
MIT at center of political power play over campus fusion reactor - ilamont
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2014/06/07/mit-used-lobbying-influence-restore-nuclear-fusion-dream-after-white-house-sought-stop-funding/T5Q9esYqbZsxIbXUpnEHFN/story.html
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jostmey
As an aspiring scientist and postdoctoral candidate, few things dishearten me
more than when political agendas creep into the scientific process. Research
is hard enough not having to worry about political competition. I fear the
mixing of science and politics could erode the objectivity of the community.

~~~
afarrell
Name me one field of human endeavor that is not impacted by the fact that
groups of humans need a process to decide which things to allocate resources
to. Name me one field of human endeavor which is not impacted by the fact that
this process is operated by humans and therefore occasionally exhibits
pettiness, favoritism, dysfunction and short-sightedness.

Name me one field of human endeavor without politics.

~~~
nitrogen
Name me one field of human endeavor that should be more removed from politics
than the search for fundamental knowledge about the workings of the universe.
"Is" does not imply "ought". We deserve better.

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rando289
> Name me one field of human endeavor

Tons of stuff. I'd rather politics axe "workings of the universe" than
vaccinations and disease control.

~~~
nitrogen
I'd rather fund _all_ of those things a thousand times over just by cutting a
small fraction of funding to the world's militaries.

~~~
rtpg
You seem to underestimate the cost of a lot of science (not to mention that
more money doesn't necessarily mean we'll get more results, maybe just the
same result duplicated).

The ISS is the most expensive structure ever built, after all.

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tobinfricke
The ISS is perhaps "the exception that proves the rule": its political value
is vastly greater than its scientific value.

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VLM
Apparently something useful is being produced, lots of research papers.

[http://www.psfc.mit.edu/research/alcator/pubs/index.htm](http://www.psfc.mit.edu/research/alcator/pubs/index.htm)

There is a sunk cost effect where it must cost a billion to build another, but
only a couple million to keep it running, so once you throw it out, you better
be sure you'll never find it useful again because another experiment would
have a capital cost of about a century of labor/maintenance cost. Something
that big and cool would seem quite capable of generating enough "stuff" to be
worthwhile.

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pdonis
I agree the reactor is useful and shouldn't simply be shut down; but the
capital cost could just as easily be recovered for the taxpayers by selling
the reactor to a private company that could focus on using the thing
productively instead of seeking government grants.

~~~
ufmace
I've gotta disagree with that. I'm all for private enterprise over government
control in general, but I don't believe that there are any private enterprises
capable of or willing to do the type of long-term engineering research that
we'll need to get a working fusion reactor. The article I linked upthread
quotes the MIT researchers as saying that we're about $80 billion in research
away from a fusion reactor that can put watts on the grid. What private
company in the world has ever invested that level of money on something not
likely to pay off for decades?

~~~
pdonis
_> I don't believe that there are any private enterprises capable of or
willing to do the type of long-term engineering research that we'll need to
get a working fusion reactor._

Considering that there are private companies willing to invest in a project to
mine asteroids, I think this is too pessimistic.

Also, you are implicitly assuming that governments are better at long time
horizon projects than private companies. I've gotta disagree with that. A
government's time horizon is the next election cycle. Yes, projects like MIT's
fusion reactor can continue to be funded for decades, but in order to keep
that funding coming, the people working on the project have to spend a
significant amount of time every year or two convincing the government that
the project is worth continuing to fund. We're only hearing about it now
because they weren't able to do that this time around.

A private company that is willing to make a long time horizon investment is
not going to have the same overhead required to keep the funding going, simply
because there are fewer masters to answer to.

~~~
Solarsail
Maybe I'm being pessimistic, but those companies will go bust before they get
any hardware off the ground. They won't want to spend $20 billion USD over a
quarter of a century before making a dime in revenue. SpaceDev wanted to do
that. Now they're a parts supplier.

(To be truly pessimistic...) Nor will NASA or any other governmental agency
ever make use of asteroid resources. That'd be too useful. Instead they'll
spend 400 years doing political stunts and in-space handshakes. In 400 years
time, we'll all have uploaded ourselves into The Cloud and gone exploring
simulated galaxies. The real moon will be empty, save for some smiley faces
carved in it from Earth with lasers.

(To address the actual topic at hand, I think long-term research isn't getting
done on either side.)

