[HN Gopher] University of Texas-led team solves a big problem fo...
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University of Texas-led team solves a big problem for fusion energy
Author : signa11
Score : 196 points
Date : 2025-05-12 12:21 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.utexas.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.utexas.edu)
| perihelions wrote:
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.02175v2
| RhysU wrote:
| > We report on a data-driven method for learning a
| nonperturbative guiding center model from full-orbit particle
| simulation data.
|
| > Then we describe a data-driven method for learning from a
| dataset of full-orbit a-particle trajectories. We apply this
| method to the a-particle dynamics shown in Fig. 1 and find the
| learned non-perturbative guiding center model significantly
| outperforms the standard guiding center expansion. Our proposed
| method for learning applies on a per-magnetic field basis;
| changing requires re-training.
|
| Is this interpolation at its heart? A variable transformation
| then a data fit?
|
| Anyone know which functionals of these orbits are important? I
| don't know the space. I am wondering why the orbits with such
| nuance should be materially important when accessed via lower-
| order models.
| wizardforhire wrote:
| Haven't read the article yet, yet alone the paper but based
| on what you've quoted these are ongoing challenges with
| regards to confinement. Think tokamak vs stellarator.
| Magnetoplasmahydrodynamics is hard because you have all the
| complexities of the navier-stokes combined with Maxwell and
| thats just scratching the surface. Sensitive dependence on
| initial conditions has never been so sinister as in plasma
| confinement. Orbital perturbations quickly lead to turbulent
| instabilities which lead to containment breach which can lead
| to multi-million degree hyper velocity jets tearing a hole
| through your multi-billion dollar toy in seconds.
| xyst wrote:
| Is there a collective repository on breakthroughs in energy
| generation by fusion? Sure, this team solves one "big" problem.
| But hints there are a plethora of other problems (or technology
| limitations) in this field.
| DennisP wrote:
| Part of the excitement these days is that the general march of
| technology has removed a lot of those technology limitations,
| due to advances in superconductors, lasers, supercomputers,
| fast high-power electronics, etc. (Superconductors and
| computers would be the ones relevant to stellarators, of
| course.)
| tiahura wrote:
| How is that different than the excitement 30 years ago?
| lupusreal wrote:
| Even with all of these advancements I don't see how you get
| around fusion reactors still being more complicated and
| expensive to build as fission reactors, and just as
| radioactive due to the huge amounts of neutron radiation the
| "easiest" kinds of fusion produce.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| The difference is that waste from neutron activation is
| "just" an engineering problem which might have an
| engineering solution (we hope).
|
| Waste in the form of long-lived nuclear fission products is
| fundamentally an unsolvable issue. Transmutation has been
| proposed but isn't really practicable, shooting it into the
| sun isn't really an option either, so the only choice is to
| confine it for geological timescales somehow.
|
| Both options are really much better, in my opinion, than
| pumping more carbon dioxide into our biosphere.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > "just" an engineering problem
|
| This is a major fallacy that makes people think DT fusion
| is more promising than it actually is.
|
| Engineering problems are perfectly capable of killing a
| technology. After all, fission after 1942 was "just an
| engineering problem". And DT fusion faces very serious
| engineering problems.
|
| I include cost issues as engineering problems, as
| engineering cannot be divorced from economic
| considerations. Engineering involves cost optimization.
| lupusreal wrote:
| True. Launch loops are "just" an engineering problem
| which could be built with known materials but in reality
| the engineering problems are so huge it's hardly any
| better than space elevators which call for undiscovered
| materials.
|
| You also have the associated economic problems; the up-
| front cost of a launch loop would be so huge that you
| could never convince anybody to build it instead of using
| rockets. Fusion has the same problem; even if you can
| design a fusion power plant that produces net power, it
| needs to produce net power by a massive margin to have
| any chance of being economically competitive with fission
| let alone solar.
| Sevii wrote:
| Storing fission waste products is a solved problem. You
| can either reprocess them as is done in France. Or you
| can store them forever. Neither approach is difficult or
| poorly understood. We can store an infinite amount of
| fission waste products in the ocean, underground or in
| the mantle.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Nuclear waste isn't an engineering problem at all, it's a
| social problem. Objectively, dropping it all into a deep
| ocean crevice is utterly safe and effective but you'll
| never get the ignorant public who go off feelings to buy
| into it.
|
| Fusion is only better insofar as the public don't yet
| understand how radioactive the reactor will become, but
| counting on that ignorance is a bad long term strategy.
| roflmaostc wrote:
| And fusion reactors cannot end up like a Chernobyl
| disaster. That's a huge safety plus and one of the major
| concerns many countries are phasing out fission reactors.
| RetroTechie wrote:
| Safe (!) fission reactors are simple? Ok.
|
| Never mind what's required to deal with the fuel & waste
| products.
| lupusreal wrote:
| They're a hell of a lot simpler than fusion reactors.
| tiahura wrote:
| Is this a variation of the Fleischmann-Pons method?
| gnfargbl wrote:
| No, this has absolutely nothing to do with so-called "cold"
| fusion. Cold fusion was a hypothetical type of room-temperature
| nuclear fusion. It was reported in 1989 but not successfully
| replicated. It can't possibly work because of the Coulomb
| repulsion between nuclei is far too strong for them to come
| into contact at our everyday energy levels.
|
| This work is related to actual genuine nuclear fusion, the kind
| that occurs at energy scales sufficient to overcome that
| Coulomb barrier. At those energy scales it becomes very hard to
| manage the plasma in which fusion occurs. This is a claimed
| advance in plasma management.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Ordinary fusion doesn't overcome the Coulomb barrier either.
| In a purely classical sense, fusion wouldn't happen, since
| the thermal energies are well below the height of the Coulomb
| barrier.
|
| What happens is that thermal energies get high enough that
| the nuclei get close enough to have a significant rate of
| tunneling through the barrier. It's a quantum mechanical
| effect.
|
| There is a nonzero rate of tunneling through the barrier even
| at room temperature -- just extremely low, far lower than
| putative cold fusion claims.
| Sniffnoy wrote:
| > It can't possibly work because of the Coulomb repulsion
| between nuclei is far too strong for them to come into
| contact at our everyday energy levels.
|
| Worth noting that (while obviously not what is normally meant
| by "cold fusion") muon-catalyzed fusion is possible and is
| cold, so the above statement can't be quite right.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| Technically correct, yes, but muonic atoms have a lifetime
| on the order of microseconds. They aren't really relevant
| to the everyday-scale physics I was discussing.
|
| There is however Lattice Confinement Fusion [1] which
| claims to overcome the Coulomb barrier through some kind of
| "screening" from the electron cloud in the lattice. That
| seems more like it would work on at everyday scales, though
| I don't understand it nearly enough to offer any opinion on
| viability.
|
| [1] https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/space/science/lattice-
| confinement-...
| bell-cot wrote:
| True...but without an _extremely_ cheap source of muons
| (half-life: 2 microseconds), muon-catalyzed fusion will
| forever be condemned to " _in theory_ , you could..."
| purgatory.
