Reply To: Set up a holding company

[Rezwan]

JShell wrote: But even if clean energy R and D did get a boost, it isn’t necessarily that FF would get any of that money, if Ed Synakowski simply gave more $$ to the ITER/Tokamak project . . .isn’t Stephen Chu still sitting on some millions from the stimulus that he hasn’t spent yet?

As it is, you’re right. Extra money now would just get soaked up by Tokamaks and lasers. This is why a key step is to ask for a budget that shows/includes ICCs and advanced fuels (LPPX!) as a protected line item on the budget. And also why you need the ReNeW type docs to help them justify to their bosses that these other approaches are well thought out and deserving of $.

What if we just did a letter-writing campaign for Chu (or someone else) to allocate some extra millions that would go to *alternative* fusion research, outside of the current tokamak and lasers funding already being conducted?

I’m all for a letter writing campaign. Perhaps asking for it to be explicitly targeted to fusion alternatives might help. If you recall, the original ARPA-E grants were supposed to be for advanced, out of the box ideas – they fit the description of fusion alternatives and many ICC folk as well as LPPX applied – but ultimately nothing came of that and grants were awarded to more conservative ideas.

In any case, I’m heading up to DC tomorrow for the Fusion Power Associates meeting. Ed should be there as well as many others. This is a more focused gathering than the Chicago thing and hopefully I’ll get a better idea of why things are at this impasse. And also, a better idea of who would be the most useful people to target in a letter writing campaign. Who knows, maybe Ed will say, “well my hands are tied, but if you got x to feel the heat, then…”