France to Be Site of World's First Nuclear Fusion

brad writes "The New York Times (free registration) is reporting that 'France won an international competition today to be the site of the world's first nuclear fusion reactor, an estimated $12 billion project that many scientists see as essential to solving the world's future energy needs.'"

Dup Fusion

[A Dafa Disciple]

If only /. editors could develop a method for fusing dups [slashdot.org].

Try paying attention to your own site.

Re:Dup Fusion

[Scaba]

Does't work that way. /. stories are a fissionable material; that's why you seem them more than once.

Re:Dup Fusion

[l3ert]

And that's why they cause servers meltdown.

Re:Dup Fusion

[PrivateDonut]

both are on the front page!

dont the /. editors read /. ?

Re:Dup Fusion

[MasterSLATE]

I bet it'd be even funnier if they were both posted by the same editor.

Re:Dup Fusion

[RedWizzard]

Take a look at the science section [slashdot.org]. They're the top two stories.

Re:Dup Fusion

[danila]

May be Slashdot editors hope that you place the stories close enough to each other, they would combine into a new, heavier story, releasing a lot of energy in the process? Yeah, that makes sense to me.

Yeah but...

[itistoday]

I bet that "Brad" character is one of the few thankful for lackluster /. editorialship.

Re:Dup Fusion

[helioquake]

Think of it as a chance for "do-over" the comment you thought you'd score high mod points earlier...

/hey, subscribers get to see the dupe 30 minutes earlier than you did.

No...

[SeaFox]

Think of it as a chance for "do-over" the comment you thought you'd score high mod points earlier...

Well, but now all comments will be redundant since we posted them already!

That was hours and hours ago.

[lheal]

Who can remember that long ago? I had to google it to verify that you were right. Luckily, it was still in Google's cache.

I, for one, welcome duplicate stories.

Re:Dup Fusion

[Lisandro]

It IS newsworthy! It's not the first dupe of a story still viewable in the main index, but it is the first dupe only 7 hours after the original! Don't be mean, you!

Re:Dup Fusion

[SeventyBang]

And that's when they append updates to the original story.

Timothy must be like the people who have been on the 'net for five years and think they've seen everything. And during the first pass of an inbox, respond to every message, thinking nothing of the fact they find responses from others later in their inbox (instead of reading everything and going back to respond).

Anyone know if any /. editors have been fired?

Re:Dup Fusion

[AKAImBatman]

If only /. editors could develop a method for fusing dups.

I'll have you know that this is NOT a dupe! The first article was in the Science section. This article is in the Hardware section! It must mean that Nuclear Fusion will be coming to power our computer hardware soon! Yippee! </sarcasm> ;-)

Re:Dup Fusion

[joejoejoejoe]

yeah no shit, it's still even on the home page / same page as this.

go ahead mod me, but sometimes this is rediculous. Read the home page before you post something, at... least...

-Joe

Re:Dup Fusion

[werewolf1031]

But... but... Dr. Octavius already TRIED this, and if his non-magnetic metal arms can't contain the reaction and keep it from blowing up the world, WHO CAN?!

IN OTHER NEWS...

"France Now World's Largest Smoking Crater; Film at 11"

...spidey sense... tingling...

Re:Dup Fusion

[Mahou]

it's ok they can just dump the sea water on it to put it out

Re:Dup Fusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Well what to you know. [nofrance.info]

Re:Dup Fusion

[XaXXon]

I just wasted 5-6 of my no-ads page-views because the last time I refreshed slashdot it was this same article on top. I thought my browser was broken.

I WANT MY 6 PAID VIEWS BACK!!!

Re:Dup Fusion

[Metteyya]

Don't complain, at least you have a chance for karma-lifting posting +5 Funny comments about dupes.

Re:Dup Fusion and rejected submission

[Mictian]

While crying and moaning about dupes and rejected submissions isn't exactly constructive criticism, I have to voice my disappointment with the Slashdot editors, especially Timothy, on this one.

I feel particularly annoyed about this news bit. Why is that? Well, I happened to submit this story early tuesday morning (about 10 am GMT / 6 am EST) and it got rejected. It happens and as such is not a big deal. But the following is imho rather embarrassing.

