
German scientists to conduct nuclear fusion experiment today - miiiiiike
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/03/nuclear-fusion-germany-scientists-experiment-angela-merkel
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antirez
"Merkel, who is a doctor of physics, is expected at Wednesday’s event, which
is happening in her constituency."

A nation lead by a leader that is both a women and a scientist. I would say
this is progress regardless of the experiment outcome.

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rb2k_
She's also the daughter of a priest, so we basically have all bases covered :)

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jawilson2
"A woman, a priest, a physicist, and chancellor walk into a bar..."

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leaveyou
The Guardian about ITER: "(...) is considered fairly easy to build but
extremely difficult to operate." If this is true, ITER is so failed.
Wikipedia: "Construction of the ITER Tokamak complex started in 2013[6] and
the building costs are now over US$14 billion as of June 2015, some 3 times
the original figure.[7] The facility is expected to finish its construction
phase in 2019 and will start commissioning the reactor that same year and
initiate plasma experiments in 2020". It's so easy to build, that is already 3
times more expensive. And it will be so hard to operate, that it will never
work.

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Retric
"35 countries"

That's the real issue, they could be building a toaster and it would be 3x
over budget.

PS: _The ITER project was formally agreed to and funded in 2006 with a cost
estimate of €10 billion ($12.8 billion) projecting the start of construction
in 2008 and completion a decade later_ So, it's not really massively over
budget _yet,_ they just decided to build something else.

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lispm
Well, the Wendelstein 7X experiment is mostly funded by Germany as an
investment into the east/north German science infrastructure. That makes it
easier to coordinate, but it's hard to finance such a project. A project,
which will have commercial use decades away, and whose commercialization would
need much larger funding...

We have actually enough financing needs in the German energy landscape
currently: dismantling the nuclear power legacy, find a safe storage for
radioactive materials and the research and development of the renewable energy
landscape - which is in the hundreds of billions of Euros over the next 35
years.

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michielr
Livestream is live here:
[http://www.mpg.de/9915939/wendelstein7x](http://www.mpg.de/9915939/wendelstein7x)

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davidiach
Is fusion something we could expect to become a real source of energy in say
the next 15-20 years? I assume just building a fusion reactor will take more
than a decade.

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rubidium
The running joke is that it's always been 15-20 years away. Since 1960.

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Retric
Nah, used to be 50-60 years ago, 20 years after that it was 40-50, then 20
years after that 30-40...

Honestly, we could have working devices today. Funding has just been less than
expected. Don't forget there was a ~30 year gap between JET and ITER.

PS: There was also initial talks for ITER to be a working power plant, but it
was significantly cheaper to downscale the device.

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lorenzhs
From what I understand it was the downscaling that politicians demanded to
reduce costs that caused most of the cost increase. Lots of design parameters
had to be changed as a result of it, new technologies developed to get things
to work on the smaller scale, etc. There was also a lot of mismanagement in
the beginning, with the Japanese management being completely new to the area
(the director general was Japan's former ambassador to Croatia). Later,
management was restructured several times and now people with experience in
plasma physics are in charge. Source: A retired nuclear fusion physicist who
was indirectly involved in ITER told me this.

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rorflcopter
That headline sounds like something from the beginning of a superhero movie

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dragonbonheur
If only that kind of money and research was put into properly exploiting the
nice big yellow fusion reactor that's already in the sky... No need to worry
about plasma abrasion of Tokamak walls and magnetic confinement if that
happened.

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lhopki01
Germany has spent the most on solar subsidies of any country. Don't make this
an exclusive situation. They can do both.

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dragonbonheur
Solar panels aren't the only way.

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the8472
Solar panels aren't the only renewable subsidized in germany.

