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Good News For US Fusion Research

Posted by Soulskill on from the all-about-the-benjamins dept.

zrbyte writes "Fusion research would get a major boost in a Department of Energy (DOE) spending bill approved today by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations. The panel rejected an Obama Administration proposal to cut funding for domestic fusion research in the 2013 fiscal year, which begins 1 October. It would also give more money than requested to an international collaboration building the ITER fusion reactor in France. This will allow the Alcator C-Mod fusion facility at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge to be kept open, which the Administration had proposed closing."

9 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. political science by bolthole · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yay election year motivated spending.... lets see them get anything the following year :p

    1. Re:political science by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The disheartening thing about our budget is that we were unable to find a reasonable solution to contain health care costs in our country. We have plenty of examples of country who are able to offer good health care for a fraction of the cost and yet we have chosen to kick the can and not solve this problem. Anything else in the budget (other than defence) is peanuts compared to health care. Yet, we have no solution in sight. Harder than facing the problem, we chose to digress the discussion and talk about 'death panels' and other nonsensical distractions. .... sigh....

    2. Re:political science by Microlith · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You imply that if they were allowed to the type of profits required to do this research... that they would actually do this research. I suspect, rather, that they would simply return it to their investors and release "record profits" announcements quarterly while buying off legislators to continue doing what they have been.

  2. Re:Slashdot carrying Republican water again by Entropius · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How exactly is fusion power a dead end?

    You're confusing "distant destination with rewards that are worth it" for "dead end".

  3. Re:Slashdot carrying Republican water again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Friendly clue from Europe:

    As long as you believe the only politics that exist is "Democrat" or "Republican" your country is never going to arise from it's current venture into corporatism.

    Fix it by changing the system. Not supporting it.

  4. Re:Slashdot carrying Republican water again by ooshna · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How do you know it will ever work? You're confusing "wishful thinking, daydreams and delusions" with "historical track record of proven failures and almost insurmountable engineering obstacles". You want a distant destination with rewards? Time to remodel our western social structure. But that's too hard, better stick to fanciful sci-fi scenarios and techno-fixes that will never happen. So much easier to cope with than reality! Also means never having to change the old career-suburbs-car model either, too comfortable in front of your Chinese TV!!

    Damn and me without a time machine to go tell Da Vinci all those drawings of flying machines are a waste. I mean really hundreds of years of none stop proven failures. He should have just stuck to art.

  5. Re:Slashdot carrying Republican water again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I've SEEN a working fusion reactor. Tokamaks work right now.

    There's a world of difference between working and practical.
    I think we both know that's what the parent meant. After all, there are fusion machines that can sit on a desk, but you don't see anyone proclaiming that fusion power is here yet.

  6. Fusion exists -- warp drives don't by dlenmn · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We know fusion exists, and that the reaction can produce more energy than it takes to maintain. If that weren't true, we wouldn't be here. That's not to say there aren't issues with fusion power, but comparing it to warp drives -- a fictional technology -- is silly.

  7. Re:Slashdot carrying Republican water again by Troed · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yes! Let's be more like Europe!

    World Happiness report ranking:

    1. Denmark
    2. Finland
    3. Norway
    7. Sweden

    And yes, us "socialist" Scandinavian/Nordic countries have perfectly healthy economies. And we would never accept your two party dictatorship.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/06/world-happiness-report-2012_n_1408787.html

    No. Let's not.

    Yeah well. How's that working out for you.

    In Transparency International's 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index all five Nordic countries were ranked among the 11 least corrupt of 178 evaluated countries

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model

    (United States: #24)

    --
    it's in my head