Senate Budgetmakers Move To End US Participation In ITER 225
Graculus (3653645) writes Budgetmakers in the U.S. Senate have moved to halt U.S. participation in ITER, the huge international fusion experiment now under construction in Cadarache, France, that aims to demonstrate that nuclear fusion could be a viable source of energy. Although the details are not available, Senate sources confirm a report by Physics Today that the Senate's version of the budget for the Department of Energy (DOE) for fiscal year 2015, which begins 1 October, would provide just $75 million for the United States' part of the project. That would be half of what the White House had requested and just enough to wind down U.S. involvement in ITER. According to this story from April, the U.S. share of the ITER budget has jumped to "$3.9 billion — roughly four times as much as originally estimated." (That's a pretty big chunk; compare it, say, to NASA's entire annual budget.)
Scientific research never got anyone anything (Score:5, Insightful)
Still I guess there are brown people that need killing, so something had to give.
Re:Scientific research never got anyone anything (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not even that. The military is getting their budget cut the same as every other government agency. A more accurate statement would be:
"Still, I guess there are budget hawks who need to get re-elected, so something had to give."
Re:Scientific research never got anyone anything (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not even that. The military is getting their budget cut the same as every other government agency. A more accurate statement would be:
"Still, I guess there are budget hawks who need to get re-elected, so something had to give."
Well that is not fair, the military's budget is so colossal that they should be cut at a much higher rate than everything else.
Threatened due to Ukraine peace talks (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Threatened due to Ukraine peace talks (Score:5, Informative)
It's unfair to cast the US in such a light. I have family in Ukraine. Russia is making a concerted effort to take over a portion of eastern Ukraine. During the ceasefire, 40 tanks were sent over the boarder. France and Germany are reticent to impose sanctions they've been talking about for months, because they want to see business as usual with Russia. Negotiating a ceasefires is the same thing as trying to coerce Ukraine into giving up territory. France is still selling several billion dollar warships even though there is so much interference into Ukraine. I know many Georgians and Ukrainians that are pretty frightened by their new sea power.
-- A message from a relative from a predominantly Russian speaking region of Ukraine :
In August 2008 I didn’t pay any attention to Russia’s invasion of Georgia. I was too busy with my work and personal life. It was too hard to figure out what happened and who was right and who was wrong. I was really far away from politics. Georgia, a country of 4.5 million, fought fiercely against Russia's overwhelming military might and came out of the battle missing 20% of its territory; the price they paid for an attempt to move toward a more democratic society and to make a step closer to the European Union. Russia put military bases on the invaded territories and never faced any sanctions.
After the conflict in Georgia, many experts and politicians said that Ukraine was going to be Russia's next victim. We, Ukrainians, laughed it off. Culturally wise, we were the closest nation to Russians. It simply could not happen! And here we go – six years after Russia's invasion of Georgia we are at the brink of a major war in our history. Russia mercilessly financed, trained and armed fighters in the East of Ukraine. It sent lots of fighters, tanks and heavy artillery across the border. Just today 30 more Russian tanks crossed the border and entered Ukraine. By estimates of our intelligence, Russia is currently training another 10,000 fighters to prepare them for the conflict in the East of Ukraine. Russia has already annexed Crimea.
I decided to review the situation in Georgia in more detail and looked through several documentaries about that war, and talked with our Georgian friend who paid a lot of attention to that situation (please see the links below; unfortunately I couldn't find the same documentaries with English subtitles). I realized that all the nightmares that we've been living through over the last couple of months, all the things that came to us as a shocking surprise - never ending lies of the Russian media and massive hostile propaganda, constant provocations, one-sided ceasefire constantly broken by pro-Russian and Russian fighters, cynical myths about fascists in Ukraine, a large percentage of Chechen mercenaries among "peaceful protesters", refugees, tortures of prisoners of war, kidnapping people, looting, etc. - all this was so unexpected to us, so unbelievable on our peaceful land, but Georgians lived through all of this SIX YEARS AGO during Russia's occupation! We just needed to pay attention. The pattern repeats itself but on a much larger scale.
If the world ignores this invasion and Russia doesn't face any meaningful, serious sanctions, the cycle will continue. Baltic countries will be next; or Central Asian countries; or Georgia and Moldova; or Poland; or Finland.
