Energy Budget

[jcoady]

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsid ... .html#DOE2

[mvanwink5]

Does this sound like the Navy is moving ahead with polywell?

Within the Office of Science, the biggest winner by far is the fusion energy science program, which would see its budget soar 14% to $458 million. Such a boost is desperately needed, researchers say, as the U.S. contributions to the international fusion experiment ITER, under construction in Cadarache, France,

In the single most dramatic shift, DOE would pay for an increased contribution to the ITER international fusion project by diverting funds from its domestic fusion programs, including shuttering a fusion experiment known as the Alcator C-Mod at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. Overall, the fusion energy sciences budget falls by 0.8% to $398 million, but increases the U.S. contribution to ITER to $150 million, up from $105 million this year. That shift forced officials to throw some things overboard, including MIT's $18 million budget for C-Mod. That machine is a donut-shaped device known as a tokamak that uses magnetic fields to trap an ionized gas or plasma and hold it at very high temperature and pressure. C-Mod is one of three tokamaks in the United States and a cousin of the gigantic $23 billion ITER that researchers are planning to build in Cadarache, France.
"I'm dismayed, but not surprised," says Raymond Fonck, a fusion physicist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. C-Mod had not yet been mined out scientifically, Fonck says, but there were arguments for keeping up the United States' two other tokamaks—at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in New Jersey and General Atomics in San Diego, California. Fusion physicists have long worried that the U.S. contributions to ITER would starve the domestic fusion program, and that appears to be happening. In the new budget, fusion research would receive 45% of the money, ITER would receive 45% of the money, and operations of the U.S. facilities would receive just 10% of the resources, a far cry from the roughly 50% considered optimal. "To have a 10% operating budget is kind of insane," Fonck says. "I understand where it's coming from, but we're already under utilizing our facilities."

[kcdodd]

To me it sounds like the US fusion science program is being gutted.

[mvanwink5]

They are basically putting it in ITER, which means they don't think polywell is worth pushing.

[kcdodd]

At this rate, in ten years there will probably not be any serious US fusion programs. Which means that if you really want to study it, you'll need to leave the US and go to Europe, China, or Japan.

[choff]

Maybe they want to put it all into ITER because Polywell does work and big oil wants to bury alternatives indefinitely. I was looking at a Greg Palast interview where he claimed the reason for the policies in Iraq was to keep from having an additional 6 million barrels a day off market. The claim was it would push the price of oil down to $18.00 a barrel.

[mvanwink5]

My conspiracy theory is that the people making the decisions are bureaucrats and politicians. In other words, looking for a never ending career and the other, a never ending cause.

[kcdodd]

The only problem with that theory is that none of those people will be in the US. So if we're just a bunch of self-serving fusion scientists over here, why are we letting the entire US program be dismantled?

[mvanwink5]

C'mon man, don't shoot my theory down like that It is about the world, not the US. Spending money is the key, and it is all a never ending big government science project...Looks good, looks like we're trying, and we care about the world.

[hanelyp]

My thinking is that ITER has run a publicity campaign successful in persuading the bureaucrats and politicians who made the decision. If ITER is "the way to fusion", it gets the money.

The low profile of the navy polywell program is a double edged sword. On the one hand, by avoiding attention it avoids the risk of a busy body bureaucrat targeting it for a cut. On the other, it misses opportunities to attract more support. And when a budget cut bludgeon comes down, nothing protects it from taking cuts along with everything else.

[jcoady]

There are a couple of more Fusion related articles at the top of the page.

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsid ... udget.html

[mvanwink5]

It is hard to tell what will finally be done, but it seems that polywell is so small it is completely in the hands of the Navy how much it gets. One thing though, WB-D is big enough that we would know if it is being funded. Short of WB-D is shoestring science project status, which means small WB and all the associated electron injection issues that have nothing to do with a full scale polywell. No headway this year, great science though...

[paperburn1]

Looks like Bussard was right again, funding is all about protecting your rice bowls. (google speach)