The coal plants can still be "plugged in" and operated during times of peak load (weekday summer afternoons and winter mornings); what they can't do is operate much the rest of the time.
The problem with this is that coal plants can't operate this way. A typical coal plant takes 4-8 hours to reach full power from a warm start and can take 24 hours to cold start. This is why we currently use them for baseload power and use other sources (mostly natural gas and hydro) for load following.
Stormv's argument was flawed, but it was unnecessary also. Coal has never been able to do load following, so other technologies were always required. Mothballed coal plants CAN be used as spare capacity when other generators are taken for maintenance or due to accident, with the same argument - they aren't operating all the time. This still reduces infrastructure, and thus overall, cost since otherwise spare (but unused) capacity must be built.
Where does this 'unsubsidized market' in PV and wind exist?
I mean, be real. Where??
If meant to be some sort of refutation, this is a non-sequitur. The unsubsized cost of renewables is easily calculated by simply removing the subsidy from the calculation, just as the cost for nuclear must be based on calculations of planned plant costs. When you do these calculations new nuclear is the most expensive form of energy due to its inherent high capital cost.
The facts that dywolf linked to showing that the overall program made money, not even counting the revenue the government will continue to collect in taxes from the economical activity generated.
Please provide concrete evidence, you know, actual facts with numbers, that are checkable (citations optional if Googling will bring them up) to support your arguments as others repeatedly requested instead of continually "arguing from your personal hatred of government" which, in your mind, excuses you from having to support your case.
The program that the Solyndra loan was a part of was budgeted for a 10 or 11% loss rate and even with Solyndra it still had less than 5% losses..
The government has been running different programs like that for a long time (more than 50 years) to help encourage new technologies to get off the ground. They always write in a 10 or 15% loss rate into them and the programs seldom reach that rate
So the US has been using similar failed approaches for half a century? I'm supposed to be impressed by this why?
In fact the boost to the economy for the ones that do succeed probably far outweigh any losses in the programs.
What boost? Perhaps we could discuss some of these examples and see if they really live up to your claims.
The loss rate for venture capital is 33-50%. Typical loss rate for "safe" conventional commercial investment strategies are 15% for leveraged buy-outs, and 13% for growth equity. A 10-15% loss rate for government is similar, or better than, commercial investment strategies. The stated 10-11% target indicates a very conservative approach, and an actual 5% loss rate is exceptionally conservative.
But is, as it seems, your operating principle is "what ever the government does is bad (perhaps outright evil)" then none of this will matter to you.
The famous phrase (quite deliberately using a non-mainstream dialect) is "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch": TANSTAAFL,
If you wish to recast it in a standard idiom (for reasons I cannot divine) then you should go with "there isn't any such thing as a free lucnh": TIASTAAFL. But this is pure pedantry.
So if Russia really wanted their own chips, like their own design, their own production, and all that, and wanted said chips to be on the same level as modern chips from Intel, IBM, etc, well they'd have to spend a ton of money, and a good amount of time.
...
All is as you say. But your conditional statement reveals why your argument is irrelevant.
Why do the Russian chips need "to be on the same level as modern chips from Intel, IBM, etc,"? They aren't trying to compete against those companies. They aren't selling them on the open market. They are simply using them of desktop computers and servers in the government, by government purchasing decision.
Commercial processors reached the level that they can fulfill all the real functional needs of the vast majority of desktop applications years ago. A decade old chip running decade old office software can do everything nearly everyone working in an office needs to do as well as the latest and "greatest". Microsoft, Intel, and the PC makers now work in quasi-collusion to force "upgrades" on businesses that do not need them or want them to keep the revenue flowing, but with diminishing success at doing so. Witness the fact that 28% of PCs still run Windows XP despite facing the artificial pressure of support termination by Microsoft, and not being able to buy any XP computers for years.
The advantages of using the newest chips have little or nothing to do with supporting the core office functions for which they are purchased - it is to run "eye candy", power saving (not an issue Russia cares about), or applications that actually harm typical office productivity.
