There is no way a fusion reactor of any kind could create a disaster of that magnitude in a failure. Fusion reactors and reactions are totally different than their fission analogs.

Fusion is actually much like chemical combustion in its behavior, its just the fuels and their products are nuclear instead of molecular in energy-density. That also means it takes an very hot “spark plug” and high compression to both ignite and burn the fuels respectively.

You think a nuclear plant meltdown (now contained by modern safety measures) was a big deal back in the 80s?

Imagine what a fusion reaction gone bad could do (hint – create the sun on planet earth).

the great thing about renewables is you don’ t need a manhattan project. It is being done in a decentralized manner. As I said above, already Texas has plans for wind equivalent to 5% of US electricity production, and Cape Wind will probably (finally!) be approved. In five years utilities may well be financing PVs on their customers roofs, and a number of forward-thinking utilities, such as PG&E, are working on renewables. See for example http://tinyurl.com/yrp88g

Man I hope I am alive to see that……

Working with composite materials is still rather labor-intensive. If enough money could be poured into educating former auto workers, two years from now Michigan would be building countless blades, motors, and posts for wind turbines. There’s your Manhattan renewable project. I bet it won’t cost 35 bil to educate a few hundred thousand on how to lay glass and wind rotors. This will create a gigantic industry (think fiberglass and carbon-fiber factories, chemical plants, steel, wire, engineering, and so on) out of nowhere, perhaps even big enough to dwarf the automakers.

But then again, you need big american trucks to eat gas so that the oil companies can get cash and keep funding election campaigns, so the above nevergunnahappen.

“Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads…”

Cue DeLorean and music

As an environmentalist, the best I can dignify that with is a snort of derision. Last I checked, the Greens didn’t win anything, and the Democrats only look green because they’re standing next to the Republicans, who are black.

I think you need to readjust the centre of you personal political spectrum a little, because I think it tilts a bit too far to the right by default.

Exactly. That means the political and bureaucratic hoops, not to mention NIMBYism, simply aren’t an issue. Plus you don’t have to get sponsors from several agencies, corporations and/or levels of government; you just have to talk to EDF.

I’ve always been of the opinion that the US has too much government, but only because they’re so afraid of Federal power that they beef up the autonomy of state and municipal systems to an alarming degree.

However, endeavors like this with a bunch of scientists from these countries via government hand-holding produces Epic Fails in big science. Look at the ISS, throw a Camaro on space-cinder blocks in front of it and the orbiting double-wide motif is complete. For $100 billion, that is not very impressive.

Fusion power is a holy grail, and it gets even holier and more unobtainable when you look at the ideal fuel for fusion, which I believe is the very high temp proton + boron fusion reaction. With that reaction, you get three charged He-4 alphas, each with an energy of ~4 MeV or so, and no neutron side-reactions. Magnetically decelerate the alphas and recover the juice, and that’s the holy grail because you have a solid-state reactor apparatus for recovering the energy at some ~80% or better efficiency without turbines or like components.

Sounds awesome, ’till you look at the 300KeV temps it takes to run that reaction. The dead-center of a detonating thermonuclear secondary isn’t even close to that hot. But oh boy, if someone figured out how to crank cheap muons without a 100 MeV accelerator, we’d be in bidness with that reaction.

There’s other ideas for fusion in addition to ITER as well, such as superlaser-powered-implosion of tiny fuel pellets in an analog of the way a thermonuclear bomb works, they’re working on that at LLNL and the Brits are cooking up something called HiPER which may even be more promising. Also, electrostatic confinement concepts hang out around the fringe of the mainstream in this esoteric business. But a widget I built for a high -school science fair way back when (and it won, and scared the sh*t out of the organizing teacher when I told her it was RADIOACTIVE) is a “fusor.” Look up “Farnsworth Fusor” on the googlewebs to learn about maybe the coolest thing a high school kid can build for physics class, and it really produces real fusion. Absolutely neat little machines those fusors are, and they LOOK COOL when they are operating, like something out of Dr. Who.

However the dirty secret is that is the last thing that the environmental left wants. They do not want cheap gas, cheap electricity, access to more coal, and basically a growing economy and more people. As my wife once said to me, “When the economy is good, everyone is having babies.”

And to think that the party of environmentalism is just about in full control of the American government and their laws that they make us live under.

According to that same page the thing is projected to cost about $10 billion. Even if the costs balloon to something like $35 billion, and even if the reactor never worked correctly, I’d still think it a better investment of money than the domestic auto companies.

Even if the thing never worked I’d rather send $35 billion down a scientific research black hole then send the money to companies that have shown they are completely incompetent at what they do. At least the scientific research could produce useful information in the process. Giving the auto companies $35 billion will just lead to more CEOs getting rich and just delay them filing for bankruptcy (or asking for more money) by what, another 5 or 10 years, maybe?

Oh, and today 20% of our electricity is Nuclear and totally carbon free. By contrast renewables provide 6% of our electricity today. I’ll eat my hat if in 10 years from now renewables combined are contributing 20% of our electricity. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to see that happen, but without something akin to a renewable Manhattan Project its just not going to happen.

Wow, that took all of one second on Google to avoid sounding like an ignorant idiot.

heck Id even setle for a fleet of fast-breeder reactors

France has the world’s safest, most comprehensive commercial nuclear program. The American system is pretty balkanized by comparison.

However, if its equal to or less than everyone else then they is probably some other logical reason to have this thing in France.

I would wager it’s a political thing more than a financial thing. Besides, aren’t they really gung-ho for nuclear in France?

It does sound cool, but that doesn’t make it likely to happen in our lifetimes. They’ve been working on fusion for over half a century. It’s not going to happen in the time frame that would be critical for reducing carbon emissions soon enough to avoid hitting a climatological tipping point, and if/when it does happen, it is going to be extremely expensive.

Meanwhile, ten years from now, wind and solar will probably supply more power than nuclear. Texas alone will supply about 5% of current production in wind.

“My real issue is why is this being built in France? The US is providing some funding for this (along with many other countries), but why not push to have this built in the US?”

Then my question to you is how much is the US actually putting up? If it is the most, then you have an argument. However, if its equal to or less than everyone else then there is probably some other logical reason to have this thing in France.

The best part is that this is not some crazy way out there technology, fusion is possible, but still needs lots of work.

higher-power reactors such as the planned ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) now under construction in France,
My real issue is why is this being built in France? The US is providing some funding for this (along with many other countries), but why not push to have this built in the US? I’ll never forgive the democratic congress in the mid 90s for canceling the Superconducting Super Collider project. And ever since then it seems nobody in this country has the stomach for (admittedly risky) large scale scientific research projects.

Forget the bailouts, spend the $35 billion on basic scientific research towards new energy sources.