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France Will Be Home To Fusion Plant
ScentCone writes "After years of politicking, France has won the right to be the location for a $12 billion fusion research facility. The plant will use deuterium-from-seawater and a huge electromagnetic ring to produce the 100-million-C conditions in which researchers hope to produce viable fusion. The debate over whether this is even possible continues to rage. The ITER project started in 1985, and there has been a running fight over money and location since. France indicated that if Japan (one of the holdouts) didn't see it their way, they'd build a coalition of the willing and do it anyway. With financing and contracting agreements in place, the 10-year construction can begin." Coverage also available at MSNBC, the NYTimes, CNN, and the BBC.
Well DUH!! Greenpeace is all about making sure nature still has checks and balances at keeping the human population from growing and/or less of a resource impact on Earth.
Anything that will allow for human prosperity is anti-green as it threatens Mother Nature by virtue of our presence.
Life is not for the lazy.
PLEASE, OH PLEASE dont talk out of you ass. If you dont know the science behind it, dont say it couldnt work.
Fyi: Binding energy in atoms depends on the size of the nucleus, because of symetry and force range issues.
Iron is the state will the stongest binding. Fusing 2 lighte cores will yield energy because the product is closer to iron, smashing a very heavy core into 2 parts will yield energy because the lighter resulting cores are closer to Fe47.
Just looking into wikipedia, or just googling would have given you that information, and in less time it took you to write down that testimony of you ignorance.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
1) why are you Americans so incredibly proud of your 40 hour week and miserable holiday entitlement?
2) I used to go out with a woman whose father had worked for the French atomic industry all his life (physics PHD) and he was emphatic that any proposed fusion reactor would produce just as much nuclear waste as a fission reactor if not more. I don't understand the details but just because the process in principle doesn't produce nuclear waste don't mean the practical application wont - or at least that appeared to be the thrust of his argument and he seemed to know what he was talking about. Remember the nuclear industry has lied to us and threatened our health consistently for 50 years.
3) I work in wind power and while I don't think they should be everywhere and blighting everyone's view, renewables combined with pump storage or compressed air storage or hydrogen storage, are more than capable of supplying the world's energy needs.
4) All us geeks like elegant solutions and fusion has always held out that promise but I think we all need to try to not mix up your personal fetishes with practical public policy issues.
Just figure out a way for Christians to fight new-agers and we'll be happy.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
The whole point of having extreme organizations in culture is to remind us of certain points of view and moral obligations. When something rather crazy is happening, something most people don't tolerate, we support them. Most of the time they just chime in and let us know what they think.
It's the reason so many people are trashed on Slashdot. Gates has a vision, and a group behind him, RMS, the same - and so forth from McNealy to Jobs...
They all hit the mark from time to time, but other than that most people are just moving on in their own lives. But if they didn't offer their opinions then a lot of people wouldn't know what to think. Just like politics, science debate, whatever. Greenpeace isn't bad, they just miss the mark. A broken mouth piece shouts a few truths every few months.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Better France than any where else!
Sig? What Sig?
I don't agree with Greenpeace's view on nuclear energy but calling them extremists and pretending that is some sort of valid critique is not okay. I hate the "extremist" argument. Extreme positions and the people that have them are not bad in themselves. At one point or another many great ideas have been extreme and unpopular.
At one point or another many great ideas have been extreme and unpopular.
And many more TERRIBLE ideas have been extreme and unpopular.
Greenpeace, like many so-called "environmental" groups, are nothing but luddites.
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
Interesting that this garbage got modded "funny" should have been modded OFFTOPIC garbage. Way to promote hate towards a nation that was eager to help the cause of American liberty in its early stages. Here's a clue for you backwards, McDonalds-brained "Americans"; take your Statue of Liberty and ship it back from where it came; it no longer stands as an adequate symbol for your country anyway.
I'm glad I gave you a chance to vent a little frustration at people who work hard to make good money. So what do you do for a living, Refrag?
I thought this was a site for geeks interested in technology and science, not a playground for people to trade cheap insults.
That's something so stupid that only a vim user could believe it.
Nice to see that on an interesting and scientific story about the possible solution to the world's energy problems the discussion decends into just slagging off the French. I thought this was a site for geeks interested in technology and science, not a playground for people to trade cheap insults.
You don't seem to realise how much politics can ruin a large project. Look at how France insisted that the EU parliment should be in France instead of Brussels. Now the entire entire EU parliament moves twice a year at the cost of hundreds of millions between Brussels and Strasbourg.
The EU integration project was founded by France, and their NON vote to the EU constitution threw Europe into chaos. So when it comes to the budget they decide to say NON to the UK rebate (France contributes 1.9bn compared to UK 8bn, but since a quarter of all EU money goes to French farmers the UK gets a partial refund of 3.5bn). This has now paralysed the EU.
Of course everyone knows the damage caused by the French veto over Iraq. And this is what they do to everyone else. Within France there is massive unemployment, appalling beaurocracy, strikes every second day.
Frankly I couldn't think of a worse country to build the reactor, unless there was a melt-down.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France