[HN Gopher] Helion Needs You
___________________________________________________________________
Helion Needs You
Author : aero-glide2
Score : 135 points
Date : 2022-07-13 16:43 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.samaltman.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.samaltman.com)
| elsherbini wrote:
| As a very much non-nuclear engineer, I found this video [1]
| explaining different fuels, size, magnetic field strength, and
| the orders of magnitude physics and engineering that goes into
| current fusion efforts.
|
| Curious where Helion would put themselves on the ntE vs ion
| temperature plot he uses to evaluate how feasible a technology
| is.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_energy_gain_factor
| chadash wrote:
| 10-15 days' vacation is pretty bare minimum if you are trying to
| get top talent. Maybe think about adding 5 days onto those
| buckets to get higher quality candidates.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| Top talent rarely takes vacations, and in my experience usually
| works a lot more than 40 hours a week (not because they have
| to, but because they want to).
|
| Go and ask any PhD student at a top 10 CS university what they
| think of 20 days vacation and 30 hour work weeks. I think
| you'll find the answer expands your worldview.
| looperhacks wrote:
| Is this a common number of vacation days in the US? In Germany
| the minimum _by law_ is 20 days on a 5 day week and I wouldn't
| even consider a position offering only that.
| chadash wrote:
| From a legal perspective I'm not sure, but I'd say 10 days is
| the minimum you'd see for a full time salaried position. But
| it's considered low for skilled professionals and would be a
| dealbreaker for many people. For skilled professionals
| (lawyers, engineers, etc.), 20 days is a more common number
| to see. This doesn't include sick days, which are usually
| counted separately.
| ghaff wrote:
| Assuming sick time is a separate pool (which is less common
| than it used to be and isn't mentioned), then yes in the US
| 15 days would be pretty standard for someone with experience
| but might be as low as 10 for someone without. It's almost
| certainly on the low side if that's a common vacation/sick
| time pool.
| cardanome wrote:
| In Germany when you are sick you are sick, there is no
| limit. You will be paid and you can not be fired for it.
|
| An allotted amount of "sick days" doesn't really make sense
| anyway, not like you can choose to be sick next year.
|
| (Only exception is for long term sicknesses, if you are
| sick for more than 6 consecutive weeks, then the next week
| your health insurance will pay you 60% of your normal wage
| instead. Or if there is no hope of you ever being able to
| work, again insurance.)
|
| Oh and if you are sick on vacation you get your vacation
| days back as you were not really able to take advantage of
| them.
| [deleted]
| ghaff wrote:
| Typically, in the US there's a progression from sick days
| (or just a shared pool of days) to short-term disability
| to long-term disability at companies that have those
| things.
| mchusma wrote:
| This seems like an insane law. I'm shocked it works at
| all. If a country wants to provide people insurance
| against sickness, totally fine. But to push it off on
| employers seems crazy. Let's say you are a small
| business, you have 1 employee. If they get sick you are
| now stuck paying them for 6 weeks and you can't replace
| them? So your small business can basically go under if
| someone gets sick.
|
| I really disagree strongly with trying to push things
| onto companies.
|
| The government want to pay basic income? Great! The
| government want to provide health care? Great!
|
| This to me is the main advantage I like about basic
| income, is it really seems like we can get rid of all
| these suboptimal laws with horrible abuses and bad
| tradeoffs, including: - min wage - overtime - vacation
| requirements - healthcare requirements
|
| So businesses can just focus on what they do best and the
| government provides a safety net.
| hef19898 wrote:
| 6 weeks per diagnosis. If say you had six weeks of Covid
| and break your leg on the way out of the hospital and
| need another six weeks, your salary will be paid. And you
| keep your vacation days.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Isn't the legal minimum in Germany 24 days, two days per
| month?
| JanSt wrote:
| 24 days for 6 day week, 20 days for 5 day week
|
| More or less everyone has a 5-day week. Most jobs offer
| 25-30 days/year + unlimited sick days
| [deleted]
| eschneider wrote:
| It's common, but you can be assured that any company offering
| 10 days vacation is being run by shitty or criminally
| inexperienced people.
| saxonww wrote:
| It varies. Some companies have 'unlimited' paid time off,
| others just federal holidays. I don't think there is a
| federal law governing paid time off. There is a law (Family
| and Medical Leave Act) guaranteeing up to 12 weeks of
| _unpaid_ time off though.
|
| As someone else pointed out, some companies still offer
| vacation time and sick leave separately. None of the
| companies I've worked for still do, all have combined those
| into a single Paid Time Off pool.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I have friends with just 10 days in the USA.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Living where the legal minimum is 24 days in addition to bank
| holidays and where 28 days the practical minimum with the
| consus being 30 days, I'll call that exploitation.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| How is it exploitation when both parties voluntarily engage
| in an agreement? Is anyone forced or coerced here? Is there
| any ambiguity or deceiving language?
|
| It is better than calling it "Unlimited Vacation" and then
| leaving it up at discretion. They're being up-front and
| honest about it. It should be totally OK to advertise a job
| with 0 vacation days. We're talking about fully functional
| and grown up adults who have great college education who can
| make that decision if they would like to take on a high-
| responsibility and high-risk job.
|
| In fact, I would argue the complete opposite. Doing anything
| _else_ is interference and forceful coercion.
