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Comment by blablabla123 | Hacker News Reader

> These fake fusion energy programs contribute to that; some of the most capable scientists don’t want to work on weapons, so they can kid themselves that they are working on “energy”.

This sounds quite anti-progressive and anti-scientific, I have trouble understanding where this sentiment comes from. If Fusion reactors could be realized, this would solve all energy problems. As you mention, renewables done right doesn't stop at production but also includes global deployment of Smart Grids and Energy storage capabilities. It's nuclear energy done in a reasonable way. Apart from that, it's really not clear if production fusion reactors will ever be possible so it's clearly a research topic. Perhaps better availability of computing power (to engineer the confining magnetic fields) and better abilities to orchestrate such complex projects will also help if you look at the challenges of the ITER project.

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“This sounds quite anti-progressive and anti-scientific, I have trouble understanding where this sentiment comes from.”

It can’t be, it was first published in the Progressive.

It comes from my scientific knowledge of the field and is my factual description of what I personally observed, working on-and-off in both magnetic and inertial fusion for many years. My motivation is not anti-scientific but in defense of real science that is not getting done because of the billions wasted on fake energy projects.

I read your article here [1] and I've found it a bit problematic.

You don't give a real foundation impetus to 'stop' fusion research other than the perception not making enough progress in general terms, and that the money could be used on renewables.

It's a problematic argument because 'a few billion' is a very, very small amount of investment for an energy potentially which could yield significant results, even decades away.

It maybe a 80 year-long project, even then, it would be worth it.

Renewables are not suffering from money otherwise allocated to Fusion.

I think if you gave some very specific arguments as to why some investment will not work - even as an experimental vehicle - that would lend more credibility to your argument, but then you'd also have to have that view corroborated in some way aka 'this experiment does not materially advance science, and they know it, here is the evidence or logic'.

[1] https://progressive.org/op-eds/let-cut-our-losses-on-fusion-...

Are you saying that no energy projects should be funded or that there are better uses of energy funding (and if so which areas)?

"there are better uses of energy funding (and if so which areas)?"

He said so somewhere else. I would assume:

batterie, electrolyse, fuel cells, more flexible energy grid, solar panel as light weight foil ... all that works already today and can be greatly improved.

Fusion is awesome. And we can greatly benefit from it, someday. But to me it sounds like scam if it is advertised as the energy solution. Not when we are still at the stage of basic research (except for bombs).

Till then I would rely on the very big working fusion reactor we have: the sun.

> If Fusion reactors could be realized, this would solve all energy problems.

If fusion reactors could be realized, they'd likely be so Rube Goldbergish and expensive that no one would want them.

There's this tendency to conflate "getting a fusion reactor" and "getting a fusion reactor that actually makes sense to use". The former, while difficult, is likely MUCH easier than the latter.

The first computers were massive Rube Goldberg machines the size of industrial buildings which cost a fortune and were useful only for the militaries of nation states. Now machines with a billion times the number of transistors fit in our pockets.

Projects like ITER and NIF are monstrously complex because they are science experiments where lots of things need to be varied and we don't even know what it is we need to do. An economical reactor designed by people who knew how to make such a reactor would look remarkably different.

Reasoning by analogy is not valid reasoning.

With old and new computers, the physics are different - what makes the principles still work is that logics are the same, both have gates, memory etc.

With fusion you still have the same physical substrate you need to affect.

Also you have something backwards in your reasoning. Real production systems are usually much more complicated because they need to stay up all the time, witness real nuclear power plants with their little armies of engineers, operators etc. versus the simple research reactors of old times.

We have simple research "fusion reactors", to the point where we know a lot about fusion. That's not the hard part. Making the real production system is the hard part.

I was not reasoning by analogy, I presented an example that contradicts the claim that machines meant for widespread adoption must resemble their experimental form.

The laws of physics are unchanged, computers improved because of clever workarounds that allowed us to accomplish the same tasks in easier ways. Practical fusion reactors need to produce power via fusion, but beyond that the how is irrelevant. Swap out different lasers, different magnets, different power supplies, hell even the fuels might be different, it's frankly ignorant to claim that these changes are the same physics but "use a shorter wavelength in your fab" isn't.

A modern computer in terms of number of logic gates is astronomically more complex than ENIAC, however what matters for practicality is not complexity but cost. The cost of complexity decreases as you learn what you're doing. Chicago Pile 1 cost $17 million in today's dollars to produce about half a watt of thermal power, or $34,000,000/Wth. A modern nuclear plant costs about $2/Wth. ITER will cost $45 Billion to generate 500 MW. If fusion sees 0.001% of the economic improvement that fission experienced, that's $0.52/Wth.

The conclusion that DT fusion reactors will be expensive follows from basic engineering considerations on heat transfer, not from specifics of any design. The volumetric power density will be lousy, so cost will be high.

> A modern nuclear plant costs about $2/Wth

This may have been the projection before the AP1000 and the EPR flamed out. In practice, the cost can escalate well above that. Their complexity made them difficult to build. And yet, these designs have reactor power densities orders of magnitude better than ITER, and are far simpler (and more fault tolerant) than a fusion reactor would be.

The cost is not a function of volumetric power density. I believe we have had this conversation before.

The most expensive nuclear plant projected to be constructed is the Hinkley Point C reactor. With all its overruns, it's projected that the cost will be £23 Billion, which works out to $3.37/Wth. $2/Wth is a $6 billion 1000 MWe plant, quite typical. Note that this is for reactors in the west, in China, where non-technical issues like NIMBYism aren't a concern, the cost is closer to $1/Wth.

> The cost is not a function of volumetric power density. I believe we have had this conversation before.

Yes, and you failed to make the case that larger things aren't more expensive than smaller things (all else being equal, but note that fission reactors are made of steel, not the complex sophisticated equipment of fusion reactors). We can continue the argument here, if you can come up with any argument for your position that makes any sense.

Maybe some vested interests don't want to solve energy problems. Didn't the cotton industry kill hemp in the early 30s or so? And created the whole Reefer Madness scare?

Why wouldn't the natgas and upstream/downstream petroleum industry want to do the same thing with any potential competitors? There is already propaganda about windmills killing seagulls and windmills being ugly, so why not take it an extra step and flash pictures of thalidomide babies and then say "wow do you really want this?" with respect to nuclear? Seems totally within the realm of possibility.

EDIT: Correction - I think I actually meant the petroleum industry when I was referring to cotton in this post. What killed the hemp industry in the 50s (I said 30s earlier but I made a mistake) apparently was the availability of inexpensive, manufactured synthetic fibers.

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