| scythe wrote:
| It is a little jarring to hear "data-driven" and
| "nonperturbative" in the same sentence. It sounds a little bit
| like saying you designed a boat with a better lift-to-drag ratio.
| "Wait, is it a boat or a plane?". So, I opened the paper fully
| expecting to not understand anything, and I was pleasantly
| surprised.
|
| > First we deduce formally-exact non-perturbative guiding center
| equations of motion assuming a hidden symmetry with associated
| conserved quantity J. We refer to J as the non-perturbative
| adiabatic invariant.
|
| Simply: this is not just some kind of unsupervised ML black-box
| magic. There is a formal mathematical solution to _something_ ,
| but it has a certain gap, namely precisely what quantity is
| conserved and how to calculate it.
|
| > Then we describe a data-driven method for learning J from a
| dataset of full-orbit a-particle trajectories. [...] Our proposed
| method for learning J applies on a per-magnetic field basis;
| changing B requires re-training. This makes it well-suited to
| stellarator design assessment tasks, such as a-loss fraction
| uncertainty quantification.
|
| With the formal simplification of the dynamics in hand, the
| researchers believe that a trained model can then give a useful
| approximation of the invariant, which allows the formal model,
| with its unknown parameters now filled in, to be used to model
| the dynamics.
|
| In a crude way, I think I have a napkin-level sketch of what
| they're doing here. Suppose we are modeling a projectile, and we
| know nothing of kinematics. They have determined that the
| projectile has a parabolic trajectory (the formal part) and then
| they are using data analysis to find the _g_ coefficient that
| represents gravitational acceleration (the data-driven part).
| Obviously, you would never need machine learning in such a very
| simple case as I have described, but I think it approximates the
| main idea.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| One of the nice things about LLMs/ML, is that they can pound
| away at something for a billion cycles, and do exactly the same
| things that you or I would do.
|
| for _ in 0..<1000000000000 { do_something_complicated() }
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Isn't that one of the nice things of computers in general not
| a feature of llm?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| The difference is the complexity of the repeated task
| BandButcher wrote:
| But don't those complexities still boil down to machine
| level instructions??
|
| Or can/do llms operate outside of a CPU? Thanks
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm not getting into angels and pinheads, but modern ML
| has the ability to perform "fuzzy analysis," and
| interpret results in a far more flexible manner, than
| ever before.
|
| They may not be able to match an MIT Ph.D, at analyzing
| experimental feedback, but they can probably match a lot
| of research assistants.
|
| It's like having a billion RAs, all running experiments,
| and triaging the results. I understand that is how they
| have made such good progress on medicines, with AI.
|
| _> "I have not failed. I 've just found 10,000 ways that
| won't work."
|
| -Attributed to Thomas Edison_
| elcritch wrote:
| Often in physics the equations are already known or can be
| derived. However, taking a formula, generally a PDE, and
| solving it efficiently is the real trick. Also as you point
| out, formulating the equation in terms of core invariants you
| wish to hold, plays an important part.
|
| Finding simplified easy to solve solutions and using them to
| estimate solutions and using adjustments to get closer to the
| real solution is a baselime technique. That's the core of the
| pertubative approach in physics which uses :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perturbation_theory#:~:text=Pe...
|
| However, now it's possible to train AI models to learn much
| more complex approximations that allow them to run much quicker
| and more accurately. A prime example is DeepMinds AlphaFold,
| IMHO.
|
| I haven't read up on the research to much, but I'd place firm
| bets that AI models will be critical in controlling any viable
| fusion technology.
| red75prime wrote:
| > high-energy electrons that can punch a hole in the surrounding
| walls.
|
| What does it mean? Beta radiation can cause structural damage? Is
| it really a problem?
| regularfry wrote:
| The electrons are high enough energy that they can damage the
| wall, yes. But also they're simply a route for energy loss from
| the plasma that you don't want. E.g.
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-48672-7
| jmyeet wrote:
| Yes. It's a significant problem for two reasons:
|
| 1. High energy particles destroy the container. Alpha
| particles, which are just Helium nuclei, are quite small and
| can in between metal atoms. Neutrons too. High energy electrons
| too; and
|
| 2. It's an energy loss for the system to lose particles this
| way.
|
| Magnetic confinement works for alpha and beta particles because
| they're electrically charged. Neutrons are a far bigger
| problem, such that you have fun phrases like "neutron
| embrittlement".
| chiffre01 wrote:
| TLDR for the paper and article:
|
| The paper introduces a new, data-driven method for simulating
| particle motion in fusion devices that is much more accurate than
| traditional models, especially for fast particles, and could
| significantly improve fusion reactor design.
| nk8620 wrote:
| Is that what the paper is about? I thought there was some heavy
| physics breakthrough. I wanted to read the paper, but given
| this TLDR, I'm having second thoughts. I'll probably just use
| an LLM instead now.
| jmyeet wrote:
| I remain skeptical that fusion will ever be a commercially viable
| energy source. I'd love to be wrong.
|
| The engineering challenges are so massive that even if they can
| be solved, which is far from certain, at what cost? With a dense
| high-energy plasma, you're dealing with a turbulent fluid where
| any imperfection in your magnetic confinement will likely dmaage
| the container.
|
| People get caught up on cheap or free fuel and the fact that
| stars do this. The fuel cost is irrelevant if the capital cost of
| a plant is billions and billions of dollars. That has to be
| amortized over the life of the plant. Producing 1GW of power for
| $100 billion (made up numbers) is not commercially viable.
|
| And stars solve the confinement problem with gravity and by being
| really, really large.
|
| Neutron loss remains one of the biggest problems. Not only does
| this damage the container (ie "neutron embrittlement") but it's a
| significant energy loss for the system and so-called aneutronic
| fusion tends to rely on rare fuels like Helium-3.
|
| And all of this to heat water to create steam and turn a turbine.
|
| I see solar as the future. No moving parts. The only form of
| direct power generation. Cheap and getting cheaper and there are
| solutions to no power generation at night (eg batteries, long-
| distance power transmission).
| lordfrito wrote:
| No one wants to acknowledge that the economics will likely
| never work out for the reasons you mentioned. Too much
| maintenance -- and very expensive maintenance at that. It's far
| cheaper cost per watt to build a traditional fission reactor
| and run/maintain that.
|
| Another reason is that transmission distribution costs are half
| of your energy bill... so even if you could theoretically get
| fusion energy generation for "free" (which is impossible)
| you've still only cut your power bill in half.
|
| Edit: I meant to say distribution costs not transmission.
| Looking at last months bill I paid $66.60 to deliver $51.76 of
| energy (about 56% of my total bill was delivery). The raw
| distribution charge was $49.32 or 42% of the bill. I'm not
| alone in these numbers, but your mileage may vary.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| And the transmission costs argument is precisely why we'd
| likely be better off solving the problem of distributing
| power production across a more decentralized grid with a lot
| of wind and solar and battery _all over the place_
| bell-cot wrote:
| Problem: the capital & maintenance costs of the grid vary
| very little with its utilization %.
|
| So if you build loads of wind & solar & battery all over -
| either (1) you've got to build _so_ much battery capacity,
| all over, that you 'll never need the grid, or (2) you've
| still got to build the grid to get you through occasional
| "calm & dark" periods.
