nominative determinism if ever I saw it.

"And my answer to that is, I honestly don't know,"

So she's not a positive Ion then.

Just needs a bit of dediCATION and appliCATION.

I wonder if she is a radical?

It has been noted before: See https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25433915-900-is-uttoxeters-world-parts-centre-the-answer-to-the-worlds-problems/ , third paragraph (log on may be required)

" Rees-Mogg, notorious among UK politicians for antiquated attitudes and espousal of traditional values except of course when it comes to making money from companies producing contraceptives "

Fixed that for you.

You forgot the off-shoring of his companies so that he can continue seamless trading with the EU that he so despises.

However, I got a new site for the plant: his head; it's certainly empty enough!

"You forgot the off-shoring of his companies so that he can continue seamless trading with the EU that he so despises."

Did he? Or do you mean complying with the regulations for an EU fund?

What's this centre shit? Isn't the whole of the UK a centre for industrial decline these days?

And when will The Register return to spelling words correctly (ie not American)?

Is this just another way to raise steam, or are we any nearer to directly converting nuclear energy to electricity?

One horse power is actually 33000 foot-pounds/minute, or 746W (Watts or Joules/second, for those who are particular about the nationality of their units). I guess there must be a Reg unit of power though...

Isn't it ?

Not sure if "The Putin" would be for wasted power or uncontrolled power.

"The Truss" - at least 4 What?'s per policy ...

Let's stick to metric please.

http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/

Booo!

This is Britain we do things differently here, like Apple in fact....

a pointless journey to abject failure starts with a single STEP

Interesting to read that the plant is "to be complete in about 17 years".

I thought that governments don't like promising anything beyond their current term of office, for fear that by the time the project completes the other lot are in power and can claim the glory.

Thick Lizzie is setting up a thousand year tory government.

Icon because I wonder what will happen if there is a meltdown should this thing actually happen.

Fusion reactors don't meltdown, they just cut out.

17 years? FFS. No wonder no-one takes fusion seriously. If we actually gave a shit about the future of the planet it would be 5 years and Bn of dollars of funding.

If we actually gave a shit about the future of the planet the company doing the work was owned by a major Tory party donor it would be 5 years and Bn of dollars of funding.

There, FTFY

Or if it was a state owned enterprise where all the money ends up with the Labour Party's donors.

Within 5 years would be [1]ITER ; which is a really big engineering experiment from 35 nations aiming to deliver first plasma in December 2025.

And yes, had we have put £10 billion a year into fusion and fission development instead of subsidies for wind turbines then we might not have energy prices that are 8 times what they were a few years back.

But complaining at the government is pointless; complain at the people who missold wind turbines to the public as a workable solution.

[1] https://www.iter.org/proj/inafewlines

And yes, had we have put £10 billion a year into fusion and fission development instead of subsidies for wind turbines then we might not have energy prices that are 8 times what they were a few years back.

The problem isn't wind turbines, it's the government's asinine decision to create a "market" for energy that ties the cost to the cost of the most expensive producer, so we pay the same for wind power as we do for the most expensive form, which is currently gas, at a large multiple of the price of wind.

It's the other way round - when the cost is likely to balloon to multiple times the original blind guess estimate, it's a millstone to hang round the neck of the next government. Either they continue funding it, or they cut the losses, along with the headlines about wasted money and job losses that that will generate. Meanwhile the Rees-Moggs of the world will be off sunning themselves with all the proceeds they have squirrelled away in tax havens, occasionally popping up to badmouth the current government in order to get a speaking gig or to promote their new book which will probably be a thinly reworded load of Ayn Rand's absolute nonsense.

Did I say "badmouth", it would probably have been more accurate to say "sneer at", because the man in question could sneer for England, if only he wasn't already sneering for profit for an offshore fund in the Bahamas.

Dame Sue Ion, former chair of the UK Nuclear Innovation Research Advisory Board

"I think there's a difference between confidence that it will work and confidence that it will work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year and satisfy an economic environment in which it's got to live. And my answer to that is, I honestly don't know,"

.. She does know, the answer to 24/7 running with any decent level of uptime is zero.

Likelihood of 7 minutes continual NET positive energy generation (never mind 7 days) is very low... I will be massively optimistic and not say zero

Plenty of teams have managed a few seconds of fusion, the difficulty is sustaining long enough bursts to create more power than the (large amount) that was used starting it in the first place, and then the lesser amounts to maintain it

By all means do some research, research is (nearly) always a good thing, but don't pretend you will end up with a viable power plant at the end of it.. but being honest & upfront is not the way of the haunted pencil.

What a pathetic thought process. Why shouldn't the aim of that research to be a model for a viable plant? What would the point be of setting the already proven point that it is possible to generate power from fusion?

"In 1961, President John F. Kennedy began a dramatic expansion of the U.S. space program and committed the nation to the ambitious goal of landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade." - nothing wishy washy with that goal. What would the outcome have been if the goal had just been a more realistic effort to just match the Soviets....

Whilst I agree with your point you accidentally undermine it with the Apollo reference.

The US spent $250bn in todays money on Apollo. It needs that kind of magnitude for Fusion to go anywhere in the time we need to avert the worst impacts of climate change.

Like me, I suspect you have no real idea if it requires funding levels of $250bn or not.