Not only was this news piece accepted and posted on Slashdot later as someone elses submission, it was actually accepted & posted twice (becoming yet another infamous Slashdot dupe). And in this case the poster of the dupe was no other than Timothy, who rejected my submission.

It seems he initially didn't think this particular news was important and rejected my submission. I knew it was an important bit of news to anyone who follows physics and nuclear stuff, a category which many slashdotters fall into. Potentially and on the long run this could be important news to everyone on the planet who uses electricity.

Anyway, the next day Timothy seems to have decided that a less comprehensive and informative submission on the same subject is worth posting, and as icing on the cake, he does it without even bothering to check the site's own news from yesterday (the already posted story was actually still on the frontpage!) thus creating a dupe story.

Only on Slashdot do you find editors who don't even read their own site's frontpage when posting a news story (to avoid dupes), nor remember that they rejected the very same story yesterday. We're all human and mistakes happen. And I'm sure the editors get swamped by a huge number of submissions, which probably aren't exactly a joy to wade through trying to pick the worthy ones.

However, these sort of things seem to happen a bit more often than they could or should. Perhaps the editors could put a little more time and effort into the process, since many of the previous, similar mistakes seem rather easily avoided (at least to a /. reader like myself).

Ps. Here's my original Slashdot submission about this story just for reference (with a forgotten BBC link added):

After 18 months of wrangling [cnn.com] over the construction site of the ITER [iter.org] (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) the participants (China, EU, Japan, Russia, South Korea and USA) finally agreed upon Cadarache [physicsweb.org] in France over Rokkasho-Mura in Japan. Japan withdrew its bid [reuters.com] after getting a concessions package deal. The 10 billion ($12bn) project will be the 2nd most expensive joint scientific project [bbc.co.uk] after the ISS and hopefully a gateway to a commercial fusion reactor prototype. Construction should begin this year and be completed in 2015.

You're doing it all wrong...

[crimson30]

Yours didn't have a NY Times link. And yours wasn't at all misleading and sensationalist, either. To spice things up, maybe add a condescending sentence at the end, like so:

The world's first fusion reactor [nytimes.com] is soon to be completed in France. Nuclear Fusion is what powers the sun and hydrogen bombs. w00t!

And last, but not least, submit it under the wrong category, like say, Star Wars.

Re:Dup Fusion

[Tassach]

Let's see... a developer wants to build a hotel on the land now occupied by Justice Souter's home, to be financed with investments from pro-Liberty individuals.

Only one question: where do I send my check?

/obvious

[benjamindees]

To the local politicians...

Unfortunate Timothy

[illumnatLA]

It sure seems that Timothy dupes posts on a recurring basis. "The Duplicator" should be his pen name.


Oh... wait... didn't someone post something about this already??? Silly me.

Re:Dup Fusion

[KillerDeathRobot]

fusing dupes would be nice too. Try paying attention to your own spelling.

To be fair, "dupe" isn't a real word either. "Dup," if you think about it, is sort of a more logical truncation of duplicate.

Fusion

[wass]

Just fuse the original story and this dupe into a heavier-Z nucleus story.

Stupid Title

[N8F8]

What moron let this title slip by. Uhhhh, the sun? Numerous research reactors?

Re:Stupid Title

[Stormwatch]

World = planet Earth. The sun is a bit far from the world.

Re:Stupid Title

[Nasarius]

As the GP said, there have been plenty of experimental fusion reactors built. Just none that have quite reached the break-even point.

Re:Stupid Title

[Barbarian]

...hydrogen bombs?

Re:Stupid Title

[joe_bruin]

UCLA has a nuclear fusion reactor (taurus type) on the bottom floor of Boelter Hall, North-East corner. As the parent said, the title is idiotic, as is the body of the story, and the editor certainly is no genius.

dupe dupe dupe, dupe of Earl Earl Earl

[Anonymous Coward]

ah, that same old song, except this time all on the same screen!

"Hardware", not "Science"

[JanneM]

This is sectioned "Hardware", not "Science", so perhaps this time around we could have an actual discussion on fusion technology and the planned plant, not devolve into a flamefest between idiots.