|
| Either way, you're looking at vastly higher capital
| expenses.
| markvdb wrote:
| Not necessarily. A slightly different approach might
| become lower TCO in the medium term:
|
| - moderately overbuild solar
|
| - batteries for short term storage
|
| - natural gas for seasonal storage
| WillAdams wrote:
| Excellent points.
|
| One wonders if this is why Lockheed-Martin dropped their
| effort:
|
| https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/compact-
| fusion...
|
| (that page is still up, but news reporting indicates it has
| been dropped)
| jmyeet wrote:
| Transmission is a really interesting problem that creates all
| kinds of distortions.
|
| Say a house uses 10,000kWh per year at $0.10/kWH so
| $1000/year electrcitiy bill. Now say you get a solar system
| that produces 5,000kWh per year, focused in the summer months
| (where your power bill tends to be higher anyway). You may
| even export some of that power back to the grid. Have you cut
| your power bill in half? No. It's probably down ~20-25%.
|
| Why? Because regardless of how much power you use (within
| limits) you still need a connection to the power grid and
| that needs to be maintained. You'll often even see this on
| the electricity bill: fixed charges like "access charge" per
| month.
|
| We benefit from being on a connected grid. Your own power
| generation might be insufficient or need maintenance. It's
| inefficient if everyone is storing their own power. So it's
| unclaer what the future of the power grid is. Should there be
| large grids, small grids or no grid?
| VagabundoP wrote:
| There also resilience. Having small to medium local storage
| increases the stability of the grid.
|
| Renewables and something like Iron-Salt battery containers,
| would be pretty efficient over all. Easy to roll-out, very
| safe.
|
| We'll still need some sort of base load somewhere and
| backup to restart everything obviously. But the big giant
| power plants (with the huge capital costs, delays and NIMBY
| headaches) might become less necessary.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > the summer months (where your power bill tends to be
| higher anyway)
|
| This depends on where you live!
| rixed wrote:
| > transmission costs are half of your energy bill
|
| Wait, what?
|
| Wikipedia[0] seems to disagree:
|
| > Long-distance transmission (hundreds of kilometers) is
| cheap and efficient, with costs of US$0.005-0.02 per kWh,
| compared to annual averaged large producer costs of
| US$0.01-0.025 per kWh
|
| Do you maybe mean that half electrical energy dissipate
| between production plant and consummer? But that figure seems
| quite large compared to what I can find online, and this
| would not be a problem with "free fusion".
|
| Care to explain?
|
| [0]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Where I live I pay about $0.09 per kWh for generation and
| about that much for transmission as well. I think that's
| what they're referring to, the literal bill they get from
| their current provider.
| lordfrito wrote:
| I meant to say distribution costs not transmission. Looking
| at last months bill I paid $66.60 to deliver $51.76 of
| energy (about 56% of my total bill was delivery). The raw
| distribution charge alone was $49.32 or 42% of the bill.
| I'm not alone in these numbers, but your mileage may vary.
|
| My point is that the infrastructure related to the delivery
| of energy to a physical location is a non trivial part of
| an energy bill, and that this part doesn't go away
| magically because "fusion".
| bell-cot wrote:
| Long-distance transmission, of huge quantities of
| electrical energy, _IS_ very efficient.
|
| Distributing tiny fractions of all that energy to each of
| millions of individual residences, then maintaining all the
| short/complex/low-capacity wiring needed to do that - that
| part ain't the least bit efficient.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| We're at a point where even "free hot water" is not competitive
| with solar for power generation. It costs more to build a 1GW
| coal power plant than it does to build a 3GW solar power plant
| (the 3X is capacity factor compensation). And most of the cost
| of that coal power plant is the steam turbine and its
| infrastructure.
|
| We're not at that point yet with natural gas because a combined
| cycle turbine is more efficient than a steam turbine.
| nothercastle wrote:
| People really don't understand how huge that is. There is no
| way to make the math on nuclear or fusion work when the power
| extraction portion of the plant costs more than solar even if
| you zero out the generation costs
| doctorwho42 wrote:
| I see this is fallacy, there are a ton of industrial
| processes that use a ton of power just to produce heat. A
| great early use case for fusion will directly use the heat
| for these industrial processes. For example, aluminum
| requires ~14-17MWh to produce 1 ton... If you use the heat
| directly you reduce your processes inefficiency by removing
| the conversions: heat to steam to electric to heat.
|
| Yeah, next 50 years you might not see coal/nat gas being
| replaced by fusion. But you will see fusion displacing
| chunks of what those powerplants will be powering
| nothercastle wrote:
| To take advantage of this you would need to build an
| integrated power/manufacturing hub. The project would be
| extremely expensive and difficult to finance in places
| that don't have strong central planning.
| hwillis wrote:
| > A great early use case for fusion will directly use the
| heat for these industrial processes.
|
| There is no chance that _early_ fusion plants will be
| small enough to justify building them in the same
| building as a factory. They will start large.
|
| > For example, aluminum requires ~14-17MWh to produce 1
| ton
|
| The Hall-Heroult process runs at 950 C, just below the
| melting point of copper. It is close to twice the
| temperature of steam entering the turbines. It is not
| something that can be piped around casually- as a gas it
| will always be at very high pressure because lowering the
| pressure cools it down. Molten salt or similar is
| required to transport that much heat as a liquid. Every
| pipe glows orange. Any industrial process will
| effectively be a part of the power plant because of how
| difficult it is to transport that heat away.
|
| Also NB that the Hall-Heroult process is for creating
| aluminum from ore, and recycling aluminum is the primary
| way we make aluminum.
| o1inventor wrote:
| > Every pipe glows orange. Any industrial process will
| effectively be a part of the power plant because of how
| difficult it is to transport that heat away.
|
| Industrial parks centered around power plants might
| become a thing in the future, being looked at as
| essential infrastructure investment.
|
| Heat transport could be seen as an entire sub-industry
| unto itself, adding efficiency and cost-savings for
| conglamorates that choose to partner with companies that
| invest in and build power plants.
| ryao wrote:
| > I see this is fallacy, there are a ton of industrial
| processes that use a ton of power just to produce heat. A
| great early use case for fusion will directly use the
| heat for these industrial processes. For example,
| aluminum requires ~14-17MWh to produce 1 ton... If you
| use the heat directly you reduce your processes
| inefficiency by removing the conversions: heat to steam
| to electric to heat.
|
| The other guy was correct while you are the one who
| posted the fallacy. If using heat from nuclear sources to
| drive aluminum production were feasible, people would
| already be doing it using heat from HTGR reactors rather
| than waiting for nuclear fusion reactors to be made. The
| reason it is not feasible is because the heat is an
| output, not an input. The actual input is electricity,
| which is what drives the reaction. The 940-980degC
| temperatures reached during the reaction are from the
| electricity being converted into heat from resistive
| losses.