Please stand together with Ukraine against Russia's invasion! Please support sanctions against Russia!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:Scientific research never got anyone anything (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with the military budget is it never gets cut in sensible places. The people at the sharp-end get hit first, the VA gets hit, the bazillion-dollar do-everything weapon system nobody really needs or wants? Mysteriously continues.
You could cut the military budget by a bunch and get a better military by cutting out the inefficency and corruption.
Re:Scientific research never got anyone anything (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Scientific research never got anyone anything (Score:4, Informative)
The budget is driven by non-defense spending - entitlements - which consume nearly every dollar in Federal Revenue that DC receives.
When you say entitlement, it evokes a bunch of money-grubbing welfare queens who have more and more children to increase their federal benefit. The truth is that the largest portion of the budget (24%) is social security, which isn't a government handout - it is funded by working taxpayers who have paid into the system for their whole lives.
Things that might be considered entitlements, or uncompensated financial assistance to the unemployed, disabled, etc. make up only about 12% of the budget, not the 2/3 you disingenuously claim. Source: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=vi... [cbpp.org]
What I'm confused about is why it isn't an "entitlement" when we give massive cost-plus contracts to defense contractors with no requirement that they actually produce products that perform as promised (JSF, or any number of botched projects with no accountability). Or force our nation to give them handouts to build overpriced, technically inferior products (SLS) when free market competition offers far superior options (Commercial crew). The point isn't just that the military budget is massive (though it is), it's that much of the spending is propping up useless programs, developing technically complex boondoggles to fight enemies that don't exist. We're getting the worst of both worlds, the bureaucracy and inefficiency of government with the greed and short-sightedness of industry.
Re:Scientific research never got anyone anything (Score:4, Insightful)
The budget is driven by non-defense spending - entitlements - which consume nearly every dollar in Federal Revenue that DC receives.
When you say entitlement, it evokes a bunch of money-grubbing welfare queens who have more and more children to increase their federal benefit. The truth is that the largest portion of the budget (24%) is social security, which isn't a government handout - it is funded by working taxpayers who have paid into the system for their whole lives.
Actually, social security isn't what you think it is [cato.org]. You have no right to anything in the fund, and your deposits are simply another tax to provide a wealth transfer. The funds paid in - especially today - simply do not cover outgoing expenses [factcheck.org]. What you pay in today covers about 80% of the money for other people - and it's a dropping percentage.
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Re:Scientific research never got anyone anything (Score:5, Insightful)
>and in the process, suck up to barely-literate savages who hate us
I think you've got cause and effect a bit confused there - most of those people are barely literate and hate us *because* we've been mucking up their country for so long in our efforts to secure energy and access to ancient religious sites.
Re:Scientific research never got anyone anything (Score:5, Insightful)
To be explicit about this, the Middle East as it currently exists - its borders, the ruling parties, the dominant social groups - were basically set out by European powers after the First World War with no particular regard for the actual social and political situation on the ground. The past century of instability has pretty much revolved around those boundaries attempting to return themselves to something approaching an equilibrium, and our own dogged efforts to stop that from happening.
It's the Berlin Wall on a truly spectacular scale.
Re:Scientific research never got anyone anything (Score:4, Informative)
War in the region that eventually became Germany predated the Cold War by just as long, it doesn't mean it was a good idea to put down a wall and say "you people are now freedom-loving Westerners, and you people are now hard-core communists".
The specific example you give is exactly my point: Sunni-Shia tensions weren't resolved by forcing them both to live in the same country with one group explicitly emplaced as the leaders of the other, if they were then there wouldn't be an outright civil war on.
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If the Germans were a threat to the rest of the world it was a good idea to divide them.
Just like the Muslims. Give a few generations of working 18inch satellite dishes and see if the Sunni/Shia war doesn't settle down, along with the rest of their non-sense. (e.g. You drew picture of our child molester! You die!)
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My bad.
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Yeah, but we've made ourselves a really convenient target for them to enrage the masses at. Nazis, "commies", etc. were mostly people just like us, under the leadership of a different group of sociopaths, but look how worked up our leaders managed to get us at them. We were full into witchhunt mode and even had internment camps where we imprisoned over 100,000 American citizens for the crime of being of Japanese descent. Similar thing today with the terrorists - the folks on the ground are mostly just poor
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I think the weapon industry wants to avoid that at all costs.
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The declaration of strategic-economic war against Japan represented by the oil embargo led to the US getting involved in war. This led the Japanese navy to estimate that it had two years of fuel left. It should not be bewildering that a nation being being thus strangled might retaliate, and that retaliation could only take the form of shooting war.
