{"id":10250,"date":"2021-11-18T11:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-18T16:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/?p=10250"},"modified":"2022-10-31T21:13:57","modified_gmt":"2022-11-01T02:13:57","slug":"how-to-spend-a-lot-of-money-on-a-problem-without-making-any-progress-in-solving-it-nuclear-fusion-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/2021\/11\/how-to-spend-a-lot-of-money-on-a-problem-without-making-any-progress-in-solving-it-nuclear-fusion-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"How to spend a lot of money on a problem without making any progress in solving it, nuclear fusion edition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I\u2019ve been known on occasion to mock fusion for being eternally 25 years in the future, and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2021\/10\/11\/can-nuclear-fusion-put-the-brakes-on-climate-change\">this article<\/a>&nbsp;on the latest potential advances doesn\u2019t really help me assess how credible the people and approaches that star in it actually are. But there is some eyebrow-raising information in the background that gives some context to the long wait for the fusion dawn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In particular, a report from the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration in 1976 projected that if $9 billion per year was spent on research, practical fusion energy could be achieved by 1990. Reduce that to $1 billion per year, and the projection was \u201cFusion Never.&#8221; And guess what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>\u201c[$1 billion]\u2019s about what\u2019s been spent\u2026Pretty close to the maximum amount you could spend in order to never get there.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The current annual spending of US government on fusion research: $670 million. In contrast, the estimated annual cost of US fossil fuel subsidies is $650&nbsp;<strong>billion<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is, of course, no proof that $9 billion\/year would have actually moved working fusion\u2019s perpetually 25 years away horizon any closer. But opting for \u2018definitely not enough money to work\u2019 whilst demonstrating the ability to throw an order of magnitude more money elsewhere in the energy sector is, at best, poor strategic foresight. At worst, it looks a lot like what you\u2019d do if you wanted to make it look like you were pushing for an energy breakthrough without materially threatening the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With the incidental bonus of turning that potential breakthrough into a punchline. My scoffing suddenly feels a little hollow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[This post was collated from <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Allochthonous\/status\/1461367643038896135?s=20&amp;t=dKLOWJWIxxjjqVRGz8yWQg\">this Twitter thread<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve been known on occasion to mock fusion for being eternally 25 years in the future, and&nbsp;this article&nbsp;on the latest potential advances doesn\u2019t really help me assess how credible the people and approaches that star in it actually are. But &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/2021\/11\/how-to-spend-a-lot-of-money-on-a-problem-without-making-any-progress-in-solving-it-nuclear-fusion-edition\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[886,364],"tags":[887,888],"class_list":["post-10250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-crisis","category-society","tag-fusion","tag-perverse-incentives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10250"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10264,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10250\/revisions\/10264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}