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Comment by rdl | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting that you can justify this investment in at least four separate ways, independently:

1) Even if there is a low chance of success, it would be wildly profitable if successful, and investing early gets you a good share if it's successful.

2) Fusion power would make the world a better place; investing in this way, when you already have huge returns and it's someone else's money, is actually rational even if you think it's not the best financial investment.

3) This looks like an amazingly smart team; even if they fail at fusion, they might find something worthwhile in the process. Just handling magnetics and high power well could be a useful toolkit for other problems.

4) "Halo effect" -- both because it's awesome science/engineering and because it shows a willingness to take extreme risks -- boosts YC (which probably doesn't need it) and Mithril (which is maybe even more awesome than YC, but nowhere near as widely known). If it loses $1.5mm but makes it more likely the next Facebook comes to either of these funds, it's a win.

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The risk of #3 is that they don't create fusion but they do develop a machine that can emit streams of hot plasma which is then turned into the Navy's weapon of choice for close weapons support on carrier battle groups.

That said, I am looking forward to at least one of the fusion efforts bearing fruit. I'm something of an optimist here but I expect a durable solution to the 'energy problem' to emerge from our developing understanding of both quantum mechanics and particle physics. I am also cognizant of the fact that it also raises the bar on both good and bad things that humans can do. The tricky parts are in the transitions, pre and post event.

We've already weaponized nuclear fusion into the most destructive bomb ever created. It probably couldn't get a whole lot worse than that.

I think there are other paths to sustainable energy, but certainly viable fusion power is the holy grail.

I don't understand why this was downvoted. I'm not going to discount the possibility to invent something worse then our most powerful fusion bomb, but if we talk probability here, developing processes that allow greater control is likely to result in a worst case scenario where we have a weapon that is at most as powerful as what we already have, but more focused.

IMHO focused fusion destruction is likely to be far more humane than the indiscriminate destruction caused by the weapons currently in our arsenal. i.e. a highly focused weapon is likely to to result in instant death for the victims instead of minutes to months to years of suffering for victims depending on their exposure levels.

This is true, but a focused bomb is also one more likely to be used because you're not laying the countryside to waste using it.

I'll never understand being able to kill someone in a humane way(through acts of war). You're killing someone.

It's like humane slaughter of animals for food - there are ways that don't cause unnecessary pain, others that do.

Sounds like a misuse of the word to be honest.

How about if we put it like this?

When a democracy has a war with a dictatorship it is similar to when the police defends civilians from violence.

(So this don't get into a shouting match: Check "democratic peace theory". I am aware of that the police can misuse their position. A democracy often also do cynical realpolitik when it isn't its voters that gets harmed.)

Edit: You might want to do the distinction of a junta that do a general draft, so there are soldiers for the dictator which didn't volunteer. It isn't an easy solution, but citizens in a country can theoretically overthrow their dictator. Hopefully with more help than the Syrians got from Obama.

Edit 2: I assume that you don't think it is immoral to sell weapons to police. If you are that pacifist, then I think you should move to some place without police to protect you... I hear they have good weather in inner Somalia and southern Yemen. Both are traditional clan societies without police.

Edit 3: Ah, you have a 60s style of police racial violence discussion in the USA right now. I get the down votes.

Go back to Ferguson.

humane (hjuːˈmeɪn)

2. inflicting as little pain as possible: a humane killing.

which dictionary did you pull this from? I see "characterized by tenderness, compassion, and sympathy for people and animals, especially for the suffering or distressed"

The most common definition is a synonym of compassion, but the definition of limiting pain/suffering is also very common.

I pulled it from http://thefreedictionary.com/humane which cites 'Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged'.

Suffering and harm are distinct things, and being humane is about the former.

I won't deny it's complicated, but there's more to thinking about how we conduct war than just the proximal individual act of killing. Two cultures that, for instance, respect military vs. civilian distinctions may war with each other with much less total damage than two cultures that practice Total War, even if the political outcome is the same in the end.

Just because war is bad does not mean we are forced to throw up our hands and stop making distinctions between degrees of badness. War is not simply infinitely bad... that's ultimately a very sophomoric view.

War, itself, is a pretty damned sophomoric thing.