The embargo was calculated to respond to Japanese action in its own region with which
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it was the OPPOSITE of isolationism which brought war to the US.
The United States was already effectively at war with Germany before the oil embargo against Japan. The US Navy had orders to sink German U-Boats on sight, we were giving weapons away to the British and Soviets (itself a violation of the obligations of a neutral country under international law), and were making plans for the manner in which we would wage open war against Germany once it broke out. Fire was traded between the US Navy and Kriegsmarine months before Pearl Harbor, in fact two American destroy
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There were a series of embargoes. The last one, in the summer of 1941, was the one Japan found intolerable.
It was a reaction to the Japanese occupation of southern Indochina. This had nothing to do with the war in China (unlike the earlier occupation of northern Indochina), but rather was a combined base and resource grab. It was essentially the first action of the Pacific War, rather than a late one in the China War. Had the Japanese not done that, they could have continued the China War until their
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Except everything we have now.
They're cutting funding because ITER's costs have spiraled out of control, and reviews of the project have shown that its management structure is fraught with problems. A few years ago, if you wanted to invest in fusion, ITER was the only project to invest in. Now there are dozens of other, far cheaper, better managed projects. We'll have to wait and see if they actually invest in any, but not investing in ITER isn't the downfall of fusion research by any stretch.
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Actually, much of the goals of ITER isn't so much to research fusion (as much of that was done in the earlier projects like the TFTR project @Princeton, similarly the like the attempts to make Thorium fission reactors like MSRE wasn't to research fission).
ITER is basically a big material science / engineering experiment to see if it is possible to build a plasma containment vessel that withstand the neutron flux and estimate how much it will be to decommission such a beast thing later (after it becomes tota
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Except everything we have now. Still I guess there are brown people that need killing, so something had to give.
We have very cheap energy in the US right now. Investing in even cheaper energy is not worthwhile. Why should we pay? Let those countries who have high energy bills now, pay the bill now. Otherwise the US is just subsidizing other countries.
Disappointing - Potential payoff is enormous... (Score:2)
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get shelved by politicians
Get shelved by Democrats, you mean. Ask Harry Reid (who sets the legislative agenda in the Senate) about his priorities, if he can articulate them in a complete, unmuddled sentence that doesn't include assertions about how his party has no rich donors, etc.
If this were the House, the tone of the comments here would be all about specifically named anti-science conservatives, not "politicians." Why aren't we naming the anti-science liberals behind this cut?
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Given the cost overruns and the fact the schedule has been already pushed out 20 years any sane person would question what is going on here.
I'm in favor of government funded R&D but this one stinks of gross mismanagement big time.
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You are arguing with an anonymous COWARD who won't even put his own identity on the line.
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Buys Republican politicians?
No, that would be Sheldon Adelson, another individual that "brave" Harry Reid won't say anything bad about.
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Disappointing to see such an important long term research project get shelved by politicians.
Politicians can only think short term. Most of them no further than the next sound-bite.
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long term
Well there's your problem. Spending on a long-term project is like throwing money into a black hole to politicians. It's bad enough if it won't pay off before the next election, but this very well might not pay off until after some of those old farts are dead! That's as worthless as a thing can possibly be to the short-sighted.
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Disappointing to see such an important long term research project get shelved by politicians.
Perhaps if they hadn't spent 40+ years promising that fusion would happen soon if we just kept throwing money at them, politicians wouldn't be so eager to stop throwing money at them.
Fusion has been twenty years away for as long as I remember.
Bad Comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
3.9 Billion is the total US contribution for a project that won't be turned on until 2020 at the earliest. The correct comparison is 0.15 billion this year for ITER to 18 billion this year for NASA.
Re:Bad Comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
$3.9 billion is chicken feed (Score:4, Interesting)
The US has just fined French bank BNP Paribas around $9 billion dollars for dealing with Sudan, Iran and Cuba.
The fine could pay for the US's ITER participation twice.
(It's not even too bad for the bank, $9 billion is about 16 months of profit).
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>"French" bank BNP Paribas ...
I wonder what the actual nationalities of the owners of such big companies are
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Well, it's a publicly traded stock so the answer is 'all of them'.
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You seem to forget that ITER is a 30 year project and you're only talking about 1-year budgets.
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75 m/year buys the US intellectual property rights to any technology which comes out of ITER.
