The AM Forum

There is a fusion Tokamac (sp?) construction project underway.  This is designed to break even energy wise. Ifn you are interested just Google ITER and enjoy .... beefus

Hmmm, is that the MIT tokamak?

73,
Ellen - AF9J
B.S.N.E. - 1987 Univ. of WI

I'm sure that the MIT device was one of the first prototypes ... there was also some level of research at Oak Ridge ORNL that has been ongoing ... ITER (according to the press) is a feasonability demonstrator and is an international effort including Korea, Japan, China, France, others I can't recall and USA ... this is pretty serious stuff as a bunch of those countries would not throw money at 'blue sky' projects ...73 ...John

Chances are practical nuclear fusion will be developed elsewhere - in Japan, Europe or China.  The US hardly seems to be at the cutting edge of anything these days.

Don, I think your wrong..........  we are the world's leader in debt.


klc

ITER is going to be built in South France, near Cadarache and another earlier fusion experiment, TORUS SUPRA. A number of nations are involved, and there was competition for the siting, with USA, Japan and France as the finalists. The US office involved is at Oak Ridge National Lab in TN. Sadly, last year the US pulled out all funding, even after agreements were signed with the other partners. This left a big hole in funding, and it is doubtful that the United States can regain the confidence of the partners and play a major role anymore. This is my opinion, and, of course, money could change everything. However, we don't have any now to provide. These fusion machines have HUGE RF power amplifiers driving them. There are gyrotrons providing 20 GHz with multi megawatts for heating the plasma. And there are tetrodes (Eimac 4CM1500KG and Thales TH526) providing VHF power (80-120 Mhz, 4-15 MW typically) for ion cyclotron resonance heating. The goal is to someday produce enough power, to generate the AC or DC power tun these amplifiers, plus the magnetic confinement fields and cooling, and so on, while also providing power for the grid. So far these big machines can only blast away for a few minutes before having to stop. Its key down CW to the RF systems, but they have considerable time to rest and cool down between shots.

Actually, I do business with folks in China and have a person born in China on staff. They will tell you that the US is very big in R&D. Where we have fallen behind is in implementation of what we develop. Due to MANY reasons, not just cheap overseas costs, our manufacturing is almost gone so when we R&D an idea others develop it and then sell it back to us. 

all you need to do is eliminate all the get rich money skimmers who produce nothing.
Make it a long term investment only and see what this country can do.

The housing mess is the prime example when everyone left the stock market and bought up housing. Without flow skimmers couldn't make a buck. So subprime was invented to generate a lot of flow that could be skimmed.
Skimmers made out driving up prices by flipping everything. Loans were given to anyone to increase flow. Who cares the guys in the front end will buy everything back when prices crash cheaper than initial investment. (letting stock out)
And it wasn't a race thing as the sheep think. In the real world you post the real rules for everyone to follow. When banks held loans the only thing that mattered was can you make payments. You could be purple and if you could pay you could get money. If you didn't pass the rules you got nothing. No race card. Same bank rules applied to everyone. That was the law if I remember.
I wonder if anyone has noticed how screwed up this country has become since Wall Street has become a Casino