|
| It should be noted that production nuclear fusion
| reactors would be even more radioactive than nuclear
| fission reactors in terms of total nuclear waste
| production by weight. The only reason people think
| otherwise is that the hypothetical use of helium-3 fuel
| would avoid it, but getting enough helium-3 fuel to power
| even a test reactor is effectively an impossibility.
| There are many things that are hypothetically attainable
| if all people in the world decide to do it. The permanent
| elimination of war, crime and poverty are such things.
| Obtaining helium-3 in the quantity needed for a single
| reactor is not.
|
| However, the goal of powering the Hall-Heroult process
| from a nuclear fusion reactor is doable. Just use solar
| panels. Then it will be powered by the giant fusion
| reactor we have in the sky. You would want to add
| batteries to handle energy needs when the sun is not
| shining or do a grid tie connection and let the grid
| operator handle the battery needs.
|
| Finally, industrial processes that actually need heat at
| high temperatures (up to around 950degC if my searches
| are accurate) as input could be served by HTGR reactors.
| If they are not already using them, then future fusion
| reactors will be useless for them, since there is no
| future in sight where a man made fusion reactor is a
| cheaper energy source than a man made fission reactor.
| Honestly, I suspect using solar panels to harness energy
| from the giant fusion reactor in the sky is a more cost
| effective solution than the use of any man-made reactor.
| megaman821 wrote:
| Agreed, fusion is a cool physics problem for now. In the
| far futrue, if it can scale down, it my have applications
| in shipping or space.
| chasil wrote:
| However, solar caused problems in Spain recently due to its
| lack of mechanical inertia, which brought their grid down due
| to frequency instability.
|
| Fusion would use a conventional turbine with boiling water.
| Is this a better source of mechanical inertia than hydropower
| or fission?
|
| Is there a better way to solve the problem of frequency
| instability?
|
| Why is this fact downvoted? This article mentions "synthetic
| inertia;" what are its drawbacks?
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-09/spain-
| bla...
|
| https://archive.ph/VI32e
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Solar caused problems in Spain because it was
| misconfigured. AC inverters are a fabulous source of power
| stabilization; many grids choose to install batteries and
| inverters for grid stabilization.
| chasil wrote:
| The article mentions that largish batteries are needed
| for synthetic inertia, which I am guessing use A/C
| inverters. Spain appeared to lack sufficient batteries.
|
| Obviously, this configuration of solar and battery banks
| will work more optimally when they are closer to the
| equator.
|
| Will different types of power grids be required for areas
| further away, or is it practical to ship power long
| distances to far Northern/Southern areas?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Synthetic inertia needs a large DC source. At the time of
| the outage, solar power was a large DC source.
| belter wrote:
| Nobody knows the cause of the energy outage in Spain,
| Portugal and France... except the U.S. Energy Secretary
| Chris Wright, a chill for the oil and fracking industry.
|
| Could you point to the outage conclusion report?
| lossolo wrote:
| > It costs more to build a 1GW coal power plant than it does
| to build a 3GW solar power plant (the 3X is capacity factor
| compensation)
|
| That "3X" figure assumes a high-insolation region (CF ~25 %).
| In Central Europe, where solar CF is only ~12 %, you'd need
| about 5x the PV capacity to equal a 1 GW coal plant's annual
| generation. How does scaling up to 5 GW of PV change the cost
| comparison vs a coal plant?
| fakedang wrote:
| > We're at a point where even "free hot water" is not
| competitive with solar for power generation.
|
| You're making the obvious mistake here of equating 1 GW solar
| with 1 GW of any other source with a 95-99% baseload
| capacity. To achieve the equivalent result, you'll need to
| have at least >2 GW actual solar power to equally compare the
| two.
|
| Granted, in most developed places, solar still beats coal,
| but this is why in many developing economies with ample coal
| resources, it makes more sense economically to go with the
| coal plants.
|
| Take any other resource, say hydel or geothermal - solar and
| wind quickly go down in economic efficiency terms compared to
| these, in most cases almost doubling or tripling in costs.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > To achieve the equivalent result, you'll need to have at
| least >2 GW actual solar power to equally compare the two.
|
| Which is why I compared 1GW of coal power to 3GW of solar
| power.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I can't really imagine how the person who responded to
| you managed to miss that, it was like the middle 1/5'th
| of your post. Oh well, I guess it is impossible to write
| a post well enough that somebody won't jump in with a
| correction... right or wrong!
| ryao wrote:
| Comparing solar power generation to solar hot water seems
| wrong to me because there is solar hot water:
|
| https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/solar-water-heaters
|
| I recall hearing that they are 80% efficient while
| photovoltaics tend to be around 20% efficient.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| We're talking about electricity generation here, not heat
| generation. People have tried generating electricity using
| solar heat, but we've stopped doing that because it's too
| expensive.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_tower
| aziaziazi wrote:
| > We're talking about electricity generation here, not
| heat generation
|
| As a peer post noted (without back it up but seems
| reasonable):
|
| > Only 20% of our energy needs are supplied by
| electricity.
|
| It is a fair viewpoint to talk about energy instead of
| only electricity. For exemple the current EV are build
| using charcoal (steel and cement for the infrastructure)
| and parts/final product are moved around continent with
| oil (ships). Same for solar panels and their underlying
| steel structure. Same for the road were using those EV,
| etc... there's technical solutions for those, but they
| didn't prove to be economically competitive _yet_. So
| I'll happily take that 80% efficiency when we need
| relatively low heat : domestic and commercial AC and
| water heating. Those are by far the most energy intensive
| usage in the residential sector when there isn't an
| electric vehicle and are most needs in pick time
| (mornings, evening at winter). We better take that +60%.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Any low heat solution is going to have a very difficult
| time competing economically with heat pumps, which often
| have an efficiency > 300%.
|
| The most economical solution for reducing our carbon
| emissions by 95% is doing these two steps in parallel:
|
| 1. Use electricity instead of fossil fuel 2. Generate
| electricity in carbon free manner
|
| Yes, there are some use cases this doesn't work well at
| yet: steel & ocean transport are two you listed. But it
| does cover the 4 biggest sources of carbon emissions:
| ground transport, heating, electricity generation and
| agriculture. The big 4 are 95% of our carbon emissions.
| ryao wrote:
| The Rheem heat pump for domestic hot water that I have in
| my home claims a maximum energy savings of 75%. That
| implies that at 20% efficiency out of my solar panels,
| the efficiency of photovoltaic panels + the heat pump is
| equal to the 80% efficiency of solar hot water. However,
| this ignores losses from DC to AC and the lines.
|
| The photovoltaic panels have the added bonus that the
| energy can be used for other purposes (e.g. transport,
| HVAC, computers, cooking, laundry, A/V equipment) should
| my hot water needs be low compared to what the system is
| designed to produce. However, from a pure efficiency
| standpoint, it is unclear to me which approach is better.
| They seem to be a rough tie, with losses for both
| approaches making the real world worse than ideal
| conditions. I am not sure if one is better than the other
| in the actual real world and if anyone who knows the
| answer is kind enough to share it, I would find the
| answer enlightening.
| SigmundA wrote:
| Doesn't matter that much if you have excess solar
| available, beyond that many who do solar also tend to go to
| a heat pump water heater which is 400% efficient bringing
| photovoltaics in line with solar hot water without running
| plumbing up to the roof and now that roof space can be used
| to power many things rather than just hot water.
