Posted on 07/03/2005 10:00:05 PM PDT by neverdem
The Senate voted early yesterday morning to stop construction of the nation's costliest science project, a laser roughly the size of a football stadium that is meant to harness fusion, the process that powers the Sun.
The project, the National Ignition Facility, or NIF (pronounced niff), is at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and has cost $2.8 billion. About 80 percent complete, NIF is scheduled to be finished in 2009 at a cost of $3.5 billion and operate for three decades at an annual cost of $150 million, for a total of $8 billion.
The Senate's action, part of the $31 billion energy and water appropriations bill, prompted warnings from the project's leaders that its demise could damage the nation's leadership in a field important to confronting energy shortages. This week, an international consortium picked France as the site of the world's first large-scale, sustainable nuclear fusion reactor, a project with an estimated cost of $10 billion.
"What's at stake here is the opportunity to meet one of the grand challenges of science," Michael R. Anastasio, director of the Livermore laboratory, said in an interview. "It's essential for investigating fusion, which will help sustain confidence in our nuclear stockpile and inform our future thinking about fusion energy."
Other Livermore officials warned of a parallel to the Superconducting Supercollider, a proposed 54-mile particle accelerator that Congress killed in 1993 after spending $2 billion. Some physicists regard its fate as a symbol of the erosion of the nation's scientific standing.
The Bush administration backs the National Ignition Facility, and the Senate action could be reversed or modified later this summer in conference with the House.
"There's going to be some meeting of the minds," said Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group, a private organization in Albuquerque that...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
LOL - I wouldn't send them to muck the stalls. Happy 4th!
Okay wiseacre, build us a sun.
Since it is made out of green cheese, that would be most fitting.
It's times like these that I really, really wish Newt was still speaker. He would have never let this happen.
Frankly, I see no reason to fund PBS, NPR, the NEA, etc.
Slashing those items alone would save wads of cash that could be returned to the rightful owners or better spent on a project like this that will provide a return.
By "better spent" I meant that if the gov't is going to spend the cash, then I prefer that it go to a project such as this.
We need folks like you in Congress
"We need folks like you in Congress"
LOL! I have heard that one from frinds and family. I am realistic. As a capitalist, who would vote for me? I have an Adam Smith view on government spending: fund defense and projects that support the marketplace and national commerce. If I were in control of the federal budget, hundreds of billions of dollars would be returned to the taxpayer. Also, I would last about two seconds in office or never be re-elected.
What a SWEET two seconds that would be!
That is just my view on spending. My view on regulation is even more "radical." Property rights would be sacrosanct, all non-criminals would be free to own just about any firearm(s) that they are able to buy, all other rights in the Bill of Rights would be enforced in favour of the citizens and against the state. More of the rightful power of the states would be returned to them. Also, income tax would be gone as would property tax.
We don't need "congress interruptus"!!!!
Not only do you have my vote, but I will campaign for you as well, would you like to start by replacing Gov Perry?
"Let France pour money down a hole for 40 years"
If I'm not mistaken, the "US" has agreed to generously support this project for france. How smart is that?
There will be fusion. I guess the Chinese will control it now.
It would have to be a very "grassroots" movement. :-)
Also, I am the type who would be happy to live in a nice apartment instead of having the taxpayers pay for an opulent house in DC.
From the sounds of it, you would shut down the Very Large Array (VLA), Kitt Peak, the entire National Science Foundation, Keck, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the Stanford/NASA Biocomputational Center, All of JPL and any deep space exploration, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (and others like it), the National Science Digital Library, the National Academy of Sciences, just to name a few.
Note, just in case anyone may have been wondering, I do have a dog in this hunt since my personal income comes from a government project. (albeit an important one IMHO)
That is just my view on spending. My view on regulation is even more "radical."
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The fact is, what they called "radical" was really "right". What they called "dangerous" was just "desperately needed".
- Ronald Reagan
Moderation in the protection of liberty is no virtue; extremism in the defense of freedom is no vice.
- Barry Goldwater
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