That 75 m/year is literally the cost of the patents and technology which will be required for practical fusion power. It's the cost of getting US physicists and engineers experience and expertise with tokamak-based fusion technology.
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Sense fusion is a constant 20 years away all patents will have run before anything works anyhow.
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While I 100% agree that the people are getting fucked over and that our budget priorities are _completely_ out of whack (We spend more money destructively then constructively), but to call the Airport Theatre Security as an anal probefest is just a LITTLE out-of-context.
The problem is that people are apathetic, ergo they get what they deserve, sadly. :-(
Once people realize they are an extension of the government and demand 1. Accountability, and 2. Transparency of themselves AND the government then things
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You mistakenly (or disingenuously) left out that you only list 'discretionary' spending.
Mandatory spending - 2/3 of the budget - has bigger numbers:
Social Security -- $860 billion budgeted, and $852 billion was spent.
Medicare --$524 billion budgeted, $513 billion spent.
Medicaid --$304 billion budgeted, $308 billion spent.
Interest payments on national debt -- $223 billion budgeted and spent.
All other (mostly social programs like unemployment, etc.) -- $497 billion budgeted, $560 billion spent
Essentially, 'so
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You strike me as the kind of guy who stops paying the water bill before he stops paying for Netflix.
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You strike me as the kind of guy who has a 100k salary, commits to buying a house with payments of $10k a month and then tells his wife to "stop WASTING all our money buying a lottery ticket for $1" ...just because it's "mandatory" spending doesn't mean the promise was a wise one in the first place.
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The ability for the government to provide water, roads, infrastructure and schools that don't produce idiots is being utterly crippled by entitlements listed above as you can see adds up to the tune of 2 trillion.
The discretionary budget is the actual part of the government actually trying to govern and run things, the statutory part is generally people literally doing nothing productive and receiving money.
By the time you take out defense spending, the budget of the US government is laughably small for 300
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Depends on what you're looking at. In the short run, the discretionary spending is what's important when comparing budget numbers. In the long run, it's total spending.
There's also the complication that Social Security and Medicare are financed by a special tax specifically intended for them, which makes them not entirely comparable.
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"Social Security and Medicare are financed by a special tax specifically intended for them,"
Not anymore.
That money is treated like all other revenue. Its marked with "IOUs" , but the revenue generated is spent like its in the general fund these days.
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That's nice, now how about we take a bit from the 2/3's of the budget you failed to mention. You know the 2/3, the non-discretionary.
To come this far & then bow out? (Score:5, Insightful)
Little quibble: "According to this story from April, the U.S. share of the ITER budget has jumped to "$3.9 billion — roughly four times as much as originally estimated." (That's a pretty big chunk; compare it, say, to NASA's entire annual budget.) "
$3.9 billion is alot compared to NASA's annual budget (which is ~$17 billion) - but that $3.9 billion would be payed over more than a decade right? So for an apples to apples comparison its what the Administration was going to spend on ITER for this budget ($150 million) compared to NASA's budget (~$17 billion).
Sunken cost fallacy (Score:2)
Seems a little odd to have gone this far and then bow out.
Depends on what you believe the prospects of the project to be. If you think that ITER may result in some worthwhile advances at some point then you are right that it would be odd to bow out now. However if you are less sure then any money spent to this point is a sunk cost [wikipedia.org] and further investment would just be throwing good money after bad. The fallacy most people tend to make is "well I've spent so much already I have to see it through" which is not rational. The money has already been spent so the onl
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Rational investment analysis (Score:2)
You misunderstand what a sunken cost is and why it matters. How much we have already spent has NO bearing on whether we should continue to spend more. That money is gone and it isn't coming back. It doesn't matter AT ALL that the project isn't finished. All financing decisions are made for projects that haven't completed yet. It's not different if it is research or if it is manufacturing a product or digging for ore. The payoff for all of these activities is uncertain. Research is more uncertain than many other activities but the basic process of deciding whether to continue to invest in research is identical.
Almost all (rational) financing decisions for any project are made on a forward looking probabilistic basis. We estimate the cost and benefits of the project and we guess at the probability of success given what we know. If the project is a failure or probable failure based on *currently known* information, then you do not continue to spend on it. If the prospects are such that there remains a reasonable chance of success in the future then you continue to invest. In either case what happened in the past is irrelevant to the decision to continue to invest more.
