Reply To: Set up a holding company

[Ivy Matt]

ITER has hit funding snags before, but I’m a bit concerned about the fallout should it hit a show-stopper. Possible headline: “The dream of fusion is over”. If that becomes the narrative, investors may find it more difficult to justify risking their money on alternative fusion projects.

I’m generally content with things as they are: civilian government funding for big projects like ITER and NIF, and for university research; military funding for skunkworks projects like Polywell; private funding for private alternative projects like LPPX and Tri Alpha. I’d like to see more private investors take up the slack from government funding for fusion projects, but that probably won’t happen until fusion becomes something more than interesting physics. Where is the AT&T Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, or IBM Almaden Research Center of the fusion world?