|
| https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/heat-pump-water-heaters
| ryao wrote:
| The two being equal in efficiency is true in a best case
| scenario, but that ignores real world effects such as
| inverter losses. I wonder which would be superior in a
| real world test.
|
| That said, in my home, I use net metered photovoltaic
| panels with a Rheem heat pump for domestic hot water.
| This was not done because I considered it to be a better
| solution, but because it was the only solution available
| to me from local installers.
| SigmundA wrote:
| Solar hot water has to account for pumping losses as
| well, its going to be in the same ballpark but the
| electric heat pump hot water system is much more flexible
| in how the power is used and decouples production from
| use along with electrical vs plumbing on the roof which
| is simpler and dare say less prone to issues.
|
| Solar thermal heating used to make more sense but cost of
| photovoltaics has come down so much along with relatively
| cheap heat pump systems nobody is doing the former
| anymore it seems.
|
| I just got a large solar system installed and next up is
| a heat pump water heater as thats the second largest user
| of power next to the HVAC, plus it will cool and
| dehumidify my garage some where the solar inverter and
| batteries are located, converting some of the waste heat
| from the inverter into hot water at the same time.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| A 3GW solar power plant takes up a _lot_ of land. Around
| 360km2 of land according to my AI, FWIW.
|
| We _can_ live with huge land areas converted to power
| generation, but more space efficient alternatives will be a
| big improvement.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| 40% of US corn acreage is used for something like 10% of
| gasoline. This is an unfathomable amount of land. Solar
| yields 20x the amount of energy per acre. On top of that
| many are finding efficiencies of colocating solar with
| agricultural activities (agrivoltaics). And there's also
| replacing agricultural activities on marginal or water
| stressed land.
|
| Conclusion, land isn't really a constraint in the US.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Yeah, I'm not saying solar power is impossible.
|
| Just pointing out that there are real downsides to this
| energy source, like all the others.
|
| Now is not the time to stop developing energy sources.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't have any reason to doubt it, but it seems like a
| basically easy computation to verify or for the AI to show
| its work.
|
| Anyway, the area issue seems not too bad. In the US as
| least, we have places like the Dakotas which we could turn
| like 70% of into a solar farm and nobody would really
| notice.
| triceratops wrote:
| What if you include all the parking lots and warehouses and
| large commercial facilities in the world too?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Your AI is messing with you. 1MW requires ~6 acres, so a GW
| requires 6000. A square mile is 640 acres. Being generous,
| let's round up to 10 square miles. Times 3 and convert to
| square kilometers gives 78.
| hovering_nox wrote:
| Nobody is building commercial plants any time soon; it's still
| in the experimental phase, with new discoveries happening
| almost every month.
|
| I see it similarly to the difference between a car with a
| combustion engine and an electric one. Combustion engines are
| fully developed. We're reaching the maximum possible
| performance and utilisation. It's a dead end. However, with
| electric cars, for example, new battery development is far from
| over. E.g sodium batteries.
|
| And just off the top of my head, in fusion, the discovery of
| better electromagnets, as happened a while back, can quadruple
| energy output.It's not a dead end, and writing it off would be
| short-sighted.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| They are building a commercial plant right now, and it will
| come online in the next 10 years.
| https://news.mit.edu/2024/commonwealth-fusion-systems-
| unveil...
| Lutzb wrote:
| Unless I missed something they haven't even completed their
| technology demonstrator (planned for 2026). No construction
| has taken place in 2025.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Yep.
|
| But so long as there is a boatload of prestige and funding to
| be harnessed via fusion research, it'll be a Really Big Thing.
|
| Centuries ago, an ambitious and clever alchemist could harness
| a fair quantity of those things via transmutation research. Vs.
| these days, we have repeatedly demonstrated the ability to
| transmute lead into gold. But somehow, there's no big talk
| about, or prestige in, or funding for scaling that process up
| to commercial viability.
| jmyeet wrote:
| There are a couple of factors in play with any research,
| including fusion. If there's money to be had for funding then
| somebody will research it.
|
| But another more nefarious factor is the nexus of fusion
| energy research and nuclear weapons research [1]. To build
| and maintain a stockpile of nuclear weapons (specificially
| thermonuclear weapons) you need appropriate trained nuclear
| energy physicists.
|
| [1]: https://thebulletin.org/premium/2024-11/the-
| entanglement-of-...
| AntiEgo wrote:
| The steam reactor I guess you might be describing is tokamak,
| which i agree will be a dead end technology.
|
| There are interesting small fusion reactors that skip the steam
| step. They compress plasma magnetically, and when the fusion
| happens, the expanding plasma in turn expands the magnetic
| field, and the energy is harvested directly from the field. No
| steam and turbines.
|
| Here is the video where I learned about it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bDXXWQxK38
|
| Maybe any physicists in this thread could share insight on how
| feasible this is?
|
| Your main point stands of course: this is a moonshot project,
| and solar works TODAY!
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| > With a dense high-energy plasma, you're dealing with a
| turbulent fluid where any imperfection in your magnetic
| confinement will likely dmaage the container.
|
| This is true of Tokamak type designs based around continuous
| confinement, but perhaps less so with something like Helion's
| design which is based on magnetically firing plasma blobs at
| each other and achieving fusion through inertial confinement
| (cf NIF laser-based fusion), with repeated/pulsed operation
| rather rather than continuous confinement.
|
| No doubt the containment vessel will still suffer damage, but I
| guess it's a matter of degree - is it still economically viable
| to operate or not, which I guess needs to be verified
| experimentally by scaling up and operating for a sufficiently
| long period of time. Presumably they at least believe the
| approach is viable or they'd not be pursuing it (and have an
| agreement in place with Microsoft to power one of their data
| centers with one of the early units).
| fpoling wrote:
| There are serious theoretical objections to Helion approach
| so I am very sceptical to their approach. Stellarators on
| other hand do not have any known theoretical obstacles and
| avoid the problem of plasma instabilities.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| What are the theoretical problems? Aren't they already
| achieving fusion with their test reactors, so what's the
| problem with scaling up and producing net energy?
| hwillis wrote:
| A 12 year old achieved fusion with a test reactor he
| built himself:
| https://www.npr.org/2020/10/09/922065766/tennessee-teen-
| beco...
