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The 5x F-35 is hyperbole. ITER is currently being funded and does account for about 80% of the current global fusion research budget. Fair enough, its results
by willis936 5y ago
The 5x F-35 is hyperbole. ITER is currently being funded and does account for about 80% of the current global fusion research budget. Fair enough, its results will be valuable. US pulling of funding throughout the Reagan era slowed progress by a few decades. We won't make up that lost time no matter how much money we spend. For now all the eggs are in the basket and we wait for the results.
MIT's HTS coil winding is the space to watch now imo. If it isn't all smoke and mirrors then we could see real test reactors for less money than ITER in our lifetime.
- leephillips 5y agoHaving less money might have increased progress. I tend to agree with my old boss, David Montgomery, that the eagerness to build big machines distracted the community from investigating the basic plasma physics and hydrodynamics that we needed to understand first.
- willis936 5y agoIt's not an eagerness to build big machines because they are fun, but out of necessity to push the experimental regime forward. Given constrained budgets theory has continued to thrive. Cutting edge turbulence models are being made by theoretical plasma physicists. This is a problem no other engineer wants to touch with a 10 foot pole yet has incredibly far-reaching implications for many engineering fields.