Think of it a bit like playing a hand of poker. You do not have perfect information about what will happen so you bet based on what you know and the probabilities of a positive outcome. Your decision to stay in a hand should in no way be influenced by what you have already bet. If the odds are against you then it makes sense to get out and cut your loses. If the odds are in your favor then it makes sense to stay in the hand. Either way the information that determines how you play the hand isn't dependent on what you've already bet.
I'm an accountant with a degree in finance. Doing this sort of analysis is part of what I do for a living.
Can Someone Help Me With the Budget Math Here? (Score:2, Interesting)
Funding is 45% by the hosting member, the European Union, and the rest split between the non-hosting members – China, India, Japan, South Korea, the Russian Federation and the USA.
Okay 55/6 = 9 1/6 percent per country. So $3.9 billion is equivalent to roughly 9.17% of the project. That means that the the other five that are split are spending $3.9 billion as well? And that the EU is spending $19.1 billion? And the total cost now is $42.5 billion?
Or is the US getting fucked again? Because that always seems to happen with international efforts.
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I couldn't comment of the budget figures. But usually with international projects the project is required to spend the budget in-line with contributions it receives from it's members. So if the USA contributes 9 1/6 % of the budget, then the project has to buy 9 1/6 % of it's stuff from the USA. This usually adds a whole load of management overhead, along with making sure different stuff from different countries all works together. This, the delays, and that it is cutting edge science usually results in sp
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Hmm, total budget this year is ~$505 million.
US share is $75 million.
Which is closer to 15% of the budget than 9%.
Total ITER budget is projected to be ~$20.4 billion.
US share is $3.9 billion.
19% rather than 9%. I wonder who isn't paying their share, given that our projected total share is over twice what it should be, and even the REDUCED ($75 million this year) share is 50% more than our share is supposed to be.
As to whether the US is getting screwed as usual with international efforts, you can deci
Idiocracy is here. Now. Not in 500 years. (Score:4, Insightful)
As the 21st century began... human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest... the fastest reproduced in greater numbers than the rest... a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man... now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized... and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd... it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most... and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.
Some had high hopes that genetic engineering... would correct this trend in evolution.
But sadly, the greatest minds and resources... were focused on conquering hair loss and prolonging erections. Meanwhile, the population exploded, and intelligence continued to decline...
Private Joe Bauers, the definition of "average American", is selected by the Pentagon to be the guinea pig for a top-secret hibernation program. Forgotten, (he awakes 500 years in the future) he awakes in 2014. He discovers a society so incredibly dumbed-down that he's easily the most intelligent person alive.
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I've always considered Idiocracy a documentary. Now I just want a Kleenex style T-Shirt dispenser.
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It's the resources that are the problem. The minds are all in the right places.
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Doubtful. Read about Srinivasa Ramanujan - some random guy, in random back woods India, randomly gets a boot on math by Gauss, invents / discovers and creates his own notation for himself of all the math discovered since Gauss 1820-1830 to 1900 in his own notation and sends the basis for all super fast pi series (the latest being a improvement of Ramanujan's formula by the Chudnovsky brothers or some such).
Ramanujan dies of a cold in 1920 at the age of 32.
You telling me all the people in a world of 7 billio
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Well, except that population growth rate is declining, and has reached negative levels (excluding immigration, of course) for the USA, Europe, China, among other places.
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Not sure if you travel much. But please to pay a visit to South Africa, Pakistan or some other places like those and drive around a bit. Any place with high birth rates, and you'll see, just like in Idiocracy, smart educated caring people have less kids to do a better job raising them than the animal-humans in some of the third/fouth world places. The population growth rate has gone down, yes, but the population is still going up.
It is well documented the growth is largely in under and undeveloped countrie
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Except that intelligence appears to be increasing, although it may have stabilized by now. It's called the Flynn effect [wikipedia.org]. Also, the population explosion is ending, since getting people to current First World standards seems to change the fertility statistics to roughly maintain the population only.
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IQ != effective use of intelligence. Smart Germans worked for Hitler, smart people can be poor.
Not that I consider Steven Hawking all that useful, I do like this quote:
"I have no idea what my IQ is. People who boast about their IQ are losers."
The Science of Second-Guessing, Stephen Hawking
If you think there is enough to around to make a First World standard of living you are smoking the good stuff. I'm no Malthusian, but 7 billion people driving to work and taking a hot shower and eating steaks for dinner?
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If it works, they will just have the NSA steal it (Score:2)
In fact, the US can likely now steal any and all data it likes and does not need to participate in any international research efforts.