Re:"Hardware", not "Science"

[ericdano]

Isn't that why the Slash guys redid their code. To have stories with multiple topics and sections?

Seems like it's working........NOT

Re:I'll wait until it shows up again

[Psykechan]

When it is duped next time it better be in the "Games" section. I want to play a nice game of Sim Fusion Power Plant.

End of year report: You have wasted X money and have angered X environmentalists. Your rank is Sparky Squirrel.

Tip: Hire more contractors. (Turn tips off? yes/no)

Re:I'll wait until it shows up again

[FidelCatsro]

See this is like sim city , in sim city 2000 the fusion power plant was kind of cool , but in sim city 3000 the plant looked much better .
You see this is why its not a dupe it's a sequel , the hardware section looks much better than the science section , though both have pretty much the same features

Re:"Hardware", not "Science"

[SamSim]

not devolve into a flamefest between idiots

You're new here, right?

Perhaps..

[helix400]

If only I had paid for a subscription to Slashdot. Then I could have seen the problem early and helped prevent Timothy from screwing up his job.

unlikely

[toby]

Having sent a few -- typos, "choose a different submitter, damn it, this one's a moron" etc -- I've seen no sign that the "editors" read e-mails sent to the Mysterious Future either.

Re:Perhaps..

[tetrahedrassface]

Itried,,, two emails. and it still posted..

But this is indeed big news.. and is probably worth repeating.. D

Cool,

[hungrygrue]

I didn't have time to read the article the first time it was posted today. Thanks for the helpful dupe!

Re:Cool,

[interiot]

Or when it was posted a week ago [slashdot.org].

Hey editors

[cy_a253]

Can't you at least wait until the original article scrolls off the main page before you post the same article again...

How hard is it to CHECK THE MAIN PAGE BEFORE YOU POST?!

*bangs head on table*

Re:Hey editors

[hjo3]

You know, other people have already made numerous comments to this effect. How hard is it for YOU to check the comments before YOU post?

Yeah, no hypocrisy here...

Re:Hey editors

[CmdrGravy]

You know, other people have already made numerous comments to this effect. How hard is it for YOU to check the comments before YOU post?

Yeah, no hypocrisy here . . .

Re:Hey editors

[Sique]

You surely are hammering the point home :)

Re:Hey editors

[Tim C]

This site would be nothing without the discussions that the articles generate. Anyone who posts comments (or submits articles) is making a material contribution to the site, regardless of whether they pay money or not.

I think that gives us all the right to complain when we see things that we perceive to be problems.

(I know, IHBT, IHL, IWHAND)

Strong support from the Pacific for this one!!

[plierhead]

As an inhabitant of the Pacific, which France has defiled over many years with their constant testing of nuclear weapons, I strongly support France's desires to house a nuclear fusion reactor in their own country for once. It will certainly make a change from them blasting the hell out of, and irradiating, the unlucky natives living on atolls that fall under France's colonial umbrella.

My only desire would be that the safety procedures at the new reactor are placed under the control of a third party - preferably a college frat house, its members well supplied with halucinogenic drugs, and who could control the reactor's safety computer systems (based on Windows ME) over the Internet from their own dormrooms via a non-secured link.

Re:Strong support from the Pacific for this one!!

[lheal]

As an inhabitant of the Pacific,

Really? Do you live on a boat, or underwater?

which France has defiled over many years with their constant testing of nuclear weapons, I strongly support France's desires to house a nuclear fusion reactor in their own country for once. It will certainly make a change from them blasting the hell out of, and irradiating, the unlucky natives living on atolls that fall under France's colonial umbrella.

I'm pretty sure they weren't doing tests "constantly", they neve

Re:Strong support from the Pacific for this one!!

[plierhead]

1) You apparently don't live around here or you would be aware that the Pacific refers to the entire region, not just to the ocean.

2) It would appear you are unfamiliar with the facts. France has conducted many many tests in the islands over man years, as well as even planting a bomb on board a Greenpeace protest ship in Auckland harbour (a city of over a million and hardly an uninhabited sandbar) and killing a journalist who was on board ("Rainbow Warrior" ring any bells to you?)

3) You fail to underst

Re:Strong support from the Pacific for this one!!