This is a simplification. Defending yourself against unprovoked attack is not juvenile, although there are moral systems that advocate rolling over and giving up if you are attacked. And there is a whole spectrum of combat actions where "defense against unprovoked attack" is one extreme.

In industrialized countries, wars of aggression are usually never profitable, but the same can unfortunately not be said for less-developed societies. Even Europe didn't find this obvious until after World War 2. So I guess it ends up being a question of how you define "sophomoric".

Actually, wars of aggression are almost never profitable. Accumulating riches via conquest is almost always a myth, because armies a) destroy much that is of value and b) are unbelievably expensive.

"Wealth through superior firepower" has hardly ever been achieved. Even Rome mostly got rich through trade after its armies conquered Europe and North Africa, and a lawful peace was imposed. Had everyone been economically rational pretty much the same end could have been achieved through trade (spoiler: not everyone is economically rational.)

Simple looting of the kind the Spanish engaged in in the New World was never a very good path to wealth, partly because its first effect was to create massive inflation (if you use gold as money and inject vase amounts of gold into your economy without increased productive capacity, you get inflation, not wealth.)

So the conditions of gaining wealth by war are very, very narrowly defined. It's not impossible, but it's amazingly difficult.

There are defensible moral reasons for engaging in mass organized violence--I support the current American efforts to kill people in Northern Iraq, for example--but economic rationality (profitability) is never one of them, because the first step to creating wealth is never to engage in the wholesale destruction of everything the creation of wealth depends on.

Interesting, you know more than me but afaik it is correct. Both in facts and arguably in moral.

Since you brought up Rome in discussing payback for warfare, you could also ask "Cui bono" here -- "who benefits?"

A war is potentially just like a gold rush, the people getting rich are the ones selling the tools to dig or make war.

Just look at my native Sweden, we managed to stay out of a few wars and shamelessly sold high quality steel to the countries fighting. It made Sweden go from the bottom to the top in Europe.

What this implies about lobbying and how wars starts I'll leave to the imagination.

(I might also add that IS has declared war on the democratic world. So trying to stop their expansion is arguably self defence.)

Interesting that wars of aggression have almost never been profitable; this fills a hole in my understanding. I've always understood that this fact only became obvious after WWII, and almost 10 years of terribly destructive fighting in Europe and elsewhere.

"Sophomoric" is not merely an empty insult, to be flung at whatever you don't like. It is a specific thing. It can not apply in this case... only a particular justification for a war could be sophomoric, not the whole act.

Sometimes situation dictates that someone is going to die, and you have the option of deciding who and how - best it happen to the "most deserving" in the least painful/agonizing way possible.

If you were going to have to die some way, would you prefer to die from 3rd degree burns over most of your body and with your retinas burned from a bright searing light or would you prefer to die from a lethal dosage of heroin?

The outcome may be the same, but there's a whole lot more humanity in subjecting someone to the latter.

I regret posting this comment due to all the completely unrelated commentary it generated, detracting from the startup in question. If you read this comment, please skip my comment above and all the replies. Your time is better spend reading about what this startup is doing.

Nuclear bombs aren't that dangerous though... in the grand scheme of things. That's because their use could trigger a chain reaction which creates a virtual apocalypse scenario. Basically ensuring their use impossible.

What's scary is a weapon that can cause massive damage, that we are actually willing to use.

In the grand scheme of things, the situation that held during the Cold War was a historical accident. Not every nuclear bomb in the future will necessarily be possessed by nations who are facing adversaries who can respond in kind to the use of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are very scary indeed, and we are very lucky to have made it decades since they have last been used in war. I have good faith that we will make it to a century, but I would not make a bet that they will never, ever be used in anger ever again.

I think MAD between a small number of (mostly rational) actors was the best case scenario.

Sure, nuclear states vs. non-nuclear traditional states is the most likely use right now, but we're not that far off from non-state actors being able to make nuclear weapons. Right now the only real protection is limiting access to fissile material.

What's worse, it's gonna soon be trivial for non-state actors to do similar (or worse) damage via bio. Fun times ahead.

With respect to nuclear weapons, the question isn't just with their use but also their misuse. There have been a non-zero amount of incidents in North America with non-nuclear detonations (fortunately).