Electrostatic Inertial Confinement Fusion (Score:2)
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We should be pursuing the legacy of Robert Brusard
If you can't even be bothered to spell his name right...
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Yes, but it is not either or, we should be pursuing all types of potentially promising research and development towards nuclear fusion or even safer and more sustainable nuclear fusion. We should be spending ten or twenty Billion dollars per year and not just $150 million.
And we should actually be building up to industrial scale some of the more promising nuclear fission designs that we have now. Solar and Wind are not likely going to be able to account for even the majority of our energy needs so we ne
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The Navy-funded research is all out there in the journals. It's an active area, it's just not a very expensive one (which is one of its benefits) so it's not a political hot potato.
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We should be pursuing the legacy of Robert Brusard
No we shouldn't. We understand the physics of those devices very well. They will aren't an energy source period.
You may understand the physics of the devices very well; the problem is none of us understand the English you're trying to speak, so we just tune you out...
Is there any evidence that ITER (Score:2)
would succeed in anything less then 40 years?
That after their "success" nuclear fusion would be cheap, clean and easily reproducible?
This is the easy brute force approach to fusion. Cut funding and scientists will be forced to use other less brute force ways which could result in cleaner ways of fusion.
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I have a feeling if the story was about the current House of Representatives slashing ITER funding, we'd see a screed about "anti-science Republicans." However, since the Senate is led by Democrats...
That's more than a feeling, that's a fact.
Re:Democrats getting a pass here? (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a feeling if the story was about the current House of Representatives slashing ITER funding, we'd see a screed about "anti-science Republicans." However, since the Senate is led by Democrats...
That's more than a feeling, that's a fact.
So Lamar Alexander is a Democrat now? Really? Did you even bother to read the article before you opened your trap here? The fact is Republicans are anti-science unless that science is related to extraction of oil. You have failed misareabley to blame this on Democrats.
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The fact is Republicans are anti-science unless that science is related to extraction of oil. You have failed misareabley to blame this on Democrats.
Neil deGrasse Tyson disagrees with you [youtube.com]. But hey, he's just using facts and numbers and science and stuff...
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Has anyone ever explained to you that the Democrats in the Senate have the MAJORITY?
And has anyone bothered to mention that the Democrats in the Senate REMOVED the filibuster, so that the Republican MINORITY has ZERO power to control legislation?
Blaming a Republican for ANYTHING that gets out of the Senate is the height of idiocy, when the Democrats have set things up so that NOTHING can be done in the Senate without their approval. It doesn't take a single Republican
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Has anyone ever explained to you that the Democrats in the Senate have the MAJORITY?
And has anyone bothered to mention that the Democrats in the Senate REMOVED the filibuster, so that the Republican MINORITY has ZERO power to control legislation?
Blaming a Republican for ANYTHING that gets out of the Senate is the height of idiocy, when the Democrats have set things up so that NOTHING can be done in the Senate without their approval. It doesn't take a single Republican vote to get something passed in the Senate, but EVERY Republican voting AGAINST something can't stop it from being passed...
So, if we're talking about the US Senate, we're talking about things the Democrats want to do....
They removed the filibuster of appointed judges. That is all. You are so blinded by Fox News that you think that removal of that filibuster for a specific purpose applies to everything in the Senate. Please do your low information self a favor and turn of Fox News. Geez.
Re:Democrats getting a pass here? (Score:4, Informative)
s the subcommittee followed through on that threat, even a senator from a state directly involved in the U.S. ITER project spoke in favor of ending it. U.S. ITER has its headquarters at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Nevertheless, at a 17 June hearing on the budget bill covering DOE, Senator Lamar Alexander (R–TN), the ranking member on the Energy and Water Subcommittee, said that ITER hasn’t shown the progress it should. "We’ve withdrawn funding for the program," he said, and "that saves taxpayers $75 million this year, and at least $3.9 billion, and potentially $6.5 billion, over the life of the project.”
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Take a look at the article, the only person it actually mentions specifically as trying to do this is a republican.
Except for the actual specific mention of the Subcommittee chair, who is a Democrat.
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D–CA), the chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, warned at a 9 April subcommittee hearing that the U.S. program could be in jeopardy. "This may be an opportunity to experience the power of the purse," she said.
Alexander's quote is just a statement of fact, it sounds pretty neutral to me - especially compared to Feinstein's.
