Quote from Wyttenbach

But to get the budget they cheat and lie to the politicians. ITER has clearly stated: Break even = IN = OUT. IN = current so OUT must be current too. Of course is not current its just heat going to the ground... (in very best case...)

The fact that input is electric power and output is heat is very clearly stated in the reports and PR documents. Electricity and heat are both forms of energy, so that a legitimate comparison. This it not cheating or a lie. This is how the experiments work. Anyone who read the reports or PR documents will see that the devices convert electric power into heat, with some excess heat from fusion. That is also how electrochemical cold fusion works. Cold fusion experimental papers make this very, very clear, as do the plasma fusion papers. There is no cheating or lying.

As I said before, what do you people want the plasma fusion researchers to say? Electricity and heat are energy. They can be compared exactly; a watt is a watt. How can they explain their results except by describing power and energy balances? Do you want them to invent some new word for "energy"? How would that clarify matters???

There is nothing the least bit deceptive about describing a device that converts electricity into heat, and comparing input to output. All electricity always converts to heat in the end.

I get that this confuses Krivit. He has said that many times in his book and videos. I see that he is confused, even though I am not. What I do not get is what Krivit wants the plasma fusion researchers to say. What is his remedy? How are they supposed to describe their results?!? What more can they say to clarify this?

He wants the the plasma researchers to make it clear that their results do not describe actual, useful energy such as electricity or process heat. But they do make that clear! They say that! It is obvious from everything they publish. It is equally obvious from everything in the cold fusion literature that we are not talking about useful devices or a useable level of heat.

Quote from JedRothwell

what do you people want the plasma fusion researchers to say?

ITER.. the Way.. has many researchers and it has many marketeers...

a sizeable marketing budget commensurate with

its revenue... The Way needs to be protected and nurtured..

What is ITER's revenue?? it is not trivial.

This statement from the website is not by a researcher

"designed to produce 500MW for 50MW of input"

designed to are weasel words..

perhaps " aimed to produce 500MW for 50MW"

or "hoped to produce 500 MW for 50 MW"

are less weaselly.

https://www.iter.org/

Quote from RobertBryant

ITER.. the Way.. has many researchers and it has many marketeers...

a sizeable marketing budget commensurate with

its revenue... The Way needs to be protected and nurtured..

What is ITER's revenue?? it is not trivial.

There will be no revenue. They are not claiming there will be. They are not hiding the fact that this is a giant experiment.

Look, I am no friend of the plasma fusion researchers. They have been the locus of opposition to cold fusion from the day it was announced. Gene Mallove documented that. They have been deeply unfair. Dishonest. But not about the things they are accused of here. They never said the reactors produce useful energy, and they never claimed ITER would make revenue. Let's criticize them for the things they are actually guilty of, rather than things they have not done such as saying ITER will make revenue, and rather than their correct use of standard physics terminology such as power and energy.

I get that in ordinary conversation "power" usually means useful electric power. But that's not what it means in a discussion of plasma physics, and I really do not see how that would confuse anyone. "Power" does not mean electric power when you are talking about an automobile engine. That's mechanical power. Does that confuse anyone?

Quote from RobertBryant

"designed to produce 500MW for 50MW of input"

designed to are weasel words..

perhaps " aimed to produce 500MW for 50MW"

or "hoped to produce 500 MW for 50 MW"

Surely it has been carefully designed. It is not just a hope or a goal. They must be using the best supercomputers and the most skilled people available to design the thing. That does not guarantee it will work, but it is way better than merely "hoping."

They have not designed a practical means of converting fusion power to electricity. They did not design much else that would be needed to make this into a practical source of electricity. I think they have not said much about such problems to the Congress or the public. There is a lot to criticize them about, and a lot left out of their plans. But, to suggest they have not made every effort to design the thing is silly.

Quote from JedRothwell

There will be no revenue.

There is revenue..for ITER..org mostly euros not much $

the word is mentioned 79 times in the financial report

https://www.iter.org/doc/www/c…ITER_Financial_Report.pdf

Quote from JedRothwell

Surely it has been carefully designed.

Evidence please JR..

is this faith based?

As far as I know, the plasma fusion program has always met its design goals. The reactors have done what they were designed to do. The problem is, the goals have been tepid. They have been very small steps that have not brought the technology anywhere near practicality. They have not begun to address key problems such as how to convert the output to electricity.

In 1903, the Wright brothers flew for the first time. The first flight was 120 feet about 6' up in the air, more or less in a straight line. Imagine that 5 years later, they announced the goal was to fly 500 feet, 10' high, in a straight line. That is not hard to imagine, because that is about the best their competitors in Europe could manage. Imagine their goal was to fly a mile by 1940. That would be unexciting. Yes, it would be flying, but nothing that could lead to a practical airplane. As it happened, by 1905 they flew for 24 miles in 39 minutes, flying in circles, under control, way up in the air. They had solved most major problems with stability and control and they had improved the engine. That was progress! If the plasma fusion people were making that kind of broad, multifaceted progress, we would have to give them credit, and the public would be justified in supporting their research.

