A senior scientist at the a senior scientist at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire told the Guardian:
“We have to use electricity to run the machine and there is no way of getting around that.”
Which is a very odd thing to say if you happen to be a research group whose intention is to produce electricity rather than use it!
It all stems from the increasing cost of electricity due to “green” energy policies, which clearly the Oxford group have been using to justify their own existence. But the fact remains, that they have publicly stated that “there is no way of getting around” their continued massive electricity bill.
Well here’s two suggestions:
- Start producing electricity rather than consuming it as you are supposed to.
- Jump off the global warming bandwagon which you have so cynically used to fund your science and which is the only thing which gives this failed theory any credibility.
It would be a good idea to have all generation “green” or other types show their electricity consumption set against production. I understand that wind not only needs its infamous back up, but reliable energy from the grid to start up, change direction, stop and run. Just how MUCH they use may be commercially confidential. However their vaunted, public funded and unattainable generation capabilities are used to milk the system.
Presumably the problem is the electricity being used while the fusion reactor is still in the experimental stage. Once it started producing power the high price of electricity would be a plus point. It should be noted that the first internal combustion engines were so heavy and low powered that people doubted that one could be built that could move under its own power.
I don’t understand the thrust of this comment.
Energy from the ‘Fusion’ process is such a dazzling prospect that we must make all reasonable efforts, and perhaps some unreasonable, to prove it.
The research cost will be high but the prospect of virtually unlimited energy without toxic waste cannot be ignored.
If it can’t be made to work by the end of this century when the current fuels will be running out, what then?
Rex, the field of energy production is full of “dazzling prospects” which are like eldorado. They attract the gullible and particularly the gullible politicians who then panda to these interest groups by e.g. going along with their propaganda on global warming. Fusion is no different from wind energy or solar or any of the other “technologies” which sell themselves like snake oil medicine, often to problems that don’t exist (like Global warming).
The simple fact is the development of wind energy had nothing at all to do with these grant-grabbing research groups who dominate government policy on new “technology” for energy production. The simple fact is that a bunch of engineers and a second hand scrap yard – and the right market incentives (customers not grant applications) was all that was required for wind.
I can’t say for sure that these fusion research groups will never produce a fusion reactor – because like a bunch of monkeys may one day produce shakespeare, so they might just one day stumble on the answer. But I can say that past history has shown that research focused groups tends to focus on research rather than practical solutions to the detriment of obtaining a solution.
Right, let’s give up on fusion as well – a particularly good idea when we are so close to creating a reaction with a net gain . . .
If funding and research is continued at the current level or above we can look forward to a cheap, limitless source of clean power in as little as 25 years time. Why on earth should we give up now after 60 years of progress?