Senate Bill Raises Possibility of Withdrawl From ITER As Science Cuts Loom

ananyo writes "Are the knives coming out for ITER? A Senate Department of Energy spending bill, yet to be voted on, would cut domestic research for fusion and directs the DOE to explore the impact of withdrawing from ITER. The proposed cuts for domestic fusion research are in line with those proposed in the Obama administration's budget request but come after the House ... voted to boost ITER funding and to support the domestic program at almost 2012 levels on 6 June. U.S. fusion researchers do not want a withdrawal from ITER yet but if the 2014 budget looks at all like the 2013 one, that could change. 'They're not trying to kill ITER just yet,' says Stephen Dean, president of advocacy group Fusion Power Associates. 'If this happens again in 2014, I'm not so sure.' The problems for fusion could be small beans though. The 'sequester', a pre-programmed budget cut scheduled to take effect on 2 January, could cut 7.8% or more off science and other federal budgets unless Congress can enact last-minute legislation to reduce the deficit without starving U.S. science-funding agencies."

Comments

Re:I have this CRAZY idea on how to cut the defici

[Sponge Bath]

Unemployment benefits I believe are right now about $500B-$600B of the current federal budget.

Combined state and federal unemployment benefits peaked in 2010 at $160 billion, 2010 was about $120 billion.

This is an ongoing debate

[Sgs-Cruz]

Ph.D student in fusion here. (I was one of the authors of this Ask Slashdot.)

It's important to note that there are a range of opinions on this. Everyone thinks ITER is a good idea, at the right price. That price was originally quoted at $5-billion (with the U.S. picking up 9% of that) when the U.S. made the decision to join in 2003; today the construction cost is estimated at somewhere north of $20-billion. Hopefully now with Motojima as Director-General, this cost will stop rising. (From what I hear, he's being very rigorous about cost and schedule control and pushing the team hard on these fronts.)

The problem for the U.S. is that participation in ITER doesn't make sense without a strong domestic program in place to take advantage of the results that come out of it. And without a (temporary) surge in U.S. fusion funding to get over the ITER construction "hump", the entire domestic program might be "squeezed" out of existence. Check out the graph here:

http://fire.pppl.gov/FusionFuture_USbudget_profile.jpg

So it's not so much a matter of "is ITER good science?" (it is!). The question is: "is ITER the right path for the U.S. at a cost of 9% of $20-billion or $25-billion, without a commitment to sustain the domestic program through the ITER construction phase?"

I urge everyone here to go to our website that we set up at fusionfuture.org, which has a lot of information about this issue. We still need your help - the House has restored funding for the domestic fusion program, but the current Senate version of the bill still has the domestic fusion budget slashed (and the fusion experiment at MIT entirely closed down). There is still work to do!