ITER Funding Restored, Tom Friedman Gives Some Ink to NIF

[TheRadicalModerate]

Tom Friedman apparently visited NIF and wrote about it in today's NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/opini ... edman.html

Feeling the need to vent, I wrote the following letter to him:

Mr. Friedman--

I'm very happy that you're giving some share-of-mind to fusion research. NIF is a moderately promising approach to the problem. But I have three big complaints with the Obama Administration's nuclear energy positions.

First, the Obama Administration has decided to restore the funding for ITER, the international tokamak fusion reactor consortium. ITER is a wonderful tool for studying plasma physics, but the chance of it or any of its successors producing commercially viable power are almost nil. The Bush Administration and Congress were right to kill the funding. Its restoration simply a waste of $127 million. (Of course, that doesn't even move the needle on waste these days, does it?)

Funding ITER merely adds insult to injury when it comes to all the alternative approaches to viable fusion. Some of these projects are almost lunatic-fringe things; others are modest long shots; still others are likely to teach us something that might actually lead to viable fusion power--unlike ITER. You should take a look at the Bussard polywell, and Paul Allen's Tri-Alpha Energy, which is working on a field-reversed configuration approach, and even the focus fusion work. Inertial confinement and tokamaks are no longer the only games in town.

Finally, you said in your column, "But, in addition, we need to make a few big bets on potential game-changers. I am talking about systems that could give us abundant, clean, reliable electrons and drive massive innovation..." I completely agree with this, but how can you make a statement like this and fail to mention good ol' fission nuclear power? Solar, wind, and geothermal may work eventually but, despite your claim, they're not even close to being able to scale up to a viable commercial level. Fission nukes, on the other hand, rely on a proven technology that is cost-competitive with carbon energy. If anybody's actually serious about doing renewable today, with virtually no R&D risk, they'd be betting big on nuclear. The Obama Administration's toadying up to the no-nukes crowd is simply disgraceful and reveals its fundamental lack of seriousness.

Deluging Tom Friedman with email might not be a horrible idea, especially in light of this:

http://blogs.knoxnews.com/knx/munger/20 ... ter_1.html

The U.S. involvement in ITER got a lift after a huge disappointment at the start of this fiscal year. U.S. ITER, which is headquartered in Oak Ridge, got $124 million in funding for the rest of the year, Mason said, and that's a really big deal for the ITER folks.

Oh, well. Two steps forward, one step back. Let's hope for serendipity.

[jmc]

I disagree on your close to nil statement. ITER if anything has a higher probability of success then the rival fusion concepts. That's not to say rival fusion concepts don't have any chance of succeeding. But most criticisms of ITER in this forum all suffer from the same fallacy of substituting the lack of data on other approaches with wishful thinking.

ITER will be the first machine to achieve steady state burning plasmas in the world, that is something valuable in its own right. While I wouldn't wish to cut off funding for the other projects I applaud the U.S. funding ITER.



Your right about fission though. I heard, for example that the U.S. was reconsidering funding carbon capture and storage. This seemed plain insane to me. The green camp say that "there is no long term solution for nuclear waste", well for every joule of energy produce a milluion times more carbon dioxide atoms are created by burning coal that radioactive atoms are created as nuclear waste. On top of that the carbon dioxide is a gas while nuclear waste can be incorporated into a solid polymer matrix, a gas has about 100 times the volume of a solid.

So what are we saying? That there is "no long term solution" for storing a relatively small quantity of solid but there is a long term solution for storing a million times more gas which occupies 100 million times more volume?????!!!!! INSANITY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[MSimon]

for every joule of energy produce a milluion times more carbon dioxide atoms are created by burning coal

Yes. Burning coal will produce a million times as much plant food. What will happen when we run out? The atmosphere is already dangerously low in terms of plants and CO2 content.

[Skipjack]

I, for my part, am for more nuclear power. Coal power plants also produce quite a bit of radioactivity. But I never see any payed protesters waving banners with radiactive signs there. Guess the coal guys have a better lobby.

[Betruger]

Theoretically, or practically? So far ITER is ahead of everyeone. How many $billions?

[jmc]

Theoretically, or practically? So far ITER is ahead of everyeone. How many $billions?

Both, in plasma physics the theoretical equations are often insoluable unless you drop terms or make simplifying assumptions of somekind. Which terms you're allowed to drop must be atleast benchmarked by experiment. Since there are more tokamak experiments in operation than any other device and they tend to be better funded with better diagnostics tokamak theory is thus more reliable then the theory of operation of machines that have historically been less well investigated.

I'm all for investigating other approaches, but we have a better chance of getting fusion done faster by building a machine whose behaviour has been well catalogued and documented. Tokamaks can give us net power. We may aswell finish what we started.