| andruby wrote:
| If all companies with interesting jobs only offer 10 days
| vacation, then there's no real other alternative. You could
| try to negotiate.
|
| I prefer to give people plenty of holidays. Enjoy life,
| recharge. I often come up with some of my best work ideas
| while or after a holiday.
|
| (I'm often concerned about the productivity of people who
| don't take time off. I work with independently contracting
| software engineers and some of the most productive ones
| take plenty of time off)
| DennisP wrote:
| > If all companies with interesting jobs only offer 10
| days vacation
|
| But since that's not the case, there are alternatives.
| swatcoder wrote:
| If you apply for 30 jobs, advance to 5 interviews, and
| receive 1 offer, all while your savings (do you have
| savings?) are being depleted on living expenses and college
| debt, are you really on even footing for fair negotiation?
| Or are you in a position to "take what you can get" and
| thereby find yourself vulnerable to an offer well below
| market norms?
|
| We use the word _exploitative_ to capture that sort of
| scenario. It suggests that the employer is _exploiting_
| candidates ' extenuating circumstances. It's generally not
| sustainable for either party and the side effect for the
| employer is high churn and low productivity/quality.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| This is a made up scenario that fabricates
| "exploitation", but even in this case I disagree. If
| there are no jobs out there, then tough luck. You are
| still getting paid vastly more than probably 99.99% of
| the world's jobs.
|
| The entitlement is simply astonishing and incongruent,
| completely untenable even in the most charitable
| interpretation.
|
| Furthermore, I believe that in jobs like this, companies
| cannot afford to hire someone that is going to take 8
| months parental leave, for example. That would be
| consider exploitation of the _employer_ by the employee
| in my view.
| int0x2e wrote:
| That still sounds super low to me. I've got 23 vacation days +
| 5-15 holiday days (varies by year due to the holidays shifting
| around the schedule) per year, and we get a ton of medical
| leave if you need it. I rarely make use of my full vacation
| options, but I still take a few weeks every summer and a few
| weeks during our holiday seasons. The US labor market makes no
| sense to me...
| MattGaiser wrote:
| They may want just the passionate workaholic candidates.
|
| I've had interviews where they were pretty open about the
| company culture not being one where you take vacation.
|
| There is something to be said for working people a ton of hours
| to compensate for talent/skill. A few notable Canadian startups
| are built heavily on evening and weekend labour of immigrants
| and young people.
| hef19898 wrote:
| They want young, naive people that acceot that kind of thing
| in exchange for saving the world and some petty RSUs, if any.
| All the while working to make early investors and founders
| rich or even richer.
|
| In a way, being open about it actually makes sure you get
| exactky those candidates. As I said, exploitative.
| DennisP wrote:
| > in exchange for saving the world
|
| Yeah, just saving the world, no big deal.
|
| Usually those claims are bullshit, but not in this case. If
| I had the qualifications to meaningfully contribute to
| this, I'd jump at the chance and minimize my vacations for
| the next several years.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| Saving the world would still happen if these people got
| 20 vacation days. The main difference would be the small
| decrease of ROI for the investors.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| Feasibility of this fusion work aside, I think it must be quite
| amazing to really believe in all these things to come true, it's
| like living in the future.
|
| I wonder whether Sam really believes in all these ventures, or if
| he's just building hype? I mean according to his timeline the
| whole world will run on Helion fusion energy in 15 years, A.I.
| will write all of our software code, we'll all pay in
| cryptocurrency using our biometric data and quantum computers
| will be a proven, practical technology (among other things).
| Would probably be amazing if these things came to pass (at least
| for some of us), but if I would go around and tell people stuff
| like that everyone would think I'm crazy. Then again I don't live
| in SV, so maybe that's on me.
| mherdeg wrote:
| Speaking of "in 15 years" -- it's not too early to start doing
| y2038 blogging.
|
| Write yourself a thoughtful post once per month about y2038
| issues and you'll have a lucrative set of consulting jobs
| starting in 15 years and ending about one year later.
| JoshCole wrote:
| Belief is a probability. Utility is an outcome propagated
| backward subject to your value function. Belief times utility
| minus opportunity cost can lead to low probability events
| having high utility such that their expected value even after
| accounting for a high opportunity cost is still worth pursuing.
|
| If you take this approach with only _one_ bet than you don 't
| minimize your risk. Probabilistic reasoning doesn't have any
| guarantee for a particular sample. You can get unlucky. In
| order to safely pursue low probability high utility gains you
| have to make multiple uncorrelated bets such that your winners
| pay for your losers.
|
| So the perception of this approach being crazy is exactly
| backwards. Rather than being crazy in his bold vision of the
| future, he is actually a cautious person who is trying to
| minimize the riskiness of his beliefs.