~~~
pdonis
_> but those companies will go bust before they get any hardware off the
ground. They won't want to spend $20 billion USD over a quarter of a century
before making a dime in revenue_

We'll see. The companies are being funded by people who have enough personal
wealth to do it without having to answer to public company shareholders or
directors; so they don't have to show revenue or profit the way a publicly
traded company would.

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kourt
MIT's next best use of its political power would be to bring Massachusetts
laws regarding innovation to parity with California's circa 1980.
Specifically, adopting the "Minnesota Model" employee IP protection, making
noncompete agreements unenforcable, and protecting moonlighting.

~~~
afarrell
We're are working on the noncompete thing:
[https://malegislature.gov/Bills/188/House/H1715/History](https://malegislature.gov/Bills/188/House/H1715/History)

~~~
dalek2point3
And backed by solid research by MIT academics:
[http://mitsloanexperts.mit.edu/matthew-marx-non-compete-
agre...](http://mitsloanexperts.mit.edu/matthew-marx-non-compete-agreements-
and-their-impact-on-employees/)

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ufmace
Here's a great old Slashdot post with lots of info about what they're doing
there:

[http://beta.slashdot.org/story/167399](http://beta.slashdot.org/story/167399)

I'm not sure exactly when it was published, since their new Beta thing hides
dates older than 2y ago, but it's great for showing why the MIT project, and
all of the other fusion projects, deserve to get a lot more money than they're
getting now.

~~~
DennisP
A note on Focus Fusion, mentioned in one of the questions: in 2012 they
published a paper in Physics of Plasmas, the leading fusion journal, showing
they'd reached the temperature and confinement time necessary for boron
fusion. Right now they're on the front page of Indiegogo (in the "trending
now" section, hit the right arrow) with a $200K campaign for the next piece of
equipment they need, a beryllium electrode that they think will improve the
plasma density.

~~~
rory096
[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/focus-fusion-
empowerthewo...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/focus-fusion-
empowertheworld--3)

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cjslep
I had the privilege of touring and getting to see the reactor directly for an
ANS student conference. Even without the politics about keeping the reactor
active, the way the graduate students use the reactor seems to already be
mired in bureaucracy. If I recall correctly, they have to wait on the order of
a year (or more) to get one full day with the reactor to conduct their
experiment.

I can only imagine how horrifying it is to have your thesis work mired in
these political struggles.

~~~
DennisP
I got to see it too, and got an informal tour by one of the grad students. He
showed us a steel tie about a meter long, and said they'd calculated that two
of them could hold down the Space Shuttle while it was trying to launch. To
hold the machine together while it operates, they need 38 of them.

It's not surprising they they have so much trouble getting time on the
machine. They barely have the funding to run it. During the budget problems
last year they went a whole year without running it at all.

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noname123
Tangential, but anyone ever been to Paradise the bar or Flour the cafe right
across the street from the nuclear power plant? Cool places to go but I've
always been afraid there because of the radiation exposure if there's a
meltdown.

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TheSpiceIsLife
You do realise nuclear power is safer than any other base-load generation
technology currently employed? Nuclear kills fewer people per kilowatt-hour
electricity generated than even roof-top solar, including the deaths from
Chernobyl and Fukushima. [1]

1\. [http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-
de...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-
price-always-paid/)

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mathattack
I'm a big fan of MIT, and consider it a national treasure.

My question - will this type of political play create enemies? I can't imagine
that the politicians who were overruled were happy, and they can make MIT pay
with 1000 small cuts.

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yeukhon
Is it truly mixing politics or rather about money? If the project is not
funded, many will be unemployed. To me, that's the center of the issue. People
want to keep their jobs.

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TheSpiceIsLife
How do you separate human endeavour from politics and money? They seem to be
inextricably. Or rather, they are one and the same thing and we use the terms
'politics', 'money', 'human endeavour', and whatever other terms are
fashionable in the social sciences this week, as a convenient way to
communicate about specific aspects of the human condition.

~~~
yeukhon
I don't disagree with you. In fact, I agree with you. My comment is directed
at the title of the article, suggesting this has something to do with
government and politics. But reading a few paragraphs the whole problem to me
is just people don't want to lose their jobs, which is part of reality. I
think the journalist who wrote the article is trying to make the money part
less, so no one gets hurt by people who are against mass public funding
program.

