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Senate Budgetmakers Move To End US Participation In ITER
Graculus (3653645) writes Budgetmakers in the U.S. Senate have moved to halt U.S. participation in ITER, the huge international fusion experiment now under construction in Cadarache, France, that aims to demonstrate that nuclear fusion could be a viable source of energy. Although the details are not available, Senate sources confirm a report by Physics Today that the Senate's version of the budget for the Department of Energy (DOE) for fiscal year 2015, which begins 1 October, would provide just $75 million for the United States' part of the project. That would be half of what the White House had requested and just enough to wind down U.S. involvement in ITER. According to this story from April, the U.S. share of the ITER budget has jumped to "$3.9 billion — roughly four times as much as originally estimated." (That's a pretty big chunk; compare it, say, to NASA's entire annual budget.)
Except everything we have now.
Still I guess there are brown people that need killing, so something had to give.
Disappointing to see such an important long term research project get shelved by politicians.
3.9 Billion is the total US contribution for a project that won't be turned on until 2020 at the earliest. The correct comparison is 0.15 billion this year for ITER to 18 billion this year for NASA.
The numbers get rather large here, but that shouldnt matter. if NASA is our shining example of the commitment to scientific progress, then its so low on our list of priorities as to be a pointless comparison.
the DoD has an annual budget of over 500 billion dollars.
the USDA has a budget of 109 billion dollars.
the department of homeland security has a 60 billion dollar budget.
the department of justice has a 26 billion dollar budget
NASA has a budget of 18 billion dollars
So if one were to read these budgets as an expression of the will of a nation elected by and for its people (i know its a laughable presumption but stick with me here) then our priorities are
shitty food thats killing us
the neverending war against everything
Airport anal probefest 2015
mass incarceration
NASA, the agency thats congressionally barred from collaborating with china or russia, and is expected by every reigning politician to turn a quarterly profit or die in a gutter.
At this point the fact that we gifted europe 75 million dollars for a project to assess the fundamental tenability of fusion should be considered a treasonously accidental oversight. thats a whopping six whole percent of the NASA budget that we wrecklessly applied to the concept of an energy source that would user in apocalyptic levels of productivity and peace.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I have a feeling if the story was about the current House of Representatives slashing ITER funding, we'd see a screed about "anti-science Republicans." However, since the Senate is led by Democrats...
That's more than a feeling, that's a fact.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Seems a little odd to have gone this far and then bow out. And spread over the decade or more this project goes on, the cost is very minor considering there might be some good takebacks from the project and most importantly the good will it will generate with our European friends who's public has just learned the U.S. is unrepentantly spying on all their citizens all the time (the good will might be worth it alone).
Little quibble: "According to this story from April, the U.S. share of the ITER budget has jumped to "$3.9 billion — roughly four times as much as originally estimated." (That's a pretty big chunk; compare it, say, to NASA's entire annual budget.) "
$3.9 billion is alot compared to NASA's annual budget (which is ~$17 billion) - but that $3.9 billion would be payed over more than a decade right? So for an apples to apples comparison its what the Administration was going to spend on ITER for this budget ($150 million) compared to NASA's budget (~$17 billion).
Funding is 45% by the hosting member, the European Union, and the rest split between the non-hosting members – China, India, Japan, South Korea, the Russian Federation and the USA.
Okay 55/6 = 9 1/6 percent per country. So $3.9 billion is equivalent to roughly 9.17% of the project. That means that the the other five that are split are spending $3.9 billion as well? And that the EU is spending $19.1 billion? And the total cost now is $42.5 billion?
Or is the US getting fucked again? Because that always seems to happen with international efforts.
s the subcommittee followed through on that threat, even a senator from a state directly involved in the U.S. ITER project spoke in favor of ending it. U.S. ITER has its headquarters at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Nevertheless, at a 17 June hearing on the budget bill covering DOE, Senator Lamar Alexander (R–TN), the ranking member on the Energy and Water Subcommittee, said that ITER hasn’t shown the progress it should. "We’ve withdrawn funding for the program," he said, and "that saves taxpayers $75 million this year, and at least $3.9 billion, and potentially $6.5 billion, over the life of the project.”
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Seems a little odd to have gone this far and then bow out.
