ITER Fusion Project Struggles To Put the Pieces Together 138
ananyo writes "The world's largest scientific project is threatened with further delays, as agencies struggle to complete the design and sign contracts worth hundred of millions of euros with industrial partners. Sources familiar with the project warn that the complex system for buying ITER's many pieces could put the fusion reactor project even further behind schedule. Rather than providing cash, ITER's partners have pledged 'in kind' contributions of pieces of the machine. Magnets, instruments and reactor sections will arrive from around the world to be cobbled together at the central site in St-Paul-lès-Durance in southern France. Because no one body holds the purse strings, designs for the machine's components face a tortuous back-and-forth between the central ITER Organization and national 'domestic agencies', which ensure that local companies secure contracts for ITER's components. Managers say the project remains on schedule. But it would hardly be the first time that ITER had been delayed or faced budgetary difficulties."
Re:summaery cubed: fusion is a waste of time (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd like to fund an entirely solar and wind powered community.
By which I mean, build a town and surrounding farmland. Power it with nothing but solar and wind and whatever storage mechanism you can dream up, cost no object. Go hog wild.
Then power all of that off of renewables, and see if it's possible.
If it is, then calculate every Joule that they import, including the energy required to construct the place, and including the energy required to keep the people producing all those imports clothed, fed, housed and entertained.
And make Greentown export that energy from their, uh, "spare" capacity. Every single Joule of it.
Because I'm a civilised man, I'd suggest that we bail them out just before cannibalism sets in.