Good News For US Fusion Research 149
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the all-about-the-benjamins dept.
from the all-about-the-benjamins dept.
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:Slashdot carrying Republican water again (Score:5, Interesting)
Says the expert.
I've SEEN a working fusion reactor. Tokamaks work right now.
ITER merely take scientificially-demonstrated technology, and makes it industrial-scale.
Re:Slashdot carrying Republican water again (Score:3, Interesting)
AC speaks the truth.
Power balance in tokamaks and other magnetic fusion machines is well understood enough, to the point where they're covered in chapters in various textbooks on the subject. They lay out, in black and white, roughly what design decisions need to be made to have tokamaks and friends produce significant net power. The books I have are quite a few years old too.
OTOH, there are quite a few papers out there, outlining why farnsworth fusors and polywells make rubbish power plants.
Re:There must be some way... (Score:4, Interesting)
Calling it a major cut is a slight exaggeration, the actual cut is 2%, as opposed to Obama's request to increase it by 8%.
It sounds like they're just shifting some money from Obama's "Green" energy initiatives to fusion research.