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| OK, and hobby rocketists have nailed a SpaceX style
| landing too, but so what?
|
| Have you seen the videos of Helion's reactor - hardly a
| basement project. Sam Altman (OpenAI) also has personally
| invested hundreds of millions of dollars into Helion,
| presumably after some due diligence!
| roarcher wrote:
| High-profile investors are not a signal that something
| will be successful, no matter how smart they may be in
| some other domain. Lots of people who should have known
| better invested in Theranos, too.
| hwillis wrote:
| Helion's device is a toy. They have nothing that would
| let them scale past designs of the 70s and say a lot of
| very suspect things, like that they want to use worse
| fuel mixes and calling one of the oldest and simplest
| designs "new" and "unique".
| epistasis wrote:
| While googling for the exact amount that Altman invested,
| I found this press release from 2021:
|
| "Helion Raises $500 Million, Targets 2024 for
| Demonstrating Net Electricity from Fusion"
| https://www.helionenergy.com/articles/helion-raises-500m/
|
| And also an r/fusion post documenting prior claims:
|
| > "The Helion Fusion Engine will enable profitable fusion
| energy in 2019," - NBF 7/18/2014.
|
| > "If our physics holds, we hope to reach that goal (net
| energy gain) in the next three years," - D. Kirtley, CEO
| of Helion in the Wall Street Journal 2014.
|
| > "Helion will demonstrate net energy gain within 24
| months, and 50-MWe pilot plant by 2019," - NBF 8/18/2015.
|
| > "Helion will attain net energy output within a couple
| of years and commercial power in 6 years," - Science News
| 1/27/2016.
|
| > "Helion plans to reach breakeven energy generation in
| less than three years, nearly ten times faster than
| ITER," - NBF 10/1/2018.
|
| > Their newest claim on their website is: "We expect that
| Polaris will be able to demonstrate the production of a
| small amount of net electricity by 2024."
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/fusion/comments/133ttne/can_we_t
| alk...
|
| I'm sure all this came up in any due diligence as well.
| They are on Series E after all.
|
| More than a decade of missed milestones is not the type
| of company that gets this many rounds of investment.
|
| A lot of people _really_ want fusion to happen, and
| happen sooner. I think that leads to people taking far
| higher risks with the capital. This sort of investment is
| always risky, but donating to a grander cause of
| technology advancement can be a reason for the
| investment, in addition to expected future value of the
| investment.
| hwillis wrote:
| IMO Helion should not be taken seriously:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vUPhsFoniw
| aeve890 wrote:
| >And stars solve the confinement problem with gravity and by
| being really, really large.
|
| Kinda. The main catalyst of stellar fusion is quantum
| tunneling. Temperature and gravity together are not enough to
| overcome the Coulomb barrier.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Quantum tunneling does not work differently in the core of
| the Sun than it does on the surface of the Earth.
|
| So what _is_ the difference between those two places?
| Temperature and pressure. In the Sun those arise from
| gravity. On the Earth, we need to create them mechanically.
| perrygeo wrote:
| There are three main hurdles here
|
| First, actually getting fusion to positive energy ROI. That's
| step zero and we're not even close.
|
| Second, scaling the production of fusion in an safe and
| economical way. Given the utter economic failure of fission
| nuclear power (there has never been a profitable one), my
| priors are that the fusion advocates are vastly
| underestimating, if not willfully ignoring, this part.
|
| Finally, even if we do get to "too cheap to meter" energy, what
| then? Limitless electricity is not the same thing as limitless
| stored energy. Only 20% of our energy needs are supplied by
| electricity. To wit, the crucial industrial processes required
| to build the nuclear power plant in the first place can only be
| accomplished with combustible carbon. A power plant cannot
| generate the energy to build another power plant. Please let
| that sink in.
|
| We're already seeing countries with photovoltaic and wind
| hitting $0/kW on sunny windy days - the grid is nearly
| saturated for daytime load. There isn't enough demand! This
| makes the economic feasibility of fusion even less attractive.
| No one is going to make money from it.
| Vanclief wrote:
| Where did you get the data that there has never been a
| profitable one? Not calling you out, but curious of where you
| are getting this data.
|
| I would expect that there have been multiple nuclear power
| plants that provide a net positive return, specially on
| countries like France where 70% of their energy is nuclear.
| Retric wrote:
| France lost an incredible amount of money on nuclear
| through capacity factor issues. The numbers are so bad they
| don't want to admit what they are.
|
| However a reasonable argument can be made the public
| benefited from externalities like lower pollution and
| subsidized electricity prices even if it was a money pit
| and much of the benefit was exported to other countries via
| cheap off peak prices while France was forced to import at
| peak rates.
| amenhotep wrote:
| Regulatory burdens on fission account for negative
| externalities to an arguably overzealous degree, whereas
| fossil fuel energy has been until recently allowed to
| completely ignore them. Doesn't seem like a fair
| comparison.
| Retric wrote:
| Regulatory burdens on fission result from the inherent
| risks and negative externalities. You're never going to
| see huge long term exclusion zones with coal, but nuclear
| has two of them right now (Ed: Overkill though the
| current size may be) which also have massive government
| funded cleanup efforts.
|
| So while regulations may be overkill it's not arbitrary
| only hydro is really comparable but hydro also stores
| water and reduces flood risks most years. Fusion sill had
| real risks, but there's no concern around $500+ Billion
| cleanup efforts.
| bpfrh wrote:
| Not really in the sense that the owning company has managed
| to survive without the state stepping in and give them
| money.
|
| Most reactors are old and in need of repair, most of these
| earlier than planned afaik.
|
| There is also the bigger issue that some reactors are shut
| down in the summer because cooling water would leave the
| reactor so hot that it would be a danger to the animals
| living in the river.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Not a single one of the ~700 nuclear power plants has been
| built without significant government subsidies [1][2].
|
| Additionally, the industry as a whole is shielded from the
| liability that would otherwise have bankrupted it multiple
| times. Notably, the clean up from Fukushima will likely
| take over 100 years, requires tech not yet invented and
| will likely cost as much as a trillion dollars [3]. In the
| US, there is a self-insurance fund paid into by the
| industry, which would've been exhausted 10-20 times over
| from a Fukushima level disaster. Plus, Congress severely
| limits liability from nuclear accidents, both on a per-
| plant and total basis ie the Price-Anderson Act [4].
|
| Next, it seems like it's the taxpayer who is paying to
| process and store spent nuclear waste, a problem that will
| persist for centuries.
|
| Even with all this the levellized-cost-of-energy ("LCOE")
| of fission power is incredibly expensive and seemingly
| going up [5].
|
| Some want to reduce costs by using more off-the-shelf tech
| and replicating it for scale, most notably with small
| modular reactors ("SMRs") but this actually makes no sense
| because larger fission reactors are simply more efficient.
|
| [1]: https://theecologist.org/2016/jan/04/after-60-years-
| nuclear-...
|
| [2]: https://www.ucs.org/resources/nuclear-power-still-not-
| viable...
|
| [3]: https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/16/fukushimas-final-
| costs-...
|
| [4]: https://www.yuccamountain.org/price_anderson.htm
|
| [5]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
| psunavy03 wrote:
| I won't dispute that fission power has enormous capital
| costs. But how much of its alleged "failure" has been the
| utter FUD that's been pushed for the past 50+ years about how
| we'd all be glowing if nuclear power was widespread?
|
| I mean sure, waste disposal is a serious issue that deserves
| serious consideration. But fission waste contaminates a
| discrete area. Fossil fuels at scale cause climate change
| that contaminates the entire freaking planet. It's a travesty
| we haven't had a nuclearized grid for 20-30 years at this
| point.
| jMyles wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| The problem(s) of scale are not only those of scaling up, but
| also scaling down.