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accid...

Why is that a risk? I'd like to live in a country with that technology, because otherwise other countries will have it and we won't.

It's a risk to the investment firms because it would deplete an upside they get from this investment: the halo effect.

But it would create a financial upside. They are a fund after all, and you'll find plenty of institutions investing in LMT, NOC, and friends.

You might lose some of the halo effect for one audience, but gain it from another. Not everyone things defense (or if you prefer weapons, or arms dealing) is a bad sector to be in.

Depending on the military application, it might still have a halo effect.

Great skill in manipulating magnetic fields would probably be useful for: MRI. Detecting landmines and UXO in a field from a UAV or otherwise safe distance. Detecting submarines, including those by terrorists or rogue states transporting NBC weapons.

While those are military applications, they're fairly unalloyedly positive.

Even the hypothetical plasma rifle isn't necessarily a bad thing; if a plasma rifle allows rich countries like US, Japan, etc. to overmatch poor countries and thus prevent war, that's kind of a plus.

It would be pretty difficult to weaponize a closed system design without significant R&D. The only risk I see would be if some small component of their design was transferred to an existing military weapon to make it better.

> The risk of #3 is that they don't create fusion but they do develop a machine that can emit streams of hot plasma which is then turned into the Navy's weapon of choice for close weapons support on carrier battle groups.

The possibility of pivoting your business model to "building plasma cannons for the Navy" is less of a risk and more of an awesome opportunity. I mean, defense contracting is a bit of a drag and there's tons of red tape, but if there's anything as cool as building fusion reactors small enough to replace diesel generators, it's building plasma cannons for the Navy.

"I mean, defense contracting is a bit of a drag and there's tons of red tape"

Not to mention the tremendous moral hazard. I am unclear as to how anyone can function as a reasonable moral actor when they profit from war.

Calling it "defense" does not solve that problem.

Generally I would expect direct fire weapons to have much less collateral damage than bombs.

Building a better bullet can save lives.

And of late someone has: guided .50BMG bullets which can adjust their flightpath to assuredly hit a target (which, one can presume, is being shot to prevent others from being killed). EXACTO .50-caliber demonstration: http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Releases/2014/07/10a.aspx

Plasma cannons don't kill people, people kill people, and we've already invented those.

Changes in topology kill people.

No doubt they could come up with something dangerous, but I wouldn't worry about that particular mode. Plasma doesn't travel far.

A nice portable high intensity directed neutron radiation source might be pretty nasty, though.

Sadly enough, those already exist:

"Fusors have also been developed commercially, as sources for neutrons by DaimlerChrysler Aerospace" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor

But you're right, plasma is not the deadly weapon. Neutrons are.

There are already commercial oilfield tools that use neutron generators with relatively low power input requirements. I'm not seeing how to make a useful weapon out of something like that, though. What can it do that isn't already done better by normal guns and bombs?

I guess you could use it to attack people inside a building without directly destroying the building, but I would figure that if you got a high enough neutron flux to reliably kill everyone inside the building, you'd also get enough activation radiation to render the building uninhabitable for at least weeks. You might well need fancy decontamination, and possibly to demolish the building and haul away parts of it. Seems easier to just use a bomb.

We'd certainly be concerned about those kinds of applications. Fortunately we don't use beams in this approach. The plasma used in the Fusion Engine is akin to a balloon or pillow, granted - a really hot pillow, but luckily a terrible projectile.

Do you have an opinion about Bussard/Polywell?

Regardless of everyone's feelings on whether weapons research is or isn't a good idea, this strikes me as a grossly unlikely application.

The problem with direct-fire weapons is not something like "bullets don't do enough damage." It's aiming and range and so forth. A plasma weapon seems unlikely to have good range or good aiming, and if it does not come with a fusion reactor alongside it, it's also kind of hard to see how you'd power the damn thing.

I'm sure someone can imagine some upside to such a weapon, but in practice, the odds that that particular result would come instead of a million other variations that would be inferior to just shooting bullets at things seems deeply unlikely.

And as everyone has already said, we already have fusion bombs. And for that matter small tactical nuclear weapons for more battlefieldy uses.

