ITER In Trouble

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Fri Nov 18, 2011 8:47 am

In the fraught negotiations underway to negotiate a new 7-year budget for the European Union, officials at the European Commission—the E.U. executive branch—came up with the idea of removing two pricey items from the budget spreadsheet and getting E.U. member states to fund them directly. The items are Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES), a system of satellites as well as air and ground-based sensors for environmental monitoring, and ITER, an experimental fusion reactor that the European Union is building in France in collaboration with China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, and the United States. But yesterday member states cried foul: government ministers from the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Finland, Sweden, Italy, and the Netherlands wrote to the commission demanding that the projects be reinstated.

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsid ... tml?ref=hp

Betruger · Post by **Betruger** » Fri Nov 18, 2011 11:27 am

Drop the thing and fund a portfolio of alternative fusion schemes at a fraction of the cost. If/when those fail, ITER will be a sure funding bet once again.

TallDave · Post by **TallDave** » Fri Nov 18, 2011 12:11 pm

"ITER Not In Trouble" would be more newsworthy.

Lighthugger · Post by **Lighthugger** » Sat Nov 19, 2011 11:56 am

It's eu budget time. While iter is a big costly programe it is still worth progressing and despite it's issues has far more support in the science comunity that polywell. I hope polywell works but iter should push our understanding further and is cheap compared to all the bail outs. A canceled iter will not help fusion one bit. At least we get published data!

Giorgio · Post by **Giorgio** » Sat Nov 19, 2011 1:29 pm

I highly doubt you can get "real" published data out of Iter before the next decade at best. Much better to axe it and move the money where they can be more useull.

I suggest a mass purchase of Rossi reactors!

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Sat Nov 19, 2011 6:53 pm

I would cut down ITER funding and rather put more funding into smaller fusion related projects that might have more near term results.
John Slough and his FRC/mirror device certainly deserve the few million needed to build a full scale reactor. Peanuts compared to ITER and much more near term too.
I would totally fund him, even give him a fully equipped lab here in Europe, if I was in charge of government funding for this sort of thing, or had the money for this sort of risk investment as a private investor.

Like Art, I think that they have the best chance for something useful in the nearterm.

rcain · Post by **rcain** » Sun Nov 20, 2011 7:55 am

i agree - put ITER build on go-slow (spend slow) and delay, substantially. move some of the savings to a 'rapid' burn over the rest of the fusion territory - including LENR.

by the time that effort is exhausted it will either have yielded something, or we will have decided upon something completely different to solve our immediate energy requirements (eg: thorium salt reactors), or we will be in a better economic cycle to jump-start ITER again.

whichever comes soonest. (given ITER will undoubtedly be the latest to deliver, if ever).