[Betruger]

I'm all for investigating other approaches, but we have a better chance of getting fusion done faster by building a machine whose behaviour has been well catalogued and documented. Tokamaks can give us net power. We may aswell finish what we started.

Sounds like someone talking about the Ares launcher program. SpaceX's roadmap shows something like a 1000x cheaper alternative.

The angle I meant to point out in the previous post is that ITER:Polywell is something of an apples to oranges comparison because of ITER's funding. The real comparison would be to equal funding.. Either ITER then, or Polywell after it were given ~12B$. Which it doesn't even need, apparently. A fraction of a single billion would settle the question for good.

BTW - I don't know if it's me being nearly two days without sleep, but I can't recall intending my previous reply for this topic... I recall it being for a thread where the OP asks (in a poll?) what the fusion approach with the best chances is. Sorry for derailing this one.

[KitemanSA]

Mr. Friedman--
First, the Obama Administration has decided to restore the funding for ITER, the international tokamak fusion reactor consortium. ITER is a wonderful tool for studying plasma physics, but the chance of it or any of its successors producing commercially viable power are almost nil.

ITER supporters always seem to ignore that portion of a critic's statement and gush as to how close it is to net power. The dang thing is already near as big as, and twice as costly as, a supercarrier; and they tell us it MAY produce net power. How is something that size ever going to be commercially viable. Maybe, but I just don't see how.

[Helius]

Mr. Friedman--
First, the Obama Administration has decided to restore the funding for ITER, the international tokamak fusion reactor consortium. ITER is a wonderful tool for studying plasma physics, but the chance of it or any of its successors producing commercially viable power are almost nil.

ITER supporters always seem to ignore that portion of a critic's statement and gush as to how close it is to net power. The dang thing is already near as big as, and twice as costly as, a supercarrier; and they tell us it MAY produce net power. How is something that size ever going to be commercially viable. Maybe, but I just don't see how.

It beats our moonshine energy program hands down. If we were serious about destroying the coal industry, we'd reinstate programs such as the Integral Fast Reactor (canceled by Clinton and the 104th Congress) and do fast development of the Thorium Molten Salt reactors, both Coal Killers.

The reason we're going to spend the next decade twiddling with moonshine, breezes and sunshine based energy is because it is politically feasible and expedient; The Coal, Oil, and Gas and current Nuclear industries are not threatened, nor is the non-profit environmental movement industry. No rice bowls get broken.

Killing Coal by well engineered Nuclear solutions is "bottom up"; Taxing Energy by a huge, one shot revenue influx through cap-and-trade is clearly "top down", and will only serve to generate revenue for the Federal Government at the expense of the electricity consumer.

What happened to our "bottom up" President?

Ah, nevermind. I'm probably preaching to the choir.

[TallDave]

ITER if anything has a higher probability of success then the rival fusion concepts

Yes, it's a very neat science project that might achieve some very neat science if given a hideously gigantic amount of money on top of the frighteningly gigantic amounts already spent. But the plant power density for the most advanced designs don't come anywhere close to that of fission plants, for which we have somewhere between 1,000 and 100,000 years of fuel.

Once the science fair is over and you pin the gold star on it and hand everyone their Nobels, it's of little practical value to humanity. If we're going to have the taxpayers fund an employment program for physicists, fine, but let's first be sure we fund the approaches that might lead somewhere useful.

[MSimon]

What happened to our "bottom up" President?

I think the anti-American-Energy interests found his bottom.

[djolds1]

What happened to our "bottom up" President?

I think the anti-American-Energy interests found his bottom.

Roger Fox was convinced that thee and me were being overly partisan in betting the Dems would reflexively TKO any nuclear options. I still hope he was right and we were wrong. Also, it is IMO as yet too early to render qualitative judgment on Team Obama; give it 6 months or so.

[MSimon]

What happened to our "bottom up" President?

I think the anti-American-Energy interests found his bottom.

Roger Fox was convinced that thee and me were being overly partisan in betting the Dems would reflexively TKO any nuclear options. I still hope he was right and we were wrong. Also, it is IMO as yet too early to render qualitative judgment on Team Obama; give it 6 months or so.

They are moving against American Energy. Coal for one. And no drilling for American oil. That is policy - for now.

[Roger]

And no drilling for American oil. That is policy - for now.

Actually not. I guess you meant Offshore:

http://www.mms.gov/ld/PDFs/OCSstatusMap8e(3).pdf

http://www.mms.gov/5-year/assets/Maps/U ... _dates.pdf

http://www.mms.gov/5-year/2007-2012Leas ... hedule.htm

The Gulf of Mexico has some excellent deep water organic rich formations.

[MSimon]

And no drilling for American oil. That is policy - for now.

The Gulf of Mexico has some excellent deep water organic rich formations.

Organic Rich Formations

Is that another name for oil seeps?

==

A lot of Alaska is off limits to exploration and drilling.