Good News For US Fusion Research 149
zrbyte writes "Fusion research would get a major boost in a Department of Energy (DOE) spending bill approved today by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations. The panel rejected an Obama Administration proposal to cut funding for domestic fusion research in the 2013 fiscal year, which begins 1 October. It would also give more money than requested to an international collaboration building the ITER fusion reactor in France. This will allow the Alcator C-Mod fusion facility at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge to be kept open, which the Administration had proposed closing."
Re:It's just 50 years away now! (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe the fact that it always seems 50 years away has something to do with this [wikimedia.org]?
They said in 1978 that then current funding levels would never produce a viable power platform. To get one going by today would have required on average $2.5 billion per year by the fusion researchers' own estimates. Actual funding since 1978? $500 million per year. Quite blaming the science for the politicians shortsightedness.
Re:political science (Score:3, Informative)
Almost no company could absorb the risk inherent in basic science at that scale and companies do not benefit from raising all boats equally - they only benefit from raising their own boat. Companies are also usually not very interested in improving things 20 years or even 2 years down the road. Government is better equipped to deal with basic science because of that.
Re:political science (Score:5, Informative)
What? I'm not following the connect between power & health costs.
How come the government is doing fusion research instead of the private sector, like existing electric companies?
Because electric companies are public utilities. See, in order to spend (invest) an enormous amount money into expensive, unproven research projects like this, you must have "extra" money laying around. That money comes from profits. Utility companies are a natural monopoly and are therefor heavily regulated so they don't take advantage of their consumers. If the utility companies had the types of huge profits needed to invest in nuclear fusion research, the government would step in and force them to lower their prices, thus eliminating their profits and research capital.
Re:Slashdot carrying Republican water again (Score:5, Informative)
Let's see, a series of anti-global warming stories, anti-environmental stories, etc, shortly followed by a pork barrel promotion story blaming the sitting president for, of all things, cutting funding to a dead end science experiment. Gee whiz, I wonder why Slashdot is once again carrying Republican talking points and pushing a Republican agenda? Oh rriiight, it's an election year so the right wing media is ratcheting it up a notch and slashdot is doing its usual duty for the right.
Here are the recent Slashdot stories:
Who Needs CISPA? FBI Has a Non-Profit Workaround
WW2 Vet Sent 300,000 Pirated DVDs To Troops In Iraq, Afghanistan
Key Test For Skylon Spaceplane Engine Technology
China Plans National, Unified CPU Architecture
Microsoft Patches Major Hotmail 0-day Flaw After Widespread Exploitation
Conflict of Interest Derails UK Government Open Source Consultation
Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief
Bionic Eye Patient Tests Planned For 2013
BOLD Plan To Find Mars Life On the Cheap
'Mein Kampf' To Be Republished In Germany
UK Digital Economy Act Delayed Till 2014
The only thing I see here remotely political is the "Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief", which is another way of calling religious people stupid and "'Mein Kampf' To Be Republished In Germany", which contains a whole bunch of comments comparing "Mein Kampf" to the Bible.
Seriously dude! How bad do you really really want to believe in the fictional "right wing media" to make you see evidence of it where it does not exist?