Comment by matt2000 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by matt2000 | Hacker News Reader

I strongly object to the language that's commonly used around fusion research. Much of it unfairly frames the discussion around what would be a world-changing technology if realized.

For example, in this article: "the controversial ITER project, a hugely expensive fusion reactor..." There is no doubt this is an expensive project, estimated at ~$20B total cost (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER#Funding) However, in terms of possible upsides or even compared to other projects it's _cheap_. Boston's "Big Dig" was $24B for example: https://www.boston.com/uncategorized/noprimarytagmatch/2012/... Which would you rather have? A 1.5m tunnel, or an energy source that would change the future of human civilization?

I am being somewhat unfair here since the Big Dig was a case study of mismanagement and cost overruns, but as a society we should be willing to spend significant resources on world changing research instead of say $22.5B on three new boats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumwalt-class_destroyer

All that being said, the way forward is probably to figure out ways to make fusion related projects smaller in scale and cost. Then multiple attempts can proceed in parallel without all the organizational and governmental overhead. More on that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4

>Which would you rather have? A 1.5m tunnel, or an energy source that would change the future of human civilization?

oh come on we have more important stuff to spend money on like the 1 trillion annual spent making sure Boomers are comfortable on social security, or 90 billion on food stamps.

/s

It's depressing how we live hand to mouth rather than investing in the future. We could solve the majority of the problems facing humanity permanently by investing a fraction of our budget into these areas.

Health care is a supply and demand problem that can be solved with AI- Berkley already has AI surgical bots that can suture intestines better than a human. Imagine being able to do most routine surgeries with bots that share, learn, and improve from every surgery done on the planet?

Global warming and energy production in general could be solved by fusion

For the context who have authority to spend 1triliion USD like this when majority oppose the same ?

> Global warming and energy production in general could be solved by fusion

Yes and no. I think you know the yes. The no is because the damage we've done has delayed effects. To solve it you need to do a ton of sequestration. But I also HIGHLY encourage funding of fusion and I think it is a necessary step forward that we can't ignore.

Having lots of cheap energy from fusion would definitely help scale up sequestration efforts.

The last couple decades have clearly shown that the limit on humanity's capabilities is the amount of electricity we can command.

> "the controversial ITER project, a hugely expensive fusion reactor..."

I heard from many insiders that ITER is a highly politicized project which has too many parties involved and therefore has exploding high costs with rather limited scientific output.

A counter example is Wendelstein-7X which breaks new records every month.

The reason for this disparity is that Fusion nowadays is a pure engineering problem not a science problem and should be managed accordingly.

That sounds like the space shuttle.

>Fusion nowadays is a pure engineering problem not a science problem

Governments aren't any better at engineering programs, in fact they may even be worse.

ITER is controversial mostly because scientists don't agree that it is necessary. THOUGH almost everyone thinks it will show fusion is possible. But it is a research reactor. The controversy is that scientists think we can do it smaller and cheaper, much closer to what a power reactor would look like.

But also remember that scientists quarreling is different than how most people argue. It is over minutia.

> Which would you rather have? A 1.5m tunnel, or an energy source that would change the future of human civilization?

Well obviously fusion. But just because we throw money at it doesn't mean it will come to pass. Throwing money at it just means there's a chance it will come to pass. I'm sure historically there were lots of up and coming technologies that looked promising, we threw a bunch of money at it, and then it turned out something else was more viable.

> I strongly object to the language that's commonly used around fusion research.

To appropriate some jeering from the other side of the political aisle, what kind of snowflake nonsense is this?

Look, power plants are a commoditized thing. They have costs to build, costs to run, costs to decomission, and they all produce exactly the same product metered in the same ways, perfectly interoperable and measurable in uniformly recognized units.

There's no squish here. Either they are worth it or they aren't. Fusion isn't. Maybe it will be someday, but it's not yet. And it certainly isn't incorrect to point that out.

> an energy source that would change the future of human civilization?

Dude... it's electricity.

Coal power plants produce a product consisting of electric power and atmospheric CO2 emissions. Those CO2 emissions will cause major climate change resulting in many major cities being underwater within 100 years, more frequent dangerous weather events like hurricanes, and disruption of a wide variety of ecosystems possibly causing food shortages.

Fusion plants, on the other hand, produce only electric power.

If fusion could be figured out, we could use 10x as much energy as we do now with no long-term environmental consequences. That would do a great deal to improve the human condition.

> Fusion plants, on the other hand, produce only electric power.

Fusion plants produce exactly zero electrical power. Someday they might. They don't now. The complaint was that we shouldn't talk about the cost of developing fusion power because someday it might be magic. But it's not magic, and the cost is non-zero.

And the relevant competitors aren't coal (which is already dying), it's things like solar and wind, which are already available, somewhat cheaper than coal on balance (but not gas, yet), and literally infinitely cheaper than fusion.

I'm not saying that fusion is a bad idea, but you can't shut down discussion about its very significant costs with a fairy wand and some text about improving the human condition.

Fusion power has been just around the corner for literally three quarters of a century. It's time to start prioritizing the thing that have actual, measurable effects on the human condition.

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