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Let ITER die. Magnetic confinement won't deliver power for 30 years, and is most likely too expensive to ever be viable outside of a very dystopian future where energy costs 10x what it does today.

Meanwhile, there are a half-dozen promising fusion alternatives using IEC schemes that could produce results with 1/10th the funding, and have some chance of producing commercially viable power in 10-20 years.

I did a presentation on ITER at the Universidad de Yucatan (Mexico) last year. We discussed the possibilities that a large project such ITER can provide to the increment of the standard of living of people in the planet, when oil becomes more expensive. The main conclusion we had at that time for ITER is that Mexico should increment its participation in a project like that. ITER is a research step, a milestone, but a very good one, with decent, achievable goals. If the US reduces its funding, the only people hurt are going to be the US citizens and companies, as they won't participate in the breed of knowledge it's going to produce. So I think it's very shortsighted to have the participation reduced just because the goverment has money issues.

TallDave,

Can you provide links to overviews of the alternative technologies?

And do any of them have traction in terms of funding? Or are they facing an uphill battle as well?

RIP. The entire magnetic fusion program is little more than welfare for physicists. TFTR set its power record nearly 14 year ago! It was shut down almost 11 years ago. Since then, the US and world fusion program has focussed on ever-finer physics, fancier diagnostics, more complex computer models, and more detailed studies of transport, impurities, and other interesting but unproductive physics.

I left the fusion program after 20 years because I wanted to build power plants, and I came to realize that the goal of the program was NOT to build power plants. That would spell an end to the gravy train for all the plasma physicists and national labs.

ITER is not a step towards power; it doesn't breed its own fuel, raise steam, spin turbines or address any of the other myriad engineering problems that lie between megawatts of neutron flux and megawatt-hours of electricity sales.

We know more than enough to attempt the design and construction of a pilot-scale fusion power plant. Government-funded programs will never result in a commercial product; all of the incentives work against it. Get the US out of ITER, let other taxpayers subsidize the boondoggle.

If and when the world wants the supposed advantages of fusion power, private firms will build them. Until then, if you want clean safe power that works, build fission plants. That's what I'm doing.

I respectfully disagree. If we can spend two trillion on an insane mess of a war, we should put an end to that and spend a few ten's of billions on all alternative energy research. Fusion works, and we see it every day in the sun. We're good at building big fires (with thermonuclear bombs)and we've got to figure out to build these "small fires" one day.
There is nothing here that good old American "know how" couldn't figure out. What's wrong with all these wimps? They would never have acomplished what the US did in the 20th century with that attitude.

I would have liked to know how this decision impacts the National Ignition Facility (NIF) att LLNL. This also has some fusion research at the heart of its mission.

Fusion has to have a future but it will always be 20 years away until it is taken out of the sandbox. Key to the success of fusion is to extract energy electromagneticlly as was pointed out by David Lilley of Harwell, England nearly 50 years ago. Because ITER does not attempt to do this, it can be considered just the latest sandbox. However, it should be continued for valuable data will be obtsined from which the "power plant of the future" can be developed aand demonstrated.. There are other approaches around, to be sure but they have to get to the concept feasibility stage. With some care in selection, program planners have to support several of these but claims that they will be producing commercially viable electric power in 10-20 years have no data base to support them. It is better to assume that fusion is a process which can become viable in the latter part of the 21st century an work to make that happen than to try and second guess the future. For the next 50-100 years, there are several attractive ways to generate electricity with minimal environmental intrusion. Fusion has to adopt a research, developmenet and demonstration strategy compatible with the overall energy situation and stop trying to make end runs based on nothing more than concepts.

Too bad the people who lead us are all attorneys, rather than engineers as in China. The US stands no chance on this planet as aresult of scientific ignorance in Congress.

Fusion has to have a future but it will always be 20 years away until it is taken out of the sandbox. Key to the success of fusion is to extract energy electromagnetically as was pointed out by David Lilley of Harwell, England nearly 50 years ago. Because ITER does not attempt to do this, it can be considered just the latest sandbox exercise and accordingly dismissed. However, it should be continued for valuable data will be obtsined from which the "power plant of the future" can be developed and demonstrated.. There are other approaches around, to be sure but they have to get to the concept feasibility stage. With some care in selection, program planners have to support several of these but claims that they will be producing commercially viable electric power in 10-20 years have no data base to support them. It is better to assume that fusion is a process which can become viable in the latter part of the 21st century and work to make that happen than to try and second guess the future. For the next 50-100 years, there are several attractive ways to generate electricity with minimal environmental intrusion. Fusion has to adopt a research, developmenet and demonstration strategy compatible with the overall energy situation and stop trying to make end runs based on nothing more than concepts.

The money is better spent on nuclear fusion than on a senseless war in Iraq!!!

US can spend BILLIONS of dollars on a futile war effort to "protect" our oil interests for the mega-rich oil industrialists, yet our government can not put together a comprehensive energy policy and fund relatively small outlays in quite promising energy technologies.

Something is wrong here with our government policy makers.

Let it die. Fusion is not clean. Look at all the matter and radiation that the Sun ejects into space. Plus any fusion reaction would activate (through fast neutrons) any concrete and steel used to contain the reactor making it radioactive!

Edward Teller promised “Controlled Fusion, Soon!” while at Berkeley half a century ago.

Unfortunately, Teller's UC National Labs lived down to a grave warning about academic scientists by President Eisenhower in his 1961 Farewell Address "The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded." and American science has failed to create controlled fusion ever since to prove his words correct.

Later in 1997 Freeman Dyson confirmed Ike's grave regard in a chapter on "Ethics" in his book "Imagined Worlds" explaining "The main social benefit provided by pure science in esoteric fields is to serve as a welfare program for scientists and engineers."

The fact is that America has had only one quantum mechanics class scientist in the 20th century, the father of Molecular Biology Linus Pauling, and no one else in America since WWII has come close to making scientific discoveries like the like Pauling, Schrodinger and Einstein did.

No wonder controlled fusion has always been decades away, as Dyson also said “pure scientists have become more detached from the mundane needs of humanity, and the applied scientists have become more attached to immediate profitability.” Thus UC still produces hydrogen bombs for profit and most recently made a $500 Million alliance with BP oil to sell out the last of their scientific and academic integrity.

UCBerkeley ‘63
IEEE Life Senior Member

The rest of the world has got used to the US signing up for international projects and then pulling out at the first opportunity. I wonder how long it will be before they leave the rest of us in the lurch with the "International" space station and it goes the same way as Spacelab.

Even when the USA does get involved, we end up with dodgy magnets for the LHC.

It really is time that we just left them to get on with their science and their wars.

As to TFTR setting records, looks like another sign of the American tendency to ignore everything that happens elsewhere. JET has done much more than improve diagnostic techniques over the past decade or so of successful operation. Perhaps it helped that the USA was not involved.

Just think: I tried to forward this e-mail to a friend and it wouldn't work (said that there is an "error"). Unspecified "error" of course. Pretty tough to imagine the organization (or the larger resident nation) participating in something as complicated as the star "bottling" process... given the example that they (the premeire national engineering org.) can't get a simple web site to work.