The issue is a bit more complicated for servers - but most server applications only require a tiny fraction of modern chip capabilities, which is why high degrees of virtualization are now common. The Russians will have to use more server chips, but each app will still run fine.
A diet with all its components is very different than supplement pills.
...
Indeed so! In fact the lesson learned thus far from hundreds of epidemiological studies (with published papers in the tens of thousands) over the last 30 years or so is that no dietary supplement pill of any kind offers any benefit to the general population. Vitamin and mineral supplements provide benefit only when the taker is actually deficient in a nutrient being provided, and deficiency in any nutrient (but one*) is rare in wealthy nations.
*That one is vitamin D, the only nutrient for which you can make a case for taking a supplement.
Another way to look at it: the $800 iPhone 5S 64GB contains $210 of parts and cost $8 to assemble, with giving an almost 300% mark-up. Laptop margins are usually 10% or less, Apple's laptop mark-ups are greater, around 30%. 300% is really remarkable.
Way more than 2,000,000 man-hours of highly paid engineers' design time (if you include time to design every single component, including bought-in CPU, graphics, etc- remember to descend recurssively into the design of every single bit of logic, power disttribution, analog bits). Of course most has been amortized over the past 50 years, Apple only pays for the top layer.
...
I guess we should count all of the hours spent in metallurgic and mechanical development since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution when considering the cost of car then?
...I really like how I hit the windows key and just type in the first few letters to the program I want and hit enter. So much faster then having to click through a list....
Do you remember every piece of software that is installed on your system, and how it is spelled? Did you memorize every utility that came with the system, or you later installed? Really?
If so, you are no power user - or even an average one. It is common to install lots of different tools/apps, if only just to try them out.
And what it is this bit about having to click through a list? Can't the UI developers offer both the text search box and a list? Why must it be only one or the other?
Unity on Ubuntu is much the same. I originally hated it, avoided using it (but found that no other UI option was stable and fully functional with the Ubuntu release), and then I discovered Classic Menu, which put the menu back. Now I have both the Unity UI (mostly ignored) and the classic menu, and every thing is fine.
One of the primary designers of the B-52, George Schairer died in 2004.
Age 91.
If he were to tie with the oldest person ever (reliably) recorded he would have lived to 122 (in 2035) and still would have seen the B-52 flying in service.
Right you are. Could you imagine someone discussing military spending in the early 1940s and saying "but leave war spending aside"? For that matter, any of the other major post-WW-II conflicts: Korea, Vietnam?
A better example than the Bangalore torpedo would be the mine clearing line charge which is capable of clearing a full width fire break (20 feet) under many conditions.
While chain saws, and wrapping trees with C4 is effective, where feasible, there are many situations where it is not (inaccessible, imminent fire danger precludes it, it is already on fire).
And there is other interesting prior art showing effectiveness on suppressing wild fires.
And the idea that blast charges can't knock down trees in an area (if that is what you are implying) is simply incorrect. The famous BLU-82 "Daisy Cutter" certainly could. Now they wouldn't be dropped daisy cutters, but a system tailored for this application might be effective. Also note that standing dead trees and trees that have undergone a certain amount of pyrolysis are not going to be as resilient and healthy tree and be easier shatter.
All told, I think the dismissive skepticism I see on this thread to be unfounded.
Actually, between the equal protection clause of the 4th amendment and the cruel and unusual clause of the 8th, it isn't difficult to argue that it does, in fact, mean just that.
Amen to that. If you have two sets of crimes ones committed by the fabulously wealthy (Wall Streeters, bankers - non one else is in the position to carry out such fraud) which do vast damage, and ones that are committed by ordinary citizens that do comparatively trivial amounts of damage, and that latter set are prosecuted far more vigorously, with much harsher punishments than the former, then we do not truly have a system of laws any longer, we have a system of (very rich) men.
One is reminded of this: "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." - Anatole France
Yah, I can only imagine this will be useful in some very very specific situations.
