June 4th, 2009
Fusion: confusion or refusin' ?
Courtesy: ITER, the fusion coalition.
Comspiracy freaks are gonna love this. The global consortium that’s been promising and planning and spending to get a fusion reactor up and running…well, they’re kinda re-thinking the project and scaling back, and maybe cutting way back…and, well, they may just not do nearly as much or move as quickly as anybody had promised.
Money problems. Feasability doubts. Money problems. Political queasiness.
Supposedly the machine would start running in 2018 with the first power-generating experiments to take place several years later.
Now it looks like the cost could double to $10 billion US, the project get trimmed down and the time for construction…? The members meet later this month to discuss the revised plans. Then they’ll meet in Japan this fall to approve, or not. members of the fusion council are the European Union (EU), Japan, South Korea, Russia, the United States, China and India.
Whatever does get built will be in France, where a big patch of land is waiting.
Fusion has long been a distant but theoretically bright hope for cheap, plentiful energy.
As of this monent, Wikipedia’s timeline on nuclear fusion still posits that construction will begin this year on the international reactor, ITER. NOT.
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A newsman since 1969, Harry Fuller has worked for CBS, ABC, CNBC Europe, CNET and was founding news director at TechTV. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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