US suspends nuclear fusion participation: ITER

Source: Times of India

18 Jan 2008, 0543 hrs IST

MARSEILLE: The United States will suspend for this year its financial participation in an international nuclear fusion project, that includes India, for budgetary reasons, project spokesman Neil Calder said on Thursday.

"This is a very worrying situation, but we cannot come to the conclusion that the United States will quit ITER," said Calder, of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, confirming a report first published in France's Le Figaro daily.

The move came after the US scientific community discovered late December that its research budget had been cut by 400 million dollars, rather than increasing as expected, Calder said.

Roughly 160 million of that amount was earmarked for 2008 for the France-based ITER project, expected to be up and running by 2016.

"It's not a cash contribution that has been withdrawn from the project, but equipment that the Americans were to have constructed that will be delayed," he said.



Read more: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/US_suspends_nuclear_fusion_participation_ITER/articleshow/2709521.cms

energy research is the first thing Reagan did after he replaced President Carter leaving us two decades behind where we should be.

Former AEC Director Hirsh and Assistant Director Bussard had lobbied Congress after the 1968 Russion Tokamak sucsess, for a US Tokamak program. During the last 10 to 12 years both have advocated for Polywell fusion.

Bussards prgram goes on after his death, first plasma reported from Sante Fe NM.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/13/224458/454/929/436375

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606&q=should+google+go+nuclear&total=126&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

It's a rather long video- just over an hour and a half- but he proves his case.

The fact that people are continuing his work and duplicating the results he got is some of the best news I've heard in a year. I truly hope this pans out- cheap, clean, safe energy with much less waste than anything we currently have.

We need more money to conduct wars designed to keep the war machine running. My god, they might even find a cheap way to produce electricity! That vill not be done!!

Budgetary reasons. More money needs to be thrown down the rat hole called the military industrial complex. Fuck Bush!

My favorite is Polywell fusion, research is going on Sante Fe NM.

Tokamak vs Polywell fusion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBfsq80EgOs

The navy has an interest in this, to power subs and ships, or so I understand. Face it, if this is left to the oil companies it will die a swift and quiet death. A working, commercial Polywell reactor spells the end of the fossil fuel era to a great extent.

has discretionary funding for research like this, 1.8 million to build and test/run WB7. The Goal of course is find out if its worth Mahattenizing the research.


The guys at http://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/index.php have put together an open source engineering proposal for a WB7x. WB7x would be the same size as WB6 & 7, but would have cooled magnets, likely LN2. And instead of capacitor banks firing to power a millisecond pulse in the device, enough power to run the device in the 100's to 1000's of seconds. After completing some DD runs at acceleration levels of 50 to 65KeV, WB7x could then refueled with Boron. Theory says Proton/Boron fusion will occur in the 50 to 65KeV areas.

For about 10 million one could have a pB11 fusion device, the first ever to cause fusion w/PB11, an international record.

The only reason that the US was participating was to deadlock the site selection process and delay progress. Now that the principle siting and funding decisions have been taken, the US can abrogate its committments to cause further disruption and delay.

You do realize that successful fusion reactors would obviate much of the need for fossil fuel and send the Anglo-American oil companies into a tailspin?

It's the last thing that the Bush adminstration wants.

- or perhaps hours - cost the amount of money this program - or the $400 million - would need.

According to the National Priorities Project we're forking over about $275 million per day to keep the profiteers happy. So less than 2 days of the Iraq adventure would more than cover the entire shortfall in the research budget.

Of course, it also wouldn't do to have fusion energy become a reality... unless we can somehow give the fossil fuel industries a big cut of the action...

and we could conquer world hunger.

Bussard Polywell update from Aug 2007:

Last August, as Bussard was losing his battle with cancer, the funds were restored with the support of Alan Roberts, EMC2's longtime Navy contract monitor. The company now has $1.8 million to pursue his work. If it is successful verifying the 2005 results, it would seek funding for a full-scale model, big enough to make net power, Nebel said. Bussard has estimated that such a demonstration model would cost about $200 million to build.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/24/01048/939/153/425980

And the war-profiteering CEOs need to put food on their families!!