Fusion Research Coverage

ABCNews is featuring some interesting coverage about the different fusion research going on around the country. The article itself talks about the shutdown of the Tokamak, and the differences between it and some of the new developments. One of the best points is talking about the pittance of money that is being put into the research, versus the known benefits of making advances in this.

Comments

Kill two birds...

[V.]

They want to use hydrogen from water as fuel.
Cool...maybe we can use up some of the
runoff from the melting polar ice caps. ;)

A reason for the lack of funding in fusion

[Jonathan]

When researchers in a field make extravagant promises about breakthoughs that are about to happen "any day now" and decades go by without these breakthoughs actually coming to pass, scientific funding agencies are bound to come to the conclusion that the money would be better spent in more fruitful fields. Maybe now, with more background research, practical fusion energy really *is* just around the corner, but today's fusion researchers have to pay the price of the hype of their forerunners. Artificial intelligence is another field that is suffering from past overhype, and now in molecular biology, gene therapy may well be a future member of this club.

Returns on investment could be huge!

[Anonymous Shepherd]

Though it may also be one of the riskiest gambles you take. However, I can't imagine a viable alternative off the top of my head...

Is there any corporation or research unit that wants funding? Perhaps a Slashdot collective, and if each user of all 200,000 of us sends 10 dollars, we could get some sort of share or ownership of the technologies involved =)

They really do need support in the US, however, for the critical nature of their research. More crucial and important the nuclear weapons or even social security...

Still waiting for the problems with the moderation system to fix themselves =)

AS