The one thing I do know is that setting the funding at $250bn would mean that is the minimum that will be spent, regardless of the outcome. As it is, $250m as first stage funding between now and 2024 is more than enough to show intent.

The basic point remains - if you don't set ambitious targets, you don't make the dramatic gains needed.

Why not spend that money on the existing ITER project instead? You also get the pooled expertise from international collaboration, and the economy of scale of having multiple contributors.

It's almost as if that sort of model of international cooperation is anathema to Rees-Mogg and his friends in Tufton Street.

"a fully operational battle power station"

Oh dear. Conservative Party Vapourware on Steroids. Is there an annual conference taking place? Are popular polls showing them trailing spectacularly?

Is Jacob fond of an occasional hit to help him feel superhumanly and pull rabbits out of top hats?

As a well known local toff politician, what do you think the chances are of him being able to deliver anything of what he says? Both history and recent form of most all outspoken politicians exercising themselves in the genre are certainly not kind to them and would have more than just a few asking if, before he rendered those few lines, had he partaken of a few, so vast and expensive and experimental is the aspiration.

The output of this reactor could be as much as 16 giga sweet fuck alls per guinea.

Why are so many comments ad hominem?

There does seem to be progress in nuclear fusion, as Nature reported only in February this year, JET at Oxford (that will be Joint European BTW) seems to have made some significant achievements.

Would we rather that nothing was done?

That it is a 17 year project is surely to be commended. No one is going to win or lose an election based on their position regarding nuclear fusion. Energy security is a long term problem.

If it creates some jobs in an area with industrial decline that seems OK too. No-one is going to win a seat in Cornwall because some jobs were created in the old industrial heartlands.

Do any of the disparagers have any better ideas?

@gerryg

"Why are so many comments ad hominem?"

Because they are tories. Anything they do at all must be evil because they are the party of baby eating monsters (or something like that).

Always reminds me about the joke to the effect that all the people that should be running the country are too busy cutting hair or driving taxis. (I'm sure that list is extensible)

Regarding your downvote (one at the moment) I wonder if it was because they disagree with your description of the tories or because you were not singing from the hymn sheet of acceptable opinion

they are the party of baby eating monsters

The Tories aren't actually baby eaters, they merely have a modest proposal for the poor.

Because they are not serious, frequently corrupt people making ridiculous promises that very recent experience tells us they will not even start let along actually complete simply to get column inches in the few newspapers that still happily parrot their lies to their gullible readers.

gerryg: "Why are so many comments ad hominem?"

Unfortunately Mr Rees-Mogg is rather unpopular, often due to his public pronouncements, and his attitude towards people who disagree with him. His reclining in the House of Commons when 'Leader of the House', for example was seen by many as treating the House with disrespect (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCNwXHaTDik). His boasting that although the father of 6 children he had never changed a nappy (and recently complained that the British worker lacks 'graft') suggests a disrespectful attitude towards less well-off people than himself.

He was also, again as Leader of the House, partly responsible for the unlawful proroguing of parliament by Boris Johnson in an attempt to prevent the debating of anything in the run up to the UK leaving the EU (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_British_prorogation_controversy).

A recent (4th October 2022) article on the front page of the FT was headlined "No10 quashes Rees-Mogg's 'half-baked' work reforms'. It seems that he wanted to remove employment protection from people paid over GBP50,000 a year and various other things bound to alienate the workforce and union members.

Furlongs per fortnight, surely?

I read an article in one of the early computer mags (in the 80s, so on paper!) where they were satirically bemoaning (a precursor to El Reg perhaps?) how the software specs will always be in the most inconvenient units possible and casually threw out the example of acceleration in furlongs per square fortnight ...

(approximately 0.137 nm/s^2 in case you wondered)

I do like the idea of a square fortnight.

Oh dear, I presume it will be the world's first coal-powered nuclear fusion plant.

On the plus side its only waste product will be diamonds. (Superman III flashback anyone)?

JRM said the benefits of Brexit would not be seen for 50 years, so 17 years to see a working fusion reactor means that fusion will be achieved well before any Brexit benefits.

https://www.esquire.com/uk/latest-news/a22513246/jacob-rees-mogg-claims-we-might-not-see-benefits-of-brexit-for-50-years/

@trevorde

"JRM said the benefits of Brexit would not be seen for 50 years, so 17 years to see a working fusion reactor means that fusion will be achieved well before any Brexit benefits."

It was amazing to see how wrong he was. I doubt he could have foreseen the instant benefits.

I suspect your up-votes there are from people who assumed you were being ironic.

@Loyal Commenter

"I suspect your up-votes there are from people who assumed you were being ironic."

You hope. I do want to let you know I am appreciating your other comments on this topic making great arguments for smaller government-

https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2022/10/05/reesmogg_proposes_site_for_prototype/#c_4542978

https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2022/10/05/reesmogg_proposes_site_for_prototype/#c_4542971

You may read it that way, but then again, you seem to be wilfully conflating that argument with one for not wasting money. I'm not against spending money on nuclear fusion, I am against wasting it on vanity projects.

Anyway, back to your original comment. Please list those immediate benefits.

I know I've asked you this before, and you've failed to do so every time, but hope does spring eternal.

For reference, opinion pieces from right-wing think-tanks, the opinions of Patrick Minford vs those of every sane economist on the planet, and the blogs of UKIP members don't count as factual evidence.