Europe Aims for Endless Energy (£6 Billion for Fusion)

[DUreader]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/renewable/Story/0,2763,1094164,00.html




Europe's scientists hope to mimic the power of
the sun and create limitless energy on Earth with
the help of a £6bn experiment in the south of
France.

Ministers in Brussels gave the go-ahead yesterday
for Iter, the world's biggest and most ambitious
fusion reactor, at Cadarache near
Aix-en-Provence. It will be 10 years in the making
and, in its 20-year operating life, researchers will
experiment with a kind of slow hydrogen bomb in
the hope of extracting vast amounts of clean
energy from tiny amounts of heavy water.

Iter will replace Jet, the current joint European
fusion research project, based at Culham,
Oxfordshire.

Sir Chris Llewellyn-Smith, head of the UK fusion
programme, said yesterday: "The Iter project will
allow a major step towards an inexhaustible
source of environmentally friendly power."

[Dudley_DUright]

1. The joke among physicists is that fusion is the energy of the future...

... and always will be. Fusion power is a great idea in principle, but the engineering problems to get to economic viability are vast and difficult. I hope this project helps to achieve the goal of a commercially viable fusion reactor, but I have my doubts.

[DUreader]

3. The joke among US citizens is a century of energy policy scams

[Lorien]

5. The scientists I know don't think it's a joke

several have great hopes that cold fusion will be the discovery that saves our future.

[Dudley_DUright]

6. Did not mean to imply that it is not worth spending money on research

but if scientists are telling you that cold fusion is worth spending money on, they are badly misinformed. Cold fusion was disproved long ago and was a good example of how not to do science (science via press conference before being peer reviewed).

[Ernesto]

8. Do these "phyicists"

work for US oil corporations?

[Dudley_DUright]

9. Look

I (and I dare say most physicists) are in favor of fusion research. I have sent students on to graduate school to study plasma physics. All I am saying is that we have to be realistic about the prospects of success in the near term. Thirty years ago, people were saying it would take 30 years to come up with a viable fusion method. We are still saying it will take 30 years. In the mean time, we need to learn how to conserve energy in this country and to work on alternatives to the internal combustion engine (like hydrogen cars). Physicists should not oversell technology. Certain physicists in the fission power field predicted years ago that power from nuclear power plants would be too cheap to bother to meter. I don't think their predictions have been born out in the real world.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

15. No, you look...

...if it was in the vested self-interest of the energy corporations to pursue the development of fusion, it would have been accomplished by now. Do you, or do you not, agree with that point of view?

You should know that the energy corporations are going to exhaust all remaining fossil fuels and extract every last cent before they move to any other energy sources. Just in case you've forgotten, that's the real reason why we have thousands of troops in the Middle East.

You should also know that the energy corporations were very creative in ensuring that the cost of energy produced by nuclear power plants was just as expensive as energy produced by other means. They weren't about to lose ANY profits for ANY reasons.

You should also know that the energy corporations will undoubtedly figure out a way to make fusion just as expensive, if not more so, than our current forms of energy.

[Bozola]

2. Kind of silly, isn't it?

The US invades Iraq to partially secure it's future energy stakes at a cost of $100 of billions of dollars.

For the cost of a could weeks in Iraq we could be well on the way to producing practical fusion reactors and space elevators.

Bush has taken our future and spent it on Halliburton & friends.

[DUreader]

4. Way more than $100 billion

[Bozola]

7. Yes, I know, but

you've got to START seriously funding these projects.

Current federal funding is a joke and has been for twenty years.

[DUreader]

10. Sorry, I misread your reply.

I thought you were saying Iraq only cost $100 Billlion, but rereading

it I noticed you pluralized billion(s)

I'd love to see hundreds of billions invested in alternative energies

It has to happen sooner or later and we need the jobs now

[Dudley_DUright]

12. That would be great

Right now the budget for basic research for the National Science Foundation (NSF) across all disciplines is about $5 B. The Department of Energy (DOE) basic energy sciences research budget is about $1 B.

[Vitruvius]

18. Total US Gov't funding for fusion , 1950 to present: less than $9 billion.

But stealing Iraq's oil -- at an ultimate cost of several hundred billion -- is so much more important. NOT.

P.S: Also note that the $9 billion is roughly comparable with what the Europeans will spend on ITER in the next few years alone. And this does not include funding for other projects.

[goforit]

11. Well.....It is about time humanity looks for other resourses.

We all live on the same boat.

[Dudley_DUright]

13. It should be pointed out that this project

is a real international collaboration (unlike the Iraq war) among many countries:

Although the Cadarache site has Brussels' backing, the decision has yet to be confirmed by the other partners in the project. These include Canada, the US, Russia, Japan, South Korea and China.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

16. Yes, they're all making sure that the project proceeds slowly enough...

...to exhaust all other forms of energy first.

You do realize that this group represents the largest producers (except OPEC) and consumers of fossil fuels, don't you?

You do realize that they all have vested interests in ensuring that certain fossil-fuel profit streams remain unbroken for as long as possible, don't you?

[nofurylike]

17. thank you for that point. it clarified a lot for me. n/t

[DemExpat]

14. This is exciting news!

A little ray of light in all the darkness....

DemEx