5 ms·

This is way big of a project. There are so many promising approches, to put that much money into one very long very expensive mega project. An international co

by nickik 8y ago

This is way big of a project. There are so many promising approches, to put that much money into one very long very expensive mega project. An international competition with a wider array of technology and more iterative could have achived more. If you look how far some organisations get with tiny amounts of funding.

FrojoS 8y ago
Some goals require large resources. E.g. the moon landings.
- nickik 8y ago
  Some goals do but many projects with much less money have achieved impressive results in fusion with far, far less money. Fusion is very much an exploration of different methods and we focus 99% research on one approach.
chriswarbo 8y ago
Most research advances are either: - Small, incremental, predictable improvements, due to more accurate modelling, tighter tolerances, bigger budgets, etc. - Big breakthroughs, usually on shoestring budgets. The largest impact comes from the latter, but they're very rare and unpredictable. We might fund thousands of small projects over decades and see nothing particularly substantial. Big budget projects are riskier, since we can't fund many of them. Hence these tend to be the first type of project: where we can be quite confident on the capabilities and outcomes, so we'll see some improvement; even though it might not be as promising as the possibilities claimed by umpteen smaller projects. It's also easier for individual institutions, companies, countries, etc. to fund smaller projects themselves. There's no point wading through the politics required to pool resources into a large international collaboration, if we're just going to divide up those resources between a bunch of small projects anyway ;)
- nickik 8y ago
  > The largest impact comes from the latter, but they're very rare and unpredictable. We might fund thousands of small projects over decades and see nothing particularly substantial. But that is not the case in fusion. We had many advances in fusion by small companies. > here's no point wading through the politics required to pool resources into a large international collaboration, if we're just going to divide up those resources between a bunch of small projects anyway ;) I do understand the political problem. However still it could be collaboration for a contest, rather then organize this project as a multi country technical problem. And I would even be happy with just 3-5 projects that get many, many billions in the end. I mean lets be honest, if it costs $20 billion (and lets be honest it will be way more) to develop it will never be economical anyway. There are lots and lots of people who would be happy to get a couple million for some fusion projects. Others believe they could build a break even project with 10s millions. And we could reinforce projects that make rapid advancement. It would also create a large fusion industry with different companies going into 'supplier' mode and so on.
  - sgift 8y ago
    > And I would even be happy with just 3-5 projects that get many, many billions in the end. I mean lets be honest, if it costs $20 billion (and lets be honest it will be way more) to develop it will never be economical anyway. It's a science project. It doesn't have to be economical. It is there to establish the path to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMOnstration_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMOnstration_Power_Station > There are lots and lots of people who would be happy to get a couple million for some fusion projects. Others believe they could build a break even project with 10s millions. And we could reinforce projects that make rapid advancement. Many people believe many things. There's a reason we do ITER: It has the best chance to actually work, unlike all the "cheap" 'hey, I'm a genius, I can do it with far less money!' projects out there.
    - nickik 8y ago
      > It's a science project. It doesn't have to be economical. It is there to establish the path to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMOnstration_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMOnstration_Power_Station Its a wildly expensive science project that produces far less science and far more overhead and waste. And as we have already established, for such a long project it gets overtaken by technology. And the 'powerstation' will cost billions upon billions more and it will still not even be close to economical. > Many people believe many things. There's a reason we do ITER: It has the best chance to actually work, unlike all the "cheap" 'hey, I'm a genius, I can do it with far less money!' projects out there. By what definition of 'work'? They might manage to get break even if they throw enough money at it. But if you had said, any project that shows break even can get 1 billion. That would be an effective use of money. An I'm not saying any of these projects should get 20 billion because they think they are smarter. But how about getting 2 million and if you show impressive results you get 20 million and then maybe 200 million.
simias 8y ago
I'm tempted to agree with you that putting all that money into ITER when we're not even sure if that's the right way might seem like putting all your eggs in the same basket but at the same time I think it's a fallacy to consider this a zero-sum game. ITER already cost over 14 billion dollars which is a huge amount of money but almost negligible when compared to, say, the defense budget of the countries contributing to ITER. The Sochi winter olympics cost $51 billions. Or to compare to something more relevant, the amount of money "wasted" fighting the consequences of global warming is going to explode in the next decades, a few dozen billions are going to be cheap change compared to that. So I agree that we should probably pump more money into more projects when it comes to nuclear research but I don't think it means that we should take it from ITER.
- nickik 8y ago
  Well, of course in the overall 'waste of money' category, I would much rather have ITER then most other garbage governments waste money on. However, the fission budget is not gone grow, saying you would rather have less aircraft carriers is simply not gone work politically.
meschi 8y ago
Nobody is preventing the free market to do fusion research.
- nickik 8y ago
  Yeah. That is not actually true. Running something that produces nuclear waste for example already comes with a huge amount of regulatory issues. Fusion has less hurdles then fission, but its still incredibly difficult to do.