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| I didn't say he was crazy, just that people would call me
| crazy here (in Germany) if I evangelized stuff like he does.
| marvin wrote:
| I'd hazard a guess that's part of the reason really
| successful entrepeneurship happens much less in Europe than
| it does in the USA.
| JoshCole wrote:
| Apologies; I didn't mean to imply you thought he was crazy.
| I was trying to refer to the easy to reach perception of
| someone who makes a lot of low probability bets as being
| crazy, but was sloppy in my word choice.
| pizzathyme wrote:
| A big part of moonshots like this is not being fatalistic. It
| is possible but not guaranteed. And if leadership does not have
| absolute conviction, belief in the best outcome future being
| possible, it will definitely not happen.
| gnramires wrote:
| It's not just about P(success), it's about P(success)*Utility
| !
| ProAm wrote:
| I think Sam Altman has always been mostly a hype man. Reading
| his posts over the years its better for him if his portfolio
| gets PR momentum.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| SV has been long conditioned to value hype equally to
| product. They've seen too many superior products lose out to
| poor marketing.
| perlgeek wrote:
| (Disclaimer: speculation ahead, never having met Sam).
|
| > I wonder whether Sam really believes in all these ventures,
| or if he's just building hype?
|
| Part of being a VC is having many moonshots in your portfolio;
| if only some of them work out, that's still a huge win in
| total, even if the others go bust.
|
| So he likely "believes" all these things in the same way that
| he believes in his portfolio: not that literally all of them
| turn out to be true, but some of them will, if you just believe
| in enough of them.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| lazzlazzlazz wrote:
| > pay in cryptocurrency using our biometric data
|
| This is incorrect -- Worldcoin orbs[1] use iris scans to create
| privacy-preserving proofs (these are called zero-knowledge
| proofs[2]) of uniqueness client side, which are just metadata
| for creating social graphs. The data is never used beyond the
| construction of the proof.[3]
|
| If you're going to be critical you should at least understand
| why the idea is exciting to some. :)
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA2ttYtUbF8
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof
|
| [3]: https://worldcoin.org/privacy
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| The Sam Altman article and the Helion web site have some major
| red flags, but this[1] item from the FAQ in particular jumped out
| at me:
|
| > Where is Helion going to get helium-3?
|
| > Helion produces helium-3 by fusing deuterium in its plasma
| accelerator utilizing a patented high-efficiency closed-fuel
| cycle.
|
| That sounds like it might be relevant for the overall efficiency
| of the system. Are there any outside fusion experts who can
| comment on the legitimacy of this company and their process?
|
| [1] https://www.helionenergy.com/faq/
| DennisP wrote:
| From what I've seen, it's not a separate accelerator. The
| fusion reactor itself is a plasma accelerator and will run a
| hybrid reaction of D-D and D-He3. The combination will release
| 6% of its energy as neutron radiation.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| It's times like this that I'm really sad that I didn't pursue an
| engineering degree :(.
|
| I have made plenty of money, and live a very comfortable life,
| but I would really love to be able to work on projects like this.
|
| I guess one option is to invest in companies like this.
| bbertelsen wrote:
| It's never too late! Ever. Keep learning.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| You can do all but the most cutting edge engineering on your
| own. People still build cars and planes in their garages. Lots
| of amateur radio hobbyists build their own radios. Even if you
| got an engineering degree you'd most likely spend 10 years
| working on boring projects before you got to do anything novel.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| I already do those things.
|
| My post literally meant: I am an engineer who never got a
| degree. Oh man it would be so cool to work specifically for
| helion, but a degree is a requirement. I wish I had gotten it
| back in the day, because I would apply for one of the
| positions.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Do you believe you can do the work of someone with a degree
| (or maybe comparable): I bet they'll still be interested!
| jffry wrote:
| The job postings all say: "We believe in hiring
| individuals. If you do not check all of the boxes, we still
| encourage you to apply. If this job isn't a fit, we have
| many other openings that may be one. "
|
| So maybe if you have relevant experience and can show it,
| apply anyways?
| franckl wrote:
| If you are an accredited investor, our climate tech startup
| would love to have your support :) https://airthium.com
| sidcool wrote:
| I don't want to come across as banal, but is engineering
| something you would like to pursue now?
| thepasswordis wrote:
| It's a tough spot because:
|
| 1) I picked up low voltage electrical engineering along the
| way, just never did a degree. As in: PCB design, tons of
| robotics and very small run (<100) bespoke devices.
|
| 2) I'm oldish (mid 30s) and have a family and am semi
| retired. So it would be burdensome to do a college degree,
| especially with the additional liberal arts requirements.
|
| My point is: if I had the degree, I would "come out of
| retirement" and apply for jobs like this one, but I don't,
| and it would take several years to get it even at an
| accelerated pace.
|
| So I guess regret is meant literally. I wish I had just done
| the degree in my 20s, because I actually don't want to do it
| now, and even if I do just decide to do it online or
| something, it will be more annoying at this point in my life
| than it would have been when I was 20.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| If you know software, most engineering projects have
| software development needs, for example method development.
| You could be contributing to an engineering project without
| an engineering degree
| qqqwerty wrote:
| There was a post on here about a guy who got his degree in
| less than a year. He used an online school that allows for
| self paced courses.
|
| Also, you might not really need a degree depending on your
| body of work. I imagine most startups these days will
| happily ignore that requirement if the candidate has
| demonstrable experience in the field.
|
| On the flip side, a company like this probably has low pay,
| long hours, and it will be a decade or more before you see
| your work come to fruition (if at all). So if you are
| financially secure enough already, the work might not be
| for you. Probably best to pick up some hobby projects that
| scratch the itch.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| Whaaat? What kind of oldish is that? You need a good friend
| kicking your rear. You need to find something meaningful.
| The nihilistic trap will do no good to you.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| The nihilistic trap of spending time with my wife and
| children?
| carapace wrote:
| I don't know about "nihilistic" but thinking you're
| "oldish" in your mid 30s could be interpreted that way.
