The illustrious "More-ons" in Washington DC have done it again. Spending literally trillions on every foible, abuse and social corruption and now they've cut the R&D and science budgets (details at ScienceNow, the AAAS website)
If anyone had a doubt about our government belonging to OPEC and/or big oil, just check out the fact that they cut funding to the ITER project which WAS the world's most advanced fusion project and was slated to deliver loads of cheap electricity at some point in the next 50 years. No radioactive byproducts, no CO2 and no oil dependence, we gotta make sure that doesn't happen.
Any hope for MIT's proposed geothermal plants is pretty much toast.
We might not mind these cuts, if a matching amount of the pork had been cut from their budget or if the border fence had been left intact. Arrrrrgg!!
4 comments:
ITER may have been zeroed out because we have better near term prospects:
Bussard Fusion Reactor Funded
So should we keep funding ITER with an 80 year time horizon or put it into something with a 5 to 10 year time horizon?
Canceling ITER could be one of the smartest moves the US gvmt has made in a long time.
Blah,blah,blah. The point isn't just about ITER, dimwit, it's about the entire proceedings. Besides, fusion reactions based on "Fusor" technology is largely accepted as being far less likely to succeed than compaction-fusion. Fusors operate out of thermal equilibrium and therefore one can never get more energy out than is put in. Try doing a little research before you blather. Especially check out the critiques by Todd Rider they are very revealing.
It might be even worse than this, because ITER is still the world's most advanced fusion device and the other member nations are likely to continue their work without us.
Hi Dave,
Yeah, wouldn't that be great for France or Brazil or (God Forbid!) the UAE to obtain fusion power while we're still addicted to oil?
I swear, Washington DC is just one big screwed up circus.
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