In an oil or gas flame, the heat of combustion generally ignites the incoming fuel. In a forest fire you have an *immense* amount of latent heat even if you were to completely extinguish the flames for a brief moment. Similar reason to why they keep spraying down after a house fire is technically out.
But the "very very specific situations" might actually be common problems that firefighters encounter. I can imagine several possibilities about how this general idea could be employed to good advantage.
Fuel structure is critical in determining the intensity of a fire. Consider burning forest or brush - the vertically held trunks and spread lateral limbs of the former, and the branched framework of the later, are perfect ways to hold fuel in place so that it can burn quickly and intensely. If you can blast the vegetation into pieces, now lying on the ground, the fire intensity will be dramatically reduced once burning resumes.
Or consider a helicopter dropping a line of charges in front of a rapidly advancing fire in rough terrain. Boom! An instant firebreak, where no man could get to, or do it in the available time, and without risking the lives of smoke jumpers.
And I bet situations are not rare where simply knocking the flames out temporarily, and thus shutting off the radiant heat, could enable firefighters to get control of situation which would otherwise be uncontrollable.
Thanks - I read TFA. Did you actually read my post? It does NOT prove this was the first time in human history this ever happened! Got the point now, AC?
In all of human history, we've never recorded one that occurred for the very first time where none happened before.
How do we know it never happened before? It may be sporadic and simply escaped recording (which was quite hit or miss before modern times).
There are many showers that were reported for the first time in recent history with no record of prior observation (e.g. the Quadrantids, never noted before 1825). In fact we are currently in a period of frequent shower discovery (several new ones a year) since sky-imaging networks are now picking up many showers that are sparse, and thus eluded visual detection.
The summary should have said "we've never predicted a shower where none has been observed before", it remains to be seen whether this one materializes.
The lifetime of a shower is typically several thousand years, so they are periodically being created.
I know that the biggest single risk for pot smokers isn't anything associated with pot itself -- it is being arrested, charged, jailed, forced to pay thousands of dollars for bail, forced to pay thousands more for lawyers, forced to pay fines and court costs, forced to endure probation, forced to pay for "rehabilitation"
The way they put it, back in the day was: "Pot is dangerous to your health because it can cause your body to get thrown in jail."
Do you really think is is a good idea for every proposal or wording to be debated in the open?
Absolutely.
Most of these idea/proposals will not make it into the final draft yet having to publicly defend them will just distract from the work at hand.
First off - it is not a given that "the work at hand" even needs to be done. The fact that corporations and other power brokers want these agreements does not mean that they are "needed" by citizens of the affected nations at large, or the world in general.
Second - the need to publicly defend proposals is a good thing, not a "distraction". Every stake-holder should have the ability to see and comment on the draft as it is developed. But only select government "representatives" and corporations are allowed to see them now. By far the largest group of stake-holders, the citizenry is shut out entirely. With public visibility bad proposals would be unlikely to even get on the table in the first place, which might even save time.
... There are several Fusion reactors around the world that now produce more energy than they consume....
No there aren't. Not one.
The only one hoping to reach Q=1 (scientific breakeven) is the small Tokamak in the UK called JET which may reach this point this year (or next). But this is simply validating the ITER approach which as you know is a decade or more off, and won't produce any electricity. For a viable power plant we must have Q > 20, ITER will only achieve Q=5 is everything goes right.
...Fusion reactors are expected to breed their own tritium in the long run, but in the short run research reactors won't and managing the world's supply of tritium will be a bit tricky. Even when they do breed it, they need to not be wasteful to get a net gain.
The tritium breeding problem is much worse than this - it is the true Achilles heel of fusion energy research. We don't have good reason to think that the required fusion tritium breeding cycle is even feasible, and even if it is the cost in a Tokamak type system at least makes fusion permanently cost prohibitive even if all that high tech fusion equipment is free! See "Fusion Power: Will It Ever Come?" by William E. Parkins in Science 10 March 2006 (it is a paid site, so no link).
