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Unfortunately fusion research is not something you can throw unlimited funds at and it would immediately be a reality. There are still hard unsolved problems an

Unfortunately fusion research is not something you can throw unlimited funds at and it would immediately be a reality. There are still hard unsolved problems and the amount people actually capable of solving them is limited and would not change significantly, if their work were better compensated. Something like Wendelstein 7-X took a decade of planning and building because they had to invent the manufacturing tools and construction methods as they went along, not because they had not enough money to finance the project.

DennisP 12y ago
Stellerators like the 7-X are the most complicated reactors to build of any design we have. Fusion has been severely limited by funding for a long time. Last year I read a history of the U.S. fusion program by Stephen O. Dean, one of the major figures involved. It was a sad, repeated story of scientific triumphs followed immediately by drastic budget cuts. In one case, we spent $372 million on a fusion reactor, completed it, then cancelled the program and dismantled it without running a single experiment. Right now most of our money is going to ITER. Alternate approaches are starved. MIT's levitated dipole was cancelled, UW's FRC was reduced to computational studies, etc. Even MIT's Alcator C-Mod, one of our leading tokamaks, keeps getting threatened with cancellation. It's got the strongest magnetic field and highest plasma pressure of any tokamak in the world, and a couple years ago made a pretty major breakthrough in tokamak physics (I-mode). If fusion had more copious funding, then certainly a lot more physics grad students would take up the field. It's not like plasma physics is uniquely difficult. http://www.amazon.com/Search-Ultimate-Energy-Source-Technology/dp/1461460360 http://www.amazon.com/Search-Ultimate-Energy-Source-Technolo... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_Fusion_Test_Facility http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_Fusion_Test_Facility

DennisP 12y ago

Stellerators like the 7-X are the most complicated reactors to build of any design we have. Fusion has been severely limited by funding for a long time. Last year I read a history of the U.S. fusion program by Stephen O. Dean, one of the major figures involved. It was a sad, repeated story of scientific triumphs followed immediately by drastic budget cuts. In one case, we spent $372 million on a fusion reactor, completed it, then cancelled the program and dismantled it without running a single experiment. Right now most of our money is going to ITER. Alternate approaches are starved. MIT's levitated dipole was cancelled, UW's FRC was reduced to computational studies, etc. Even MIT's Alcator C-Mod, one of our leading tokamaks, keeps getting threatened with cancellation. It's got the strongest magnetic field and highest plasma pressure of any tokamak in the world, and a couple years ago made a pretty major breakthrough in tokamak physics (I-mode). If fusion had more copious funding, then certainly a lot more physics grad students would take up the field. It's not like plasma physics is uniquely difficult. http://www.amazon.com/Search-Ultimate-Energy-Source-Technology/dp/1461460360 http://www.amazon.com/Search-Ultimate-Energy-Source-Technolo... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_Fusion_Test_Facility http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_Fusion_Test_Facility