Absolutely.

First off - it is not a given that "the work at hand" even needs to be done. The fact that corporations and other power brokers want these agreements does not mean that they are "needed" by citizens of the affected nations at large, or the world in general.

Second - the need to publicly defend proposals is a good thing, not a "distraction". Every stake-holder should have the ability to see and comment on the draft as it is developed. But only select government "representatives" and corporations are allowed to see them now. By far the largest group of stake-holders, the citizenry is shut out entirely. With public visibility bad proposals would be unlikely to even get on the table in the first place, which might even save time.

No there aren't. Not one.

The only one hoping to reach Q=1 (scientific breakeven) is the small Tokamak in the UK called JET which may reach this point this year (or next). But this is simply validating the ITER approach which as you know is a decade or more off, and won't produce any electricity. For a viable power plant we must have Q > 20, ITER will only achieve Q=5 is everything goes right.

The tritium breeding problem is much worse than this - it is the true Achilles heel of fusion energy research. We don't have good reason to think that the required fusion tritium breeding cycle is even feasible, and even if it is the cost in a Tokamak type system at least makes fusion permanently cost prohibitive even if all that high tech fusion equipment is free! See "Fusion Power: Will It Ever Come?" by William E. Parkins in Science 10 March 2006 (it is a paid site, so no link).

The fundamental feasibility problem is that the tritium fusion process produces no excess neutrons. Of course there will be tritium losses in separation and refining, and parasitic neutron capture in the fusion reactor structure, so it is not clear how enough net tritium production can be achieved to keep the reactor running, much less produce an excess for more reactors. How about a neutron multiplier to compensate for losses, and create an excess? Multipliers do exist, although the best one happens to be, ummm, fission - but no one has ever demonstrated that a design is possible that can achieve "breeding break-even". This is an engineering challenge on the same scale as the ITER reactor itself.

Quoting the analysis by Parkins:

If we assume an average heat transfer rate of 0.3 MW/m2, the vessel wall and blanket-shield each must have an area of 2000 m2. To absorb the 14 MeV neutrons and to shield against the radiation produced requires a blanket-shield thickness of 1.7 m of expensive materials. This is a volume of 3400 m3, which, at an average density of about 3 g/cm3, would weigh 10, 000 metric tons. A conservative cost would be $180/kg, for a total blanket-shield cost of $1.8 billion. This amounts to $1800/kWe of rated capacity—more than nuclear fission reactor plants cost today.

.

Further:

Scaling of the construction costs from the Bechtel estimates suggests a total plant cost on the order of $15 billion, or $15, 000/kWe of plant rating. At a plant factor of 0.8 and total annual charges of 17% against the capital investment, these capital charges alone would contribute 36 cents to the cost of generating each kilowatt hour. This is far outside the competitive price range.

Your post is inaccurate. The Naval Research Laboratory Plasma Physics Division is investigating magnetic confinement focus fusion, the very version referenced in TFA.

The Navy's cumulative funding over the last several years is about 50 times larger than this Kickstarter campaign target.

Not necessarily. We know of several associations of stars called "moving groups" (the Ursa Major/Big Dipper constellation is largely the core one such group) that have a common origin -- they have the same space velocity vector, and are the same age, and are still relatively close to together in space after hundreds of millions or even billions of years (the Zeta Herculis Moving Group appears to be the oldest known so far -- somewhat older than our own sun). The shared vector means that the stars in a cluster are not going to disperse very far, they will all orbit together in a (slowly growing) region of dispersion.

Source? According to Wikipedia Houston has a density of 3500 per square mile, almost three times the figure you assert. By the same source Japan has a population density of 860 per square mile, so a 4-1 ratio. This is lower than Taiwan, South Korea, Belgium, the Netherlands, India, Israel, and the (Associated Free State) of Puerto Rico, which - while well populated - are rarely referred to as being "cities".

Half the population of Japan lives in just 4 metropolitan areas, which are quite dense. So the average density outside of these four areas is only half that of the entire nation. One could argue that these 4 areas are Japan, but that is a different discussion.

Well, they tell us that there will be cake....

The article does mention one other problematic issue - it is this unsettled scientific question called "evolution". Seriously, read TFA.

Say what? All of the scientists/science teams studying this issue are independent parties testing the hypothesis - that's what science is and how it works. It is a process of continual repeatable testing of the hypothesis.

What is your concept of this "missing outside party"? A new "super science" that mysteriously needs to be created to address this one issue because, as you admit, it is politically inconvenient for Wyoming?

It isn't politics - it is economics.

Private enterprise if fully capable of building new nuclear power units in the U.S. if they want, the licenses are available, and the U.S. government still underwrites the insurance for the industry (a significant subsidy since it is a favor that other industries do not get). This has been true continuously for all of the last 35 years.

The reason none have been built is that the capital cost is very high, and the long pay-off time makes the investment unattractive compared to coal and natural gas. Also modern American business is allergic to investing to make profits in the distant future when profits can be made sooner in other ways.

It is a straight-up business decision by (short term) profit maximizing capitalism not to build them.

Or possibly, do you mean that politics should create mandates requiring they be built?

Such rich ore in thick veins is very rare - the uranium content of the ore was the highest in the world, 20-60% uranium, the average ore concentration current mined is around 1%, and many mines operate with ores containing a few tenths of a percent. Some Canadian mines have ore grades up to 20%, so there is a possibility it another might be found there.

We do know that similar reactors have existed in the past. The isotopic concentration of U-235 in natural samples exhibits an unusual variation in concentration over a range of about 0.008% (say, 0.7199% to 0.7207%). Other mid to heavy elements with multiple natural nuclides don't do this. The explanation would seem to be ancient nuclear reactors that have eroded away have created regional U-235 variations.

Unfortunately you overestimate the power and influence that investors, even very large investors, actually have these days

Consider executive compensation packages. Those packages are often a significant portion of the company's profits, and can remain enormous even when there are no profits at all. This is money being taken out of the pocket of shareholders. In theory those shareholders should be able to control corporate behavior in those periodic meetings where they get to vote their shares, and should thus be able to reign in these enormous levels of compensations that greatly exceed world standards, and historical U.S. standards. But voting on executive pay has only recently be mandated by law (before such votes were rarely taken) and they are non-binding - i.e. the board can ignore them entirely. The result - executive compensation packages, which have been at record levels for a couple of decades, continue to explode, breaking records year after year.

I think you are including unexploded cluster bombs in this count - which while not being actually landmines do function in effect like them.

There is a treaty to do just that: The Ottawa Treaty. 161 States are parties to the treaty, unfortunately hold-outs include a majority of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: the United States, Russia and China.

And of course a ban does nothing to remove those already in place.

Oops - editing era (accidental list deletion). That should read: "These could easily last more than a century, particularly in a dry climate like Somalia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Angola, Iran and Egypt (which happens to be the most heavily mined country)."