MIT's Tokamak Gets Resurrected
Posted: Mon Jun 09, 2014 8:37 am
I have a daily Google alert for the keywords "Nuclear Fusion." Most of what comes across gets filed under the general heading of "same old story."
This morning I read this item:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/ ... story.html
Which appears under the headline:
MIT at center of political power play
The school’s prized fusion reactor was dead; its federal funding axed. Then its political allies went to work.
At the risk of stirring up a political flame-war, I'll just say that I am enamored of Elizabeth Warren and most of what she has to say about banking and the financial system, but it's pretty clear she's out of her depth when she says things like...
"It’s ground-breaking research that could lead an energy revolution,” Warren said. “This was not about politics. This was about good science.”
The sad illogic of which emerges about two sentences later with...
"A fading poster titled “Fusion, Physics of a Fundamental Energy Source” takes up nearly an entire wall of MIT’s Plasma Science & Fusion Department’s second-floor lobby. It reads: “If fusion power plants become practical, they would provide a virtually inexhaustible energy supply . . . substantial progress toward this goal has been made.
The poster was printed in 1996. The goal has remained elusive."
Two more years and that poster will be a reminder of Richard Hull's slogan that "fusion is 20 years in the future and always will be."
Sorry, Elizabeth, but the administration was probably right to shut this one down. Expect for the part where they want to divert the funds to ITER....
--PS
This morning I read this item:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/ ... story.html
Which appears under the headline:
MIT at center of political power play
The school’s prized fusion reactor was dead; its federal funding axed. Then its political allies went to work.
At the risk of stirring up a political flame-war, I'll just say that I am enamored of Elizabeth Warren and most of what she has to say about banking and the financial system, but it's pretty clear she's out of her depth when she says things like...
"It’s ground-breaking research that could lead an energy revolution,” Warren said. “This was not about politics. This was about good science.”
The sad illogic of which emerges about two sentences later with...
"A fading poster titled “Fusion, Physics of a Fundamental Energy Source” takes up nearly an entire wall of MIT’s Plasma Science & Fusion Department’s second-floor lobby. It reads: “If fusion power plants become practical, they would provide a virtually inexhaustible energy supply . . . substantial progress toward this goal has been made.
The poster was printed in 1996. The goal has remained elusive."
Two more years and that poster will be a reminder of Richard Hull's slogan that "fusion is 20 years in the future and always will be."
Sorry, Elizabeth, but the administration was probably right to shut this one down. Expect for the part where they want to divert the funds to ITER....
--PS