose they're moderately fragile, but so what? We have windows on our houses. We cover entire skyscrapers in glass. You might have to provide some cover for a panel array in the event of large hail, but beyond that I wouldn't be too worried. There's the added benefit of modularity. If I throw a rock at a panel, or even drive a truck into the edge of an array, I only take out a very small fraction of the total area. If one panel is damaged, it's the work of an hour for a guy to drive out and slap a new panel in place, and generation from the rest of the site stays up. Not only that, but you get an automatic twelve or so hours of downtime at night every night to do maintenance work.

What makes you think evildoers won't own any of these alternative energy sources? They have a vested interest in maintaining their position in the energy market, and if people swing towards alternative energy they are going to be involved.

Well yes--if the evildoers in question are the big energy companies, they will be involved, and they'll probably try to manipulate energy markets as they always have (*waves at Ken Lay*). With respect to evildoers in the Middle East, it's much more difficult to ship PV generated electricity here from Saudi Arabia or Iraq. Even if OPEC decides to build solar plants in Arizona, they're going to be working in U.S. territory under U.S. law. Mexico hasn't threatened to invade Texas for quite a while now, and it's fairly unlikely that California will try to annex Nevada. The region is stable, and nobody will have to drop any more bombs.

I completely agree that solar power isn't some sort of magic bullet that will solve all of our energy problems. No doubt the future will have a mix of energy sources, in the same way as we do now. It isn't anywhere near valid to write off solar because it isn't appropriate for all energy needs.

World electricity consumption vs solar

[Morgaine]

A few relevant ballpark figures might help the discussion:

World electricity consumption circa 2001: under 14 trillion KWh (14 x 10^12)

Max solar energy typically falling on a square metre of land: 1 KWh

Minimum area of land needed to supply world demand at 100% conversion: 14 million Km^2, or 14 solar farms of 1,000 x 1,000 Km each.

Before anyone gets carried away, this doesn't lead directly to a plan for converting the world to solar by siting 14 farms in the world's deserts. :-) [For a start, 100% conversion efficiency isn't even theoretically possible.] However, on a smaller national scale, there's no doubt that there is a lot of energy available in sunlight.

It is stalled because of the US

[johannesg]

They disagreed with France as the location because of Frances opposition to the Iraq war. Of course now Europe has dug its heels into the sand and won't agree to any choice the US finds acceptable.

I just love to see the only _really good_ energy source that is in our future being delayed and delayed because of petty politics.

Re:Shut up liberal.

[meadowsp]

The people of Iraq declared war on you on September 11th 2001?

References please.

Re:Would it be simpler in natural vacuum?

[Oddly_Drac]

"The first question that comes to mind is, does plasma research benefit from being carried out in a natural vacuum environment rather than needing apparatus to create one artificially? How does the degree of evacuation inside a fusion containment vessel compare with that in LEO, far orbit, or on the Moon? Is there any benefit to be gained from ever-better vacuums, such as freedom from plasma contamination?"

And which state gets the massive influx of cash and jobs? Seriously, you don't seem to understand the game.

Re:Shut up liberal.

[WhiteWolf666]

Don't be so dense.

Iraq != Taliban, or Al-Qaeda.

I agree with the war in Iraq, however, for entire different reasons.

Get your shit straight, and then it will make more sense.

U.S. has maintained a virtual occupation (containment) of Iraq since Desert Storm 1. We had no exit strategy.

We could have either a) left the area, pulled out our planes, and let Saddam did as he wanted, b) invaded, and force regime change, or c) maintain the SQ, shooting SAM sites, and occasionally have a plane shot down by Saddam's troops.

My opinion, B) was the best idea.

Unfortunately, we didn't consult the international community, we decided to pin it on WMD, we didn't bother to try and force Saddam out of power, and we still maintain that regime change was a fiction necessitated by WMD.

Saddam was a complete asshole, but our diplomatic efforts surrounding his removal were beyond terrible.

Anyways, these people (Iraqs) did not declare war on us. Infact, they never declared war on anyways.

Their autocratic fascist dictator declared war on Kuwait, and we only just now decided to end his rule.

A Comedy of Errors.

