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Comment by willis936 | Hacker News Reader

I simply do not have the time or energy to dispel all of the myths Sabine's words have conjured in the past half year all over again. Her argument is convincing laypeople that scientists and engineers who devote their lives to difficult, underpaying work are trying to cheat the public. As someone who has worked in fusion I can tell you there is exactly one reason why people work in fusion and it is to secure humanity's future. No level of cynicism from outsiders will change that fact, only make their lives more difficult.

The best I can do for now is point back to prior points at the cracks in the story.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28730707

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28736859

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Read the references you provided, but do you mind commenting briefly on the issue raised here:

(At correct time) https://youtu.be/LJ4W1g-6JiY?t=329

Edit: More specifically, would you argue the approximate calculation here is incorrect?

(At correct time) https://youtu.be/LJ4W1g-6JiY?t=521

Edit: on Q of ITER. The approximation is reasonable. ITER isn't a power plant. It's being built to study burning plasmas and blanket technologies. It has always been a stepping stone. Is the number not getting large enough fast enough to please the god emperor?

Which issue, exactly? She raises several flags then conflates them all.

The overarching theme is that scientists are misleading the public. There is no shortage of charlatans using the guise of fusion research to spend public goodwill. She is pushing the idea that even the real scientists are doing the same. They are not. Who are these figments "touting Q"? The pop science articles? Did she sit down and actually talk to a single researcher, ever? In the comments I link above I tear apart her primary sources as they are misrepresented.

She seems intent on claiming Qplasma is a bad metric and shouldn't be used. Well she isn't qualified to make that statement, certainly without some scientific basis for the claim. Astonishingly she never mentions triple product or empirical scaling laws, which are the actual metrics that real research machines use. Real machines are not nuclear, so Q is always zero. Does this mean fusion has made zero progress? This highlights her bias in the argument.

I am not at all claiming your arguments are not valid but why is ITER claiming this then?

"ITER will generate 10 times more heat than used to start the fusion reaction." https://fusionforenergy.europa.eu/iter/

Edit: I will half-answer or rephrase my own question so as to make clear, there are no hidden intentions behind it:-)

Why did ITER decide to present Qplasma as the core metric without using the metric, most would consider the critical to decide closeness to commercial viability? Would you agree with experts that claim that a minimum Q of 100 is the minimum to target for commercial viability?

I do not find that claim misleading or inaccurate in any way. What is the issue?

Also, that site belongs to some sort of EU bureaucracy, not a research institution.

I just edited my question above to make it more clear.

>Why did ITER decide to present Qplasma as the core metric

This one is easy: they did not.

https://www.iter.org/sci/Goals

You'll notice that the goal in question is the power output. Regardless, Qplasma is there because that is the plasma physicist's yardstick. Change it after 50 years because we're closer to ignition? For what purpose?

I think the wording towards the end of the first goal could be better. That feels like headline bait, but it isn't why the goal was set.

>most would consider the critical to decide closeness to commercial viability

The goal of plasma physicists is to straight-line achieve fusion on the grid, not put on a song and dance. The straight-line path has nothing to do with making a number go up, but everything to do with developing plasma models in new regimes, performing materials studies, and just plain old doing it. ITER wasn't conceived as a demonstration power plant.

Problem is plasma physicists are being subsidized on their very meritorious endeavors, at the cost of 21 billion dollars. A paragraph like the one below, also from the reference you provided, is going to bite them bitterly:

"ITER is designed to produce a ten times return on invested energy: 500 MW of fusion power from 50 MW of input heating power (Q=10). It will be the first of all fusion experiments in history to produce net energy."

As ITER is supposed to start in 2025, and imagining a successful experiment running for 10 years. Adding to this the planning, and procurement process for a possible first device, one with the "real Q" above 1, then its clear it wont be here for at least another 50 years.

It's true there will be a PR reckoning for that wording. I am not under the impression that those that greenlit ITER were deceived about the target performance metrics, which is the implied scandal. The scientists and engineers gave pitches to committees, the committees asked questions, the scientists answered honestly. Not everyone on those committees is clueless about plasma physics, as indicated by their informed questions (see the DoE FES subcommittee transcripts). Is this how we should decide to allocate society's taxed income? I don't know, but I don't think the funding of existentially critical research that requires expensive machines that only produce incremental knowledge should be on the chopping bloc every year.

Regardless of whatever "well actually"s come about, the achievements of ITER should not be sidelined. If ITER is successful, it sets a very important bar for mega projects in the 2020s. It would be a valuable yardstick and a blueprint for a nuclear facility that has enormous subsystems for cooling and tritium processing. Thanks to HTS we might not need to make a machine much larger than ITER to hit the necessary performance metrics, but ITER is being made now, not in another two decades.

Watch SPARC for now.

Thanks for the replies.

"Improbable Matter" posted a reply to Sabine video

"In defense of "Q-plasma" - a response to Sabine Hossenfelder" https://youtu.be/KtqC8W0_Ups

I had a conversation with him where I requested he make a Sabine response video in the comments of a previous video. I think he is a good communicator of plasma physics. His response didn't take the exact shape I would have taken, but I think his high level response will age better than my lower level points.

I shared this video on HN when it came out. This kind of content doesn't inspire as many emotions, so it doesn't take off in the same way. That's a problem nobody has figured out how to grapple yet. ;)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28964858

This is her summary: That people are not being unambiguous/open about Qtotal numbers.

All responders who are trying to discredit her are just throwing even more diversions, jargons and ambiguity. Which proves her right even more.

If people wish to prove her wrong, it's simple – just openly and unambiguously discuss the Qtotal numbers.

You're doing what I take issue with what she was doing: misrepresenting the arguments. There is a kernel to what she has said, however she pours gasoline onto it to expose some sort of villain that doesn't actually exist. It's a great story though.

I discredit her because she was never interested in finding truth but wears the guise of being someone who is. Now more than ever (even late 15th century) is it difficult to discern misinformation. The last thing we need are smart and capable people weaponizing misunderstanding.

Noble motives are neither necessary nor sufficient to achieve success. The laws of physics neither know nor care how altruistic and self-sacrificing fusion researchers are. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

You're absolutely right. And fusion does work. These issues are entirely human.

> fusion does work

Right. That's why we have such a thriving fusion power industry.

If you broaden the scope of the economy beyond about 1AU, we absolutely do have a thriving fusion power industry.

I think the point he is making is that profitable fusion-based electricity generation isn’t a physics problem; it is an engineering problem. Engineering requires dealing with people in addition to physics.

Heavier than air flying machines? Epic failures across centuries led many to believe it was fundamentally impossible, despite Leonardo Da Vinci's math in the 16th century showing it was theoretically possible.

The incandescent light bulb? At one time considered to be a securities fraud! The British parliament assembled a team of investigators to probe Edison's claims.

History is full of inventions that seemed impossible until the dogged inventors made it work. Obviously not all fantastical inventions are possible, but fusion has plenty of evidence that points to its eventual possibility.

> The incandescent light bulb? At one time considered to be a securities fraud! The British parliament assembled a team of investigators to probe Edison's claims.

I don't know this story, but maybe they were investigating patent infringement? Edison's work drew heavily on the much earlier work of British (and other) inventors and was patented after Joseph Swan's similar patent. Joseph Swan had demonstrated his practical bulb about 10 months before Edison applied for his patent, and was lighting private homes (e.g. Cragside) and theatres at about the same time Edison got going.

Did anyone claim noble motives are sufficient to achieve success?

GP said that some claim it's all a scam, but GP disagrees and has seen noble motives. That's all. Your aggressively arguing against a claim that was never made.

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