| If you live to be 70 you're only halfway through, eh?
|
| Anyway, you're young, already semi-retired, with "plenty
| of money, and live a very comfortable life" "spending
| time with [your] wife and children", and your regret is
| not being able to help create fusion directly (as opposed
| to "merely" investing)?
|
| Not to be that guy, but uh, "must be nice".
|
| Seriously though, congratulations! You seem to have won
| life. :)
|
| I'm curious about your motivation for your original
| comment, do you not want encouragement to go back to
| school?
| [deleted]
| defterGoose wrote:
| I'd urge you to reexamine now. When your kids are grown up
| and out of the house and you're a little older you might
| think "it would have been so easy to go back and get my
| degree then and look where I could have been now." Remember
| that although rare, there are people getting PhDs in their
| 60s and 70s.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Tell that to people without enough money to be semi retired
| before 40 that actually pursue their degrees like everyone
| else. Some of those, sometimes single parents, have to work
| full time during during yheir studies (a had one of those
| in my class for a while).
|
| You are in such a priveleged position, if you want that
| engineering degree, go get it.
| dpz wrote:
| never too late
| colesantiago wrote:
| Disclaimer (if it isn't obvious already): Sam Altman is an
| investor in Helion Energy. (Lead investor for Helion's E round
| raise).
| yomkippur wrote:
| i just dont trust this guy after that weird eyeball sphere
| thing connected to a crypto ponzi scheme
| sdfhdhjdw3 wrote:
| Bingo, I made the exact same comment.
|
| That was quite an effective way to take your credibility and
| shove it down the drain.
|
| They're all scumbags.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| This isn't Reddit.
|
| I don't want to defend anyone, but at the same time, if I
| see accusations, I'd like to see substance and reference
| points, not just "they're scumbags", end of conversation.
|
| Please, provide some details on why you think they're like
| that.
| yomkippur wrote:
| Why do you feel the need to apologize for a well
| documented display of shady behavior?
|
| It just puzzles me when people jump into defend what is
| clearly unsavory and amoral behavior.
|
| Just because its legally grey area doesn't mean its
| moral.
| hef19898 wrote:
| A short search for this eyeball scanning cryoto scheme of
| Sam's on HN will answer that question. At least why OP
| thinks it.
| PebblesRox wrote:
| Here's a post from 3 months ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30931614
| sdfhdhjdw3 wrote:
| They were offering shitcoins in exchange to people
| scanning their eyeballs. That's a double-whammy of dodgy
| behavior.
|
| No, I don't need to provide details. If you don't see it,
| you're a lost cause.
| davidatbu wrote:
| Are you aware that the eyeball scans are only used in a
| zero-knowledge proof? So they collect no biometric data
| actually?
| sdfhdhjdw3 wrote:
| Not everything is a question of "does it collect data",
| actually.
|
| They're collecting _some_ value from individuals, whether
| you understand it or not.
|
| Your comment reminds me of Facebook's disingenuous "we
| we're not _selling_ the data", which just a way of
| distracting from the real issue. This isn't about data,
| it's about yet another incremental stripping down of
| individual's control over their intrinsics.
| davidatbu wrote:
| You seem to agree that they don't collect biometric data,
| so I'm not sure exactly what "intrinsics" is being
| "stripped down" from individuals, in this case. Could you
| clarify?
| sdfhdhjdw3 wrote:
| I don't agree to anything, because I don't know enough
| about it. They SAY they don't collect data, they SAY it's
| a zero knowledge proof. Who knows about that.
|
| What I know is that they're extracting some value from
| people who (like me) likely don't understand the
| implications. This isn't complicated.
| davidatbu wrote:
| Because you _so confidently asserted_ that they were
| "all scumbags" who have no "credibility", I'd expected
| much more certain evidence about the nefariousness of
| Worldcoin.
|
| I, like you, believe it is very important to remind folks
| that they should clearly understand the value prop of an
| exchange before they participate in it.
|
| But I don't think that calling "scumbags" the folks
| behind any proposed value exchange (like Worldcoin) that
| _you yourself_ (self-admittedly) don 't fully understand
| the implications of, is a way to achieve that.
| sdfhdhjdw3 wrote:
| There's no value prop in getting your eyeball scanned in
| exchange for magic beans.
| sdfhdhjdw3 wrote:
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/richardnieva/worldco
| in-...
|
| You asked me exactly what "instrinsics" are people being
| stripped from. So according to that article, people are
| being robbed of the ability of proving their own
| identity. If that startup succeeds, people will no longer
| be able to prove their identity other than thru them.
| This is really dangerous stuff.
|
| You see, the mistake you made here is assuming that
| without understanding the details you can't come to any
| conclusions. But that is wrong. There's some things that
| I don't need to know the details of to accurately
| determine they're nefarious.
|
| So again, they're all scumbags.
| yomkippur wrote:
| drexlspivey wrote:
| or after what he did with "OpenAI"
| remarkEon wrote:
| As with all of these threads, someone needs to tell me why I
| shouldn't be optimistic about this. I'm not a physicist, and only
| partially grok all the technical challenges with making something
| like this work. I'm skeptical, but that's because so many others
| with so much money have been working on Fusion, so why is Helion
| different?