Re:How much more energy do we need?

[michael_cain]

I am becoming more skeptical as time passes about the need to pursue new power sources... We already generate enough power world-wide.

The "wealth" of a country -- per-capita GDP -- is tied rather closely to the amount of energy it can generate and apply. Western Europe and Japan are roughly the baseline for efficiency -- their per-capita GDP is about the same as the US, but they use about half as much energy. Western Europe and Japan have some clear geographic advantages compared to the US and Canada that makes it easier for them to be more energy-efficient. Hong Kong is pretty much at the extreme of efficiency for a rich "country", using only about one-quarter the per-capita energy of the US. But we can't all be Hong Kong -- someone has to grow crops and refine metals and all the other energy-intense activities a developed economy requires.

At least four billion people on this planet live in poverty -- very low per-capita GDP. For the economies in which they live to become richer, they will have to consume more energy. For example, look at the increases in energy consumption in China over the last ten or fifteen years as their economy has boomed. Energy consumption is not up because they got richer -- they got richer because they increased their energy consumption (and hence the goods and services produced per person). We produce enough energy worldwide ONLY if you're willing to tell those people that they and their children will have to be poor forever.

Re:Put it on the Moon.

[san]

But as far as gravity is concerned it doesn't really matter whether the moon has its familiar shape or a point mass.

We could just choose to leave the singularity there in orbit and observe funky gravitational lense effects!

Cheaper energy means more cleanups can be done.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Although I think it's a good thing that the US is willing to work with an international effort, I am becoming more skeptical as time passes about the need to pursue new power sources.

By concentrating only on the current uses of energy, you're making the same mistake as the early IBM executives who thought only ten computers would ever be needed - because that's how many it would take to do as much arithmetic as all the accountants in the world.

Completely missing the fact that this was all the arithmetic that was done because it was SO EXPENSIVE to do arithmetic, making other useful applications impractical. Cutting the cost of computation enabled an amazing range of additional, useful (or fun) things. (It now takes more arithmetic than the annual computation of that world full of accountants just to refresh my screen. Now think about DOOM III. B-) )

The same is true for energy.

For stareters, there's a WHOLE LOT of old trash stored in landfills and other disposal sites. Some if it is way toxic. Some is radioactive, and some of that is burning its way out of its containers and contaminating the ground water. Meanwhile, though recycling is making some progress, we're mining more minerals to make new materials - because it's often much less expensive to do it that way.

With cheaper energy for separating and purifying the components of used materials for reuse, the balance shifts more toward recycling.

In the extreme limit, with abundant nearly-free energy, you can vaporize the entrire trash stream and run it through a mass spectrometer, separating it by element and isotope. Use the carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen, plus still more energy, to feed your hydroponic farm. Use the purified metals and other elements in lieu of mining and refining more, for manufacturing feedstocks. Sort out the useful radioactives for devices that need them (i.e. smoke detectors), feed the NON-useful ones into nuclear processes that convert them to something more useful or less dangerous. Or just contain them (which you can do better when they're pure rather than a witches-brew) until they change to something more useful on their own, then separate it out again.

Abundant cheap energy is enormously enabling.

Re:Cheaper energy means more cleanups can be done.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

With cheaper energy for separating and purifying the components of used materials for reuse, the balance shifts more toward recycling.

Why? Won't extracting new resources get the same benefit?

They will receive some benefit. But a lesser one. Even an unlimited amount of free energy won't get you a mineral if the ore supply is actually all used up, or pay other costs such as having to move cities, strip-mine parks, or go fifty miles deep to reach the reserves that are still there.

Then there's the disposal costs - both of the mine tailings and other unwanted products of purification, and the material that you didn't recycle. Both those costs go away (replaced by the cost of the recycling technology) when you recycle old materials rather than digging up new.

Make the cost of recycling lower and more raw materials achieve crossover, where it's cheaper to recycle than mine (at least for some major fraction of the demand). Given that energy is the main cost of automated recycling and a disproportionately smaller fraction of the cost of primary resource production, I expect that progressively cheaper energy will mean progressively more materials reach crossover.

Re:Shut up liberal.

