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Comment by sddfd | Hacker News Reader

ITER is a research project. As with all research, its main purpose is discovery of "incidental knowledge" , i.e. things you did not set out to research, but are important to know for future projects in the direction. ITER has between 1000 and 5000 highly qualified workers and scientists on site. The experience these people gain during the project can hardly be expressed in USD.

Furthermore, many companies gain experience in manufacturing parts for ITER - experience that might be useful for other projects in the future too.

Lastly, many different players collaborate in ITER so the whole of things is also a management experiment.

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This article is a "critique of fusion as an energy source", not a critique of ITER as a research project. Part of its complaint is about the marketing behind ITER, including the "misguided motto" and misleading information about the ITER power balance.

It brings up some of the same benefits you did. "[ITER's] most favorable legacy is that, like the International Space Station, it will have set an impressive example of decades-long international cooperation among nations both friendly and semi-hostile." and "A second invaluable role of ITER will be its definitive influence on energy-supply planning."

> a management experiment

Really? Billions and billions of Euros, hundreds of thousand of metric tons of concrete, hundreds of MW of power, thousands of gallons of fresh water-per-minute, tends of thousands of nuclear waste, to run a "management experiment"?? This has to be the most ludicrous, expensive and ill-designed case study in the history of mankind.

Also, it seems the word "experiment" is inadequate. An experiment requires

1/ a theory and an expectation of what should happen

2/ a rigorous, controlled and replicable setup, where you test the theory and compare the actual result to the expected one

Having many people from different nations working together does not qualify as a "experiment"; maybe it's an experience, or a happening (like a concert). It's the Woodstock of science; it must certainly be fun for all involved but it's unlikely humanity will make much progress because of it.

> > a management experiment

This is a disingenuous quote -- the parent said 'so the whole of things is also a management experiment'.

You then go on to attack that decontextualised fragment by saying:

> Really? Billions and billions of Euros, hundreds of thousand of metric tons of concrete, hundreds of MW of power, thousands of gallons of fresh water-per-minute, tends of thousands of nuclear waste, to run a "management experiment"?? This has to be the most ludicrous, expensive and ill-designed case study in the history of mankind.

And I'd suggest:

metric tonnes

hundreds of MW

thousands of imperial measurements of water that are re-usable

tends <sic> of thousands of nuclear waste ... means what, precisely?

refer you again to the 'also' runs a management experiment

This clearly is not the most ludicrous, expensive, and ill-designed case study in the history of mankind, no matter how the coal industry wishes to describe it.

Sorry for the typos.

I fail to see how the "coal industry" reference applies to me however, or indeed, critics of this mammoth project that makes absolutely no sense.

I'm French and have been listening to politicians telling us the billions of Euros spent, and tons (why tonnes?) of concrete in an otherwise nice region would transform the production of energy, for most of my adult life.

As I've always suspected, that's complete BS, as the article makes clear. Why people who are not politicians would want to defend ITER, I don't know.

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