The fundamental feasibility problem is that the tritium fusion process produces no excess neutrons. Of course there will be tritium losses in separation and refining, and parasitic neutron capture in the fusion reactor structure, so it is not clear how enough net tritium production can be achieved to keep the reactor running, much less produce an excess for more reactors. How about a neutron multiplier to compensate for losses, and create an excess? Multipliers do exist, although the best one happens to be, ummm, fission - but no one has ever demonstrated that a design is possible that can achieve "breeding break-even". This is an engineering challenge on the same scale as the ITER reactor itself.
Quoting the analysis by Parkins:
If we assume an average heat transfer rate of 0.3 MW/m2, the vessel wall and blanket-shield each must have an area of 2000 m2. To absorb the 14 MeV neutrons and to shield against the radiation produced requires a blanket-shield thickness of 1.7 m of expensive materials. This is a volume of 3400 m3, which, at an average density of about 3 g/cm3, would weigh 10, 000 metric tons. A conservative cost would be $180/kg, for a total blanket-shield cost of $1.8 billion. This amounts to $1800/kWe of rated capacity—more than nuclear fission reactor plants cost today.
.
Further:
Scaling of the construction costs from the Bechtel estimates suggests a total plant cost on the order of $15 billion, or $15, 000/kWe of plant rating. At a plant factor of 0.8 and total annual charges of 17% against the capital investment, these capital charges alone would contribute 36 cents to the cost of generating each kilowatt hour. This is far outside the competitive price range.
To reply to my own comment, it's unlikely that that star has been moving away at a steady speed though. Most likely it's been through an insane trajectory that has at times taken it very far away and at times closer, as it orbits around the center of the milky way along with the sun.
Not necessarily. We know of several associations of stars called "moving groups" (the Ursa Major/Big Dipper constellation is largely the core one such group) that have a common origin -- they have the same space velocity vector, and are the same age, and are still relatively close to together in space after hundreds of millions or even billions of years (the Zeta Herculis Moving Group appears to be the oldest known so far -- somewhat older than our own sun). The shared vector means that the stars in a cluster are not going to disperse very far, they will all orbit together in a (slowly growing) region of dispersion.
Slashdot Mirror
The coal plants can still be "plugged in" and operated during times of peak load (weekday summer afternoons and winter mornings); what they can't do is operate much the rest of the time.
The problem with this is that coal plants can't operate this way. A typical coal plant takes 4-8 hours to reach full power from a warm start and can take 24 hours to cold start. This is why we currently use them for baseload power and use other sources (mostly natural gas and hydro) for load following.
Stormv's argument was flawed, but it was unnecessary also. Coal has never been able to do load following, so other technologies were always required. Mothballed coal plants CAN be used as spare capacity when other generators are taken for maintenance or due to accident, with the same argument - they aren't operating all the time. This still reduces infrastructure, and thus overall, cost since otherwise spare (but unused) capacity must be built.
Where does this 'unsubsidized market' in PV and wind exist?
I mean, be real. Where??
If meant to be some sort of refutation, this is a non-sequitur. The unsubsized cost of renewables is easily calculated by simply removing the subsidy from the calculation, just as the cost for nuclear must be based on calculations of planned plant costs. When you do these calculations new nuclear is the most expensive form of energy due to its inherent high capital cost.
The facts that dywolf linked to showing that the overall program made money, not even counting the revenue the government will continue to collect in taxes from the economical activity generated.
You haven't shown that it lost any money.
Please provide concrete evidence, you know, actual facts with numbers, that are checkable (citations optional if Googling will bring them up) to support your arguments as others repeatedly requested instead of continually "arguing from your personal hatred of government" which, in your mind, excuses you from having to support your case.
Remarks to which "khallow" was responding:
So the US has been using similar failed approaches for half a century? I'm supposed to be impressed by this why?
In fact the boost to the economy for the ones that do succeed probably far outweigh any losses in the programs.
