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Comment by Jeff_Brown | Hacker News Reader

Breathless as usual, and as usual I can't judge. Experts, how big a deal is this?

I'm not sure why this seems to be hyped up in media reports and I'm skeptical this is a big deal. They used NIFS's stellarator to observe proton boron fusion in a magnetic plasma. The way they accomplished this is by bombarding the plasma with massively energetic particles. The energy produced through fusion is almost undetectable. I'm not sure what relevance this has to their proposed FRC reactor and the paper doesn't make that clear either. They do talk about a wealth of data that could inform their research but since the scale here is so astronomically different from a hypothetical reactor that produces energy it is hard to see how the knowledge gained from what is essentially a single experiment has any relevance to their eventual goal of producing net energy gain. Most of the work to make fusion energy work is engineering and engineering is very sensitive to scale.

Right. This is either huge, Nobel Prize / multi-billion dollar industry huge, or a gross exaggeration of a lab result. Which?

Considering this comes from Japan, I'm going to lean on hot air exaggeration until demonstrated otherwise.

Not taking away from the fact this is an interesting achievement in the science of nuclear fusion, of course.

> Considering this comes from Japan...

Can you explain to me why this follows? I don't usually associate "hot air exaggeration" with Japanese culture.

I reflected on this once before[1], but basically I've seen Japan design great things only for them to fail on execution time and time again.

I'm sick and tired of them at this point, so I simply refuse to hold my breath on anything coming from Japan until I see it in action.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34803445

By any economic measure Japan is an advanced productive nation. Like top five in the world.

At the same time they have maintained a high quality of life over decades and a unique culture.

That is tangent to whether Japan can bring projects to fruition.

The recent termination of the Mitsubishi Regional Jet is a perfect example (among many others) of what I'm sick and tired about with Japan: Lots of bold claims to start, absolute failure when time comes to execute.

Seems like cherry (or is that lemon?) picking. The United States has failed projects too, as do all advanced economies. There’s no way Japan got where it is today if they can’t execute.

The private sector in Japan is not especially productive and definitely has trends of choosing unworkable gadget ideas that nobody outside the country would ever care about. A fusion reactor that doesn't work is a sort of big Galapagos phone.

Japan is the 4th largest exporter in the world. At that level big gambles are responsible bets. Japan already has an established industrial and economic base. They can afford to experiment. At their scale failures come for free and still have positive value.

> I've seen Japan design great things only for them to fail on execution time and time again.

Is there a country more renowned for engineering than Japan? Maybe Germany?

The United States of America.

Yes, I'm being 100% objectively serious.

The infrastructure since disproves your claim.

You are in for a very rude awakening in the next few years.

The United States of America is host to:

* The forefront of IT engineering (Intel, AMD, Nvidia, IBM, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Micron, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Seagate, Western Digital, Cisco, etc.).

* The forefront of aeronautics and space engineering (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Electric, General Dynamics, Honeywell, SpaceX, etc.).

* The forefront of higher education for engineering (MIT, Caltech, etc.).

* The forefront of new engineering research and development (NASA, DARPA, the National Laboratories, National Science Foundation, etc.).

* Leaders in medical engineering (Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, etc.).

* The most powerful and capable military in the world, made possible by the vast above-mentioned engineering base and more.

You're more than likely reading and posting on HN using technologies engineered, either in whole or in part, by Americans. You're welcome.

As regards infrastructure upkeep, even Japan is suffering from insufficient upkeep of infrastructure to the point of crumbling; they simply aren't as infamous for them as America is.

I am sure none would claim that the US has not produced great things, but in an economy of world wide trade, even the US is very much dependent on foreign products.

Just for one high tech example, the most sophisticated chips in the computer you use (whether desktop, laptop or phone) are almost certainly produced in Taiwan, who in turn rely on high tech manufacturing equipment from Europe.

You're welcome, too! Isn't international trade a great thing?

The point I am making is that America knows how to execute and succeed with engineering, unlike Japan.

Look at Kioxia, formerly Toshiba Memory. Neglected and laid out to rot under Japanese hands, bought by Americans and immediately became one of the biggest names in NAND flash (and rightfully so as inventors of the damn thing).

Japan can't succeed if success looked at them straight in the eye, and I'm tired of it.

Kioxia isn't good example. Toshiba was failed on some industry like nuclear, but Toshiba NAND manufacturing was one of the best division. They invented NAND Flash and has been a top player. Toshiba should avoid bankrupt so they needed to sell superior division.

Japan's infrastructure is light-years ahead of America's.

It's not even close.

You can flex all the exceptionalism you want, reality won't change one iota.

There's barely electrical passenger train lines there, let alone high speed rail.

I would agree with you when it comes to innovative engineering. But when it comes to making really reliable and high quality parts of not-so-innovative designs, then I think Germany has a traditional edge. This is visible when you look at the staple German suppliers for all sorts of machine parts and their reputation compared to the competition.

But Japan makes 45% of the worlds industrial robots.

https://ifr.org/ifr-press-releases/news/japan-is-worlds-numb...

So even though they fail at some things, Japan is absolutely an engineering powerhouse, and a key part of our current industrialized world.

So for a project requiring a ton of advanced robotics or industrial systems I'd put Japan being involved as a plus, they are the best in the world at that.

It doesn’t scale.

Aren't we supposed to "do things that don't scale"?

I really don’t understand the downvotes, but the full version of that famous quote is “do things that don’t scale right away.” Not “do things that don’t scale and will never scale.”

You were probably downvoted because you made a strong statement without further explanation, or at least references that support your claim.

I pressed the zoom button and it scaled just fine.

Or perhaps you mean something else which you have not bothered to explain?

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