| csense wrote:
| The company's FAQ page addresses this:
|
| https://www.helionenergy.com/faq/
| remarkEon wrote:
| Right I get that, I guess I'm looking for an unbiased party
| to evaluate what they're saying here.
| hef19898 wrote:
| All easy, Helion will just do it better than everyone else.
| They can even produce Helium-3 themselves!
|
| Which kind of raises the question why they are not aiming
| to sell said Helium-3...
|
| I call BS on basically all of it. Except their cookie
| banner, that has an "opt-out" button right next to accept.
| momojo wrote:
| I have a friend who did their dissertation particle physics at
| a fusion lab, modeling Alcator c-mod tokamaks, and was reached
| out to by Helion for a R&D position.
|
| The general consensus among him and his peers is that the
| hardest challenge to overcome is the energy capture. As
| interesting as it is, it's not efficient enough to be useful
| yet.
|
| The company is by no means snake-oil, but there's a reason the
| energy-capture part of the video is a bit vague.
|
| Take all that with a grain of salt.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| If you want to feel optimistic, solar pv tech that's been
| improving over decades should be hitting the same price point
| around the time they intend to actually produce net energy for
| the first time. Other pv tech in the pipeline that may or may
| not work aims to make it cheaper still.
|
| So if this works great, if not it's not the only shot we have.
|
| Also the most important price point is "less than fossil fuels"
| which renewables have reached already in most of the world.
| That's when you start displacing large amounts of carbon.
|
| But more new cheap, clean energy sources are always welcome
| news.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| I doubt renewables are cheaper once they start making up a
| majority of the supply (except in small countries that can
| get most electricity from hydropower). Sure batteries or
| other storage technology may get there eventually but that's
| very much TBD.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Well, you're wrong to have that doubt.
|
| 80 or 85% is the figure that people usually quote as being
| when solar and wind will start having issues (the exact
| division between the two varies by latitude mostly), but at
| that point you're saving money on 85% of your energy
| expenditure so things have to go pretty drastically wrong
| for you to end up in the negative.
|
| As this post notes, with cheap power you can make liquid
| fuels for less than it costs to dig them up.
|
| This web site here will give you example renewable only
| grids for most of the earth and how much battery and
| power2x renewable gas you'd need. It's generally not a lot,
| wind and solar do the heavy lifting.
|
| https://www.wartsila.com/energy/towards-100-renewable-
| energy...
|
| You get lots of batteries in sunny places, but that's just
| because it's cheap and we know it works well with solar.
| But yes anywhere with hydro gets to take advantage of cheap
| renewables much more easily.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Interesting. I'll have to look into it more closely.
| Sounds like the "climate crisis" (don't like that term
| but everyone knows what it means so it's convenient) is
| basically solved if everything you've said is true.
| mutant wrote:
| Oh, is that all? A complete solution to energy?
|
| Have it next week boss
| sdfhdhjdw3 wrote:
| > the ability to manufacture enough power plants to satisfy the
| current electrical demand of earth in a ten year period.
|
| LOL.
|
| Is Helion backed by the same VCs that back all those shitcoins?
| naillo wrote:
| For all the cynicism in this thread, I can't really deep down
| dislike sama for investing his money like this. There's plenty of
| ways to get more money and this isn't one of the most secure ones
| so money going to physics and smoothing out the engineering here
| may or may not get us all the way but it's nice that he's
| spending money to try to get us closer.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I agree. A simply b2b sass startup is hard enough to make work.
| This is probably 10x as hard to pull off. I still think it's
| great he and others are trying.
| Animats wrote:
| This is for real?
|
| I read the web site. It's all web glitz, not much content.
|
| Are there peer-reviewed papers on the technology?
| pnw wrote:
| Yes, the founders published this research before they
| incorporated.
|
| https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0029-5515/51/5/05...
| capableweb wrote:
| This is what I came across:
|
| > Helion has demonstrated the concept[4] in a D-D reactor with
| plasmoids that fire once every three minutes, and it is now
| seeking $15 million in private financing over the next five
| years to develop a full- scale machine that could use D-T fuel
| to reach the break-even point, when it generates as much energy
| as it takes to run. The company hopes that its reactor could
| eventually reach the hotter conditions needed to fuse deuterium
| with helium-3, another combination that produces only
| a-particles and protons, with no neutron by-products.
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mitch-Waldrop-2/publica...
|
| - [4]
| https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0029-5515/51/5/05...
| (https://sci-
| hub.se/https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.108...)
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >produces only a-particles and protons, with no neutron by-
| products.
|
| Magnificent use of weasel wording there. D-He3 is aneutronic,
| but of course a mixed plasma hot enough for that reaction is
| going to have tons of fusions among deuterons, producing
| plenty of neutrons. I'm not sure if the sky high price of
| helium-3 is worth just _reducing_ the neutron output of a
| reactor, rather than eliminating it.
| DennisP wrote:
| It's intentionally a hybrid of D-D and D-He3. The output of
| D-D is half He3, and half tritium which decays to He3 with
| a 12-year half-life. So the only external input is actually
| deuterium.
|
| I've seen Helion and other say that the combined reaction
| will release 6% of its energy as neutron radiation. That's
| low enough to skip a heat cycle, which is the real benefit
| since it substantially lowers your capital cost. That's why
| Helion estimates a cost starting at $0.01/kWh, and less as
| they get into mass production.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| -> As the plasma expands, it pushes back on the magnetic field.
