thingsarerosy - Slashdot User

Comment: Why the cuts? (Score 1) 5

by thingsarerosy on Thursday March 01, 2012 @04:15PM (#39213509) Attached to: President's budget slashes domestic fusion energy research

What do they hope to accomplish by cutting the domestic program in favor of sending money overseas? What are their reasons for doing this?

+ - President's budget slashes domestic fusion energy research-> 5

Submitted by

Sgs-Cruz

on Thursday March 01, 2012 @02:11PM

Sgs-Cruz writes "There is a huge problem with the Obama administration's budget request for fiscal 2013, announced a couple of weeks ago. Essentially, the government is trying to fund its share of the ITER construction (capital) budget out of the operating budget of the U.S. magnetic fusion energy research program, instead of increasing the funding to pay for ITER construction. One of the three tokamak facilities, Alcator C-Mod at MIT, is being closed entirely, and the other two are facing huge cuts and will have to lay off many staff. In a few years, this will swallow up the domestic fusion research program entirely. Given that magnetic fusion is one of the best hopes for abundant clean energy in the future, this seems very shortsighted on the part of the government. There is a letter-writing campaign under way to get Congress to reverse the cuts."
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