Depends on what you believe the prospects of the project to be. If you think that ITER may result in some worthwhile advances at some point then you are right that it would be odd to bow out now. However if you are less sure then any money spent to this point is a sunk cost and further investment would just be throwing good money after bad. The fallacy most people tend to make is "well I've spent so much already I have to see it through" which is not rational. The money has already been spent so the only question worth asking is whether future expenditures will get the result you want for a price tag you can live with. How much has already been spent is irrelevant. The money is gone and cannot be recovered regardless of the future prospects of the project. Any future investment in the project needs to be done on a forward looking basis.
Personally I don't really know enough about ITER to really make an informed judgement about whether it is sensible research project or not. However I suspect more good will come out of it than from buying a few more bombers even if the project ultimately fails so I'd say get the money out of the defense department's budget. We spend too much on the military as it is.
Oh, you don't have to go all the way to OPEC. The domestic oil industry is influential enough.
This is great news! If the oil industry is pressuring the US gov to wind down involvement in ITER, it probably means that they are beginning to be afraid it might actually yield promising results!
As the 21st century began... human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest... the fastest reproduced in greater numbers than the rest... a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man... now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized... and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd... it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most... and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.
Some had high hopes that genetic engineering... would correct this trend in evolution.
But sadly, the greatest minds and resources... were focused on conquering hair loss and prolonging erections. Meanwhile, the population exploded, and intelligence continued to decline...
Private Joe Bauers, the definition of "average American", is selected by the Pentagon to be the guinea pig for a top-secret hibernation program. Forgotten, (he awakes 500 years in the future) he awakes in 2014. He discovers a society so incredibly dumbed-down that he's easily the most intelligent person alive.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
In fact, the US can likely now steal any and all data it likes and does not need to participate in any international research efforts.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
We should be pursuing the legacy of Robert Brusard https://www.youtube.com/watch?... like these folks http://www.talk-polywell.org/b.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... It works, 15 year old students have made it work in a lab http://www.popsci.com/diy/arti... and $100m would build a proof of concept energy positive plant. I have no idea why we have not done this other than we may have already under the NAVY but they aren't talking. NASA should build one for interplanetary ion engines.
I'm sure that for the cost of the Iraq wars, the US could have converted all their energy to renewable sources or developed practical fusion power, thus never having to go to war over oil again.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The US has just fined French bank BNP Paribas around $9 billion dollars for dealing with Sudan, Iran and Cuba.
The fine could pay for the US's ITER participation twice.
(It's not even too bad for the bank, $9 billion is about 16 months of profit).
I have a feeling if the story was about the current House of Representatives slashing ITER funding, we'd see a screed about "anti-science Republicans." However, since the Senate is led by Democrats...
That's more than a feeling, that's a fact.
So Lamar Alexander is a Democrat now? Really? Did you even bother to read the article before you opened your trap here? The fact is Republicans are anti-science unless that science is related to extraction of oil. You have failed misareabley to blame this on Democrats.
France (and Germany) is negotiating with Moscow to broker a peace deal in Ukraine and the US does not want that: This threat is just pressure to make France reconsider.. All power politics here, nothing to do with science and research or budget cuts. Expect more in the next few weeks (plus Sarkozy scandal is related but that is another story)
I'm sure that for the cost of the Iraq wars, the US could have converted all their energy to renewable sources or developed practical fusion power, thus never having to go to war over oil again.
Pretty much though the benefits would probably have been even larger. Solar thermal is straightforward enough and close enough to normal construction that it would have beee feasible.
Sure, the amount and the required HVDC distribution grid would have been of an unprecedented scale but it is more or less well understood technology.
Not only would have spending it locally given energy independence, it would have kept the money circulating locally rather than going overseas. Even better a huge amount of construction and manufacturing infrastructure would have had to be created in order to pull it off. That would have left a vast amount of capacity allready written down ready to produce stuff at a profit alsmost certainliny making it very competetive both in the local market and for export.
Sadly it seemed that it was better to just dump the money into the sand and set fire to it. And if my country came along for the ride we could have had our high speed rail line or a replacement for Heathrow, or any number of other major infrastructure projects.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
We should be putting more into ITER than the NASA budget
I do hope that the congress critters redirect at least some of the funds towards US based non-tokamak alternatives which have struggled to get funding in light of the giant sucking sound that is ITER.
