Save Alcator C-Mod
Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2012 8:18 am
Hi all,
I'm a first-year grad student in MIT's physics department, and the experiment I work on, the Alcator C-Mod tokamak, is slated to be shut down in the President's FY 2013 budget proposal in an effort to increase funding for ITER, a tokamak in France: http://science.energy.gov/~/media/budge ... 13_FES.pdf
If you want to help, please go http://fusionfuture.org and please let your friends, faculty, etc know.
This is really bad for a variety of reasons.
1) From a scientific standpoint, C-Mod is the only existing tokamak that can reach the magnetic field strength to be used by ITER, and C-Mod has achieved a new operating mode (I modes for anyone who does plasma physics) which is being strongly considered for ITER operations. In other words, for ITER to be successful, ITER needs C-Mod to continue operating.
2) C-Mod is a primary training facility for fusion scientists; at any given time, there are 30 grad students working on C-Mod projects. A shutdown means that many of the people who would be eventually working on ITER would no longer be trained in fusion research in the first place. This means that the US will not see the benefits of the money it spent trying to fund ITER in the first place.
3) This decision by DOE was made without any input from the fusion community whatsoever. The fusion community is unanimously opposed to shutting down C-Mod.
4) In order to make appropriate contributions to ITER, the US will essentially have to shutdown the entire domestic fusion program in the next few years. In fact, this year every fusion and plasma facility is slated to take severe cuts. PPPL will have to lay off 100 staff scientists and DIII-D in San Diego around 30.
If you have questions, please see this reddit discussion (it's overly complete and the grad students who participated did an excellent job of answering questions): http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comm ... ar_fusion/
Again, if you want to help, please go http://fusionfuture.org and please let your friends, faculty, etc know. Thanks!
I'm a first-year grad student in MIT's physics department, and the experiment I work on, the Alcator C-Mod tokamak, is slated to be shut down in the President's FY 2013 budget proposal in an effort to increase funding for ITER, a tokamak in France: http://science.energy.gov/~/media/budge ... 13_FES.pdf
If you want to help, please go http://fusionfuture.org and please let your friends, faculty, etc know.
This is really bad for a variety of reasons.
1) From a scientific standpoint, C-Mod is the only existing tokamak that can reach the magnetic field strength to be used by ITER, and C-Mod has achieved a new operating mode (I modes for anyone who does plasma physics) which is being strongly considered for ITER operations. In other words, for ITER to be successful, ITER needs C-Mod to continue operating.
2) C-Mod is a primary training facility for fusion scientists; at any given time, there are 30 grad students working on C-Mod projects. A shutdown means that many of the people who would be eventually working on ITER would no longer be trained in fusion research in the first place. This means that the US will not see the benefits of the money it spent trying to fund ITER in the first place.
3) This decision by DOE was made without any input from the fusion community whatsoever. The fusion community is unanimously opposed to shutting down C-Mod.
4) In order to make appropriate contributions to ITER, the US will essentially have to shutdown the entire domestic fusion program in the next few years. In fact, this year every fusion and plasma facility is slated to take severe cuts. PPPL will have to lay off 100 staff scientists and DIII-D in San Diego around 30.
If you have questions, please see this reddit discussion (it's overly complete and the grad students who participated did an excellent job of answering questions): http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comm ... ar_fusion/
Again, if you want to help, please go http://fusionfuture.org and please let your friends, faculty, etc know. Thanks!