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ITER alone has absorbed about as much investment as the entire Manhattan project, in inflation adjusted terms. That’s just one project to produce a prototype re

by simonh 5y ago

ITER alone has absorbed about as much investment as the entire Manhattan project, in inflation adjusted terms. That’s just one project to produce a prototype reactor. Fusion has been very heavily funded, to lots of hype but very little evident progress. Sometimes throwing money at a problem just isn’t the answer.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
Every year $731B is spent on US military, $380 B on makeup, 10.7 B on NSA, and measly $4 B on ITER by the whole world combined, of which US contribution is ~10% In what world is this pathetic level of funding adequate, let alone heavy? Do you realise the cost of this reactor is roughly in the same ballpark with 'normal' nuclear reactors? You claim there has been little progress, do you know that fusion has advanced faster than Moore's law?
- leetcrew 5y ago
  you are comparing against the entire us military budget (which includes funding its own fusion research), an entire category of consumer spending (ie, money that the government can't spend to begin with), and an intelligence agency that employs tens of thousands of people. how are any of those valid comparisons against a single (albeit important) research project that may never bear fruit?
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    All these efforts are less important that global survival of organised civilisation, to which fusion research is key. Also what kind of argument is "an intelligence agency that employs tens of thousands of people"? Does headcount mean its okay to spend money on NSA and not ITER? Has NSA born more fruit than ITER has in some tangiable way, besides violating our privacy and freedom? You seem to be encouraging the largest possible and least efficient bureocracy.
    - leetcrew 5y ago
      > Also what kind of argument is "an intelligence agency that employs tens of thousands of people"? my point is that, however you may feel about the NSA, you are comparing the budget of an entire government agency to that of a single research project. ITER is (AFAIK) the largest fusion research project, but it isn't the entire field. furthermore, fusion is an important piece of the sustainable energy puzzle, but it seems an exaggeration to call it the singular key. I just don't see how this comparison makes sense. why not compare ITER against other research projects? I suspect it is because you know that $4 billion is already a huge budget for a single project, maybe not the largest ever, but among those. > You seem to be encouraging the largest possible and least efficient bureocracy. the only thing I am encouraging is a reasonable apples-to-apples comparison.
      - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
        Your yardstick is totally wrong - we know how much funding is needed, and we underinvest: https://amp.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/5gi9yh/fusion_is_always_50_years_away_for_a_reason/ https://amp.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/5gi9yh/fusion_i... The laws of physics have bo obligation to us to be 'researcheable' on a level of funding you deem sufficient. This should be priority number 1, it should be funding fusion on the same level as we fund the military and healthcare, not some second rate government agency, our future depends on it.
- simonh 5y ago
  I don’t know where you got $4bn for ITER from. The project itself estimates a cost of €18-22 by the time it’s completed, with some estimates well over double that in real terms. It’s also one of about 100 fusion reactors built since the 1950s. Comparing the budget for one area of research to entire defence budgets is frankly just giving up on reality.
est31 5y ago
The Manhattan project also was only the start of a long series of nuclear weapons experiments and research. In fact it's still continuing. CTBT doesn't ban computer simulations so many research institutions employ supercomputers.
njarboe 5y ago
Most people in fusion research consider ITER a huge waste of money and is slowing down progress toward a successful fusion powerplant. The fusion research budget of the US (and other countries?) is now mostly going to ITER with money spent mostly pouring concrete and building magnets, not discovering the new science needed to make an economically viable reactor. Maybe it is worth the money to have a large international project involving most the large world powers (China, European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, United States), but like the international space station, there is not going to be a lot of cutting edge science going on there. Especially since it is taking so long to build. On a brighter note, maybe in part due to the fact that ITER is such a boondoggle, there are now many small (and not so small) VC backed fusion projects being funding that are testing out a wide variety of fusion concepts. High temperature superconductors help and our understanding of how plasmas work and behave is still improving at a great clip. A carbon tax would really improve the economic case for developing fusion power (and fission power, while we are at it)
- simonh 5y ago
  Exactly, simply spending money doesn’t solve problems. The issues with fusion are not with funding but with fundamental research, but you can’t always spend your way to solutions in research either. The laws of physics can’t be bribed or influenced by financial incentives. I completely agree we need to continue fusion research, proportionately to the evidence for the specific lines of research. The fact is though, we are spending huge amounts on fusion and have done for many decades. As ITER shows simple increasing spending will almost certainly just mean wasting all or at least most of the extra money on dead end lines of investigation.
  - njarboe 5y ago
    My father is a long time plasma physicist researching fusion power. I have talked to him quite a bit about these issues. The research budget for fusion has long been, unfortunately, spent on a few large projects instead of many smaller that would have likely let progress toward controlled fusion power plants happen much more quickly. We probably could have had them in the 1990's or 2000's with good planning and $3-5 billion a year (2020 dollars) in funding from the 1970's, instead of the ~$500 million that was being spent. Very significant progress has been made though and understanding how plasmas work continue to improve. We probably understand the physics on how to build an economical fusion power plant (if there was a reasonable carbon tax), but there is a lot of complicated engineering problems that need to be figured out. Materials that can self heal under hight neutron bombardment being a major one. A Manhattan like project with the right focus, leader(s), and the ability to ignore bureaucratic red tape (radiation rules make developing anything that produces radioactivity almost impossible), might be able to do it in a similar time frame, but I don't know if the US's current culture would support it.