Which "alternatives" are worthy of greater funding? (credible alternatives mind you) I think fusion research is hugely important but its unclear to me what worthy research is being starved of funds by ITER. If an idea has real merit it typically doesn't have too much difficulty getting funded so I find it surprising that you think there is some worthwhile project that would obviously work if only it had more money. That's the sales pitch a scam usually makes.
Assume that the remaining members of ITER are successful before they are bled dry. Do you honestly think that any commercial venture will exclude customers in non-ITER countries?
Customers? No. But being a customer isn't where the biggest economic benefit lies. A successful project would have a lot of technology that would be controlled by those who contributed. Like any investment, the biggest rewards usually go the the folks who were involved at the earliest stages and stuck with it.
Better that the US pay a premium on each reactor built (assuming that someday ever happens) than to continue to pour money down a hole today.
I disagree. Iit is unclear if ITER is a money pit but let's assume for the moment that it is not. In those circumstances it is definitely NOT better that the US pay a premium for the technology. The premiums that would be paid would be enormous. On the other hand if ITER is simply a research project with the usual unclear future benefits, then it still makes sense to invest as long as the money is available to do so, which it is if we want it to be. The only cases where it clearly makes sense to get out is if it is obviously a dead end, if there is a clearly better alternative or if we simply cannot afford it. Neither of those are clearly true here. We might have other priorities for the money but the US certainly can afford it and it isn't at all clear if the research is a dead end. Might be but that case does not appear to be at all conclusive.
Besides, I'd rather pour money into a dead end fusion project and hope for some spinoff benefits than buy yet another aircraft carrier that we really don't need.
USA left ITER also in 1999 and 2006. There is still time to rejoin and re-quit before 2020.
You misunderstand what a sunken cost is and why it matters. How much we have already spent has NO bearing on whether we should continue to spend more. That money is gone and it isn't coming back. It doesn't matter AT ALL that the project isn't finished. All financing decisions are made for projects that haven't completed yet. It's not different if it is research or if it is manufacturing a product or digging for ore. The payoff for all of these activities is uncertain. Research is more uncertain than many other activities but the basic process of deciding whether to continue to invest in research is identical.
Almost all (rational) financing decisions for any project are made on a forward looking probabilistic basis. We estimate the cost and benefits of the project and we guess at the probability of success given what we know. If the project is a failure or probable failure based on *currently known* information, then you do not continue to spend on it. If the prospects are such that there remains a reasonable chance of success in the future then you continue to invest. In either case what happened in the past is irrelevant to the decision to continue to invest more.
Think of it a bit like playing a hand of poker. You do not have perfect information about what will happen so you bet based on what you know and the probabilities of a positive outcome. Your decision to stay in a hand should in no way be influenced by what you have already bet. If the odds are against you then it makes sense to get out and cut your loses. If the odds are in your favor then it makes sense to stay in the hand. Either way the information that determines how you play the hand isn't dependent on what you've already bet.
I'm an accountant with a degree in finance. Doing this sort of analysis is part of what I do for a living.
You are confused/uninformed. ITER is plain old conventional tokamak style hot fusion. This has nothing whatever to do with cold fusion.
would succeed in anything less then 40 years?
That after their "success" nuclear fusion would be cheap, clean and easily reproducible?
This is the easy brute force approach to fusion. Cut funding and scientists will be forced to use other less brute force ways which could result in cleaner ways of fusion.
Funny, I didn't know that the Kochs were in charge of the Senate; I thought it was Harry Reid and the Democrats!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The fact is Republicans are anti-science unless that science is related to extraction of oil. You have failed misareabley to blame this on Democrats.
Neil deGrasse Tyson disagrees with you. But hey, he's just using facts and numbers and science and stuff...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
We went to war to restart the Sunni/Sheia war. Before the Arabs make peace they will have pumped the last of their oil. Nelson Ha, Ha /Nelson
Of course with those types of motivations you can't say it out loud.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Nope. It started when Reagan was Prez.
