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ITER Needs More Time

Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2015 10:57 am
by Paul_Schatzkin
..... like, another 6 years (over and above whatever the original schedule was):

http://news.sciencemag.org/europe/2015/ ... er-planned

...not to mention countless billions over and above whatever the original budget was.

Richard is going to have to update his .sig file: "fusion is 20 years in the future +6..."

--PS

Re: ITER Needs More Time

Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2015 11:26 am
by Jeroen Vriesman
$15 billion would give us almost 4GW of solar power with today's technology.
with the investors actually making money in a few years.

If a fusion reactor design isn't completely stable and working on a small scale, then it is useless to create an enormous version of it which will definitely have way more problems than a small one. Yes the calculations show that it will produce energy, but the problems are materials, practical operation, neutrons everywhere, an unstable current-carrying plasma and last but not least: very unhappy bookkeepers (and every business man knows that an unhappy bookkeeper is the most ferocious monster you can image...)

Re: ITER Needs More Time

Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2015 2:02 pm
by Richard Hull
If ITER is ever completed and shows itself to be a forelorn hope boon-doggle and then fusion is tackled by a lucky donkey in an easy method further down the road, ITER will forever stand as a giant monument to scientific delusions carried to the nth degree.

Richard Hull

Re: ITER Needs More Time

Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2015 10:24 pm
by prestonbarrows
And this is why you don't put all your eggs in one basket.

It's unfortunate that ITER has been spun as an 'engineering' project to the public when really it is a big-science project more on par with the LHC. It's goals are simply to produce date and experiment with new plasma confinement/heating schemes on large scales, but it gets held to the standards of an engineering project which needs to turn a profit.

The leadership for whole project is sliding into a bureaucratic mess, but it dosen't help that their PR department makes the average citizen think the project will be 'solving the energy crisis' and putting power onto the grid in two or three years...

Re: ITER Needs More Time

Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2015 11:05 pm
by Paul_Schatzkin
prestonbarrows wrote:The leadership for whole project is sliding into a bureaucratic mess, but it dosen't help that their PR department makes the average citizen think the project will be 'solving the energy crisis' and putting power onto the grid in two or three years...
On that basis alone, the whole enterprise does fusion an unconscionable disservice. One of these days the public is going to realize how they're money is being spent (think "hundred-billion-dollar toilet seat) and the whole concept will be discredited.

--PS