by nickik 8y ago

FrojoS 8y ago

Some goals require large resources. E.g. the moon landings.

nickik 8y ago
Some goals do but many projects with much less money have achieved impressive results in fusion with far, far less money. Fusion is very much an exploration of different methods and we focus 99% research on one approach.

chriswarbo 8y ago

Most research advances are either: - Small, incremental, predictable improvements, due to more accurate modelling, tighter tolerances, bigger budgets, etc. - Big breakthroughs, usually on shoestring budgets. The largest impact comes from the latter, but they're very rare and unpredictable. We might fund thousands of small projects over decades and see nothing particularly substantial. Big budget projects are riskier, since we can't fund many of them. Hence these tend to be the first type of project: where we can be quite confident on the capabilities and outcomes, so we'll see some improvement; even though it might not be as promising as the possibilities claimed by umpteen smaller projects. It's also easier for individual institutions, companies, countries, etc. to fund smaller projects themselves. There's no point wading through the politics required to pool resources into a large international collaboration, if we're just going to divide up those resources between a bunch of small projects anyway ;)

nickik 8y ago
> The largest impact comes from the latter, but they're very rare and unpredictable. We might fund thousands of small projects over decades and see nothing particularly substantial. But that is not the case in fusion. We had many advances in fusion by small companies. > here's no point wading through the politics required to pool resources into a large international collaboration, if we're just going to divide up those resources between a bunch of small projects anyway ;) I do understand the political problem. However still it could be collaboration for a contest, rather then organize this project as a multi country technical problem. And I would even be happy with just 3-5 projects that get many, many billions in the end. I mean lets be honest, if it costs $20 billion (and lets be honest it will be way more) to develop it will never be economical anyway. There are lots and lots of people who would be happy to get a couple million for some fusion projects. Others believe they could build a break even project with 10s millions. And we could reinforce projects that make rapid advancement. It would also create a large fusion industry with different companies going into 'supplier' mode and so on.
- sgift 8y ago
  > And I would even be happy with just 3-5 projects that get many, many billions in the end. I mean lets be honest, if it costs $20 billion (and lets be honest it will be way more) to develop it will never be economical anyway. It's a science project. It doesn't have to be economical. It is there to establish the path to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMOnstration_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMOnstration_Power_Station > There are lots and lots of people who would be happy to get a couple million for some fusion projects. Others believe they could build a break even project with 10s millions. And we could reinforce projects that make rapid advancement. Many people believe many things. There's a reason we do ITER: It has the best chance to actually work, unlike all the "cheap" 'hey, I'm a genius, I can do it with far less money!' projects out there.
  - nickik 8y ago
    > It's a science project. It doesn't have to be economical. It is there to establish the path to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMOnstration_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMOnstration_Power_Station Its a wildly expensive science project that produces far less science and far more overhead and waste. And as we have already established, for such a long project it gets overtaken by technology. And the 'powerstation' will cost billions upon billions more and it will still not even be close to economical. > Many people believe many things. There's a reason we do ITER: It has the best chance to actually work, unlike all the "cheap" 'hey, I'm a genius, I can do it with far less money!' projects out there. By what definition of 'work'? They might manage to get break even if they throw enough money at it. But if you had said, any project that shows break even can get 1 billion. That would be an effective use of money. An I'm not saying any of these projects should get 20 billion because they think they are smarter. But how about getting 2 million and if you show impressive results you get 20 million and then maybe 200 million.

simias 8y ago

I'm tempted to agree with you that putting all that money into ITER when we're not even sure if that's the right way might seem like putting all your eggs in the same basket but at the same time I think it's a fallacy to consider this a zero-sum game. ITER already cost over 14 billion dollars which is a huge amount of money but almost negligible when compared to, say, the defense budget of the countries contributing to ITER. The Sochi winter olympics cost $51 billions. Or to compare to something more relevant, the amount of money "wasted" fighting the consequences of global warming is going to explode in the next decades, a few dozen billions are going to be cheap change compared to that. So I agree that we should probably pump more money into more projects when it comes to nuclear research but I don't think it means that we should take it from ITER.

nickik 8y ago
Well, of course in the overall 'waste of money' category, I would much rather have ITER then most other garbage governments waste money on. However, the fission budget is not gone grow, saying you would rather have less aircraft carriers is simply not gone work politically.

meschi 8y ago

Nobody is preventing the free market to do fusion research.

nickik 8y ago
Yeah. That is not actually true. Running something that produces nuclear waste for example already comes with a huge amount of regulatory issues. Fusion has less hurdles then fission, but its still incredibly difficult to do.