[ExI] Written for another list

[Stefano Vaj]

On 4 August 2012 22:09, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:

> I agree! Fusion, particularly Tokamak fusion is making fast breeder
> power look like a bargain, by a factor of 100 at least. Throwing good
> money after bad on ITER is not very sane. I reserve some judgement on
> inertial confinement/laser ignition, but it's probably not going to
> work out either (fusion must be a fertile breeder, too).
>

I may be "ideologically" biaised in favour of fusion, but how could it
*not* work?

I mean, the physics behind it is clear enough, we have large-scale examples
of working fusion before our eyes every time the sun rises, and it is hard
to see what could prevent a solution of the related engineering probs.

And, hey, a puny 10-billion dollars have been spent on the half-hearted,
never-meant-to-be-the-real-thing ITER experimental reactor by a consortium
of *a dozen* countries while the US alone spent some 80 times more for the
oil war in Iraq.

What is the worse bet in the mid-term? What could be achieved with a
Manhattan-project kind of push?

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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