Just how much licensing is there for a technology that takes 2x the patent duration to construct a prototype?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I was mostly referring to solar thermal, not photovoltaic. Photovoltaics are more efficient but the construction is rather higher tech which makes it more expensive to scale up production. It also solves the nighttime problem since apparently there's enough heat energy stored in the day to run it through the night as well.
As for HVDC, it's much less convenient on short to medium scales since you can't just work it as an infinite bus bar with synchronus machines, transformers and whatnot. You can't have multi-drop in and out and you require serious kit to step it up or down. However it does work well for very very long high power links. This is because:
1. No skin effect for DC, so thick concuctors work.
2. No capacitive loss (this completely kills AC links underwater in even short runs)
3. Full voltage 100% of the time, not just for instantaneous peaks, so you get a higher power for a given insulator spacing (sqrt(3)/2 gain)
4. No problem synchronising very distant grids. 60Hz has a full wavelength of 5000Km or so which means you have to start worring about transmission line problems and phase shifts for very long links.
This is proven technology: it's been in use for over 100 years, originally using mercury arc valves to rectify and a motor, generator pair to go back to AC. It's generally used to connect different grids (e.g. between nations in Europe) and for connecting large, physcially remote generating plants such as hydro to a main grid.
One wouldn't convert the entire system into HVDC, but the links from the geographically isolated solar (thermal) plant would almost certainly be that because it's the best way of connecting such a thing to a grid.
As for cost, yes cost is an issue, but we're talking about the hypothetical where oil wasn't subsidised to the tune of $3E+12 by the various recent wars. If you put that into the solar thermal plants instead, the overall cost would be much less. Also at that kind of scale economies of scale would really kick in and the price would come down.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Except that none of that would have happened with the money. The Iraq war was pretty much paid for by credit card, at least most of it was off the books.
Think back to the climate before 9-11, Congress and the Administration were waxing political about "surpluses as far as the eye can see". So they instituted the Bush tax cuts. You do recall those. They were brought up recently when Obama railed against them as tax cuts for the rich. Congress did too. Except when they had the chance to let them fade into past, they renewed them and made them permanent.
Meanwhile, government expenses spiraled out of control due to 2/3's of the budget that is non-discretionary. So what did Congress do? Whack discretionary spending including the IRS. The IRS would have been able to collect another $250 billion a year but for lax enforcement because of its budget cuts.
There is no way in hell that Congress or the President was going to stump for spending money on things like energy independence...except they made a half-hearted effort because "you shouldn't waste a crisis". So instead of having a real policy of steady investment, they threw about 800 billion at the economy. Except that didn't all go into "investment". Little known but true, a fair whack of that, about $350 billion, went to that Congressional favorite, tax cuts. So the economy got some transitory "investment" in infrastructure.
So, no, we couldn't have spent that money on infrastructure. Congress and the President do not believe in it. Want to take a guess how far the proposal by Bob Corker (R-TN) and Chris Murphy (D-CN) will go to raise the gas tax and pay for infrastructure? A bi-partisan effort. Obama seems to not care, the conservative Republicans claim this is a matter best left to the states, etc.
Take a look at the article, the only person it actually mentions specifically as trying to do this is a republican.
Except for the actual specific mention of the Subcommittee chair, who is a Democrat.
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D–CA), the chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, warned at a 9 April subcommittee hearing that the U.S. program could be in jeopardy. "This may be an opportunity to experience the power of the purse," she said.
Alexander's quote is just a statement of fact, it sounds pretty neutral to me - especially compared to Feinstein's.
I'm not debating that it wouldn't have happened: clearly it did not.
It's just that had the 3Tn (borrowed or otherwise) gone into local spending on energy rather than the war the benefits would have been immense.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Why? Read newyorker's excellent article and no i wont TLDR because its worth reading in its entirety. http://www.newyorker.com/repor...
Wanted : A Signature.
Has anyone ever explained to you that the Democrats in the Senate have the MAJORITY?
And has anyone bothered to mention that the Democrats in the Senate REMOVED the filibuster, so that the Republican MINORITY has ZERO power to control legislation?
