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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."
Instead of cutting where its needed (gross government pay and military), they cut everything else instead.
And before hell is raised, yes the military budget CAN be cut. However, the way they have gone about it recently has been messy. 2 wars we're footing the bill for haven't helped either.
Why do I get the feeling this wouldn't be on the cards if Japan had got ITER, as the US essentially demanded in the first place... Once France got it, US interest took a massive nose dive, with multiple calls for investment in a home grown alternative instead.
...then I might have to run for office myself.
Next article up, some manager whining about how there's a shortage of scientists because he wants to pay almost nothing and the domestic eggheads think they're worth more than $7.25/hr so we'll have to crank open the H1B floodgates until Physicists can only dare to daydream of having the career opportunities of a mcdonalds fry cook. I'm glad I didn't go into science. Would have loved to, but hate grinding poverty even more and don't want to spend my middle age as a taxi driver like happened to all the rocket scientists I know after Apollo.
Next article after that will be some washed up town patting themselves on the back for rolling out a new STEM program for grade school kids, to handle the massive future shortage of STEM employees. You know, the kind of town where 2000 STEM employees just got the axe because one of the STEM educational initiative corporations just moved their HQ from that heartland town to China, and another 200 person foundry just went bankrupt and a 200 person cement factory just closed (this is my home town... I'm not directly affected but it still sucks)
As long as the rich get richer I guess we're on the right path...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Considering the size of the U.S. federal budget, it always seems to be smallish programs that are symbolically put on the chopping block when these political debates come up. This one isn't as ridiculous as, say, spending lots of time arguing over NPR's paltry budget, but it's still a pretty small budget, and comes with quid-pro-quos that make the net cost even less. The U.S. contributes 1/11th of the ITER construction costs, and in return American companies get 1/11th of the construction contracts, and U.S. scientists make up 1/11th of the staffing. That's about $2 billion over 10 years, i.e. $200m/yr is the US share. Withdrawal would save that, but result in both the contracts and the scientific participation going to remaining consortium members.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The entire US science funding - for EVERYTHING - is a drop in the bucket.
You want to make a difference in the budget? Here's what you have to do:
(1) Trim entitlement spending
(2) Trim military spending.
Shit, there's enough graft, corruption, and incompetence in both that you could probably cut their budgets in half and end up with the same effectiveness at the end.
Nothing else besides entitlements and military spending matters to any significant degree, and eating your seed corn is always a bad idea.
How about...
1. We pull back all of our military forces except at a few major naval bases, end the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and tell Europe, Japan and Korea to pick up 100% of their defense budget from now on. Then cut the defense budget by 25%-30%.
2. We reduce unemployment benefits to six months instead of two years. Sorry, if you haven't worked in your field for about two years you don't have a career in it anymore. Unemployment benefits I believe are right now about $500B-$600B of the current federal budget.
3. We means test the hell out of Social Security and Medicare.
4. Release all non-violent drug offenders (including dealers) from prison, end the War on Drugs and send the enforcement personnel DEA and ATF to work for another federal law enforcement agency.
5. Privatize TSA, repeal 90% of the legislation behind Homeland Security and just admit that the only sensible reform we really needed post 9/11 was letting the FBI and CIA coordinate on terrorism cases.
But nope, we can't stop bombing foreign backwaters where some jihadi is rattling his sabre and AK47 impotently at the Great Satan(tm) or tell someone they need to back away from the federal trough.
I'm looking forward to someone explaing to me why the government needs to save money now, when it can borrow for free? That is to say that the US government can borrow money for zero or even negative interest rates. To me, this seems to say that people have so little faith in the economy that they rather take a little loss but a guaranteed return (even if only via the mythical printing press) than invest their money in the economy. Now, if the government can have money so cheaply, and if my analysis of the reason is correct, then it should be an immediate logical consequence that government should make up the lack of investment in the private sector by spending itself.
So, why should the government save money?
are investments in the future.
Our politics has been infested with the corporate tendency to think short term, just as long as the next quarterly results. Which makes sense, since our representatives answer to the agendas of the corporations that fund them, certainly not the people who elected them.
The result of which is that the USA is declaring its intent to be a declining power in the world. You invest in science and education, or you head towards second rate status in the world. It's that simple.
Yet another reason why the corporate infection of our democracy basically means our doom.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
and/or nuclear plants with passive safety systems and a rational waste storage facilities, it would be a good idea. Instead, well'l use the savings to pay down debt caused by military spending, bail out banks and making sure very wealthy people stay wealthy and get wealthier. We are almost the definition of a culture in decline.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
More free energy for us!
