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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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, but it is not either or, we should be pursuing all types of potentially promising research and development towards nuclear fusion or even safer and more sustainable nuclear fusion. We should be spending ten or twenty Billion dollars per year and not just $150 million.
And we should actually be building up to industrial scale some of the more promising nuclear fission designs that we have now. Solar and Wind are not likely going to be able to account for even the majority of our energy needs so we need nuclear fission or preferably nuclear fusion to provide for our industrial scale needs.
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.
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.