ITER Fusion Reactor Enters Existential Crisis

deglr6328 writes "The long beleaguered experimental magnetic confinement fusion reactor ITER is currently in what some are calling the worst crisis of its 25 year history. Still existing only on the paper of thousands of proposed design documents, the latest cost estimates for the superconducting behemoth are soaring to nearly 20 billion USD — roughly twice the estimates from as recently as a few years ago. Anti-nuclear environmentalist organizations have seized upon the moment as an opportunity to use the current global economic crisis as a means to push for permanently killing the project. If ITER is not built, the prospect of magnetic confinement fusion as a technique to reach thermonuclear breakeven and ignition in the laboratory would be in serious question. Meanwhile, the largest laser-driven inertial confinement fusion project, the National Ignition Facility, has demonstrated the ability to use self-generated plasma optical gratings to control capsule implosion symmetry with high finesse, and is on schedule to achieve ignition and potentially high gain before the end of the year."

Comments

Re:Fusion Reactor... Crisis?!

[Captain Splendid]

And while we're at it, a few less Irish would be nice. And I can't stand Nigerians or Barbadians either. In fact...

Whoops, I got my prejudice in your bigotry!

Re:ITER is too big

[0123456]

I'm sure those "top scientists" have given a lot of thought to the size of ITER and its budget -- as they plan their retirements around it.

Indeed: some of these people are going to retire having spent their entire careers not building working fusion reactors. So I'd rather trust the thoughts of some random Slashdot poster than a 'top scientist' who's achieved nothing of substance after spending decades and billions of dollars in research.

Re:Come on now

[bill_mcgonigle]

do not have the political power to do anything but make a mostly ignored noise as they complain

The US hasn't built a new nuclear reactor in 30 years. The 'smelly hippies' won.

Then they (Clinton, Kerry, Gore) got into power and killed our research into the safe kind of reactor that cleans up our nuclear waste.

Now they rake in untold fortunes promoting 'green energy' which doesn't seem to actually make any mathematical sense. But they've finally figured out the secret to alchemy: CO2 + government = gold.

Re:I smell a dirty troll

[Required Snark]

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. That was really fast. You prove my point more thoroughly and succinctly then I was able to do.

First, let me restate my argument in a very simple fashion so there can be no misunderstanding. I was trying to say that you could be an environmentalist and be pro-fusion. I was also saying that the majority of negative posts were falsely equating environmentalism with blanket anti-nuclear sentiment. I also asserted that those critical of environmentalism were assuming that environmentalist were anti-technology Luddites.

I did not in my post deny that there are environmentalists that are against all nuclear power. I did not even bring it up.

Your response was to go to known anti-nuclear environmental web sites and show that, in fact, they are anti-nuclear. This is about as insightful as going to a vegetarian web site to show that some people are against eating meat.

Disagreeing with me means that you think that there are no pro-environmental and pro-fusion interests groups. You could support this hypothesis by searching for such groups and not finding any. You didn't do this.

My other criticism was that Slashdot posters bring blind prejudice into the arguments, and do not use facts and logical reasoning. To quote myself: "There are no shades of gray."

I would assert that your response proves my point. You did not look for any information that would prove me right, you only looked for information that would support your pre-existing conclusion.

Am I guilty of "fatuous ramblings"? It might appear that way to some readers. I think that I use logic and sarcasm (also know as snark) to make well founded, if somewhat cranky, criticism of people who are not thinking very much.

Are you a ' "pigheaded moron" '? (Note that I had to put single quotes around double quotes to get this completely accurate.) I cannot make a meaningful judgment about the "moron" part, and I will leave that determination to others. I can, however, say with some certainty that the "pigheaded" part applies, based on your response. I tried to point out that it was not a simple black and white case of all environmentalists being anti-nuclear, and all I got from you is a reiteration of that same simplistic view. That makes the case for "pigheaded" as far as I can tell.

By the way, thank you for a very enjoyable time. I haven't had this much fun on Slashdot in ages. I was literally laughing out loud all the time I was writing this.

Re:So let me get this right...

[Renraku]

Nuclear? Holy shit, they must mean like..nuclear bombs and stuff. Nuclear bombs release a lot of pollution which will end up killing our favorite poster animals that everyone loves and it will kill people too. Remember Chernobyl? Surely all nuclear power plants are just like Chernobyl, nuclear medicine is like an injectable atomic bomb just waiting to go off and cause everyone around you to mutate or die of radiation poisoning!

Nuclear fusion must be much worse!

It goes without saying that most rabid environmentalists wanted to have an art degree.

Re:I smell a dirty troll

[dcollins]

'Anti-fusion environmentalist organizations' I wonder who that is exactly? Care to name one?"

"Well here ya go Einstein: http://www.stop-iter.org/ [stop-iter.org] here's another: http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/programs/atmosphere-energy/nuclear-free/reactors/index.shtml [sierraclub.ca] and oh look, another: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/releases/ITERprojectFrance/ [greenpeace.org]"

So you didn't NAME any, did you? You posted a bunch of links, which is a different action entirely.

This is a good marker for establishing who's the real asshole in an online thread -- the person who acts like they don't understand that a "citation" means quote + name + page number.