Rather than a literal plasma gun, I think they were just saying the risk is that the team will pivot into weapons research. But no one has thus far explained why weapons research would be anything but a positive thing.

Yes, using weapons is unfortunate. The decision to ever use a weapon should be made with the utmost discretion. But when it comes time to use a weapon, it seems hard to argue against having the most effective weapons that also have little collateral damage.

Maybe people are worried that a new, extremely effective weapon will be discovered which happens to have high collateral damage. That's a concern, but it's never been possible to delay the advancement of technology. If something is possible to discover, then it seems like some diligent researcher will eventually discover it. But the concern itself seems misplaced: most new weapons have less collateral damage, not more.

I think people are worried about a low-collateral-damage weapon which means political leaders can be more likely to deploy it. Observe the objections to the use of precision-guided munitions fired from long-hovering remote-controlled drones.

And what I'm saying is that regardless of the ethics of it, why should we regard it as in any way plausible that this company would pivot into weapons research?

By a huge margin, the most plausible military application of anything this company develops is "a fusion reactor on an aircraft carrier."

And I say that as someone who regards it as deeply unlikely that this company will create any major step towards a fusion reactor.

Not big enough for a carrier, and that last generation is already designed.

But about right for a submarine.

The biggest fear of carrier groups are mach 7 ramjet antiship missiles launched from hundreds if not thousands of miles away, way too fast to destroy with anything even laser (you barely see them coming at you) and on top of that relatively cheap at maybe half a million a piece compared to the billions a carrier costs, meaning the enemy could launch tens of them at each ship.

It's insanely cool that YC is now part of this. Also love that pg credits Sam for making it happen.

On a somewhat related note. Despite the setbacks and the bad rep nuclear gets, fusion really could be a better future. The energy density is in a class of its own, compared to that of renewables. Prof David MacKay demonstrates this quite effectively here[1]. This of course is not to take anything away from renewables or imply we shouldn't pursue funding both.

One group of companies I find particularly interesting, are those attempting aneutronic fusion.[2]

Like many good ideas, that became bad ideas (in the 60's), it appears to now be back in fashion.[3] Theoretical advancements have pushed the achievable temperature ceiling northwards, allowing a move towards commercialization.

Whether this particular line of fusion innovation will ultimately pan out, is perhaps anyone's guess. Personally however, I suspect there is a chance it can work. The benefits would be almost too good to pass up. Small, modular, cheap and safe (with almost no radioactive waste)

Some examples in the industry:

Raman-budget: Focus Fusion [4]

Secretive and heavily funded: Tri Alpha Energy [5]

[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_ren...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion

[3] https://www.sciencenews.org/article/proton-boron-nuclear-fus...

[4] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/focus-fusion-empowerthewo...

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri_Alpha_Energy,_Inc.

Prof Mackay's talk pretty much says that in order to use renewable energy the whole UK would have to be covered in electricity generating equipment.

However, 15% of UK energy is generated from renewables (excluding nuclear), which would mean that currently one seventh of the landmass of the UK was covered in wind turbines etc. Which it isn't. You'd be able to tell.

So, one of us has made a mistake with our calculations somewhere.

> However, 15% of UK energy is generated from renewables (excluding nuclear), which would mean that currently one seventh of the landmass of the UK was covered in wind turbines etc. Which it isn't.

Most likely brought in from other countries, and the wind parks in the North Sea.

Many local utilities in Germany hold stakes e.g. in a Norwegian (iirc) dam project, so they recieve a given amount of electricity output. This increases Germany's renewable-source amount even if the energy itself isn't produced in Germany.

Nope, Scotland over produces and sells to England, but that's still UK, at least for another month ;-)

Offshore wind was included in the impossible. There's something off in his figures. Perhaps wind turbines have become more efficient since he first made his calculations?

It may also be diminishing returns, not all land is equal for wind turbine placement. If all the "good" spots can't generate enough for the UK's needs you might need to start using less suitable locations.

By far the most efficient wind turbine placements are offshore. We have plenty of coast, and so far very little of it has offshore wind farms.

We also have a good few estuaries that could create electricity relatively easily - using known and proven technology, which fusion certainly isn't.

Bottom line is these figures are either incompetent or disingenuous.