| By Faraday's law, the change in field induces current, which is
| directly recaptured as electricity. This clean fusion electricity
| is used to power homes and communities, efficiently and
| affordably.
|
| Charging without wires! /s
|
| Where does the thermal power go?
| thatcherc wrote:
| Thermal power goes into the expansion of the plasma I'd figure,
| just like the hot gases in an internal combustion engine
| cylinder. Only here the work is done against a magnetic field
| instead of a piston.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| I wish I understood this better. Isn't it the opposite, it
| requires work to contain the plasma? The hotter it gets the
| more work it takes to contain?
| DennisP wrote:
| Helion uses a series of pulses, just like an ICE.
| zamalek wrote:
| > Only here the work is done against a magnetic field instead
| of a piston.
|
| I understand the theory behind this, but when it is used in
| an analogy like this it really blows my mind.
| Animats wrote:
| This seems to be a magnetohydrodynamic generator. Shoot a
| charged plasma through a coil and get electricity out.
| Experimental MHD plants have been built for fossil fuels.[1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamic_generator
| trhway wrote:
| MHD have pretty low efficiency (otherwise the world wouldn't
| have bothered with turbines, pistons/crankshafts, etc.). They
| claim 95% recovery. That is amazing. That would in particular
| seem to imply that the radiative/thermal losses less than 5%,
| which is very strange (classic thermal radiative power is 4th
| power of temperature and add bremsstrahlung to that). You'd
| usually need high density (or size sometimes can do for it)
| for the radiation/thermal to not escape much. They seem to
| have demonstrated efficient recovery at conditions far from
| the real fusion where such radiative losses would be expected
| to grow disproportionally.
| Animats wrote:
| According to Wikipedia, there's an inherent limit on MHD
| generators due to plasma instability. That's also the
| problem with most fusion systems, where everybody struggles
| to maintain a stable plasma for seconds. The idea behind
| this Helion thing seems to be to run in pulsed mode, so
| long term stability isn't required.
|
| Pulsed fusion systems have been around for a while. There's
| another startup, First Light Fusion, also claiming to have
| a commercial energy source Real Soon Now.[1] People have
| been claiming that for pulsed fusion since at least 1971,
| when laser confinement was a big thing.
|
| [1] https://firstlightfusion.com/
| trhway wrote:
| I personally believe that the pulsed/inertial would be
| the fusion, be it energy generation or space engine
| (after all the only net positive artificial fusion device
| so far - thermonuclear bomb - is "pulsed", and so we have
| only a matter of engineering to scale it down :). My bet
| though would be on something like Sandia Z-machine or on
| laser (as we've had remarkable laser efficiency
| improvements) as they clearly create fusion conditions
| (and much closer to the bomb confinement wise) and burn
| significant amounts of fuel (thus allowing for typical
| established ways of energy generation) than for example
| Helion where the plasma clouds don't carry much fuel and
| thus can't produce significant amounts of energy.
| jxy wrote:
| At least we know it's not written by and for engineers or
| scientists, but let's be polite and just call it BS. There is
| so much things need to happen between plasma expanding and
| consumer electricity in the copper wire.
|
| > Helion now needs to figure out how to engineer machines that
| don't break
|
| This is actually honest. It encompasses all the past, current,
| and future researches. The rest doesn't matter as much. Wish
| them the best.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion
| engineer_22 wrote:
| https://sci-
| hub.se/https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.108...
|
| Here's a paper that explains it better than the wikipedia
| thinkcontext wrote:
| Seems unlikely to me that they will read that over a high
| level summary.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| why?
| hef19898 wrote:
| The thermal energy is used to power Sam's eyeball scanning
| crypto orbs, obviously.
| ilaksh wrote:
| I have always wanted to believe that fusion will be a real energy
| source someday. Maybe this is finally it. Not the first time
| someone said that though.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| people like sam are betting the world on it
| defterGoose wrote:
| If the uber-riche (like SA) are doing anything less than
| betting their comfortable livelihoods on climate tech,
| they're not doing enough. The rest of us don't have the
| resources to do anything other than vote and hope change
| literally comes from the top.
| ericd wrote:
| You can go work at one of the many jobs that help with
| it...
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| sorry for my imprecise words. what I meant is that they are
| exclusively interested in market solutions for climate
| change, using capitalism to cure itself
| DennisP wrote:
| It's not like governments are doing anything significant.
| If politicians won't do their part, then it's up to the
| capitalists.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| they are copilots in growth at any (externalized) cost
| lkbm wrote:
| This made me wonder just how much he's actually putting in
| vs. what he has / is investing in general. Reports say that
| he personally invested $375MM into Helion[0] and various
| sources say his total net worth is...$200-$200MM[1][2].
|
| But yc definitely also has solar startups, and Sam Altman
| appears to believe in those as well[3], as one would expect.
|
| Conclusion: It's unclear how "all-in" he is (but it's a
| pretty big bet), and online "net worth" estimators are even
| more terrible than I'd assumed.
|
| [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/05/sam-altman-
| puts-375-million-... [1] https://finty.com/us/net-worth/sam-
| altman/ [2] https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-
| businessmen/ceos/s... [3]
| https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/25/y-combinator-backed-
| bright...