|
| One of the best and most unsung benefits of solar is that it is
| profoundly easy and intuitive to build a very small (ie,
| vehicle- or house-sized) grid.
|
| In an increasingly decentralized and stateless world, it makes
| sense to look for these qualities in an energy source.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| You realize this is what people said about solar energy and
| nuclear energy at one point, right
|
| And before someone chimes in and says Nuclear doesn't make
| sense - it made sense at plenty of times and in different
| places.
|
| It doesn't make sense in Western countries that are hell bent
| on making it as expensive as possible, strictly to ensure it
| doesn't get built, so we stick on fossil fuels as long as
| possible.
| jmyeet wrote:
| This is a meaningless argument people trot out all the time
| for things they just don't understand. Sometimes it applies
| but often it doesn't.
|
| For example, people will dismiss arguments saying FTL is
| likely impossible because people once said that about going
| to the Moon. To be fair, there was some logic to the anti-
| Moon argument based on physics. The big change came with
| multi-stage rockets that solved the weight and thrust
| problems. And even then it's close [1].
|
| There are good, physical reasons why FTL is highly likely
| impossible. You know, based on phnysics.
|
| Likewise, the challenges to commercial fusion are also based
| on physics. Fusion reactions produce neutrons. Neutrons can't
| be magnetically contained. Neutrons destroy the container
| and, more importantly, lose energy from the system.
|
| But saying "people once said the Earth was flat" or "people
| once said we couldn't get to the Moon" and so on are just
| meaningless platitudes. [1]: https://www.realclearscience.com
| /blog/2017/07/06/if_earth_wa...
| Projectiboga wrote:
| There are multiple potential fusion reactions, duterium and
| tritium like in our home star The Sun is the most researched.
| There is also research into ones with Lithium and other left
| side elements. Finally the one I think has the best future is
| aneutronic fusion with Boron11 plus hydrogen, it gives off
| three alpha particles which can be converted directly to
| electricity. the leading model is Field Reversed Fusion.
| https://spectrum.ieee.org/aneutronic-fusion
| snowwrestler wrote:
| > I remain skeptical that fusion will ever be a commercially
| viable energy source. I'd love to be wrong.
|
| I'm also skeptical, but I think the emphasis of my skepticism
| is on "commercially viable" as opposed to an available energy
| source. That is, I think fusion development will (and should)
| proceed anyway.
|
| There's a good argument that nuclear fission is not really
| commercially viable in its current form. Yet it provides quite
| a lot of commercially available electricity. And it also powers
| aircraft carriers and submarines. And similar technology
| produces plutonium for weapons. In other words, I don't think
| fission's continued availability as a power source is a
| strictly commercial decision.
|
| I think there's a quite a lot of technology that is not
| directly commercially viable, like high energy physics, or the
| space program. But they remain popular and funded. And they
| throw off a lot of commercial side benefits.
|
| The growth of solar for domestic consumer power will certainly
| continue and that is a good thing. But I bet we'll have fusion
| too in the long run. There's no lack of ideas for interesting
| things to do with extreme amounts of heat and power. For
| example I'm hopeful that humanity eventually figures out space
| propulsion powered by fusion.
| o1inventor wrote:
| I wonder how much research has gone into neutron-deficient
| materials for shielding?
|
| Depleted uranium is one example but that has terrible
| implications due to radioactive pollution that would result,
| disposal costs and risks, etc.
|
| Surprised theres not more research into meta-materials and
| alloys that are neutron-resistant, neutron-slowing, or neutron-
| absorbing.
| emtel wrote:
| I have no idea why you are being downvoted. The chances of a
| power source that _doesn't even work yet_ will out-compete one
| that is currently on both an exponential price decline curve
| and exponential capacity growth curve are pretty close to 0.
| ryao wrote:
| Nuclear fusion as an energy source has major unsolved problems.
| Off the top of my head: * The super conducting
| metals required for confinement randomly stop superconducting.
| * The fuels produce absurd amounts of radiation and the
| Helium-3 solution for that might as well be fairy dust, since
| even if we convert the energy global economy to helium-3
| production, we will not have enough by orders of magnitude to
| power hypothetical fusion reactors that would handle our needs.
| Strip mining the moon for it is supposedly a way to get it, but
| defacing the surface of the moon for minuscule amounts of
| Helium-3 per acre is unlikely to ever be profitable.
| * The amount of radioactive materials produced from the
| experiments are many times those produced in fission reactors.
|
| This is just off the top of my head. Until recently, I would
| have included the inability to produce more energy than we put
| into it on this list, but LLNL's breakthrough a few years ago
| seems to have solved that. I suspect that someone with time to
| look into the practical issues involved in building a fusion
| reactor would find other issues (such as the design not being
| practical to use in a production power plant and thus further
| research being needed to make one that is).
|
| I wonder if the only reason countries fund nuclear fusion
| research is to keep nuclear scientists from finding employment
| in the production of nuclear weapons.
| paul-schleger wrote:
| I'd love to see some references on those three claims. None
| of them make sense to me.
| reubenswartz wrote:
| I'm thinking perhaps the best place for a fusion reactor is 93
| million miles away. It's already up and running, and we're
| making huge strides in energy collection and storage...
| blindriver wrote:
| Can someone tell me what the likelihood of a humongous explosion
| from nuclear fusion could be? All these nuclear physicists
| dealing with enormous amounts of energy, like the LHC or China
| with their attempts at nuclear fusion really terrify me that it
| might provoke a huge reaction that will devastate the planet. Is
| this possible or do they have a true fail-safe in place that
| prevents it?
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| There's nothing to 'prevent'. There's not enough energy in the
| hydrogen in the chamber to cause an explosion. Your high school
| science teacher could have explained this to you.
| hwillis wrote:
| > All these nuclear physicists dealing with enormous amounts of
| energy, like the LHC
|
| The LHC uses ~86 megawatts, about the same power as a 747's
| engine at full throttle. It's about the same as a small natural
| gas powered turbine. GE builds gas turbines that produce 800+
| MW.
|
| The LHC is just a controlled environment to study the kind of
| particle collisions that are happening all over the earth every
| day. We live next to a giant fusion reaction, and freak
| particles come in from outer space all the time. We have
| detected many particles with millions of times more energy than
| the particles in the LHC- the Oh-My-God particle had 20 million
| times more energy.
|
| > Can someone tell me what the likelihood of a humongous
| explosion from nuclear fusion could be?
|
| Fission self-sustains. Each reaction produces 3 neutrons that
| can start another reaction. It explodes because the neutrons
| grow like 3, 9, 27 etc.
|
| Fusion does not. You have a number of atoms, and 2 of those
| atoms have to find each other to fuse. One reaction does not
| make any other reactions more likely. Unlike fossil fuels or
| fission reactions, the fuel cannot be lit. It can only burn
| when carefully confined. You can only build up enough flame to
| break the containment vessel, at which point it goes out. Since
| the inside of the vessel is basically a vacuum, it will
| _implode_ instead of exploding.
| blindriver wrote:
| Thank you for the great answer, unlike the other responser.
| munchler wrote:
| > This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy.
