China to Build World's First "Artificial Sun"

cletuii writes to tell us the People's Daily Online is reporting that China is planning on building the world's first "artificial sun" device. From the article: "The project, dubbed EAST (experimental advanced superconducting Tokamak), is being undertaken by the Hefei-based Institute of Plasma Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It will require a total investment of nearly 300 million yuan (37 million U.S. dollars), only one fifteenth to one twentieth the cost of similar devices being developed in the other parts of the world."

Comments

*sigh*

[voice_of_all_reason]

So, we could've built like 270 of these already if it weren't for the war on terror, right?

//carte blanche, it's a helluva drug...

cheap because of the

[minus_273]

the wonders of chinese slave labor. I guess you can do that when you have a billion people and a ton of them in jail/reeducation camps.

The Tokamak Fraud

[Baldrson]

I was banned from /. for a month for posting this but I'll post it again, and again, and again, since it seems to really piss off the kind of folks who need to be exposed for the frauds they are:

Basically the main story was about a non-conventional fusion technology purportedly capable of burning hydrogen-1 and boron-11, which is a highly desirable fuel cycle since it produces no neutrons at all. My response was to detail my experience with a project to try to achieve the same fusion cycle, called p-B11 ("p" standing for "protium" or hydrogen-1 as opposed to "deuterium" which is hydrogen-2). Since this history involves some information that the tokamak afficionados find enormously embarrassing, they linked to a post of mine made to the Stormfrot forum where I stated my opinion of Jewish complicity in the failure of the fusion program. Then the block occurred. I did file a complaint with slashdot's editor but no action was taken. I find it all too predictable that people can credit Jews with nuclear technology projects over which they had disproportionate influence and everyone nods their heads in righteous agreement but if anyone assigns blame for failure of such programs not only is he a social pariah -- he's blocked from posting.

Of Plasmaks and Prizes (Score:1, Offtopic) by Baldrson (78598) *
on Saturday November 05, @10:43AM (#13958456)
(http://www.geocities.com/jim_bowery | Last Journal: Wednesday July 21, @04:12AM)

Back when the cold fusion brouhaha hit, I ran across an intriguing idea of achieving p-B11 (p=proteum=Hydrogen-1 and B11 =Boron-11) fusion using artificial ball lightning, called the Plasmak. No adequate explanation of ball-lightning has yet been concocted resuling in reproducible free-floating plasmoids, and the guy (Paul Koloc) doing the work seemed to have a somewhat plausible idea. (And he did have background with the Spheromak group at the University of Maryland.) Most importantly there were actual photographs of these plasmoids floating in the open air without continuous power input! So I looked into it seriously for a while. During this time I also ran across others who were looking into a variety of p-B11 technologies including one of the founders of the US Tokamak program, Robert W. Bussard with his resurrection of Philo Farnsworth's inertial electrostatic confinement device sometimes called the Farnsworth Fusor.

Given:

1. all the foment in the air.
2. the fact that the Tokamak was to fusion as the Shuttle was to cheap access to space.
3. I had been working on getting NASA out of the launch service business via grassroots legislation.

...as the, then, Chairman of the Coalition for Science and Commerce (that had been successful in passing the Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990, requiring NASA to buy commercial launch services whenever possible) I decided to go around to the various fusion contenders and come up with a set of about 10 milestones they all agreed would be worthy of prize awards, and came up with some legislation that would have awarded a series of $100M prizes, each for acheivement of one of those milestones.

This was 1992.

I never got very far with this legislation myself but about 3 years later, Bussard decided to submit this legislation -- with a kicker:

Re: WHY THE GODDAMN HELL DOES EVERYBODY...

[freaks_and_geeks]

You, sir, should take yourself off Slashdot and over to the National Review board, or the nearest mental facility.

Re: WHY THE GODDAMN HELL DOES EVERYBODY...

[Zantetsuken]

FIRST ISSUE: how can you be so blind as not to see the relationship between MONEY and FISH? The fish is compared to the money that America gives to some 30 odd countries, and as I said, it would be better to help the nation industrialize itself and become self sufficient - but since their government is likely to come take what we have given them or help them acheive, be it free money or helping the people of the nation become self sufficient.

===============

SECOND ISSUE: This is where their government becomes a major part of the issue. How many of you have heard of or seen the video clip of the third world country wherein a group of international charities were kind enough to build a soccer/football (only soccer in America, correct?) stadium for the people. In return, their government seizes it to publicly execute people in. So what do the people of the country that used to enjoy soccer games there do??? Instead of seeing their own government as a serious threat to themselves, they ask the international charities to BUILD THEM ANOTHER STADIUM, when instead they could have at the absolute least asked the UN and NATO for help replacing the current government.

I know a LOT of you guys think like rts008 here, that "Sooooo, if they aren't marching to our tune they are WRONG? Again.... WTF????". It is NOT a matter of getting them to do what we say, its called giving the people FREEDOM AND LIBERTY from the oppression of their own government, or the "revolutionaries" that supposedly fight for the betterment of their country, yet hold whole villages hostage (such as cases where either the military or revolutionaries place landmines around the village well, and only they know where to step to get through to the well withought getting blown to peices) which they daily have to live with the fear of being tortured or executed because of what they say or do. One of Saddam Husseins kids (was it Uday or Qusay?) favorite methods of torturing people was to chain them to a wall by their feet, with the victim hanging upside down, and to beat their feet with a baseball bat (swinging down on their heels).

My point is, for the past FORTY YEARS the people Iraq lived in this kind of fear, and the situation is not limited to just Iraq and Afghanistan. How is it hurting the people of their country by taking away that fear and helping them to set up a government where THEY make sure it never happens again?