The MIT Tech – Alcator C-Mod’s funding might be cut
The MIT Tech – Alcator C-Mod’s funding might be cut
By Austin Hess | 20 March 2012
Alcator C-Mod — MIT’s tokamak, a toroidal plasma confinement fusion device — is currently facing the possibility of getting all of its federal funding cut.
Housed in NW21, Alcator C-Mod has been in operation since 1992. It is one of the three major U.S. plasma fusion facilities and can produce the highest magnetic field and plasma pressure of any such device in the world. Nuclear fusion research aims to find ways in which a self-sustaining fusion reaction could provide a viable energy source.
President Obama’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2013, however, would cut all federal funding to Alcator C-Mod, which received $24 million from the Department of Energy in 2012, forcing the termination of the program. That amount, which currently constitutes almost the entire budget of the project, would be instead be used as part of the U.S.’s contribution to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a plasma fusion reactor currently under construction in France. ITER is an international collaboration expected to begin operating in 2019 and designed to be the first fusion reactor to have a net positive energy output.
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