Re: For a good laugh from the University of Washington
Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2014 12:59 pm
I disagree with the condescension towards this paper. It is highly relevant and probes whether the experimental end-point for tokamak and its ilk is a scientific or a practical one.
I am all aboard with tokamak as an ongoing science project, but shudder when people suggest it is now 'an engineering project'.
I have questioned, and continue to do so, what the actual experimental objective of ITER is. It seems to serve no particular purpose and is a political hodgepodge without a true goal, which, consequently, will fail because of that alone.
As alluded to in other threads, and recent posts, there are known, viable routes forward for long term fission power (beyond slow reactors) that mankind should be pursuing. We should be fully powered by renewable and nuclear by now. I view it as a form of self-destruction of the human race that we are not there yet, and politics is to blame. (On a side note, I am sure this is why we have not observed other intelligent species in the Universe - because organised technological societies only last for a few hundred years before they naturally implode, politically. The control of unlimited and free power is both a magnificent danger but is simultaneously essential. It is a naturally unstable conundrum.)
I am all aboard with tokamak as an ongoing science project, but shudder when people suggest it is now 'an engineering project'.
I have questioned, and continue to do so, what the actual experimental objective of ITER is. It seems to serve no particular purpose and is a political hodgepodge without a true goal, which, consequently, will fail because of that alone.
As alluded to in other threads, and recent posts, there are known, viable routes forward for long term fission power (beyond slow reactors) that mankind should be pursuing. We should be fully powered by renewable and nuclear by now. I view it as a form of self-destruction of the human race that we are not there yet, and politics is to blame. (On a side note, I am sure this is why we have not observed other intelligent species in the Universe - because organised technological societies only last for a few hundred years before they naturally implode, politically. The control of unlimited and free power is both a magnificent danger but is simultaneously essential. It is a naturally unstable conundrum.)