Slashdot Mirror
MIT Used Lobbying, Influence To Restore Nuclear Fusion Dream
An anonymous reader writes in with the story of how MIT's fusion energy experiment is alive and well even though its federal funding was axed. "'In the end, it is about picking a winner and a parochial effort to direct money to MIT,' said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based watchdog group. 'It's certainly a case of lawmakers bucking the president and putting their thumb on the scale for a particular project.' MIT enlisted the support of a wealthy Democratic donor from Concord and the help of an influential Washington think-tank co-founded by John Kerry. These efforts were backed by lobbyists, including a former congressman from Massachusetts, with connections to the right lawmakers on the right committees. The cast also included an alliance of universities, industry and national labs, all invested in the fusion dream. 'It's ground-breaking research that could lead an energy revolution,' [Senator Elizabeth] Warren said. 'This was not about politics. This was about good science.' The revival of MIT's project, whatever its merits, clearly demonstrated what the combination of old-fashioned Washington horse-trading and new-fangled power — both nuclear and political — can do."
from the days of the Radiation Laboratory....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
The US could have just stayed in ITER but it didn't because it thought fusion power was quixotic...
what's happening with thorium?
the Obama administration, while sharing the hope that nuclear fusion will one day be harnessed as a power source, concluded that the MIT experiment was a waste of taxpayer money. It deemed MIT’s facility outdated and small, the least scientifically useful of three domestic fusion reactors. Indeed, critics of the experiment said it amounts to a $1.5 million-per-student training program that MIT wants to keep going to protect its turf and prestige.
It would be interesting to see an analysis of what the program is actually accomplishing. It's not clear, and I don't have the expertise to determine whether the program is doing anything useful.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I read a report 2 years ago that said the R&D funding in America has fallen, while at the same time R&D fundings in Korea, Japan, Singapore and in China have gone up
The report also stated that the number of patents awarded to America has plateaued while patents awarded to other countries, especially those from East Asia, have skyrocketed
Most importantly the report stated that of the patents awarded to American companies, more and more are not directly resulted from technological advancement, but rather, based on "usage" and/or "methodology", such as the patent as described in following article -
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/11/scheduling_paradigm/
Why not? How can you justify America being unable to pursue green-energy and real R&D? Is it better to dump money into defense so the details can be stolen from other countries? How do you justify protecting oil money and the existing excesses? Is this just what politicians are bought and paid to do?
Seriously, how many times have I seen outrage at this sort of thing? And now, because it's "our" side (I put it in quotes because MIT and John Kerry would not give me the time of day and any relationship I would attempt to start would quickly end with security being called) suddenly it's OK. Here, try this quick vocabulary game I just made up, just fill in the blank:
_____________ (n.) The practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
It's common to hear someone say that "fusion power was 30 years away in the seventies, it's 30 years away now, and it will stay 30 years away"" or similar, and sadly, there is some truth to that (though perhaps it's 30 years now (estimated time for the DEMO full power-plant is 2033)). I think one of the reasons is that funding keeps decreasing, far below the optimistic projections of the 70s. The MIT fusion project made this graph to illustrate: https://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg
It's a bit like when you're downloading a file, and while the download keeps making progress, the estimated time left stays put because the download speed keeps going down. I've had that happen a few times, and it requires an exponentially falling download speed. With fusion, the situation isn't quite that bad, but when you consider the sort of funding levels people were imagining before, it isn't surprising that they thought we would have fusion power by the year 2000.
One interesting way of putting this is to say that fusion power isn't a constant amount of time away, but about 50 billion dollars of funding away. To put those 50 billion dollars in context, fossil fules have received 594 billion dollars in subsidies in the USA since 1950. So partially fusion is difficult, and partially we're not trying very hard.
Never forget!
The stunning, complete lack of realistic expectations in the minds of their graduates... Their solution to even the most trivial problems is a multi-million dollar research project into some pie-in-the-sky technology that only exists in sci-fi movies. They have no grasp of practical problem solving.
Now a lobbying group is unhappy. What would they have done, instead? Use "influence" and "lobbying" perhaps? Pot, meet kettle. We're all niggers here so settle the fuck down.
For all the group's name is worth, it could be a republican-funded anti-science organization serving the coal, natural gas, and oil industries; and the uranium industry to a lesser degree.
Some things are too important to save money on. Fusion is one; space expansion is the other.
The Manhattan Project was an expensive undertaking, even for a rich country fully mobilized for war. Competing methods were given unlimited funds and two different methods were pursued to completion.
Lobbying is part of getting legislation passed. Sometimes it has broad support from the public and sometimes the public just doesn't care (such as copyright law - the average person just doesn't care).
The answer to bad lobbying isn't to ban lobbying. It's to create an informed public that participates in the democratic process.
Lets not forget that it was politics in the first place that re-appropriated the money for other (larger and better funded) DOE projects. When politics are involved, scientific value does not matter anymore. You can only battle politics with politics.
This is a presentation on fusion I watched recently. It is by a Skunkworks engineer, made at Google's Solve for X program. It looks plausible to me. Would anyone care to comment on it?
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Tens of millions of dollars for decades pay for people's careers.
With very little to show for.
Stop fusion research. Give molten salt thorium reactors a chance.
Big difference, fusion needs scientific breakthrough.
Molten Salt Thorium reactors are strictly engineering challenges, and not very difficult ones.
The LFTR reactor enables mainly fissioning Uranium 233 (Th-232 -> Pa-233 -> U-233 -> fission).
LFTR could run with a 3% blend of spent nuclear fuel for solid uranium reactors (AKA Nuclear Waste).
LFTR output is fully fissioned (99%+) material, 81% is stable in 10 years, 19% is table in 300 years (compared to current nuclear waste that takes millenia to become stable).
By mixing in spent nuclear fuel, a large fleet of LFTR reactors could burn up 100% of existing spent nuclear fuel stockpiles, while producing two orders of magnitude nuclear products than current reactors. Currently it takes 250 tons of mined uranium to fission one ton of uranium producing 1GW year of electricity. With LFTR 1 ton of Thorium produces the same 1GW year of electricity (less than 10000 tons of Thorium per year would produce close to 120% of worldwide electricity demand) !
And LFTR development could be done 30 to 40% public money and the rest private funding. Could be just a loan guarantee.
Plenty of investment interest in LFTR if govt would come in and sweeten the deal just a little.
While Fusion research today is 100% money invested without any expectation of medium term return at all !
But instead we're hostage to radical anti nuclear environmentalists, that want solar/wind everything, which is a solution that creates as many problems as it solves.
Solar+wind might not produce any CO2 directly, but the fossil fuel peaking plants used to cover the time solar+wind shortfalls do produce twice as much CO2 as fossil baseload electricity sources. Only nuclear is CO2 free baseload electricity source !
Now, practical fusion power is only 25 years away, instead of, well, 25 years away.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.