[SeventyBang]

Nah. Let'er rip. If it gets out of hand, Spider-man can rescue everyone.

What a founder of the fusion program has to say...

[Baldrson]

You should probably read what a founder of the US fusion program has to say [geocities.com] about the Tokamak technology upon which ITER is based:

The DoE committment to very large fusion concepts (the giant magnetic tokamak) ensures only the need for very large budgets; and that is what the program has been about for the past 15 years - a defense-of-budget program - not a fusion-achievement program. As one of three people who created this program in the early 1970's (when I was an Asst. Dir. of the AEC's Controlled Thermonuclear Reaction Division) I know this to be true; we raised the budget in order to take 20% off the top of the larger funding, to try all of the hopeful new things that the mainline labs would not try.

Each of us left soon thereafter, and the second generation management thought the big program was real; it was not. Ever since then, the ERDA/DoE has rolled Congress to increase and/or continue big-budget support. This worked so long as various Democratic Senators and Congressmen could see the funding as helpful in their districts. But fear of undermining their budget position also made DoE bureaucrats very autocratic and resistant to any kind of new approach, whether inside DoE or out in industry. This led DoE to fight industry wherever a non-DoE hopful new idea appeared.

Re:What a founder of the fusion program has to say

[Usquebaugh]

Classic, could be re-phrased as :-

Myself and two other cohorts dreamed up this scheme to enable us to retire early. We dreamt up this project that needed huge sums of cash. We then siphoned 20% off the top straight ionto our own projects, known as wine, women and song.

Of course it was only a matter of time before we were caught and had to retire leaving a new line of porkers at the trough. But those incompentent fools only took 5% and spent the remaining on projects.

This retirment swindle has gone on

Get a grip.

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Friend, it's bitter grapes ramblings from a has-been on a GeoCities web site, for Christ's sake. Get a grip.

Re:What a founder of the fusion program has to say

[Goldsmith]

Tokamak technology goes back around 60 years, not 30. It was invented in the 1940s. There is a replica of the original Tokamak style reactor in a small museum at General Atomics in San Diego.

General Atomics, by the way, is in a very Republican area. GA has one of the biggest fusion programs around, AND is part of the established energy industry. They do have a gigantic magnetic fusion reactor there, but also a number of groups working on alternative fusion technologies.

Re:What a founder of the fusion program has to say

[TorKlingberg]

I tried to find more about this, but all I find is a lot of trolling on all kinds of web pages.

I will have to side with the people at Wikipedia. I'd like more proof than a Geocites page by an internet troll.

Correction

[NotQuiteReal]

The headline says France to Be Site of World's First Nuclear Fusion... but that is speculative.

Since they already have EuroDisney, and this Fusion thingy might not pan out, the headline just as easily could have been:

France to Be Site of World's Second Largest Boondogle

Re:Correction

[Thomas Miconi]

Since they already have EuroDisney, and this Fusion thingy might not pan out, the headline just as easily could have been: France to Be Site of World's Second Largest Boondogle

No way ! Not even close ! Everybody knows that the single largest boondogle in human history is Eurotunnel ! [forbes.com]

Oh wait......

Thomas-
(Disclaimer: Yes, I'm French)

Half Life

[keytoe]

Looks like the half-life of a slashdot story is about 7.5 hours...

Let's sing!

[Stormwatch]

This is the news that doesn't end,
yes it goes on and on my friend,
some people started posting it not knowing it's a dupe,
now they'll continue duping it forever just because...

(repeat)

Re:Let's sing!

[roman_mir]

the ugly truth is that
the truth is ugly.

Shari Lewis was brilliant.

[GPS Pilot]

"Lamb Chop's Play-Along" [imdb.com] was children's programming at its finest -- engaging young minds with wit, instead of talking down to them like that GODDAMN EVIL PURPLE DINOSAUR.

Geezzzz!

[JohnnyBigodes]

The French are going to have TWO nuclear fusion reactors. They are becoming a top world power! :D

Conflict of interests...

[InvalidError]

On one hand, people start talking about ways of preventing solar heat from reaching Earth to reduce global warming, on the other hand, people are getting ready to create power plants that will eventually generate gigawatts.

