Free Republic

The ITER fusion reactor will fire up for the first time in December 2025, the €18-billion project’s governing council confirmed today. The date for “first plasma” is 5 years later than under the old schedule, and to get there the council is asking the project partners—China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States—to cough up an extra €4 billion ($4.5 billion). “It is expected, if there are no objections, that we can approve [the schedule] by November and then we can move forward,” says ITER director general Bernard Bigot. ITER aims to show that it...

The linchpin of California's climate change agenda, a program known as cap and trade, has become mired in legal, financial and political troubles that threaten to derail the state's plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The program has been a symbol of the state's leadership in the fight against global warming and a key source of funding, most notably for the high-speed rail project connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles. But the legality of cap and trade is being challenged in court by a business group, and questions are growing about whether state law allows it to operate past 2020....

Jerry Brown’s dream of constructing a high speed rail line connecting the Bay Area with Southern California suffered a major setback this week, but rest assured every effort is being made to spend enough money quickly enough to make pulling the plug seem unreasonable. Construction costs of the project have escalated so rapidly since the times state voters narrowly approved a bond issue that instead of constructing new tracks in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, the trains will share existing tracks with conventional freight and commuter trains, drastically increasing travel time, and making the trains half-fast at best. But...

The latest auction in California's cap-and-trade market for greenhouse gases fell sharply below expectations, as buyers purchased just 2% of the carbon credits whose sale funds a variety of state programs -- notably, the proposed high-speed rail project. The quarterly auction, conducted May 18 and announced Wednesday, will provide just $10 million for state programs, including $2.5 million for the bullet train. The rail authority had been expecting about $150 million. Whatever prompted the lack of buyers, the auction is a stark example of the uncertainty and risk of relying on actively-traded carbon credits to build the bullet train. The...

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System located near the California-Nevada border, burst into flames when some of the thousands of mirrors that focus sunlight on water towers became misalinged and started an electrical cable fire. The plant was built with a $1.6 billion taxpayer guaranteed loan and is run by a consortium of companies that include BrightSource Energy, NRG Energy and Google. Associated Press: Firefighters had to climb some 300 feet up a boiler tower at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in California after fire was reported on an upper level around 9:30 a.m., fire officials said. The plant...

General Dynamics Bath Iron Works delivered the first Zumwalt-class guided missile destroyer to the Navy on Friday, Naval Sea Systems Command announced. The delivery of the 16,000-ton Zumwalt (DDG-1000) optimized for stealth and operations close to shore follows last month’s successful acceptance trials of the ship overseen by the service’s Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV), Navy officials told USNI News. INSURV evaluated the ship’s hull, mechanical and engineering (HM&E) systems during the underway testing period last month. “Zumwalt’s crew has diligently trained for months in preparation of this day and they are ready and excited to take charge of...

High-speed rail is turning out to be a slow-speed proposition. The first segment of California’s first-in-the-nation bullet-train project, currently scheduled for completion in 2018, will not be done until the end of 2022, according to a contract revision the Obama administration quietly approved this morning. That initial 119-mile segment through the relatively flat and empty Central Valley was considered the easiest-to-build stretch of a planned $64 billion line, which is eventually supposed to zip passengers between San Francisco and Los Angeles in under three hours. So the four-year delay is sure to spark new doubts about whether the state’s—and perhaps...

BATH, Maine (AP) — The U.S. Navy is ready to take ownership of the Zumwalt, its largest and most technologically sophisticated destroyer. Sailors' uniforms and personal effects, supplies and spare parts are being moved aboard the 610-foot warship in anticipation of crew members taking on their new charge, said Capt. James Kirk, the destroyer's skipper. The Zumbalt is the first new class of warship built at Bath Iron Works since the Arleigh Burke slid into the Kennebec River in 1989. The shipyard is expected to turn the destroyer over to the Navy this week. "We've overcome lots of obstacles to...

Some of the smallest surface combatants in the U.S. Navy will be getting new missiles with "over the horizon" capabilities. The effort is part of a program to give the troubled Littoral Combat Ship program a major firepower boost. The Navy has announced that the USS Freedom, one of two types of the so-called Littoral Combat Ship, will be outfitted with the Norwegian-designed Naval Strike Missile. The missile will be ready for the Freedom's next deployment, whereupon it will be evaluated with an eye for fleet-wide adoption. The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program, originally designed to provide a multi-mission ship...

