by Margaret Shauers

Created on: April 05, 2009

Nuclear Fusion Research Must be funded by the U.S. Government

Imagine a man-made sun. That's fusion. It is a wonderful concept and, some years ago, there was serious effort to perfect the concept and make it real. Personally, I still think the concept is great. No fission (requires an explosion); just energy.

Truth is, at about 15-18 years ago, the U.S. government totally pulled the plug on fusion funding.

My son got his doctorate from M.I.T. (plasma nuclear physics) in the late 1980's. He went to work at Lawrence-Livermore labs. Along with a really brilliant team of other scientists, he worked his brains out trying to make fusion functional.

No, they were not successful, but there seemed true hope for the future. A war came along and the government still funded energy research along with the bombs also being funded (much more heavily). After a few years, though, the government cut all funding for fusion research.

My son, along with many of the "bright boys" was offered a transfer to the "A" building where bombs definitely were the main priority. He passed on the option, despite the fact that directly working with bombs paid considerably better than he'd been getting for research and development for a project he totally believed in (energy for the ages).

That research/development is tremendously costly, but it should lead to cheap always renewable energy.

My son instead choose to write computer code for Lawrence-Livermore for numerous projects (physics majors are extremely savvy about advanced codes). Eventually, with those same bright boys he knew from M.I.T. days, he moved to the truly old government lab at Los Alamos (New Mexico).

Whatever he did there had an even higher security rating and I could no longer even visit his office even on "guest days."

Los Alamos is much more "open" than it was in the old days of WW II when all gates were barred to civilians. And he went to Los Alamos after Desert Storm, but it was still spooky driving through the three mesas where the lab was located.

Lawrence-Livermore had security checks and visitors were checked and, after clearance, offered limited guest passes. There were some buildings roof-top guards armed with automatic weaponry, especially during Desert Storm.

Los Alamos had many barred windows, including the building where my son worked. There were a few heavily guarded buildings in his area. The last mesa we passed was totally guarded with rooftop guards holding machine guns.

No fusion research going on, of course. My son

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