Well, fusion plants are necessary to replace coal/diesel/fission plants but global warming initiatives should simply focus on making everything more power-efficient and low-emission instead of coming up with inconvenient/impossible ideas. (Some european minister said he was shocked at ho

duped again

[ONOIML8]

Please see my other posts in this thread.

If I were more clever

[Forager]

If I was feeling clever, I'd go back through the post earlier today and repost some of the things that got +5s, just for the extra karma.

But I'm feeling lazy.

Nuclear fusion has already happened.

[Devil's BSD]

The only thing that's different between the original post and this dupe is that this one's headline isn't completely accurate - fusion has already happened with the detonation of the H-bomb in... whenever it was.

Re:Nuclear fusion has already happened.

[Lisandro]

Fusors are a common source of neutrons; specially seemingly simple arrangements like the Farnsworth fusor [farnovision.com] (that's right, the same guy who invented TV). The hard thing about fusion is getting excess energy from it.

Re:Nuclear fusion has already happened.

[ross.w]

Yes, but this time the French are doing it in their own country, not on the other side of the world - now that it doesn't doesn't explode and all....

duped again!

[ONOIML8]

Please see my other posts in this thread!

duped again?

[ONOIML8]

Please see my other posts in this thread?

Wait, people...

[Colz Grigor]

Wait a second, folks... this isn't a duplicate story! Don't you see? The first one was posted under the Science category, and this article is about Hardware.

All joking aside, wouldn't it be nice if SlashDot's main page worked just like the moderation system? Every submitted story would start with a value of 1 and each moderator could push a story up or down one point. Of course, it all comes together when each user sets their own threshhold for front page stories...

I'm guessing this feature has already been suggested for SlashCode implementation. Maybe I should go check...

::Colz Grigor

Amazon?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

I'm guessing this feature has already been suggested for SlashCode implementation. Maybe I should go check...

I believe Amazon has already patented this idea, maybe you should send them a check for disclosing proprietary information.

Scoop

[waynegoode]

It is called Scoop [kuro5hin.org] and you can see it at (among other places) SciScoop.com [sciscoop.com]. Everyone gets to vote on stories, not just the moderators. I post several articles a week myself.

Quick Post it again!

[tekrat]

And we can see the same story THREE times on the main page!!! That would be a historic first!

Come on slashdotters, let's make it happen!!!

Slashdot Dupe History

[Hack Jandy]

Hmm... 3 times have been done before, but never on the FP I think.

http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=151936&c id=12747639 [slashdot.org]
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=144601&cid=121 15432 [slashdot.org]
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=150292&c id=12603539 [slashdot.org]

Of course there was the April Fools Trupe of yore:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=59193&threshol d=1&commentsort=0&tid=95&tid=172&mode=thread&cid=5 638044 [slashdot.org]

And then there are the many dupes by the same "Editor" (Usually Zonk):
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=144599&cid=121 13809 [slashdot.org]

Ah yes, and then there was the dupe that occured less than an hour after the original. There has been some debate as to whether that was even a dupe or just a Slashvertisement, but for our purposes today we will just call it a dupe:
http://www.andrerestivo.com/weblog/archives/slashd otdupe.html [andrerestivo.com]

All of this has been documented for your protection here:
http://anti-slash.org/injustices/CmdrTaco/double_d upe/ [anti-slash.org]

HJ

Re:Slashdot Dupe History

[haggar]

There was the story about Google releasing their APIs. That was triple-duped, and the best thing is, two of the dupes were from the same author (CmdrTaco).

Usually Zonk???

[nokilli]

Oh, c'mon! It's almost always timothy!

It's like OSTG has a program to employ all of the kids from the short bus, and somehow timothy got the gig as editor.

Of that group, he's probably the best at this. So we should show our support. It isn't easy being intellectually-challenged.

But at the same time, we shouldn't be blaming others.

Let's accept the fact that, at least on /., diversity means we get several dupes a day, and leave it at that.

Re:Usually Zonk???

[haggar]

I said nothing about Zonk?!

It's groundhog's day...

[Lothsahn]

Dang, I read this and I thought, for some weird reason, I had just become trapped in the movie "Groundhog's Day".

Scary.

why why why NYT?