This is one of the best pictures of the new USS Zumwalt destroyer yet. width=1000> There she is on her second (very successful) US Navy acceptance trials and will soon be turnd over to the US Navy soon. They will put her through her paces for the next 18 or more months before commissioning in late 2017 or so. Beautiful and very powerful, modern vessel. The second will launch soon. See my Flickr Album on this Ship for much more information

The reconstruction of Sandy-battered Route 35 is soaking New Jersey taxpayers with tens of millions of dollars in cost overruns, an Asbury Park Press investigation reveals. The newspaper found that the project, announced by Gov. Chris Christie in 2013, is already $76 million over budget and a year behind schedule. The potential final cost of $341 million means that the 12.5-mile road construction in Ocean County will cost a jaw-dropping $27.3 million per mile — making it one of the most expensive road projects in the state. The Asbury Park Press, which called the project a “boondoggle,” found that the...

A reporter for Defense News is the first to spend time on the USS Zumwalt as it conducted builders trials off the coast of Maine. The 610 foot long, 16,000 ton stealth destroyer, the first of her class, is undergoing extra testing before delivery to the U.S. Navy. The Zumwalt's iconic slab-sided profile, in which no radar antennas, weapons or masts are visible, reduces the ship's radar cross-section. Although most recent U.S. Navy surface ships incorporate some level of stealth, Zumwalt is by far the stealthiest. This has meant some pretty dramatic departures in warship design, which veteran reporter Christopher...

The future guided-missile destroyer USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000) returned from Atlantic Ocean on Thursday after completing its second round of sea trials off the coast of Maine.

California regulators may force a massive solar thermal power plant in the Mojave Desert to shut down after years of under-producing electricity — not to mention the plant was blinding pilots flying over the area and incinerating birds. The Ivanpah solar plant could be shut down if state regulators don’t give it more time to meet electricity production promises it made as part of its power purchase agreements with utilities, according to The Wall Street Journal. Ivanpah, which got a $1.6 billion loan guarantee from the Obama administration, only produced a fraction of the power state regulators expected it would....

The California bullet train project violates state law because it is not financially viable, will operate slower than promised and has compromised its design by using existing shared tracks in the Bay Area, attorneys for Kings County and two Central Valley farmers argued Thursday in Sacramento County Superior Court. The lawsuit asserts that the state's plans for the Los Angeles to San Francisco high-speed rail link violate restrictions placed on the project under the $9-billion bond act that voters approved in 2008.

When a devastating earthquake leveled Haiti in 2010, millions of people donated to the American Red Cross. The charity raised almost half a billion dollars. It was one of its most successful fundraising efforts ever. The American Red Cross vowed to help Haitians rebuild, but after five years the Red Cross' legacy in Haiti is not new roads, or schools, or hundreds of new homes. It's difficult to know where all the money went. NPR and ProPublica went in search of the nearly $500 million and found a string of poorly managed projects, questionable spending and dubious claims of success,...

Video from Maine Imaging Photography showing the U.S. Navy’s Zumwalt (DDG-1000) entering Portland Harbor following sea trials in December. The Zumwalt is the first of three planned Zumwalt-class stealth destroyers being built for the Navy by General Dynamics Bath Iron Works in Maine.

Explanation: The majestic Lagoon Nebula is filled with hot gas and the home for many young stars. Spanning 100 light years across while lying only about 5000 light years distant, the Lagoon Nebula is so big and bright that it can be seen without a telescope toward the constellation of the Archer (Sagittarius). Many bright stars are visible from NGC 6530, an open cluster that formed in the nebula only several million years ago. The greater nebula, also known as M8 and NGC 6523, is named "Lagoon" for the band of dust seen to the right of the open cluster's...

It is 600 feet long, weighs 15,000 tons and its captain is named James Kirk. You read that right. The USS Zumwalt is the largest destroyer ever built, and, with its inverse bow and radar-deflecting angles, the stealthiest. The Zumwalt weighed anchor this morning and steamed from Bath Iron Works, in Bath, Maine, down the Kennebeck River and out to sea, where it will conduct its first sea trials. First announced in 2001, the Zumwalt-class destroyers are a $4.4 billion test crucible for a slew of new naval doodads, including all-electric propulsion, new radar and sonar systems, powerful missiles and...

The U.S. Navy’s newest littoral combat ship had to be towed into port last week after losing propulsion off the coast of Virginia. A statement from the U.S. Navy said the ship, USS Milwaukee (LCS 5), was en-route to a naval base in Little Creek when it lost propulsion Thursday night while approximately 40 nautical miles off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia. The USNS Grapple (T-ARS 53) was sent to retrieve the vessel and tow it to the Joint Expeditionary Base (JEB) at Little Creek-Fort Story, where they arrived at approximately 9 p.m. EST on Friday.