jawfish

Fusion Power May Be Un-American
john posted in politics & culture, technologies on June 29th, 2005

Just a couple of days ago, I wrote an innocuous little piece on the US lack of support for science. Yesterday, an international consortium, mostly France and Japan, but with a 10% share from the US, announced the French site of a very long-term nuclear fusion power project, ITER. Fusion power is a long way off, and American teams have been working on it for years, but this still rings like another American failure to control our destiny. Even if it fails commercially, it will establish the city, and the universities which feed the project, as pre-eminent centers of research. Think of Cape Canaveral, and the so-called Space Coast. Like the space program ITER is sure to produce a spin-off of people and ideas for a long time to come.

Why would the richest country. with the largest science establishment, and the highest per-capita energy use, fail to be a center for something so economically important?

Is it because this experiment, for there is no guarantee of commercial success, is too expensive? It will cost as much as a couple of months of the Iraq war, but spread over decades instead of months.

Perhaps its ill-conceived and overly-bureaucratic, and an American project will be competitive?

Perhaps there are too many Euros and Japanese with funny accents?

Perhaps its not being run by Bechtel, Halliburton, or Chevron?

Perhaps no one connected with the project gave money during the last election cycle.

Much as I loathe the Republicans for their trailer-trash refusal to believe government can accomplish anything, I have to say Democrats are just as narrrow-minded here. They are terrified of promoting anything that furthers the economy. Yes, I am all for de-centralized sustainable energy, and massive energy conservation, but the only way we are going to keep a semblance of our lifestyle is through Big Power and the grid. Any projects which require big infrastructure, require Big Capital and Big Companies. I think it would be really cool to live off-grid, and someday I might be able, but 99% of everyone else will be on the grid. That’s just the way it is. Until the ill-advised deregulation in California, we had stable, profitable power companies, answerable to the public, with active research departments working on sustainable energy and conservation. Funny how our rates were lower too.

Then again, maybe worrying about American pre-eminence in research and business is muddle-headed. International financial markets and their remoras, the super-rich, are not beholden to any one country, not even the US or to the US dollar. Countries with the foresight to see to their energy needs will prosper, and the others will fade away. If it’s too expensive to smelt aluminum in Washington, or make steel from recycled cars in North Carolina, then those factories can always be moved elsewhere. We’ll just have to move with the healthy economy, won’t we? Oh. We aren’t allowed to move.