Blaming a Republican for ANYTHING that gets out of the Senate is the height of idiocy, when the Democrats have set things up so that NOTHING can be done in the Senate without their approval. It doesn't take a single Republican vote to get something passed in the Senate, but EVERY Republican voting AGAINST something can't stop it from being passed...
So, if we're talking about the US Senate, we're talking about things the Democrats want to do....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I haven't found anybody who knows why the US went to war.
It wasn't because of WMDs, because the administration pushed really hard to make people believe in the WMDs that the UN couldn't find then and that we couldn't find when we invaded.
It wasn't because of oil, because in that case we'd have put more pressure on the new Iraqi puppet government to sell oil to us on favorable terms.
It wasn't because of al-Qaida, because the administration had people who know perfectly well that Osama and Saddam hated each other.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Has anyone ever explained to you that the Democrats in the Senate have the MAJORITY?
And has anyone bothered to mention that the Democrats in the Senate REMOVED the filibuster, so that the Republican MINORITY has ZERO power to control legislation?
Blaming a Republican for ANYTHING that gets out of the Senate is the height of idiocy, when the Democrats have set things up so that NOTHING can be done in the Senate without their approval. It doesn't take a single Republican vote to get something passed in the Senate, but EVERY Republican voting AGAINST something can't stop it from being passed...
So, if we're talking about the US Senate, we're talking about things the Democrats want to do....
They removed the filibuster of appointed judges. That is all. You are so blinded by Fox News that you think that removal of that filibuster for a specific purpose applies to everything in the Senate. Please do your low information self a favor and turn of Fox News. Geez.
And last month, the Government Accountability Office found that, thanks to the lack of a credible schedule for the project as a whole, even those estimates are not reliable. Given the situation, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D–CA), the chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, warned at a 9 April subcommittee hearing that the U.S. program could be in jeopardy. "This may be an opportunity to experience the power of the purse," she said.
The bold gives the statement needed context and shows that she does not necessarily want to shut it down, and it does not even show that she is on board at this momement. And even still you will note that I mentioned her in my statement.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
This is a good thing. ITER is a complete waste of money. Look at Lawrenceville Plasma Physics. Their Focus Fusion Indiegogo campaign (http://goo.gl/Cmjhw3) can't even get 200k in funding so that they can prove within the next year on whether their technology is scalable enough to commercialize. ITER, on the other hand, says they will commercialize in another 30-50 years. Their numbers are useless and this is after throwing billions at them per year. There are more promising fusion research projects out there that don't need billions per year to waste.
Actually he is using half facts. The budgets went up during the bush era due to the dems having congress, and the reverse during the clinton administration. The president does not have much control over the budget itself, his entire argument makes it out to be the case that they do.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
that a government would want to prevent people from coming or going is a pretty strong indication that the country in question is a squalid hell-hole of human oppression.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Crowd-fund it.
-
Who else is on the subcommittee? Turns out it's 7 republicans and 4 democrats. While I can believe that the Rs may have dominated the vote, it's about as valid as assuming both sides agreed on the cut, since the quote from Senator Lamar Alexander specifies "We've withdrawn..." meaning it wasn't just his decision.
Really, though, you expect one single person is the only one ever asked to decide anything? Well, you might, but I don't think you should admit to it, if you do. But in case you do, perhaps you should examine this:
"Instead, appropriators will zero out ITER spending until DOE comes up with reliable numbers, said Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), chair of the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, at a hearing today. "We provide no funding for ITER until the department provides this committee with a baseline cost, schedule, and scope," she said.
Source
Don't ask me why I decided to go to google for this stuff, but I didn't really need to. Even the first link in the submission specifies that it was a Democrat who chairs the subcommittee and who warned almost 3 months ago that the funding was in jeapordy.
That does not mean she wants to do it.. You are comparing someone who will cut funding if there is no timeline to someone who just wants to cut funding....
When you cant win, ad hominem.
it's because the US government is currently about $17,000,000,000,000 in debt
That is a very large number, yet the country seems to be doing fine. What is the downside of having debt when you got the power and influence of a superpower?
As far as I know there are no western-style country that is not in debt. Looks like it is the norm rather than an exception.
Oh, wait. 2020 is when they turn it on. It might not work right away. Could take as much as a year to get one up and running near me.
Let's call it 7 years away, then.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.