Go cull yourself first.
Interesting that you left Israel out of your first bullet point...
Considering % taxes used in defense of one form or another and considering that developing cheap or free energy also solves many conflicts... its easy to see where cuts should be happening.
Yes, let's cut 'entitlement' spending. I'm sure all the (wildly overexaggerated) problems with those programs will simply disappear overnight if we take money away from them.
Or, you know, the ACTUAL result will be that benefits will be cut to people who have paid into the system for decades. Yeah, that's fair.
I'm all for improving efficiency in government. But you don't cure cancer by shooting yourself in the head.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Since when is a 7.8% cut "starving" the budget? With baseline budgeting adding automatic budget increases every year, I'd be surprised if a mere 7.8% cut would actually reduce spending year to year. The public sector has NO clue what the real economy is going through.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
.. because RIGHT NOW it's not profitable for Big Energy. If ExxonMobil figured out a way to make billions on it, you can bet your ass the government would be funding it. Big Energy likes us right where they have us: under their collective thumb. And they'll spend billions to keep us there.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
The U.S. contributes 1/11th of the ITER construction costs, and in return American companies get 1/11th of the construction contracts, and U.S. scientists make up 1/11th of the staffing.
So it's quite possible they withdrawn from ITER then go ahead and make their own ITER in the USA.
For an AC that's actually a pretty good idea, you should proudly sign your name to that. Seriously.
The problem with the ITER is there are 535 congress members and "most" of the ITER money as currently budgeted is probably going to come from a small minority of members districts... for example probably more scientists will be hired out of Caltech and MIT than, for example, Wyoming (does WY even have a research university as opposed to a teaching U?). Bringing it in-house like NASA means it'll cost more, but I guarantee all 535 members will end up with some pork to brag about. Perhaps my house rep can get me a pork contract to be a linux sysadmin or something for the domestic effort... That's not going to happen with the ITER plan as is...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
And for every person like you, there's another shrieking, "Don't cut military spending!", and the result is that neither is cut, we're spending 1.4 TRILLION dollars more every year than we take in, and the country is going to go bankrupt to the detriment of the entire world.
I'm sorry, but entitlements are one of the two massive bloated parts of the federal budget, and it's the one growing the fastest. The other is the military. We CANNOT afford them. We must cut both by at least 25%, if not more.
"Short term" means "next campaign." The problem with science and education investment, is that it NEVER pays off, even in the very long term. If you vote to increase that spending, it will never result in you getting an advertising budget advantage over your opponent.
It might help the country, but nobody ever votes for people who help the country; they only vote for people who buy ads. Ad budgets are voters' primary means of selecting who we vote for.
Look at everyone on your next ballot: which of those names didn't spend significant money on advertising? Virtually none of them; maybe some local judge, though even that's rare. WHO writes in choices for everything on the ballot? Most people don't even do it for the presidential race, much less the state senator race or county treasurer race, etc.
So why would anyone spend money on science? We never reward them for it, and we usually punish them for it.
Are you willing to "throw away your vote" by voting against the Democrat and the Republican on your ballot, in favor of writing in the name of the guy who nobody else has heard of, because he's in favor of education, instead of paying favors to industry in exchange for ad money? Keep in mind that nobody else knows about your guy, so he will almost certainly lose. Will you do it anyway, Mr. Voter?
We created this problem and cannot fix it without risking losing many elections, and the "risk" will be nearly 100% for several elections in a row. You have to lose 99-1, then 98-2, and so on, hoping that somebody notices that the guy who didn't advertise, got a few votes.
IMHO nobody has the patience or faith for that. I'm not sure even I do.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
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.
Typo, 2011 was about $120 billion.
before we talk about entitlements I think we need to create a proper bar graph where one bar is entitlements and the other is military. Then we can talk entitlement cut.
It's not that there is nothing there to cut, it's just that the entitlement discussion is entirely out of proportion.
If I read correctly:
So just cancel orders for five of those and ITER will be set for the next four years or so.
So greater knowledge and understanding are not practical results? Huh.
Ask a member of the Tea Party and see what they say.
Again, this costs fewer votes than the teeniest of cuts to massive social spending, or the military, or tax increases.
So unless you wanna make a stink about it, deal with it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
To sum up your post: Deficit (more being spent than taken in) is too high, so the only possible solution is to cut spending (in two categories you list). Do you notice the gap in this logic? Here, I'll highlight it: Deficit (more being spent than taken in)
The current US deficit crisis isn't due to a spike in spending but a collapse in income.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
We do all those things, and we'll reduce our deficit to maybe three quarters of a trillion per year.
