I don’t know how many of you have seen this, but a group of Alcator C-Mod researchers have taken to Reddit to answer questions about fusion, in response to President Obama’s budget proposal that would shut down much of the United States’ public fusion research in exchange for increased funding of ITER. Their stated concern is that, without much of a domestic fusion program, the U.S. will lose its expertise in plasma physics and nuclear fusion research, and those interested in such subjects will either choose other fields, or will leave the country in search of greener pastures.
Naturally they favor the tokamak, and they have some pretty good talking points. For instance, they note that the fusion triple product of tokamak machines has grown faster than Moore’s Law since 1970. I found a graph that tells that story, although it ends with the year 2000 (or actually 1997 or 1998, as far as the triple product is concerned). They also note that the U.S. budget for solar photovoltaic research has been $700 million for the last three years, not counting subsidies, whereas fusion has been at $300 million for the past decade. The other thing I thought was interesting is that JET is planning a DT experiment in 2014 that is expected to achieve breakeven.
Regarding their attitude towards other fusion efforts, they seem to be pessimistic about IECs and Polywell, and especially negative towards NIF. In response to a question about Focus Fusion, however, one poster (who as far as I can tell is not one of the C-Mod researchers) posted a negative comment, citing Todd Rider’s thesis as evidence that aneutronic reactions would lose too much to Bremsstrahlung to ever be efficient, and also referring to the pulsed nature of the DPF as a disadvantage, but the C-Mod researchers seemed to be a bit more positive, pointing out the obstacles and drawbacks to the Focus Fusion approach, but generally accepting its feasibility. Anyway, I thought it was interesting. I haven’t read through all of the comments there, though, as there are now hundreds of them.
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