EU Fusion Experiment's Financial Woes Get More Concrete

fiannaFailMan writes "An international plan to build a nuclear fusion reactor is being threatened by rising costs, delays and technical challenges. 'Emails leaked to the BBC indicate that construction costs for the experimental fusion project called Iter have more than doubled. Some scientists also believe that the technical hurdles to fusion have become more difficult to overcome and that the development of fusion as a commercial power source is still at least 100 years away. At a meeting in Japan on Wednesday, members of the governing Iter council will review the plans and may agree to scale back the project.' Iter will be a Tokamak device, a successor to the Joint European Torus (JET) in England. Meanwhile, an experiment in fusion by laser doesn't seem to be running into the same high profile funding problems just yet."

Comments

Better get cracking!

[cashman73]

We're supposed to have Mr. Fusion by 2015, you know,... Of course, we were supposed to have flying cars 9 years ago, too,... ;-)

I am impressed

[spyfrog]

The saying has always been that "fusion is still 50 years away", for fifty years ago and recent.
Now EU has managed to make it 100 years away - it's an impressive achievement: they have managed to double the time we have to wait. Great use of money. Since fusion was only "50 years away" when we started we where actually better off before we started to build that reactor (or the scientists where to optimistic, but whats the fun in that?).

Re:I am impressed

[ultranova]

Commercial fusion will be "20 years away" after normal fusion. As always.

Commercial fusion - the merging of two small corporations into a single large one - is already commonplace. The problem is making it profit-positive; that is, how do you make the profits from that large corporation minus the sum of profits from the small ones be larger than the money spent on the fusion?

Commercial fission, on the other hand, is regularly used to energize in the marketplace, and is usually catalyzed by neutral parties, such as anti-trust committees. Spontaneous decay does occur, however one would be wise to avoid the particle companies thus emitted, as they tend to be irradiated with poisonous debt.

Both of these commercial power generation forms are somewhat controversial amongst some religious and philosophical groups, such as libertarians, who argue that the Limited Liability Force that governs large corporate interactions is contrary to their beliefs and thus an evil perversion of nature. Said groups would rather we'd stick with less efficient but more straightforward interactions between indivisible (except with a chainsaw) businessmen particles. Some also argue that the supply of Corporate Spin, which is a vital element of all interactions, is of limited supply and will be exhausted unless we deploy Astroturf Generators which, unfortunately, also produce and release weapon-grade bullshit into the environment. There is no known way to contain this contaminant.

Re:Posting

[Anonymous Coward]

I must admit this is a unique first post.

Useless? Of course. But at least its not a copy/paste troll.

Re:To heck with Fusion.

[Samalie]

You're posting on Shashdot. Thats enough of an anti-mater for any girl out there.

Now anti-matter energy....that would be cool :)

Inflation

[Lars T.]

The number of Slashdot stories on this has also just doubled. http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/29/0511233

Tokamak

[HTH NE1]

Iter will be a Tokamak device

Good choice, since attempts with Zat'nik'tel and Tacuchnatagamuntoron devices failed.

100 Years?

[divisionbyzero]

Wow, in the 50's it was any day now; 70's real soon now; 90's became 50 years; now 2010 we're at 100. That's a heck of a curve. In 100 years we'll be at only 200 years away!

Re:Pure Fusion power generation is a pipe dream

[The Archon V2.0]

We have two working examples of fusion generation, the Hydrogen Bomb that uses a fission device to jump start it and the Sun which is hugely radioactive.

So our two working examples of fusion generation require fission.

It is with great dishonor that I present you with the "you fail physics forever" diploma. I wish you the best of luck on your new career as a Hollywood action and sci-fi movie writer.

Re:seriously

[Kesch]

What if we blow our selves up with some really cool stuff? I'm thinking lots of last words along the lines of "Damn! That's awesome!"