ITER back in jeopardy - again....

Reflections on fusion history, current events, and predictions for the 'fusion powered future.
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Chris Bradley
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ITER back in jeopardy - again....

Post by Chris Bradley »

The ITER 'refund' plan that looked like it had recovered after getting into jeopardy.. is now back in jeopardy. The EU Parliament Budget Committee has rejected the plan;

http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/im ... 68869.aspx

"16.09.2010 / 05:19 CET
Commission wants to raise additional €1.4bn for ITER, but MEPs say a different approach is needed.

The European Parliament's budgets committee has rejected EU plans to raise an extra €1.4 billion for constructing the international experimental fusion reactor, ITER... MEPs refused to back a deal concluded on 20 July between member states and the European Commission....

...Böge and most of his fellow members on the budgets committee complained about the lack of consultation in the drafting of the plan..."
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Richard Hull
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Re: ITER back in jeopardy - again....

Post by Richard Hull »

Politics and science. A bad mix where scientists have to sell themselves and their ideas to get money. They have gotten used to this and a special breed of politico-scientist exists; not to do science, but to see to it that his fellows keep their jobs, regardless of the value of the idea or the scope of the work.

Question: Has the work got too big to fund or too big to fail.

The Texas super collider was an example of older thinking where failure was a real option over throwing cash into a money pit. The US started cutting its committment to ITER a while back.

We will see......... and I imagine, real soon now.

As always, we are mere bystanders and, like our fusion efforts, are many orders of magnitude below any real significance in this issue. Such discussions by us has the same effect as casting a bean into a lion's mouth.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
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Linda Haile
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Re: ITER back in jeopardy - again....

Post by Linda Haile »

Regardless of whether or not we believe ITER will achieve ten times unity (500MW output for 50MW input) we are all interested in what they are doing.

Some contributors here may consider it a waste of their (taxpayers) money, others here work for ITER subcontractors.

Regardless of our own personal opinions or relationship to it, we ALL follow their progress, with interest.

We can't help it. It is a fact of life. We are curious about it.
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Doug Coulter
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Re: ITER back in jeopardy - again....

Post by Doug Coulter »

I'd have to mostly agree with Richard on this one. Governments always cut what they consider non essential when times are tough, and investments in the future are always the first to go, which is why after a long. long time of that, the present ain't all that hot -- vicious cycle.

And I really ditto the "Academic big scientist" comments -- I've met too many who don't care much about science, but really do like that solid paycheck and the perks.

But I follow it myself, and am interested in what they will certainly learn, even if it's mostly going to be negative in the sense of "well, that didn't work" because that's the other 99% of invention, the perspiration of trying all the stuff that didn't pan out and finding out why it didn't. That knowledge might be useful even to us. Unknown unknown, in other words.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
Chris Trent
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Re: ITER back in jeopardy - again....

Post by Chris Trent »

I live in Texas, about 45 minutes from the old SSC site. In fact, I drive by it numerous times each year. There are huge rotting husks of scientific equipment sitting in a lot near there to this day.

I had a front row seat as the political theater played out and it became obvious that a 10+ year project was doomed by an 8 year political cycle, 5 year budget cycle, and Billions in unanticipated expenses.

The irony was the fight about billion dollar overages in the process of shutting down the site, but of course by that point they were committed.


Despite my cynicism about ITER, and the politicization of science it represents to me, I would not like to see them go down this path; yet I see some of the same drama playing out. It is predictable, and unfortunate.

That said, I will watch with interest but not excitement to see what happens next.
billwcf
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Re: ITER back in jeopardy - again....

Post by billwcf »

Chris, Hi. I traveled to Waxahachie in the 90's, while it was being constructed, but never actually made it to the site. Do you think there is anything useful in those piles of equipment? Why do you think they have not sold the stuff? Thanks. -bill
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Re: ITER back in jeopardy - again....

Post by Chris Trent »

Bill.

SSC Equipment discussion continued in a new thread:

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=7623#p54304
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Doug Coulter
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Re: ITER back in jeopardy - again....

Post by Doug Coulter »

SSC wasn't canceled for purely political reasons -- actual common sense got involved.

It was becoming obvious that what they were proposing was stuff they just couldn't yet actually do, and looking at a big pot of money as a playtoy, rather than getting (or having) the technology in hand. There were some major failures in proof of concept work that involved pushing the dates well back (and thus more money). They just couldn't pull off all they proposed and it was obvious even to me -- and the failures were in key areas that had to be right to get a beam at all. For once, our pols did something almost right and re-purposed some of the bucks to CERN.

So if anything, the politics were such that it was starting to look like pure pork-barrel, not something that would push the USA to the fore in high energy physics.

If you really study all the CERN design papers (which I have) even that "lesser" tech is highly ambitious to anyone who has ever built large systems (I have). You need a lot of 9's reliability in all the pieces for something that complex to ever work all at once, as an exercise in raising .9... to various high powers will show anyone so inclined as to try it. Heck, even in our simple fusors you might have an exponent nearing two digits when all the subsystems are counted, and as anyone who really does it knows, it's hard to get it all right at the same time and have it stay that way.

Scale that way up!
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
DaveC
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Re: ITER back in jeopardy - again....

Post by DaveC »

RE: SSC -

AS I dimly recall, one big uncertaintly was with the SC magnets. Seems there were some major issues and LLL was involved.

The CERN initial power on "experience" brought that home again... although it seems their magnet thermal problems were more mundane.

Dave Cooper
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