Fusion program at MIT is ending
Carolyn Johnson of The Boston Globe wrote about plans to shut down MIT’s Alcator C-Mod, one of three indispensable fusion facilities in the United States. Congress plans to reallocate fusion funding towards ITER, but without a significant increase in funding for fusion overall, more ITER funds will have to come out of the domestic program. From the article:
Miklos Porkolab, director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center where the project is housed, said that unless Congress decides to step in, 70 employees will be laid off, including physicists, technicians, engineers, and support staff. The shutdown will leave only two fusion experiments in the United States, one at Princeton University and the other at General Atomics, a company in San Diego.
Half of the workers have already received notice, Porkolab said. Most of the 20 doctoral students working on the Alcator C-Mod project will be able to complete their thesis work based on data they’ve already taken, but about five may need to switch projects. The effect of the shutdown will reverberate beyond MIT, which produces the most PhD scientists in the field of fusion and plasma research in the United States.
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