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Comment by pfdietz | Hacker News Reader

Fusion has pretty much no chance of being a reality, in the sense of being economically competitive. And this has been known for more than 35 years.

http://www.askmar.com/Robert%20Bussard/The%20Trouble%20With%...

(See? That's how you give a reference to back up a claim.)

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And yet the Chinese just succeded with an important step.

You are using something written in 1983 as your support enough said.

If someone's argument is that something is wrong and has been known to be wrong for a number of years and here is an article explaining why, you cannot really use the fact that the article being used as explanatory evidence has been around for the amount of years stated, as some kind of winning move against their argument.

You do know this, right?

Yup, I also know that we are actually seeing progress in that field because the Chinese are investing in it and which then obviously needs to be factored in like everything else.

The point was that fusion is as far of as 100% solar is. So again unless you show some actual proposals for how to get 100% solar to work realistically you are in no better position than the Fusion crowd is.

I'd be interested to know more about the Chinese research you are referencing. Could you point me to the research and explain how it overcomes those arguments of Lidsky? Is it using something other than Deuterium and Tritium, or has it found a way around the problems that Lidsky enumerated with the DT approach?

He's probably referring to this:

https://www.universetoday.com/140540/chinese-fusion-experime...

It's nothing very notable.

That thing is interesting for plasma physics though. It isn't really trying to be a fusion reactor, as far as I can tell from following the links past the article. Is more of a scaled down testbed. I have often wondered if the people working on tokomaks are more interested in the science you can do with them, than the potential for generating electricity, even if the people providing the money aren't entirely aware of this.

Its a step toward solving how to control the plasma. So yes its a pretty important step.

Better plasma control doesn't do much to Lidsky's argument though, if you have a look through it.

The Chinese succeeded at something that doesn't do anything to address the devastating, fundamental argument Lidsky gave back in the 1980s.

Lidksy's argument is as valid today as it was then.

They succeeded in one of the steps toward a solution.

How far is wind and solar with realistic fuel-cells?

https://steelguru.com/metal/korea-zinc-installs-ess-to-power...

https://www.ewe.com/en/media/press-releases/2017/06/ewe-plan...

In other words. Not far.

When you write "EWE plans to build the world´s largest battery" you know you are dealing with PR not with reality.

Lets see how well that theory goes up against recent history.

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Tesla to build world's biggest battery

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/07/07/tesla-buil...

Tesla mega-battery in Australia activated

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-42190358

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Hyundai Plans World’s Largest Grid Storage Battery In Korea

https://cleantechnica.com/2017/12/05/hyundai-plans-worlds-la...

Hyundai Electric completes world's largest ESS

http://komec.kr/eng/Board.asp?menucode=0503010000&mode=2&no=...

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I don't think Korea Zinc or the people of Adelaide are storing their power using public relations. I think, in reality, they had a battery delivered.

Again not far. Fuel cells to be used that allow for storing solar reliably, by all means, provide the evidence of the fuel cell industry making this possible not wishful proprietary technologies

>provide the evidence of the fuel cell industry making this possible

Hang on, so, you want fuel cells but dismiss someone building the world's largest battery using redox flow technology?

I take it that you don't know that redox flow batteries are a type of reversible fuel cell? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_battery#Redox

I want fuel cells at scale that can work anywhere just like batteries, otherwise you dont have a useful solution to the already utopian all solar world you guys dream of.

That would be cheap redox flow batteries, like the EWE project I linked you to.

One thing, I take it you don't see lithium scaling. Why is that? There is enough of it.

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