[Anonymous Coward]

so your logic is that the US action was justified because the world community didn't have the balls to force Iraq to own up to their WMD programs that did not exist since before the Gulf War? do you honestly believe that your government, your state, acts as some humanities agent in the world? please, pull your head out of your ass and look at the history of your nation.. the US supports brutal dictators when it is _in their own best interest to_.. wake the fuck up and challenge a little bit of what you are told

Re:This is actually a very good option

[Strontium-90]

The only way that we can ever make fusion commercially viable is if we do build things like ITER. As for the timescale, if the US fusion programs were properly funded, there would probably be a lot more progress toward reaching the goal of having fully functional fusion power plants. However, I don't want to get into issues of funding.

To say that ITER is just about "engineering and acquiring knowhow" shows that you are simply ignorant about all that is and will be going on with the project. There will be a great deal of information on large plasmas produced at ITER that cannot be produced anywhere else, since ITER will be the largest fusion tokomak ever built. Learning how larger plasmas behave in real-life situations instead of computer simulations is definitely on the list of information that I would like to know before building a real reactor. Additionally, developments made at ITER, both in fundamental science and engineering carry over to such things as propulsion systems for space exploration, large scale information management (Do you realize how much information is produced during a 1 sec. test on a tokomak?), materials science, and other fields. No, to say that ITER is "just about engineering and acquiring knowhow" shows that you just don't understand: Much of science is about building devices (of whatever kind) to test your theories, obtaining additional knowledge, and then refining your theories and tests.

Do some real reading about what you call a "waste of money" before you write it off as such. There are lots of fringe benefits to tokomak-based fusion research that you simply don't get with pulsed laser fusion. However, given the potential benefits from having functional fusion power plants, I think both strategies should be researched to their full potential. Just because I don't know a whole lot about pulsed laser fusion doesn't mean that I'm going to just write it off as expensive and unproductive (which is what my limited knowledge tells me). I would have to learn a lot more about it before being able to justify doing that.

Re:Put it on the Moon.

[blackpaw]

I shudder every time I see a blackhole related story on slashdot, it always reveals the incredible lack of scientific knowledge and/or critical thinking skills possessed by the average slashbot

It's not the end of Nuclear Fusion

[NCFlipper]

You know, ITER isn't the only other fusion programme going on. ITER follows on from, in particular, the JET programme based at Culham (near Oxford, England). IIRC the technology is based around a toroidal confinement (tokomak?) design.

ITER was proposed years ago. The problem, for a long time, has been that America didn't want to be involved, especially if ITER was not built in the States. Hence the FIRE programme is partly a case of America going it alone, and in that sense its cancellation is a good thing. ITER needs the involvement of all of the science community, inclusive of Japan, Europe, Canada and the States (forgive me if I've forgotten other major players, these were the ones I remembered without consulting a reference). Such expensive projects will suffer from dividing the funding into separate efforts: look at Fermilab which competes with CERN, and there is evidence that if both continue to go it alone, the next (much larger) accelerators may never be built.

And don't go thinking that that's the end of American innovation in nuclear fusion. There is other research being carried out into alternatives to the toroidal confinement design. At the very least there is the work on Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) being carried out at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL - sorry about all the acronyms). This project involves the compression of tritium pellets using several high-energy lasers. The approach is radically different from the work at ITER/FIRE. Funding of such a project makes a lot more sense than funding FIRE; instead of spending money duplicating research, the money goes towards funding a diversity of research. Evolution of the best technology happens faster that way.

So to me the future still looks promising. Nuclear fusion is a technology that needs to be shared worldwide, and before more countries decide that burning yet more fossil fuels is a more accessible way of generating electricity. More prudent use of the financial resources available to develop Fusion can only be a good thing.

Re:Put it on the Moon.

[imaginate]

Have you even *been* to France?

I know you think it's supposed to be funny, but all the sudden french-bashing that goes on in America comes from the same mentality that allowed people in other countries to cheer when the world trade centers went down. Do you not see that? That the simple-minded judging, the derogatory attitude, and the holier-than-thou attitude comes from the same place?

I didn't think that's what America was about, but it seems that a surprisingly large majority of America's people think in the exact same way as the people they most despise...