PHB?

My point was: Q>1 is not an optimistic view on ITER. Q=infinity is.

And yes energetic breakeven has NOTHING to do with putting power to the grid. ITER simply hasn't got the means (turbines etc.) to convert the excess heat comming out of the reactor into electricity. So when you interpret breakeven 'as power (from the grid) in versus power (on the grid) out' ITER cannot archieve breakeven. Breakeven in the context of ITER can only be interpreted as Q=1. And that is NOT 'optimistically looking at ITER'.

Assuming that ITER and DEMO cannot overcome the instabilities is not an optimistic view either. Especially if you know that JET and other experimental reactors are succesfully managing these instabilities. That being said: ITER will investigate the instabilities and find out exactly when and were they occur so that they can be made absent in future designs like DEMO. ITER has plans to even create these instabilities on demand for the single purpose of studying the phenomenon. For that the walls of ITER are designed to withstand about 3 000 instabilities (or disruptions) and many parts of the vacuum chamber can be replaced for that purpose.

My last point was: why does anyone 'work on fusion' if he has such a limited confidence that the biggest experiment in the field will work. He states that he looks 'optimistically' at ITER and DEMO and then continues to assume that they will both fail. If ITER does not reach Q=10 it is officially a failure. Q=10 is their official target. If DEMO does not give reliable power due to disruptions it is a failure too. Since proving that fusion power can be done relibably and economically it the sole purpose of DEMO.

And yes ITER is an experiment. Its not a working prototype but it's not a research for fundamental science either. It can be best compared to Chicago Pile-1. The first fission reactor build at the university of Chicago. It too had no means to convert the excess power into electricity but it showed that controllable fission power was possible.

There is no indication that a fusion plant will be much more expensive to build than a fission plant (in fact it is an aim of the DEMO (successor of ITER)). But the wase handling is much cheaper since no high radioactive waste is produced.

So how you would archieve better prices per kW from a fission plant than a fusion plant is beyond me.

What you missed is this: ITER is planning on archieving Q=10 (10 more energy OUT than IN) in 2027. But a reactor that produces current on the grid (DEMO) for 2040.
Could we accelerate that? YES! If we increase funding massively this could be done much more quickly and we could have the first current in the grid by 2030 or so.

Good question! Head or tails??

That is NOT 'Optimistically looking'. The target of ITER is not break even but Q=10. That is: 10 times more energy out than in. For each 50 MW in you get 500 MW out. Of course they are hoping to get more (Q=100, Q=1000, all the way up to Q= infinity (i.e. the plasma sustains itself and only the confinement + the addition of fuel en removal of waste keeps the reaction going)).
So breakeven is NOT optimistic.

DEMO is then supposed to actually convert this excess heat into electricity. And 20 billion dollars is a lot of money but a fission reactor (I gather from a quick scan via google) costs somewere between 10 and 15 billion to build. So that's comparable. About the ELM's: of course the target of ITER is to overcome that issue and make the process reliable. If they cannot get that under control the reaction will stop and how would they archieve their target of Q=10?? Again you're not being optimistic at all.
Honestly if you think so badly about fusion why waste your time on it?

You have started off with the correct line of thinking: INVESTING. If you look at the ITER project it should be obvious that their prime concerns are not fundamental science things but rather engeneering things. They are building a reactor of which they are pretty sure it will deliver reliable fusion power.
So what is between them and commerical fusion reactors (currently foreseen for 2035)? Mainly money. So yes it's still 30 years away. And it has been for some time. Why? You said it yourself: INVESTING.

Unfortunately you are wrong. Lowering the speed limit has been shown to increase safety. And pointing to one or two specific situations where you think it decreases danger doesn't make a difference in this.

That being said: driverless cars could pave the way to faster and more reliable transport by car. And with faster I don't necessarily mean higher speeds. I mean: less stops and obstructions. If all cars are self driving it would be possible to create traffic management systems that route you in such a way that you practically don't neeed to stop for traffic lights or anything. It will make you evade places where traffic is dense and so on. In this way the avarage speed would be much higher.
And the biggest change will be: the actual speed at any moment in time will be of no concern to you or anybody else anymore. I're not driving! The only thing you care about is: when will I get there! The top speed of a car will probably not be shown on ads anymore. People will only care about the cost per km (or mile).

