Domestic Fusion at Risk
MIT’s oldest newspaper, The Tech, did an overview of how President Obama’s budget request to Congress for fiscal year (FY) 2013 could stagnate domestic fusion prospects. If Obama’s FY 2013 is approved without change by Congress , it will lead to the shutting down of MIT’s Alcator C-Mod, a magnetic fusion device. It would also cut the budgets of the remaining two domestic magnetic fusion facilities in favor of the internationally funded ITER (International Thermonuclear Expansion Reactor). According to the article, these actions could be potentially devastating to domestic fusion:
“We must be training the next generation of fusion scientists and engineers, which requires domestic facilities to train them on, as well as maintaining our scientific lead as one of the great fusion powerhouses of the world, which requires our unique domestic facilities to perform the research, if we hope to be ‘building’ fusion power plants in the future rather than ‘buying’ them from China or Europe. Sacrificing the domestic program for ITER makes no sense,” says Hartwig [an MIT PhD student].
Supporters of the domestic fusion program foresee serious consequences if Congress decides to wind down Alcator C-Mod in FY 2013. Hartwig worries that MIT’s plasma physics group will disappear. Hartwig also echoes fusionfuture.org’s warning that “without an increase in funding, the domestic fusion program will be effectively eliminated to pay for ITER.”
To read the full article click here.
