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This reactor is going out with a bang:
On Friday, Sept. 30, at 9:25 p.m. EDT, scientists and engineers at MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center made a leap forward in the pursuit of clean energy. The team set a new world record for plasma pressure in the Institute's Alcator C-Mod tokamak nuclear fusion reactor. Plasma pressure is the key ingredient to producing energy from nuclear fusion, and MIT's new result achieves over 2 atmospheres of pressure for the first time.
[...] During the 23 years Alcator C-Mod has been in operation at MIT, it has repeatedly advanced the record for plasma pressure in a magnetic confinement device. The previous record of 1.77 atmospheres was set in 2005 (also at Alcator C-Mod). While setting the new record of 2.05 atmospheres, a 15 percent improvement, the temperature inside Alcator C-Mod reached over 35 million degrees Celsius, or approximately twice as hot as the center of the sun. The plasma produced 300 trillion fusion reactions per second and had a central magnetic field strength of 5.7 tesla. It carried 1.4 million amps of electrical current and was heated with over 4 million watts of power. The reaction occurred in a volume of approximately 1 cubic meter (not much larger than a coat closet) and the plasma lasted for two full seconds.
[...] While Alcator C-Mod's contributions to the advancement of fusion energy have been significant, it is a science research facility. In 2012 the DOE decided to cease funding to Alcator due to budget pressures from the construction of ITER. Following that decision, the U.S. Congress restored funding to Alcator C-Mod for a three-year period, which ended on Sept. 30. [...] Scientists, students, and faculty from the Alcator C-Mod team will discuss fusion, the pressure record, Alcator C-Mod, and the high-field approach at an Ask Me Anything Session on Reddit on Thursday, Oct. 20, at 1 p.m. EDT.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21 2016, @12:07PM
Yours is one of those posts that reveals something about the author rather than the nominal topic. You see some sort of venal carelessness when in fact the people involved knew they had a timeline, they knew they had 3 years, so they scheduled their work to make the most of what was available to them. If they had scheduled a run a month after the funding expired that would have been stupid.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21 2016, @12:55PM
What's worse, is that if there was no result and the story said that nothing was achieved, he would not have opined that the time limit provided to then was not enough to achieve something good and justify further funding. He would have instead said it was a waste of taxpayer resources, without taking a moment to count the progress made within the limits such research was constrained.
Some people just want to climb into a Norman Rockwell painting and stay there. In the places where those are hung, it's accepted that challenges exist and sometimes successes are to be had, and sometimes resources are cut prior to accomplishing anything good.
Much research falls into one of two categories:
We need more funding, but look at this big list of things we tried that doesn't give us what we want!
and
Wow that wasn't what we expected, let's see what that result means
Those "Eureka!" moment's often come when the scientist is in the shower...and not on the taxpayer's dime (unless it's a public bath, of course).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 21 2016, @02:01PM
He would have instead said it was a waste of taxpayer resources, without taking a moment to count the progress made within the limits such research was constrained.
Because a positive or negative result would have been equally relevant to his interests.
Those "Eureka!" moment's often come when the scientist is in the shower...and not on the taxpayer's dime (unless it's a public bath, of course).
I saw that movie!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by gnuman on Saturday October 22 2016, @02:06AM
Those "Eureka!" moment's often come when the scientist is in the shower...and not on the taxpayer's dime
Sorry, but that is bullshit.
There is no "Eureka" moments like you think they exist. Almost all science happens incrementally, small steps at a time. There is very few "giant leaps" and in almost all cases those only involve people working or studying in the field for significant amount of time.
If all you care is "taxpayer's dime", then that is all you ever hope of getting from it.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Saturday October 22 2016, @02:00PM
Er... you DO NOT schedule your work to occur right when funding ends, because that leaves absolutely no time for proper analysis, repetition, or investigation into your results.
You only schedule that late if nothing interesting has happened in your NORMAL schedule worth analysing, so you whack it up at the time to try to get more funding.