For me the impact of self driving cars on our daily life can hardly be understimated. Want another example? Car sharing. Currently it is not much in use. Why would you? Instead of having your own car on your driveway you need to fetch a car (with what??) and you have to put it back where it came from or you pay a premium price for having it droped off somewhere else...
With driverless cars the car will come to you. Since the cars drive themselves it's also easier to have them maintained (it drives to the maintenace center automatically), cleaned (drives to cleaning facility at the end of the day) etc. So you get the car that you need at that moment (big, small, truck, MPV) delivered to your doorstep exactly when you need it. And you let the car drop you off where you need to be (e.g. town center) without having to look (or pay) for a parking spot. Simple.
If you don't need a car often, then why would you still buy one??

Simple: A kWh is (here in belgium) approx. 6,5 eurocent. Let us count on 5 cents to be on the safe side (and for easier calculation)
Your 10 MW windmill would theoretically produce 10 MWh every hour ==> 10 000 kWh = 50 000 eurocent or 500 euro per hour.

How long does it take to get to 10 million? Simple: 10 mil/ 500 = 20 000 hour or about 1 000 days which is about 3 years.

Yes this is a very crude calculation but one that shows that there is nothing wrong with te business case for a 10 milj/10 MWh wind mill.

I generally agree with the post above. Just a few remarks:
* The post mentions that the benefit is "that you free yourself from the vendor". That is an illusion. You and the vendor are long term relationship. The contracts you make with the vendor should reflect that as should you attitude. In an atmosphere of distrust it is extremely rare to come to a win-win situation. Which is the goal you should be aiming for.
* For every function, application or adaptation you should reflect on the following:
            * Where does it belong? Is this part of the core functionality of the ERP or is this more a specific function, an add on?
            * Which approach (add it to the ERP or impelement it through an interface) is easier? (Sometimes 'adding' a function is nothing more than configuration..)
            * Which approach will most likely port well to the next version of the ERP?
            * Check that request does not violate the foudations of the ERP. Often an organisation has a different datastructure than the ERP internally. Trying to fight the system by extending and modifying is works counterproductive. In this case: think outside the box.

You're NOT a committee!

Well if you read the IPPC report you would find out that it's the oposite. It's not economical NOT to do anything about it.
The costs incurred by letting GW continue and fighting all the resulting changes are much higher than trying to minimize the impact as much as possible.

Really?
A. Introduction
B. Observed Changes in the Climate System
C. Drivers of Climate Change
D. Understanding the Climate System and its Recent Changes
E. Future Global and Regional Climate Change

Do you know what this is? Its the table of content of the IPPC WG1 fith report SPM which stands for 'Summary for Policy Makers'.
Want to hear more about the risks? Here is the table of content of the WG2 fifth SPM report:

A: Observed impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation in a complex and changing world
B: Future risks and opportunities for adaptation
C: Managing future risks and building resilience

Thses and more in depth reports that explain the underlying science are available at the IPPC site (www.ipcc.ch).

Either you decide that all this science is just crap (like many climate denialists seem to do) or you have to accept that global warming is a serious problem that is created by men for which the scientific comunity has provided huge amounts of evidence, warnings and pointers to possible causes of action.

As for the Cadillac: that may actually be a good idea ;-)

No.
Yes, I know science is a moving target. But certain things cannot be unexplained. Evolution e.g. is not a theory. If you look at fossile evidence collected over thousands of years that cover probably milions of lifeforms covering milions of years and you place them in time you see a pattern. This pattern is that it goes from a very few primiteve old species to more and more complex and a bigger number of more differentiated more 'modern' species.

This pattern cannot be undone. The explanation for it may evolve like it has. Darwin knew only the mechanism by which life evolved on a macroscopic level. Since then our knowlege of genetics have refined this view and has given us ways of exploiting this mechanism.

But even then the global statements of Darwin remain true.