What boost? Perhaps we could discuss some of these examples and see if they really live up to your claims.
The loss rate for venture capital is 33-50%. Typical loss rate for "safe" conventional commercial investment strategies are 15% for leveraged buy-outs, and 13% for growth equity. A 10-15% loss rate for government is similar, or better than, commercial investment strategies. The stated 10-11% target indicates a very conservative approach, and an actual 5% loss rate is exceptionally conservative.
But is, as it seems, your operating principle is "what ever the government does is bad (perhaps outright evil)" then none of this will matter to you.
....Summoning elder gods just because signed arithmetic might wrap around is not a good cost/benefit tradeoff!
Make that Elder Gods. Respect is essential - we do not wish to arouse their wrath. Nyarlathotep be praised!
TINSTAAFL? Mixing idioms much?
The famous phrase (quite deliberately using a non-mainstream dialect) is "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch": TANSTAAFL,
If you wish to recast it in a standard idiom (for reasons I cannot divine) then you should go with "there isn't any such thing as a free lucnh": TIASTAAFL. But this is pure pedantry.
...
So if Russia really wanted their own chips, like their own design, their own production, and all that, and wanted said chips to be on the same level as modern chips from Intel, IBM, etc, well they'd have to spend a ton of money, and a good amount of time.
...
All is as you say. But your conditional statement reveals why your argument is irrelevant.
Why do the Russian chips need "to be on the same level as modern chips from Intel, IBM, etc,"? They aren't trying to compete against those companies. They aren't selling them on the open market. They are simply using them of desktop computers and servers in the government, by government purchasing decision.
Commercial processors reached the level that they can fulfill all the real functional needs of the vast majority of desktop applications years ago. A decade old chip running decade old office software can do everything nearly everyone working in an office needs to do as well as the latest and "greatest". Microsoft, Intel, and the PC makers now work in quasi-collusion to force "upgrades" on businesses that do not need them or want them to keep the revenue flowing, but with diminishing success at doing so. Witness the fact that 28% of PCs still run Windows XP despite facing the artificial pressure of support termination by Microsoft, and not being able to buy any XP computers for years.
The advantages of using the newest chips have little or nothing to do with supporting the core office functions for which they are purchased - it is to run "eye candy", power saving (not an issue Russia cares about), or applications that actually harm typical office productivity.
The issue is a bit more complicated for servers - but most server applications only require a tiny fraction of modern chip capabilities, which is why high degrees of virtualization are now common. The Russians will have to use more server chips, but each app will still run fine.
Or writers' (or writers's depending on your stylebook).
A diet with all its components is very different than supplement pills.
...
Indeed so! In fact the lesson learned thus far from hundreds of epidemiological studies (with published papers in the tens of thousands) over the last 30 years or so is that no dietary supplement pill of any kind offers any benefit to the general population. Vitamin and mineral supplements provide benefit only when the taker is actually deficient in a nutrient being provided, and deficiency in any nutrient (but one*) is rare in wealthy nations.
*That one is vitamin D, the only nutrient for which you can make a case for taking a supplement.
Another way to look at it: the $800 iPhone 5S 64GB contains $210 of parts and cost $8 to assemble, with giving an almost 300% mark-up. Laptop margins are usually 10% or less, Apple's laptop mark-ups are greater, around 30%. 300% is really remarkable.
Way more than 2,000,000 man-hours of highly paid engineers' design time (if you include time to design every single component, including bought-in CPU, graphics, etc- remember to descend recurssively into the design of every single bit of logic, power disttribution, analog bits). Of course most has been amortized over the past 50 years, Apple only pays for the top layer.
...
I guess we should count all of the hours spent in metallurgic and mechanical development since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution when considering the cost of car then?
...I really like how I hit the windows key and just type in the first few letters to the program I want and hit enter. So much faster then having to click through a list....
Do you remember every piece of software that is installed on your system, and how it is spelled? Did you memorize every utility that came with the system, or you later installed? Really?
