[HN Gopher] A high-profile geneticist is launching Pacific Fusion
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A high-profile geneticist is launching Pacific Fusion
Author : sudohalt
Score : 11 points
Date : 2024-10-25 18:05 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| PeterCorless wrote:
| Related same-day story in Wired. You only get this kind of
| coverage if you have a solid PR/marketing team. The kind of team
| that $900 million can buy you.
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/plaintext-pacific-fusion-eric-la...
| PeterCorless wrote:
| "For these next years, leading up to the early 2030s, the goal
| is to get, for the first time, a single pulse where you get
| more energy out than you put in," says Will Regan, Pacific
| Fusion's president and an ARPA-E veteran. "As we're doing that,
| we're looking at a lot of the commercial issues, like getting
| costs down."
|
| -- imagine having $900 million and you don't need to show any
| positive results for nearly a decade.
| PeterCorless wrote:
| Mind you, I understand the challenges such an incredible
| scientific breakthrough as fusion requires. Which is why
| traditionally such work was funded by national governments.
| It just goes to show how unique this is for any sort of
| scientific research or venture capital models.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| They aren't getting the $900M up-front.
|
| > Taneja proposed that investors commit a sum to be paid over
| time, with tranches released only if Pacific Fusion reaches
| certain milestones. "The team was a little skeptical at
| first," he says of the Pacific Fusion people. "But it became
| clear that that structure resonated, because everybody takes
| early-stage risk in these really capital-intense, long-
| duration moonshots."
| dang wrote:
| Yes, maybe it's best if we change to that from
| https://www.generalcatalyst.com/stories/our-investment-in-
| pa.... Thanks!
|
| The best third-party article tends to be preferable to a
| corporate press release on HN (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRang
| e=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...), though interested readers may
| want to look at both.
| PeterCorless wrote:
| It's definitely a breathtaking announcement for those of us
| old enough to remember when we were promised living in a
| fusion-powered future since the 1960s.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/U08GV
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Here's a model:
|
| > "The problems faced by MCF systems involving reactor structures
| made radioactive and physically weakened by neutron bombardment
| can be almost eliminated in ICF systems where the fusion fuel
| capsule must be enclosed in a one-meter-thick flowing liquid
| metal sphere or cylinder to accommodate the gigajoule-level
| impulse loading.34 This containment approach can take the form of
| liquid falls comprising jets of molten metal.35 The incoming
| fusion neutrons sustain the temperature of the circulating liquid
| metal, whose heat would be extracted to drive a turbine.
| Relatively few neutrons would strike the solid outer chamber."
|
| https://inference-review.com/article/the-quest-for-fusion-en...
|
| Here's the original 2021 laser-ignition experiments:
|
| https://www.llnl.gov/article/48866/three-peer-reviewed-paper...
|
| I doubt we'll see any fusion-based power plants in the next 50
| years, but who knows? Certainly there are worse things to do with
| a billion dollars.
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(page generated 2024-10-25 23:02 UTC)