Quote from JedRothwell

n 1903

ITER may fly in 2103...

Quote from RobertBryant

Evidence please JR..

is this faith based?

No, it is based on the fact that they met their previous design goals, which were published long before the reactors were made.

These are smart people. They are capable. They know a terrific amount about physics. Unfortunately, they do not know how to make a practical tokamak plasma fusion electric generator. No one knows how to do that. Perhaps it cannot be done. No one knows if it is possible.

The Star Wars space defense system is similar. Anyone can see that in principle, you can hit an incoming rocket with another rocket and fend off an attack. There is no doubt they have actually hit a rocket with a rocket. The problem is, this is so difficult that most of the time they miss by a wide margin -- I think by hundreds of kilometers. The other problems are, for example, it is far cheaper and easier to devise countermeasures that defeat the defense rocket than it is to make that rocket. You can defeat it with decoy mylar balloons, for a few dollars, whereas the rocket costs hundreds of millions. Space defense is possible in principle, but with today's technology is not possible in practice.

Quote from JedRothwell

These are smart people. They are capable.

More faith Hallelujah...

the exact design parameters for the amazing 500/50 O/I machine

.. maybe they are somewhere..

en Provence.. Je crois .. a Dieu

Quote from RobertBryant

More faith Hallelujah...

the exact design parameters for the amazing 500/50 O/I machine

It is not faith, and it is not amazing. It is a plodding accomplishment. Too conservative a goal, but perhaps the best they can do.

I see no point in calling this "faith" or in claiming these people are not expert physicists who know what they are doing. Let us not invent false reasons to slam these people. The real reasons are bad enough! Their overall project has been a 70-year-long failure. It has been a waste of money. They choked off progress in cold fusion to preserve their own funding. They may have choked off other promising approaches -- I wouldn't know.

Quote from JedRothwell

t is not faith, and it is not amazing.

it is faith until it is revealed.. amazing faith

do you JR by any chance have the exact revelation

of the exact design details for the amazing 500/50 O/I machine

or will you persist with assertion?

Link please..

Quote from RobertBryant

do you JR by any chance have the exact revelation

of the exact design details for the amazing 500/50 O/I machine

or will you persist with assertion?

Link please..

Oh give us a break. You can find hundreds of documents describing every aspect of ITER and the other tokamak reactors. I don't need me to find them for you. You can review them and see for yourself they met the technical goals. They often exceeded the budgets, but they met the goals.

The problem is that even if they do meet the ITER goals, it will not bring us much closer to a practical machine. They will not even begin to address many essential aspects of the design, and no has a clue how to go about meeting them.

Quote from JedRothwell

Oh give us a break.

No break.. just a link to the exact design details for the amazing 500/50 machine

You must have it

since you have read it JR??

Quote from Curbina

StevenBKrivit has created a section on the page where he promotes his ITER documentary where he addresses criticisms and further comments about his documentary and intents behind its publication. I think is totally worth the read, one of the questions was result of the interaction between Steven Krivit and yours truly. See if you can find which one.

I cannot tell which is yours. But as I said before the whole Q&A section is drowning in confusion. Example:

If the ITER reactor is not designed to produce net power, what is its real scientific purpose?

Of course it produces net power!! Does he think the input power vanishes? Or does he think fusion produces no power? Obviously, the output equals input plus fusion power, which is a net positive. To avoid confusion, this should be "ITER is not designed to produce useful power, such as electricity or process heat." That's not complicated. It is understandable. It does not confuse the issue. As far as I know, the plasma fusion people have never claimed they are producing useful power, or that ITER will. They have misrepresented their work in various ways, and they have made very little progress. Perhaps they should be defunded. But not for the reasons Krivit gives.

Starting with the title, this whole account is confusing, for no reason:

ITER, The Grand Illusion: A Forensic Investigation of Power Claims — $65 Billion for a Zero-Watt Reactor

It isn't "zero watts." It can't be. That's physically impossible. It is "zero useful watts," or "zero excess electrical watts." But not zero.

In the video he makes a distinction between the "practical meaning" of power and the "scientific" meaning, where "scientific" means they don't use it for any practical purpose, or they cannot use it. I have never heard of anyone else making this distinction. Krivit is the only person I know who finds the difference between useful power and power that dissipates as heat without any practical use to be confusing. It is an obvious fact about the experiment. There is no way you could use ITER heat for any practical purpose. It is out of the question.

Anyway, if using power with this meaning is an attempt to bamboozle the public, all cold fusion researchers are as guilty as the plasma fusion people. But I never heard of anyone accusing the cold fusion researchers of being dishonest in their use of the word "power" or "excess heat" or "net energy output."