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This bill has a ton of what looks like awesome elements inside it, I encourage folks to peruse the summary to explore a little bit. One part that people here ma
by colincooke 4y ago
This bill has a ton of what looks like awesome elements inside it, I encourage folks to peruse the summary to explore a little bit. One part that people here may find exciting is the fusion research funding:
> Sec. 10105. Fusion Energy Research.
Subsection (a) amends section 307 of the Department of Energy Research and Innovation Act (42 U.S.C.
18645) by authorizing $50,000,000 per year for FY 2023 through FY 2027 for research and development
of fusion materials. It extends the authorization for inertial fusion research and development, alternative
and enabling concepts, and the milestone-based development program through FY 2027. It authorizes the
establishment of at least two national teams to develop conceptual designs and technology roadmaps for a
pilot fusion plant, and authorizes $35,000,000 for FY 2023; $50,000,000 for FY 2024; $65,000,000 for
FY 2025; $80,000,000 for FY 2026; and $80,000,000 for FY 2027 for these activities. It directs the
Secretary to establish a high-performance computation collaborative research program and an associated
innovation center in high-performance computing for fusion. It directs the construction of the Material
Plasma Exposure Experiment including $21,895,000 for FY 2023 and $3,800,000 for FY 2024 to carry
out the project. The subsection also authorizes an upgrade to the Matter in Extreme Conditions endstation
at the Linac Coherent Light Source.
- vlovich123 4y agoWhat I’d like is that the teams be rewarded with significant monetary renumeration if they achieve a milestone and curtail the subcontracting disease that permeates government purchasing.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> teams be rewarded with significant monetary renumeration if they achieve a milestone and curtail the subcontracting disease that permeates government purchasing This has a poor track record for basic research and complex technologies. The Ansari XPRIZE recipient’s SpaceShipOne is a prime example.
- modeless 4y agoDARPA Grand Challenges worked well. Created Velodyne Lidar and the team that became Waymo among others.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> DARPA Grand Challenges worked well Agreed. But the dollar amounts were small. And in many cases, every qualifying team received a grant.
- modeless 4y agoI believe most of the grant money was conditional on meeting significant intermediate milestones.
- idiotsecant 4y agoThese sorts of challenges work great for engineering problems where a little bit of money and a lot of sweat is all that is required to figure something out. Fusion research is not that- it needs very large equipment investments for decades for even the most trivial experiments. If we had tried to get to the moon with the same model we'd still be waiting!
- nimish 4y ago> engineering problems This is what is holding fusion from commercial viability. Give me a modern tokamak with 75 years of known dynamics, increase the size and magnetic field (i.e. bring high temp superconducting wires to market). At the very least you get something as a consolation prize that has real uses vs. decades of wacky research ideas that more than likely will go nowhere. IMO thinking of fusion as needing a "silver bullet" to viability is one of the major issues. Everyone wants the sexy new reactor concept, but nobody wants to be improving the boring donut design that's on the edge of practicality.
- r3012 4y ago
- r3012 4y agoI’m super happy to see these things, and some money is better than no money, but judging by how much my lab spends per year, $50M/yr isn’t going to get them very far. And we do consumer electronics.