[1nv4d3r]

A quick trip to google news will show you 307 other sources of this story, which don't require registration. It seems to me like slashdot should never have to link to NYT from the main page.

I can understand if my suggestion is not taken seriously. I only hope it doesn't lead to 307 more dupes.

Ob Holy grail

[ross.w]

Now go away or I shall dupe you a second time.

hilarious.

[TheLittleJetson]

WOW... AMAZING

[sokoban]

I can almost see both dupes on my front page at once.

Come on, That's less than 12 hours between dupe posts.

It'll hardly be "the world's first fusion reactor"

[GPS Pilot]

Here's a list of other fusion reactors that came before ITER: http://www.grandunification.com/hypertext/Fusion_R eactors.html [grandunification.com]

It is not the first

[littleghoti]

JET http://www.jet.efda.org/ [efda.org] has been doing fusion for quite a while.

Closer, but still nowhere near

[littleghoti]

From the article: Still, few scientists expect a fusion reactor to generate commercially viable electricity before the middle of the century, if by then.

Some more informations

[Alarash]

For the french to "win", they had to give out a few things. Most of the countries, for the last few monthes, agreed that France was better suited for this facility because of their great knowledge of nuclear (France was one of the first countries to develop both civil and military nuclear facilities). Also, because of Japan's very active sismic activity, that could have been a problem (we don't want to see a 12 billion dollars facility to be destroyed because of a earthquake, do we ?).

Also, in order to hav

Re:A little bit disappointed, but there's an upsid

[drgonzo59]

This shows how irrational and stupid thinking can win against common sense even on large scales, such as national policy. What about US -- they have not built too many reactors since the mid 80s. Chernobyl scare combined with leftover fear of the cold war nuclear appocalipse didn't help, but one would think people who make such decisions will act rationally.

Re:Reeeeeeepost

[EvilTwinSkippy]

At least they could have made us work for it. Dear God, both dups were on the same screen when I brought up 'ol /.

(Must resist urge to tell French jokes...)

Re:When did Greenpeace become anti-energy

[bigberk]

There is a problem with coming up with amazing new ways to power our economies. We do not have a shortage of fuel (the sun provides everything we need one way or another). The problem is that the environment has limited resources and can assimilate limited waste before ecosystems become overwhelmed. By providing sources of new, unlimited energy you are speeding up resource consumption and pollution, and slowly killing the natural systems we need to survive.

I really think hunting for new and amazing energ

Re:When did Greenpeace become anti-energy

[Anonymous MadCoe]

Then one could argue that the biggest issue for them would actually be population, if the human population on this planet stops growing or even gets smaller the root of this problem will go away (need for more energy). They should start a big campaign for birth-control all over the world and tackle the root of the problem.

Re:When did Greenpeace become anti-energy

[lxs]

I really think hunting for new and amazing energy sources is the wrong way to approach environmental problems. We should prioritize waste reduction and resource efficiency, so that we can do more with less.

Why not do both? In the long run we need something to completely replace both fossil fuel and fission reactors, but in the short run, 'doing more with less' as Bucky used to say, will keep us alive until we have unlimited energy. There is no fundamental link between use of resources and pollution. It's

Re:When did Greenpeace become anti-energy

[CmdrGravy]

Hmm yes, like all those other stupid inventions which have totally ruined our idyllic cavemen lives !

Re:Dup

[jericho4.0]

Nope, they've done that before. I remember one that had one story between them.

Re:Dup

[Hack Jandy]

http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=15424 6&cid=12939005 [slashdot.org]

HJ

Re:Notice...

[vidarh]

This is jointly funded by a consortium that includes United States, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea and the European Union, so it's hardly a matter of France spending 12 billion and taking a risk, but France winning a bid to get substantial benefits (as presumably having the site of the reactor means a larger amount of the investment will be spent in France).

Re:NIMBY - Not In My Back Yard

[fluffy666]

Tell me, did you ever work out what that grey stuff between your ears was for?

FUSION IS NOT FISSION. A FUSION REACTOR CANNOT GO BOOM EVEN IN THEORY.

Re:Oh, Dear.

[DrSkwid]

Would that be Citreon, World Rally Champions ?