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| I'm not talking about dollars put in, I meant that they are
| banking on surviving climate change via accelerated techno
| optimism
| DennisP wrote:
| Techno-optimism is destructive when it gives people an
| excuse for inaction. If you're actually putting a lot of
| effort or resources into a possible solution, that's the
| opposite of inaction.
|
| Plenty of people are tackling the political side of
| things, with a notable lack of success. I'm glad there
| are people working hard on the technological
| breakthroughs that could make the task a lot easier.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| ur talking about vc who got us into this mess and
| continue to invest in consumerism and growth at all costs
| epaulson wrote:
| I know that I should be skeptical of all fusion claims, so I'm
| not asking anyone to predict if this actually WILL happen from
| Helion, but this machine claims to be smaller than other designs.
| Does anyone know how small this approach to fusion could scale
| down? Is it conceivable that it could deployed as the power
| source for an ocean-going ship, or could it be small enough that
| it could be part of a campus-scale microgrid?
| lacker wrote:
| That is conceivable, if it works as intended. Small enough to
| fit in a shipping container is small enough to put on a ship or
| on a campus. Of course, that's a big "if", and I don't have
| much to go on besides material that Helion itself puts out.
| DennisP wrote:
| It's also about the right power output. Largest diesel
| engines on ships put out about 40MW of power.
| perlgeek wrote:
| I would love to support this endeavor, but a distinct lack of
| remote jobs makes this not very feasible for me. Best of luck
| though!
| sidcool wrote:
| At what stage are we in actualising fusion energy as a feasible
| source? Is it:
|
| 1. Theory is in place. Need to work out some some physics.
|
| 2. Physics is solid. Engineering needs work.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Helion addresses that in their FAQ
| (https://www.helionenergy.com/faq/). TLDR, they have produced
| six working prototypes, the most recent which has been
| continuously running for 16 months. These haven't produced net
| electricity yet, apparently due more to scale than to any
| unsolved scientific or engineering problems. Prototype 7,
| "Polaris", is aimed to scale up the design to produce net
| electricity by 2024. This new hiring spree is to figure out how
| to mass produce it.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Wow, so start-up claims to have a fusion reactor demonstrator
| running for 16 _months_ , while all the large projects are
| struggling with their firat prototypes. And we just believe
| said start-ups claims?
| DennisP wrote:
| Achieving fusion is not that hard, lots of projects have
| working fusion. You can even do it yourself with a homebrew
| project costing about $1000. What's hard is getting more
| power out than you put in, which GP mentioned Helion has
| not done yet.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| You don't have to believe it. Literally nothing in your
| life will change whether you choose to believe this bit of
| information or not. Either Helion will solve nuclear
| fusion, or turn out to be another failed startup, but in
| this instance, your personal beliefs will have no impact on
| which one happens. So you may as well suspend both belief
| _and_ disbelief and just wait and see what the reality
| turns out to be.
| sdfhdhjdw3 wrote:
| The theory has been in place for about 70 years.
| ambrozk wrote:
| The most basic physics (e.g. the actual reactions involved) is
| solved but how plasmas actually behave in practice is not well
| modeled. A lot of improvements in fusion efficiency come from
| tinkering with settings and seeing what works. A caveat that I
| am not an expert in fusion, and am getting this from the book
| "The Future of Fusion Energy".
| mhb wrote:
| Book review/summary of The Future of Fusion Energy:
|
| https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-
| the-f...
| Symmetry wrote:
| Of the current fusion startups I'm generally most optimistic
| about Helion because they have a plausible solution for
| generating energy that produces electricity rather than just
| heat. Having to couple large amount of turbine with potentially
| neutron-activated liquids is a big driver of costs in nuclear
| plants and this neatly seems to sidestep the problem by turning
| the momentum of charged particles into electricity directly with
| no heat engine involved.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > this neatly seems to sidestep the problem by turning the
| momentum of charged particles into electricity directly with no
| heat engine involved
|
| How??
| obblekk wrote:
| Aneutronic fusion
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion) - some
| fusion reactions simply don't result in many neutrons being
| created, rather all protons and electrons being created.
|
| When a neutron is created, it has a lot of energy (heat) and
| it has 0 charge. This means it cannot be contained by
| electric/magnetic fields, and it cannot create an electric
| potential in metal directly. It must run into something else,
| transfer it's heat energy, and that something else must then
| transfer energy into electricity (usually this means heat up
| some water and run a turbine).
|
| That's hard, lossy, and messy. And it's how all major fusion
| projects have always worked (including ITER). If instead,
| someone got an aneutronic fusion reaction to work (no
| theoretical issues, just engineering problems), they could
| produce pure protons and electrons, trap them with an
| electric field, and use the high speed motion of the charged
| particles to induce a current/voltage in a nearby metal.
|
| This would solve the following problems: 1. Easy to contain
| high temperature outputs 2. Easy to protect the inner wall of
| a reactor (minimal interaction due to electric repulsion) 3.
| Easy to generate useful (electric) energy from heat energy
|
| This would definitely be a gamechanger. It's like going from
| "use the sun to boil this water and turn the turbine" to "use
| the sun to induce a photoelectric effect." Categorical
| difference.
| joak wrote:
| Actually they have raised (a round lead by Sam Altman)
| $500M to demo net electricity by 2024.
|
| Then their plans are to have a factory to build 20 50MW-
| generators per day. Each generator is shipping-container
| size.