If so, you are no power user - or even an average one. It is common to install lots of different tools/apps, if only just to try them out.
And what it is this bit about having to click through a list? Can't the UI developers offer both the text search box and a list? Why must it be only one or the other?
Unity on Ubuntu is much the same. I originally hated it, avoided using it (but found that no other UI option was stable and fully functional with the Ubuntu release), and then I discovered Classic Menu, which put the menu back. Now I have both the Unity UI (mostly ignored) and the classic menu, and every thing is fine.
Why the forced fake choices?
One of the primary designers of the B-52, George Schairer died in 2004.
Age 91.
If he were to tie with the oldest person ever (reliably) recorded he would have lived to 122 (in 2035) and still would have seen the B-52 flying in service.
Right you are. Could you imagine someone discussing military spending in the early 1940s and saying "but leave war spending aside"? For that matter, any of the other major post-WW-II conflicts: Korea, Vietnam?
A better example than the Bangalore torpedo would be the mine clearing line charge which is capable of clearing a full width fire break (20 feet) under many conditions.
While chain saws, and wrapping trees with C4 is effective, where feasible, there are many situations where it is not (inaccessible, imminent fire danger precludes it, it is already on fire).
And there is other interesting prior art showing effectiveness on suppressing wild fires.
And the idea that blast charges can't knock down trees in an area (if that is what you are implying) is simply incorrect. The famous BLU-82 "Daisy Cutter" certainly could. Now they wouldn't be dropped daisy cutters, but a system tailored for this application might be effective. Also note that standing dead trees and trees that have undergone a certain amount of pyrolysis are not going to be as resilient and healthy tree and be easier shatter.
All told, I think the dismissive skepticism I see on this thread to be unfounded.
Actually, between the equal protection clause of the 4th amendment and the cruel and unusual clause of the 8th, it isn't difficult to argue that it does, in fact, mean just that.
Amen to that. If you have two sets of crimes ones committed by the fabulously wealthy (Wall Streeters, bankers - non one else is in the position to carry out such fraud) which do vast damage, and ones that are committed by ordinary citizens that do comparatively trivial amounts of damage, and that latter set are prosecuted far more vigorously, with much harsher punishments than the former, then we do not truly have a system of laws any longer, we have a system of (very rich) men.
One is reminded of this: "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." - Anatole France
Yah, I can only imagine this will be useful in some very very specific situations.
In an oil or gas flame, the heat of combustion generally ignites the incoming fuel. In a forest fire you have an *immense* amount of latent heat even if you were to completely extinguish the flames for a brief moment. Similar reason to why they keep spraying down after a house fire is technically out.
But the "very very specific situations" might actually be common problems that firefighters encounter. I can imagine several possibilities about how this general idea could be employed to good advantage.
Fuel structure is critical in determining the intensity of a fire. Consider burning forest or brush - the vertically held trunks and spread lateral limbs of the former, and the branched framework of the later, are perfect ways to hold fuel in place so that it can burn quickly and intensely. If you can blast the vegetation into pieces, now lying on the ground, the fire intensity will be dramatically reduced once burning resumes.
Or consider a helicopter dropping a line of charges in front of a rapidly advancing fire in rough terrain. Boom! An instant firebreak, where no man could get to, or do it in the available time, and without risking the lives of smoke jumpers.
And I bet situations are not rare where simply knocking the flames out temporarily, and thus shutting off the radiant heat, could enable firefighters to get control of situation which would otherwise be uncontrollable.
Thanks - I read TFA. Did you actually read my post? It does NOT prove this was the first time in human history this ever happened! Got the point now, AC?
In all of human history, we've never recorded one that occurred for the very first time where none happened before.
How do we know it never happened before? It may be sporadic and simply escaped recording (which was quite hit or miss before modern times).
There are many showers that were reported for the first time in recent history with no record of prior observation (e.g. the Quadrantids, never noted before 1825). In fact we are currently in a period of frequent shower discovery (several new ones a year) since sky-imaging networks are now picking up many showers that are sparse, and thus eluded visual detection.