by simonh 5y ago

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

Every year $731B is spent on US military, $380 B on makeup, 10.7 B on NSA, and measly $4 B on ITER by the whole world combined, of which US contribution is ~10% In what world is this pathetic level of funding adequate, let alone heavy? Do you realise the cost of this reactor is roughly in the same ballpark with 'normal' nuclear reactors? You claim there has been little progress, do you know that fusion has advanced faster than Moore's law?

leetcrew 5y ago
you are comparing against the entire us military budget (which includes funding its own fusion research), an entire category of consumer spending (ie, money that the government can't spend to begin with), and an intelligence agency that employs tens of thousands of people. how are any of those valid comparisons against a single (albeit important) research project that may never bear fruit?
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  All these efforts are less important that global survival of organised civilisation, to which fusion research is key. Also what kind of argument is "an intelligence agency that employs tens of thousands of people"? Does headcount mean its okay to spend money on NSA and not ITER? Has NSA born more fruit than ITER has in some tangiable way, besides violating our privacy and freedom? You seem to be encouraging the largest possible and least efficient bureocracy.
  - leetcrew 5y ago
    > Also what kind of argument is "an intelligence agency that employs tens of thousands of people"? my point is that, however you may feel about the NSA, you are comparing the budget of an entire government agency to that of a single research project. ITER is (AFAIK) the largest fusion research project, but it isn't the entire field. furthermore, fusion is an important piece of the sustainable energy puzzle, but it seems an exaggeration to call it the singular key. I just don't see how this comparison makes sense. why not compare ITER against other research projects? I suspect it is because you know that $4 billion is already a huge budget for a single project, maybe not the largest ever, but among those. > You seem to be encouraging the largest possible and least efficient bureocracy. the only thing I am encouraging is a reasonable apples-to-apples comparison.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      Your yardstick is totally wrong - we know how much funding is needed, and we underinvest: https://amp.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/5gi9yh/fusion_is_always_50_years_away_for_a_reason/ https://amp.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/5gi9yh/fusion_i... The laws of physics have bo obligation to us to be 'researcheable' on a level of funding you deem sufficient. This should be priority number 1, it should be funding fusion on the same level as we fund the military and healthcare, not some second rate government agency, our future depends on it.
simonh 5y ago
I don’t know where you got $4bn for ITER from. The project itself estimates a cost of €18-22 by the time it’s completed, with some estimates well over double that in real terms. It’s also one of about 100 fusion reactors built since the 1950s. Comparing the budget for one area of research to entire defence budgets is frankly just giving up on reality.

est31 5y ago

The Manhattan project also was only the start of a long series of nuclear weapons experiments and research. In fact it's still continuing. CTBT doesn't ban computer simulations so many research institutions employ supercomputers.

njarboe 5y ago

Most people in fusion research consider ITER a huge waste of money and is slowing down progress toward a successful fusion powerplant. The fusion research budget of the US (and other countries?) is now mostly going to ITER with money spent mostly pouring concrete and building magnets, not discovering the new science needed to make an economically viable reactor. Maybe it is worth the money to have a large international project involving most the large world powers (China, European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, United States), but like the international space station, there is not going to be a lot of cutting edge science going on there. Especially since it is taking so long to build. On a brighter note, maybe in part due to the fact that ITER is such a boondoggle, there are now many small (and not so small) VC backed fusion projects being funding that are testing out a wide variety of fusion concepts. High temperature superconductors help and our understanding of how plasmas work and behave is still improving at a great clip. A carbon tax would really improve the economic case for developing fusion power (and fission power, while we are at it)

simonh 5y ago
Exactly, simply spending money doesn’t solve problems. The issues with fusion are not with funding but with fundamental research, but you can’t always spend your way to solutions in research either. The laws of physics can’t be bribed or influenced by financial incentives. I completely agree we need to continue fusion research, proportionately to the evidence for the specific lines of research. The fact is though, we are spending huge amounts on fusion and have done for many decades. As ITER shows simple increasing spending will almost certainly just mean wasting all or at least most of the extra money on dead end lines of investigation.
- njarboe 5y ago
  My father is a long time plasma physicist researching fusion power. I have talked to him quite a bit about these issues. The research budget for fusion has long been, unfortunately, spent on a few large projects instead of many smaller that would have likely let progress toward controlled fusion power plants happen much more quickly. We probably could have had them in the 1990's or 2000's with good planning and $3-5 billion a year (2020 dollars) in funding from the 1970's, instead of the ~$500 million that was being spent. Very significant progress has been made though and understanding how plasmas work continue to improve. We probably understand the physics on how to build an economical fusion power plant (if there was a reasonable carbon tax), but there is a lot of complicated engineering problems that need to be figured out. Materials that can self heal under hight neutron bombardment being a major one. A Manhattan like project with the right focus, leader(s), and the ability to ignore bureaucratic red tape (radiation rules make developing anything that produces radioactivity almost impossible), might be able to do it in a similar time frame, but I don't know if the US's current culture would support it.