U.S. to announce major breakthrough in zero-carbon nuclear fusion energy | Hacker News Reader

U.S. to announce major breakthrough in zero-carbon nuclear fusion energy

cbsnews.com

208 pointsbirriel10 comments

(Edit: this story has proven impossible to wait for because it was leaked and is being widely reported, so I guess we'll merge this thread into https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33945863 - that seems to be the 'original source' of at least the current wave.)

This is a dupe of an announcement of an announcement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33950289

Announcements of announcements are off topic on HN since we can discuss the actual announcement when it happens, and that's when specific information will be there to discuss.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

The twitter thread linked to in the comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33955793 has all the concrete info of what happened, especially the last link in said thread, so you could just edit the submission.

Ok, I've added that to the current thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33945863. Thanks!

This does happen all the time tho.

Maybe HN should implement thread merging? A couple ideas..

A story could be merged by closing comments and setting an HTTP redirect, with some sort of notification on the landing page you've been redirected.

There's some utility to having a new batch of comments a few days later, so maybe alternatively, maybe have a section between story header and comments with a dupe area like you comments, but structured in a regular way to make it easy to page through.

I wouldn't say it happens all the time, though no doubt there are cases we miss, since we don't see everything that gets posted.

Sorry yeah, I just notice it a lot. Maybe then a way for users to vote things as dupes. Just tryna help!

FT reported yesterday that there's been a breakthrough on Fusion - first time more energy out than used in powering it up (net gain).

https://www.ft.com/content/4b6f0fab-66ef-4e33-adec-cfc345589...

I presume there's still some embargo on the press release? Possibly much more news to follow. [edit: announcement coming Tuesday]

Possibly paywalled, here's the archived link: https://archive.vn/szeNj

From the article:

> The Financial Times reported Sunday that scientists in the California-based Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) had achieved a "net energy gain" from an experimental fusion reactor.

The question is, in terms of energy input, are we talking about Q-total or Q-plasma? Based on the video by Sabine Hossenfelder, my guess would be, the announcement references Q-plasma. That would mean that the announcement is a motte-and-baily miscommunication, as it promises much more than people are lead to read into it.

Motte: We got more energy out than we put in. Bailey: Oh, what we really meant is, more energy was produced, than was put into the plasma, though we didn't actually capture any energy and also, there was actually a great deal of energy also needed to run all the ancillary systems to keep the plasma confined.

How close is nuclear fusion power? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY

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