Which will make it the fifth highest in history....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
reduce unemployment benefits to six months instead of two years. Sorry, if you haven't worked in your field for about two years you don't have a career in it anymore.
So if someone can't find a job in six months - screw them? Or are you suggesting to replace the other 18 months by government-sponsored courses to re-train the unemployed into another career?
Anyway, as I understand it, unemployment benefits go right back into economy since 100% of them are actually spent right away.
From the 2012 budget...
MIlitary budget, including overseas contingency operations: $716.3 Billion.
Note that the above doesn't count the VA, which can adds in another $129.6 Billion.
If you assume that the VA is part of "military spending", that makes the total $845.9 Billion.
If you assume VA is NOT part of "military spending", then it probably should be added to "entitlement spending"....
Entitlement spending...
Social Security: $778.6 Billion.
Medicare: $484.4 Billion
"Income Security": $579.5 Billion.
Total: $1842.5 Billion
Not sure if that's all the entitlements, but looks reasonable. Note that Medicaid may or may not be included in "Income Security". If it's not, then add a hundred billion or so more onto the entitlement pile.
Note that payment on the National Debt amounted to $225 Billion. So about 6% of our federal spending vanishes to pay for overspending in previous years....
So, "entitlements" amount to rather more than twice "military spending" if you count VA as "military spending", and 2.75x "military spending" if you count the VA as "entitlement spending"....
Note, by the by, that those two chunks of money ("entitlements" and "military spending" amount to considerably more than we take in in tax revenue. So we could ZERO the rest of the government, and still have a large deficit with those untouched.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
You can't get blood from a turnip. People are already suffering under the tax burden they already have. Heck, half the workers in the country pay no income tax because they can't *afford* to. They need every penny they can get for basic needs like shelter and food.
Alright, a few rich aren't, but you could take every single penny "the rich" make, and it still won't fix the problem, not to mention it'd be immoral to do so.
You can't fix this by taxing people more. We have to get our spending down to sane levels. It's not sane at all right now.
ITER is the international fusion reaction reaction, its being built over the next 8 years in the south of france, and should hold a mixture of tritium and deutrium gases at a hot enough temperature and high enough pressure to generate more fusion power output than the electricity need to create the plasma, ITER should run consistantly in the breakeven range of fusion power. That said, scientists and not created a system for extracting the energy from the plasma yet, and true energy generation is left from the next reactor after ITER, currently called DEMO, which should demonstrate useful power generation to the electricity grid. ITER is the successor to JET the joint european torus which was the first reaction to show breakeven energy generation.
I may be assuming incorrectly that you feel that the bar for entitlements would be substantially smaller than that for the military. If so you will be quite put out. Some individual entitlements may not be as large as the military budget but taken as a whole entitlements are far larger portion of the budget than the military. A quick search produced this course grained pie chart. If you would like a finer grained breakdown of the budget there is the obligitory XKCD reference. Then there is this (Obama's proposed 2012 budget) chart from the NY Times although there are other ones as well from the NY Times that I have previously found. If you just like spinning numbers there is always national debt clock which lists the 6 largest budget items of which military spending is listed as well as some of the entitlements.
Time to offend someone
You can't get blood from a turnip. People are already suffering under the tax burden they already have. Heck, half the workers in the country pay no income tax because they can't *afford* to. They need every penny they can get for basic needs like shelter and food.
And when grandpa's monthly retirement check is cut as an "entitlement" and their uncle bob who can only work 3 days a week due to disease gets kicked off disability and can't make rent on the 1-room basement "apartment" anymore, this makes them better off how?
Someone had to do it.
MikeRT, I totally agree with you. Run for office please!
Israel can do a perfectly fine job of taking care of itself. It has nukes and some of the most modern arms on the planet.
Why should we, the American taxpayers, pay for a squabble between Judaism Mk. I and Judaism Mk. III? (Probably because Judaism Mk. II has some ideological stake in it...)
Not to worry they actually have to pass a budget first. You know the Obama administration will probably go down in history as the first one to never pass a budget.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
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!
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
Fusion scientists often get criticized for making unrealistic promises ("Fusion has been thirty years away, for fifty years!" or some variation on that). But take a look at the graph here. The graph shows the funding estimates from a 1976 fusion development plan, with various paths to a reactor. The black curve way at the bottom is the actual funding profile.