|
| Link to the interview in local press here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32088113
| Symmetry wrote:
| Pushing against a magnetic field. There are a lot of ways to
| do it, including the generators that turn mechanical energy
| into electricity. My favorites are flux compressors though,
| for when you to turn the energy in a stick of dynamite into a
| very sharp current spike.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compre.
| ..
| SkeuomorphicBee wrote:
| Their website mentions that fusion makes the plasma expand
| and:
|
| > Electricity Recapture
|
| > As the plasma expands, it pushes back on the magnetic
| field. By Faraday's law, the change in field induces current,
| which is directly recaptured as electricity. This clean
| fusion electricity is used to power homes and communities,
| efficiently and affordably.
| [deleted]
| pnut wrote:
| Unlimited access to a natural resource can juice development
| short term, but look at where that has gotten us with both fossil
| fuels and Moore's Law - bloated, absurdly resource hungry
| software, and environmental destruction. Of course, we also got
| new technology and increased average standard of living, but so
| much waste.
|
| Probably "free energy" is necessary to achieve a utopian, post
| scarcity society, but with all our prior experience with gluts of
| resource mostly being hoarded and used for profit-seeking, my
| enthusiasm for the nature of any fusion revolution is more
| measured than wide eyed.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Helion_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29119180 - Nov
| 2021 (250 comments)
|
| _Helion Energy achieves fusion milestone_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27915833 - July 2021 (80
| comments)
|
| _Y Combinator And Mithril Invest In Helion, A Nuclear Fusion
| Startup_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8178450 - Aug
| 2014 (192 comments)
| borissk wrote:
| "in 2024 to 1) demonstrate Q > 1 fusion"
|
| You wish :)
|
| I used to work in CERN a long time ago and still keep in touch
| with a few physicists. All of them are very skeptical about
| commercial nuclear fusion before 2050 - 2070. It's going to take
| huge advances in science and engineering and a lot of money (on a
| scale similar to Manhattan or Apollo projects).
| thepasswordis wrote:
| I wish too. I think we all do
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| To be fair, Q > 1 in a research system and "commercial nuclear
| fusion" are two different things. I'm a lay person but it feels
| to me like SPARC has a good chance of Q > 1 this decade and
| reasonable that they could build a commercial system before
| 2040.
|
| I'm reminded of all the NASA people that were highly skeptical
| of SpaceX when they were getting started and I feel like these
| big institutions end up with a bias against new companies with
| new ideas.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Nay sayers! All it takes is some innovative, VC backed start-
| up. Until IPO / SPAC that is.
| Shadonototra wrote:
| VCs funding a company has nothing to do with innovation
|
| Their goal is to make a profit
|
| That's why we don't have fusion energy yet
|
| And that's why Nuclear plants have stagnated for many decades
| already
|
| Education is where innovation comes from, it's been like this
| for centuries (scientific, health, industry) and yet it's
| been neglected for decades, go look at the salaries of
| teachers, even in private schools
|
| VC backed startups prevent innovation, look at today, we
| living a recession since 2008 because the market invested and
| moved their wealth in for profit pockets
|
| If you invest in schools, you don't expect profit in return,
| you expect innovation in return
|
| If you invest in a startup, you don't expect innovation in
| return, you expect profit in return
|
| It is very simple
|
| Galileo wasn't a VC and he wasn't backed by a VC
|
| Even Tesla and SpaceX couldn't be where they are with only
| just VCs, they had to get massive help from the fed and the
| government to stay afloat, as well as a shit ton of
| internships from all around the world to sustain their R&D
| efforts
| DennisP wrote:
| The Manhattan project cost $23 billion in 2020 dollars. The
| ITER project alone is spending more than that. Helion is
| spending a couple billion, but draws on decades of published
| research.
| borissk wrote:
| How many % of the country GDP did the Manhattan cost? How
| much would that percentage be in dollars today?
| UncleEntity wrote:
| It was a government project during a wartime economy so
| probably doesn't matter.
| DennisP wrote:
| How does that matter? It's the same size project, no matter
| how much is going on in the rest of the economy.
|
| Also, the Manhattan Project took three years. Fusion has
| been actively researched for seventy years.
|
| We can spend all day quibbling but it seems clear that
| fusion research is at least roughly "on a scale similar to
| Manhattan."
| borissk wrote:
| Nothing like it. Nearly all the best physicists and
| mathematicians in the free world were employed in
| Manhattan, a minuscule amount of the top scientists in
| the world today work on fusion.
| DennisP wrote:
| You said "a lot of money (on a scale similar to
| Manhattan", so I've been arguing that specific point.
| Money on the scale of Manhattan is in fact being spent.
|
| I don't think there's any way to quantify whether the
| "best" physicists are working on fusion so I'm not going
| to argue that one.
| borissk wrote:
| As I tried to explain, what I meant was the Manhattan
| project cost 0.8% of 1945 US GDP. To spend the same
| percentage today would be 184 billion. Obviously nothing
| like that is being spent.
|
| If you read physics journals, you'll know there is very
| little research being done and published on fusion today.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| I am definitely not in the know wrt fusion, but I certainly
| wish this venture is successful.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| I dislike steam. Their approach to this is to extract electrical
| energy direct from the reactor is what I really like. If they
| actually succeed, this is perfect for space travel.
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