The summary should have said "we've never predicted a shower where none has been observed before", it remains to be seen whether this one materializes.
The lifetime of a shower is typically several thousand years, so they are periodically being created.
I know that the biggest single risk for pot smokers isn't anything associated with pot itself -- it is being arrested, charged, jailed, forced to pay thousands of dollars for bail, forced to pay thousands more for lawyers, forced to pay fines and court costs, forced to endure probation, forced to pay for "rehabilitation"
The way they put it, back in the day was: "Pot is dangerous to your health because it can cause your body to get thrown in jail."
...
Do you really think is is a good idea for every proposal or wording to be debated in the open?
Absolutely.
Most of these idea/proposals will not make it into the final draft yet having to publicly defend them will just distract from the work at hand.
First off - it is not a given that "the work at hand" even needs to be done. The fact that corporations and other power brokers want these agreements does not mean that they are "needed" by citizens of the affected nations at large, or the world in general.
Second - the need to publicly defend proposals is a good thing, not a "distraction". Every stake-holder should have the ability to see and comment on the draft as it is developed. But only select government "representatives" and corporations are allowed to see them now. By far the largest group of stake-holders, the citizenry is shut out entirely. With public visibility bad proposals would be unlikely to even get on the table in the first place, which might even save time.
... There are several Fusion reactors around the world that now produce more energy than they consume....
No there aren't. Not one.
The only one hoping to reach Q=1 (scientific breakeven) is the small Tokamak in the UK called JET which may reach this point this year (or next). But this is simply validating the ITER approach which as you know is a decade or more off, and won't produce any electricity. For a viable power plant we must have Q > 20, ITER will only achieve Q=5 is everything goes right.
...Fusion reactors are expected to breed their own tritium in the long run, but in the short run research reactors won't and managing the world's supply of tritium will be a bit tricky. Even when they do breed it, they need to not be wasteful to get a net gain.
The tritium breeding problem is much worse than this - it is the true Achilles heel of fusion energy research. We don't have good reason to think that the required fusion tritium breeding cycle is even feasible, and even if it is the cost in a Tokamak type system at least makes fusion permanently cost prohibitive even if all that high tech fusion equipment is free! See "Fusion Power: Will It Ever Come?" by William E. Parkins in Science 10 March 2006 (it is a paid site, so no link).
The fundamental feasibility problem is that the tritium fusion process produces no excess neutrons. Of course there will be tritium losses in separation and refining, and parasitic neutron capture in the fusion reactor structure, so it is not clear how enough net tritium production can be achieved to keep the reactor running, much less produce an excess for more reactors. How about a neutron multiplier to compensate for losses, and create an excess? Multipliers do exist, although the best one happens to be, ummm, fission - but no one has ever demonstrated that a design is possible that can achieve "breeding break-even". This is an engineering challenge on the same scale as the ITER reactor itself.
Quoting the analysis by Parkins:
.
Further:
Your post is inaccurate. The Naval Research Laboratory Plasma Physics Division is investigating magnetic confinement focus fusion, the very version referenced in TFA.
The Navy's cumulative funding over the last several years is about 50 times larger than this Kickstarter campaign target.
To reply to my own comment, it's unlikely that that star has been moving away at a steady speed though. Most likely it's been through an insane trajectory that has at times taken it very far away and at times closer, as it orbits around the center of the milky way along with the sun.
Not necessarily. We know of several associations of stars called "moving groups" (the Ursa Major/Big Dipper constellation is largely the core one such group) that have a common origin -- they have the same space velocity vector, and are the same age, and are still relatively close to together in space after hundreds of millions or even billions of years (the Zeta Herculis Moving Group appears to be the oldest known so far -- somewhat older than our own sun). The shared vector means that the stars in a cluster are not going to disperse very far, they will all orbit together in a (slowly growing) region of dispersion.