Never heard of this lecture…. anyone with any thoughts on it? I imagine you mean this video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606

-cvj

If there is a non-zero probability of theft of plutonium then I would say there is some value.

Elliot

I’ll take that as an admission you couldn’t come up with any kind of rational counterargument.

Why? If a government is talking about licensing reactors in its own territory, why should this matter at all? Is it worried about the electric company building bombs? And have any civilian powerplants been used to make plutonium for bombs? All cases I’ve heard of have involved dedicated production reactors.

The point on Thorium is that there is no risk of weapons development. That alone would make it attractive.

Elliot

Uranium is plentiful, so there’s little point in doing so. This is also why breeder reactor research has dead-ended.

The ITER project will return untold benefits to human society and I do mean untold, since few will ever hear of them. How many new scientists will we get out of that twelve billion? How much of it will go to education? How many companies will prosper on the contracts awarded for ITER and what will those companies do with the new techniques and the experience they gain from working on the project.

Oh please! If we are going to be getting new scientists and putative spinoff technologies we might as well be getting them in fields that also yield useful results. ITER has little chance of leading to a reactor that would be economically competitive with the alternatives, including fission.

Even if they never attain a sustained reaction, humankind will be enriched by ITER and projects like it. ITER isn’t expected to be a commercially viable energy source, but the knowledge we get from working on it will bring us that much closer to that goal. We know fusion will produce energy and now that economics is forcing us to address our future energy needs, we will work out a process to make it work.

This is why people, like Friends of the Earth infuriate me. With all the urgent environmental problems society faces today, why do they oppose the spending on long term solutions for short term concerns. Unless we blow ourselves off the face of the earth, our population controls will do no more than slow growth. Many of you will live to see a population of nine to ten billion, but only if we have the energy to feed and shelter ourselves. Making sure that energy is there when and as we need it requires research now and that means money.

Many organizations say we must spend that money on short term fixes for current problems, but the problems we face are not just technological, they come from within. The greed of those who would exploit, persecute, and even kill others for personal gain. The politicians from the dark side who’ve made a business out of war, genocide, and terrorism. More money is never going to solve these issues, nor will it eliminate disease, pain, or suffering. That requires better humans and to accomplish that goal will take time, time we won’t get if we don’t address our energy needs. No one asks them to stop their efforts to make the world a better place, why do they try to block our attempts to do the same, people spend more on thier pets and personal grooming this year, than ITER ever will. Let the Friends of the Earth go after them and let science do what it has always done, keep us one step ahead of the disasters that our expanding population is is bringing down on us.

Indeed, we need the both/and discussion. As PitifulRed points out the $$ allocated for the project are about equal to the money spent in Iraq by the US in a month. Not exactly spare change, but after nearly four years of this debacle, spending funds to help the planet cope with the numerous threats to its life sustaining capabilities would seem highly reasonable. The environmental community is concerned with the transportation issues that surround the “flashy” envisioned benefits of the fusion reactors to remove the hazardous and toxic radioactive materials that are quickly accumulated in our world. Trains and trucks moving through towns and cities, carrying radioactive wastes are a major problem. We are even transporting some of those across the oceans, and the supposed oversight is underfunded and unmanned.

Therefore, we do need to support the development of the ITER, and all other alternative energy researches. We also need to lobby to restrict the desire on the part of large corporate entities to restart a vigorous coal burning energy economy. Unless intense scrubbing and sequestration of carbon is part of that measure–and certainly stopping the abusive, destructive, human-health destroying, mountain-top-removal mining of coal–we will only further contribute to our future generations sufferings.

That said I think that a variety of approaches, solar(including perhaps off planet), wind, deep water currents, biofuels(including perhaps some GMOs), along with an aggressive of conservation and reforestation will be required to 1) provide adequate energy for society 2) hopefully avoid the most serious consequences of climate change.

One interesting area is the enzyme RuBisCO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuBisCO which is the key enzyme in one phase of photosynthesis. It looks ripe for modification to be made more efficient or “moved” to a non-organic platform.

Elliot

-cvj

I am not an expert, but there seem to be reasonable concerns expressed about safety, etc, that have not been addressed since nobody has figured out how to make the technology work yet. So there is still a lot to do in realizing the technology before we can make the extraordinary claims of cleaner and safer… I use the word flashy only to reflect that image that is presented of fusion - a fantastic fix-all near-perfect solution to everything. Have a look at some fusion promoting websites for what I mean. The idea of fixing deep problems with a clever technology is seductive, and is one that people (especially in the USA) love to reach for… it is most often a mirage.

Gosh, I’d love it it we could fix all our problems in this way. But no….. putting all our eggs in one basket is insanity.

-cvj

And why exactly is fusion `flashy’? I might be misunderstanding you, but would you be happy if we did find it possible to take all of our power from fusion reactors? It sounds like you think that that kind of solution would fail to address a deeper problem.

(If all you mean is that we shouldn’t put all the eggs in one basket etc, I totally agree with you—but as I think we agree, the money currently spent on fusion research isn’t huge in the grand scheme of things.)