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
Good theory, but not true.
2005 Federal tax revenues - $2.152 trillion
2012 Federal tax revenues - $2.469 trillion.
That works out to about 1.9% annual increase in revenues, which is a bit below inflation (2.3% per year on average).
Of course, the economy has well and truly sucked for the last four years, but even so, tax revenues are only about $60 billion below what would be expected from inflation.
And the annual deficit is rather more than $1 trillion higher than it was in 2005.
So, no, it isn't the revenues that are the problem (if it was all revenues, we'd have a deficit in the $400 billion range), it's the expenditures (which have increased at an annual rate of 5.3% or so since 2005 - much faster than inflation....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Ron Paul ran on a platform like this, but he was ahead of his time.
When world and domestic circumstances finally force the USA's hand into doing major things like what you're suggesting (probably due to unavoidable debt constraints), then your suggestions will be (involuntarily) implemented. Until then, your ideas are untouchable, politically because people don't want to give up the American cake while eating it too.
BTW - I'm for legalizing and taxing/regulating marijuana comparable to alcohol, but other drugs? Not so much. And the DEA/ATF will need to continue to function to control the flow of highly-addictive and more socially-damaging drugs like meth, heroin, cocaine, etc.
Some 20T (yes, 20 trillion) in 2008 and 2009 alone for financial institutions. Plus few trillions every year sucked off the economy via ZIRP policies and rigging all meaningful markets and base market rates (eg. LIBOR scandal). We don't see austerity because of some budget-balancing need, it just bankers who want this money for themselves.
Or, you know, the ACTUAL result will be that benefits will be cut to people who have paid into the system for decades. Yeah, that's fair.
That sounds unfair until you realize that historical taxes for some big entitlements were lower than they are today: http://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/taxRates.html
People starting jobs today are paying 300% more than someone who started their career in the 60s. It's unfair NOT to cut benefits for people who are about to retire. They didn't pay their fair share into the system for most of their careers.
One issue I've always had with a military budget - why ever would the US government publish the true dollar amount of the military budget? Wouldn't it be a national security concern that foreign nations could estimate force and equipment strength based on an accurate dollar amount?
Somehow, I have my doubts that the published dollar amount is anywhere close to the real amount.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Fine, so we need to cut 'entitlements'. What's your plan?
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
OK, sure, big problem. What's your plan?
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
So your plan is to say, "Oh, gee, Mr. 64.5-year-old worker, I know we told you that your contributions would get you $X per month when you retired. But, seems that some people don't think that's fair, so we're only going to pay you $X * .33 per month."
Yeah, good luck with that. Defending against the inevitable lawsuits would eat up any savings that plan would create.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Be glad it is a public insurance program and can afford to be flexible. You'd have been paying 30% more your whole life if it was private insurance and they'd NEVER be kind and extend it during a depression. (Assuming they'd not screw you out of it as private insurance often does.)
In the end, unemployment insurance can go for long periods of time for millions of people and that cost will just be averaged into the insurance rates of everybody in the future - just how disasters cause everybody's rates to rise over time in the private insurance market. Being a public program it has the maximum pool size (lowest rates) and largest borrowing power.
The benefits of extending unemployment insurance during bad times are well established; not that facts mean anything to ideological zealots...
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Holy crap, you just dumped a few million more people into the pool of unemployed, while reducing unemployment benefits. The economy will not adjust gracefully to that kind of drastic, sudden change. Can you say, "Great Depression II"?
The problem with trying to reduce unemployment benefits is that we are living in an increasingly specialized society. Suppose I'm a really good WidgetA designer. However, the WidgetB design comes along and makes WidgetA completely obsolete, and nobody wants to hire somebody who is a really great engineer to work on WidgetBs unless they have 5 years of WidgetB experience. That means that I need to demonstrate practical experience with WidgetB on my own dime, likely with some kind of certification. That might take a year, and lots of money.
Or I could just go rob stores or do whatever it is that unproductive people do with their time when you get rid of all other social assistance. Maybe WidgetA skills are transferable to gun design or something, so that I can overwhelm the local private security force that has replaced the police.
Another problem is that with the increase in technology, I think more and more people will simply become completely unemployable. You can sustain a population of hundreds of millions without having half of those people work, so why would you want them to?
1. Why would it need to be a 67% cut? Easier to start by increasing the retirement age a bit, especially for women since they live longer. Or start with a small cut like 5%.
2. Assign them all to a single class, not millions of separate lawsuits.