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Good News For US Fusion Research
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."
Yay election year motivated spending.... lets see them get anything the following year :p
How exactly is fusion power a dead end?
You're confusing "distant destination with rewards that are worth it" for "dead end".
A day without fusion is like a day without sunshine!
I gatta get me this shirt (on thinkgeek)...
if (it != oneThing) it = another;
Maybe the fact that it always seems 50 years away has something to do with this?
They said in 1978 that then current funding levels would never produce a viable power platform. To get one going by today would have required on average $2.5 billion per year by the fusion researchers' own estimates. Actual funding since 1978? $500 million per year. Quite blaming the science for the politicians shortsightedness.
Says the expert.
I've SEEN a working fusion reactor. Tokamaks work right now.
ITER merely take scientificially-demonstrated technology, and makes it industrial-scale.
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.
Let's see, a series of anti-global warming stories, anti-environmental stories, etc, shortly followed by a pork barrel promotion story blaming the sitting president for, of all things, cutting funding to a dead end science experiment. Gee whiz, I wonder why Slashdot is once again carrying Republican talking points and pushing a Republican agenda? Oh rriiight, it's an election year so the right wing media is ratcheting it up a notch and slashdot is doing its usual duty for the right.
Here are the recent Slashdot stories:
Who Needs CISPA? FBI Has a Non-Profit Workaround
WW2 Vet Sent 300,000 Pirated DVDs To Troops In Iraq, Afghanistan
Key Test For Skylon Spaceplane Engine Technology
China Plans National, Unified CPU Architecture
Microsoft Patches Major Hotmail 0-day Flaw After Widespread Exploitation
Conflict of Interest Derails UK Government Open Source Consultation
Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief
Bionic Eye Patient Tests Planned For 2013
BOLD Plan To Find Mars Life On the Cheap
'Mein Kampf' To Be Republished In Germany
UK Digital Economy Act Delayed Till 2014
The only thing I see here remotely political is the "Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief", which is another way of calling religious people stupid and "'Mein Kampf' To Be Republished In Germany", which contains a whole bunch of comments comparing "Mein Kampf" to the Bible.
Seriously dude! How bad do you really really want to believe in the fictional "right wing media" to make you see evidence of it where it does not exist?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
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.