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And last month, the Government Accountability Office found that, thanks to the lack of a credible schedule for the project as a whole, even those estimates are not reliable. Given the situation, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D–CA), the chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, warned at a 9 April subcommittee hearing that the U.S. program could be in jeopardy. "This may be an opportunity to experience the power of the purse," she said.
The bold gives the statement needed context and shows that she does not necessarily want to shut it down, and it does not even show that she is on board at this momement. And even still you will note that I mentioned her in my statement.
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Who else is on the subcommittee? Turns out it's 7 republicans and 4 democrats. While I can believe that the Rs may have dominated the vote, it's about as valid as assuming both sides agreed on the cut, since the quote from Senator Lamar Alexander specifies "We've withdrawn..." meaning it wasn't just his decision.
Really, though, you expect one single person is the only one ever asked to decide anything? Well, you might, but I don't think you should admit to it, if you do. But in case you do, perhaps you shou
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Oh, you don't have to go all the way to OPEC. The domestic oil industry is influential enough.
This is great news! If the oil industry is pressuring the US gov to wind down involvement in ITER, it probably means that they are beginning to be afraid it might actually yield promising results!
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Re:fusing relitivity to orders of magnitude (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure that for the cost of the Iraq wars, the US could have converted all their energy to renewable sources or developed practical fusion power, thus never having to go to war over oil again.
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I'm sure that for the cost of the Iraq wars, the US could have converted all their energy to renewable sources or developed practical fusion power, thus never having to go to war over oil again.
Pretty much though the benefits would probably have been even larger. Solar thermal is straightforward enough and close enough to normal construction that it would have beee feasible.
Sure, the amount and the required HVDC distribution grid would have been of an unprecedented scale but it is more or less well understo
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Except that none of that would have happened with the money. The Iraq war was pretty much paid for by credit card, at least most of it was off the books.
Think back to the climate before 9-11, Congress and the Administration were waxing political about "surpluses as far as the eye can see". So they instituted the Bush tax cuts. You do recall those. They were brought up recently when Obama railed against them as tax cuts for the rich. Congress did too. Except when they had the chance to let them fade into pas
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I'm not debating that it wouldn't have happened: clearly it did not.
It's just that had the 3Tn (borrowed or otherwise) gone into local spending on energy rather than the war the benefits would have been immense.
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I was mostly referring to solar thermal, not photovoltaic. Photovoltaics are more efficient but the construction is rather higher tech which makes it more expensive to scale up production. It also solves the nighttime problem since apparently there's enough heat energy stored in the day to run it through the night as well.
As for HVDC, it's much less convenient on short to medium scales since you can't just work it as an infinite bus bar with synchronus machines, transformers and whatnot. You can't have mult
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We went to war to restart the Sunni/Sheia war. Before the Arabs make peace they will have pumped the last of their oil. Nelson Ha, Ha /Nelson
Of course with those types of motivations you can't say it out loud.
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I haven't found anybody who knows why the US went to war.
It wasn't because of WMDs, because the administration pushed really hard to make people believe in the WMDs that the UN couldn't find then and that we couldn't find when we invaded.
It wasn't because of oil, because in that case we'd have put more pressure on the new Iraqi puppet government to sell oil to us on favorable terms.
It wasn't because of al-Qaida, because the administration had people who know perfectly well that Osama and Saddam hated
Prove that it is a boondoggle (Score:2)
I do hope that the congress critters redirect at least some of the funds towards US based non-tokamak alternatives which have struggled to get funding in light of the giant sucking sound that is ITER.
Which "alternatives" are worthy of greater funding? (credible alternatives mind you) I think fusion research is hugely important but its unclear to me what worthy research is being starved of funds by ITER. If an idea has real merit it typically doesn't have too much difficulty getting funded so I find it surprising that you think there is some worthwhile project that would obviously work if only it had more money. That's the sales pitch a scam usually makes.
Assume that the remaining members of ITER are successful before they are bled dry. Do you honestly think that any commercial venture will exclude customers in non-ITER countries?
Customers? No. But being a customer isn't wh
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There will be no premiums to be paid (by any nations) for ITER technology.
All basic patents will have run before the prototype can possibly be complete. Two people can keep a secret, if one of them is dead.
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You are confused/uninformed. ITER is plain old conventional tokamak style hot fusion. This has nothing whatever to do with cold fusion.
Gipperphone (Score:2)
Nope. It started when Reagan was Prez.
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Just how much licensing is there for a technology that takes 2x the patent duration to construct a prototype?