MIT’s Alcator C-Mod

At a time of short-term thinking in Washington, it is even more important to step back and consider the long-term view in areas crucial to American competitiveness and national security. Nowhere is this more true than in energy research that offers, down the road, real options for U.S. energy security and the attendant strategic and economic benefits.

In Cambridge, Mass. fusion energy research at MIT faces budget headwinds at a time when dedicated facilities in China and Europe are gaining momentum behind their bigger and better funded efforts. Scientists are as competitive as any Wall Street trader or Congressman. The headwinds they face at MIT’s Alcator C-Mod facility keep getting stronger too as they work to further understanding of how this potentially revolutionary energy production can become something that in a few decades is a staple of power production.

One clear sign of faltering commitment in Washington to fusion research is evidenced by the MIT program not being able to take any new PhD’s because of a lack of funding. This occurs at a time when Chinese research is ramping up through partnerships with U.S. research facilities and their own development of a scientific research cadre whose growth rate outpaces that of the U.S. Less funding also means running the Alcator C-Mod reactor, capable of producing temperatures 50 times hotter than the sun, less often. That means fewer experiments and less data.

Alcator C-Mod’s control room

This illustrates a larger problem of, essentially, under-funding the future. At this moment in the global economy’s development and America’s own tentative recovery, the U.S. can’t afford to be short-sighted. Whether it is the Energy Department cutting funding to such advanced research programs or the Congressional appropriators who choke off energy-related research and development at critical points for political reasons, examples of this short-term view unfortunately abound. Decision makers who must make such calls need to be mindful that America’s dulling competitive edge comes not from a hammer blow but from careless and indifferent use of the fine instrument that is America’s scientific and research community.

Even if patience is in short supply right now in Washington, support should not be for initiatives that bolster America’s scientific and competitive edge.

Read more about ASP’s work on fusion here

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