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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.
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
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?
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.
I think you're rewriting history a bit as the USA bailed completely out of the project in the 90s until the canadians pouted and quit in the 00s because they didn't get the construction site and we joined sorta in their place, kinda, at about the same time Japan agreed to stop arguing about where to build it if they got extra job slot quotas. So if anything interest picked up when Japan stopped fighting, not reduced. I suppose "interest decreased" in a sort of prime time reality TV drama sense in that it got less dramatic and more boring once Canada stopped pouting and got evicted from the island or whatever mixed metaphor and Japan stopped picking fights with everyone. On the other hand, after the prime time TV drama ended, they actually started working on stuff and there's dirt being dug up and things being built right now...
It won't be the first time we've bailed, it'll probably happen again.
Kazakhstan wants to join (yeah, Kazakhstan, no kidding) ... I suppose as a point of national pride they are a rising country instead of a declining one like the US. They even have a superior medical system. Its embarrassing that replacing us with them will, overall, be an upgrade to the ITER project.
To some extent this is just a larger scale version of what happens every time a school district budget is squeezed. Don't lower mahogany row salaries from $250K to "only" $200K per year because then we wouldn't attract the "leadership" of the best and brightest who are currently running us into the ground, nahh, just threaten to cut something cool and popular like drivers ed or high school football until the taxpayers are beaten into submission and meekly accept higher tax rates.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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.
Go cull yourself first.
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.
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.
Yeah well sorry maybe that was a little harsh phrase selection. I checked wikipedia and the order is as I recall, the opposite of the order of events you recall. We bailed out, came back momentarily, were not exactly negotiating from a position of strength. If we were planning on taking one for the team and ally with Japan, we wouldn't have bailed out to begin with. I'm confused why the US and japan were supposedly allied as you'd think we'd have pushed harder for the Canadians who bailed out, maybe its more Japan allied with us because they would be against the Chinese and Korea (as usual). So japan was at best our 2nd choice but we would probably be their 1st choice in allies. This is all the view from an interested outsider not insider. I would imagine the insiders are not officially talking, a ask /. interview with an anonymous insider would be pretty good reading.
On the other hand as kind of a generational trend, only the europeans do "big science" anymore, so I don't know why there's even a window dressing that anyone other than the french would ever realistically get this project. The swiss are not getting another big physics project this generation (they got cern) and india/korea/china cannot seriously claim to build it, japan is not in the eurozone and only euros do big science, and germany was busy reunifying, so its gotta be built in france, more or less. A political drama played out where everyone knows the inevitable conclusion anyway. Much like US presidential elections where the single "rich guys" party always wins although one of the competitive PR departments lose.
As for implicit threats of backing out of the project, again from memory I think everyone but the french and russians made threats at least once, so I don't know if it means much. In the early stages the russians even stayed in during/around the USSR breakup, they have always been remarkably loyal to the project.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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..."
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"
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).