|
| Unfortunately, sentences like this are going to be way less
| common soon.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| It's been sad reading the posts of the various people in the
| sciences and academics that I follow.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Hopefully this will be short lived, like financial crisis.
| Hopefully.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| You can't just hit "pause" on this stuff.
|
| I have at least one friend who runs a biomedical research
| lab.
|
| From conversations, here is what it going on:
|
| - incoming students and researchers have been retracting
| their applications because of fear of ending up in detention
| for having something the regime doesn't like on their phone
| or on social media, or having their photo snapped at a
| protest about something the regime doesn't like, or their
| research being on a subject the regime doesn't like...or even
| something as stupid as the letters "trans" appearing as
| _part_ of a word like "transgenic." (That's actually
| happened.)
|
| - the schools have had to retract offers for others because
| there's no money to pay their stipends or for their
| lab/office space
|
| - meeting with their administrations to discuss how long
| their schools can float salaries for lab staff. Admin
| assistants, scientific support staff like lab and animal
| technicians, and so on.
|
| - planning phases of the euthanization of their organism /
| animal models
|
| - planning phasing of the liquidation of lab equipment (in a
| market being flooded with such equipment)
|
| My friends are talking about not being able to bear making
| their techs or researchers mass-euthanize research animal
| populations (typically rodents) and doing it themselves, in
| tears. Many of them justify the normal 'sacrifice' of
| research animals because their deaths help us advance science
| - but in this case, it's just because some transactional
| dickhead can't directly draw a crayon line between their
| research and GDP. But it's also because it's a visceral
| representation of scientific progress being destroyed. All to
| "own the libs" (but really to give billionaires tax cuts.)
|
| One said they are trying to figure out what to do now that
| their career, which they have spent two decades of 60+ hour
| weeks on, is basically over - what little positions are left
| will see hundreds if not thousands of applicants. Salaries
| will plunge both out of necessity and a saturated labor
| supply.
|
| The damage that has been done in less than 6 months to
| scientific research is immesurable and the consequences will
| be generational.
|
| If you don't believe me, go through your list of friends,
| coworkers, family, etc and see who works in research and see
| what they're posting on social media or talk with them.
|
| Got any friends who work in companies that make scientific
| equipment, reagents, etc? They might not have a job already,
| or soon.
|
| Kids get into science in part because their parents or a
| family member is in science. Or they see a cool show on PBS
| about science. All that's going away. We're going to see a
| precipitous drop in the number of people pursuing scientific
| educations and careers.
|
| Billionaires are about to find out that it doesn't matter how
| much money you have if your kid has cancer and there's nobody
| to treat them, no drugs being researched or manufactured, no
| diagnostic equipment (that was in part funded by research
| project grants), and o on.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Got any friends who work in companies that make
| scientific equipment, reagents, etc? They might not have a
| job already, or soon.
|
| Nothing to lose any more? Then go and protest, hard. It's
| too late to undo the damage already caused, but a huge part
| of why Trump was able to rise to power was because there
| was by far not enough protest against him.
| ngangaga wrote:
| > but a huge part of why Trump was able to rise to power
| was because there was by far not enough protest against
| him.
|
| There are a lot of reasons to be skeptical of this claim.
| For one thing, it's not clear that trump voters respect
| protestors in the first place. For another thing, we're
| an extremely geographically distributed population, and
| most of our cities already swing strongly blue. This
| means protesting is generally a high-effort, low-return
| activity.
|
| Whatever _will_ provide friction I do not know, but I don
| 't think protests are going to play a major role outside
| of maybe providing a narrative about how angry people
| are. But it's important to note that a significant number
| of people vote for Trump _because_ he makes certain
| people angry.... If the right people "protest" in a
| ridiculous enough manner, you're going to likely
| strengthen the resolve of his base. Granted, I suspect
| this isn't much of an issue with science funding, but
| it's something to keep in mind.
|
| My attitude is: if this country doesn't want science
| research, let it, follow the research overseas, and let
| your absence speak for itself.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > There are a lot of reasons to be skeptical of this
| claim. For one thing, it's not clear that trump voters
| respect protestors in the first place.
|
| They do respect one thing, just like their master does:
| _strength_. Show up in force, in overwhelming numbers,
| and all these "don't tread on me" people suddenly find
| out that, whoops, they aren't the top dogs any more. It
| used to be the case that you got beaten up or worse for
| showing up in KKK outfits, these days you got pseudo-edgy
| kids on social media with them.
| harikb wrote:
| You are underestimating the risk to people who protest
| and how bad it needs to get before people are pushed to
| it.
|
| Distribution is somewhat like this...
|
| Say there are 10,000 people affected by this
|
| 5,000 probably have skills to pivot to something else,
| don't give a shit about future billionaire's kid's
| problem. People wouldn't want to be scientists if they
| can't also have a decent career.
|
| 2,000 people have means to survive and can't afford to
| fight the thugs on street
|
| 2,000 people are desperate, but otherwise marginalized by
| current admininstration (immigrant, mexican, black,
| muslim,... whatever) but don't want to sacrifice their
| extended family too.
|
| 1,000 people are desperate, have the courage to fight
| (probably white).
|
| If the future of curing the billionaire's kid relies on
| 1,000 people sacrificing their life... oh well....
| immibis wrote:
| Protests do not accomplish political change, have never
| accomplished political change, and will never accomplish
| political change. They are good for one thing and one
| thing only: meeting other people who are just as angry as
| you about something. From which you might decide to take
| actions that actually cause some political change.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Protests do not accomplish political change, have never
| accomplished political change, and will never accomplish
| political change.
|
| France's "yellow vests" or Germany's "Pegida" might
| disagree with you on that one. Both were pretty darn
| effective.
| misja111 wrote:
| Well as long as they carefully avoid phrases like climate
| change or energy transition, they might be able to avoid the
| wrath of the Trump administration.
| whatshisface wrote:
| That was what the NSF director may have thought during the
| first 100 or so days of the administration, but he resigned
| because he believed that the 55% budget cut wasn't possible
| to overcome through negotiation.
| dang wrote:
| " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents._ " -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Why that last bit? Generic tangents supplant narrower/specific
| topics with broader/generic ones that people tend to already
| have opinions about, which they are eager to repeat. Because of
| this, generic tangents--especially on divisive/indignant topics
| --end up having two bad effects: (1) they take over the
| conversation, and (2) they are repetitive.
|
| It's similar to how weeds take over a garden. We want a garden
| of unusual, interesting plants, not the most common ones that
| take over everywhere if allowed to.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
| munchler wrote:
| I hear you, although I respectfully disagree that my comment
| was either flamebait or a generic tangent. The topic is
| (IMHO) appropriate for HN, and a concrete example like this
| is a good way to highlight the issue. It seems quite far from
| a common weed to me.
| dang wrote:
| It's generic in the sense that it masks out all the bits
| about fusion energy, let alone this specific report of a
| discovery, in favor of the much larger and more general
| topic of what's happening with science and health funding
| in the US.
| lifeplusplus wrote:
| I think it's time to say nobody in Congress can be older than 65
| and has a dual citizenship
| hornd wrote:
| Is this comment on the right thread?
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