I'm old enough to remember fusion being touted as the Next Big Thing for literally all of my life. Commercial containment fusion seems no closer now than it did fifty years ago.

There are alternatives, but they're highly speculative. Dropping YC cash on them makes sense as a long shot, but the science doesn't suggest it's wise to expect them to make good.

To start with, you're talking about electricity generation, where he is talking about total energy requirements. So your 15% figure doesn't include the energy consumption of cars, aeroplanes, many types of heating etc.

I believe he also includes the embodied energy of imports (this was in his book), where if goods are manufactured overseas and imported, it may make sense to count the energy used to manufacture them, depending on what you're measuring exactly.

For example, there's little difference between importing aluminium, or importing energy and bauxite and smelting it yourself.

Also, area use will not increase linearly with the addition of many renewables, because in many cases the best sites are taken first. Hydro can generate a lot of energy around the clock, but you quickly run out of the best locations. Wind strength varies across the country.

In a small country like the UK, solar isn't going to vary much by latitude, and you can probably build it out all over the country. But time shifting of demand isn't always possible, so even if the panels were free, using them to push from (say) 50% of energy from renewables to 100% is going to involve some kind of storage system, which is either going to be very expensive (probably exceeding GDP) and unproven (eg hydrogen fuel cells, lithium ion batteries), or require a ton of space and specific terrain, like pumped water. So that's going to cost a lot of space.

Lastly, electricity isn't always the desired final form. If you're powering jet planes, you're going to need some type of biofuel, which is very inefficient per unit area. If and when hydrogen planes are developed, this will stop being an issue (electric cars have already proven their viability).

I highly recommend his book. It's a brilliant read, he nicely boils down the issues, and is thoroughly committed to stopping global warming - it's not some doom and gloom oil industry sponsored thing. But he doesn't have his head in the sand about how hard a switch to renewables is going to be, unlike (unfortunately) a ton of the green movement seems to.

If your talking total energy then you need to include food and farms already take a lot of land.

So, while close it's vary misleading as going 100% renewable would take less new land than he is suggesting. Add to that you can mix wind farms and regular farms at the cost of less than 1% of the farm land. Not to mention off shore wind farms. Which further reduces the land requirements well below his calculations.

Also, Hydro is vary efficient built in storage using it 24/7 is vary wasteful.

Wind is 24/7, and solar aligns with peak demand fairly well. Anyway, rather than storage your better off with extra wind capacity that's often wasted, with solar to meet your daily peak and hydro to fill in the gaps.

PS: Adding a few peaking power plants is still a good idea, going 80% renewable is a much more reasonable goal until most of the world is at that point. It's silly to chase a few extra % when china is using so much coal power.

Ok, if we're talking total energy, then 5% rather than 15%. The point still stands.

I've no idea why he would include imports. Does he exclude exports? It seems a bit mad. There's a huge difference between me buying some aluminium and having to generate the electricity at my home to smelt it myself as a kind of cottage industry! (A case of he who smelted, dealt it?)

The point about area use not increasing linearly is a good one. However, Prof Mackay doesn't do this. He consistently states that - even giving renewables every advantage and pretending they'll always work at peak efficiency - you'd still have to blanket the country with them to make them effective.

I've read his book and it's where I first started to think there was something a bit off in what he was saying. Yes, he's very full of the idea that he's the hard-nosed realist and anyone who disagree must have their heads in the sand. I've heard that tactic before.

If your goal is sustainability, there is no difference. Pushing your energy consumption out to another country is just shifting the problem. Though yes, you would want to exclude exports in this model.

Picture a hypothetical country that solely consists of stay at home programmers making large sums of money, powered entirely by solar, but importing vast amounts of physical goods manufactured in environmentally unfriendly ways. The country would by traditional measures be a perfect model of sustainability, but it is simply paying others to do unsustainable actions on its behalf.

The book isn't really "saying" much, for the most part. The vast bulk of it is simple, back of the envelope calculations for energy consumption which shows working. I realize you might not want to take a half hour to find specific faults in it, but it is not helpful say there is "something a bit off" with a work like that, when the source code is published for all to see.

For instance, that he counts embodied energy of imports, and you do not wish to, makes a big difference to the bottom line. Just skimming the chapter headings is enough to point out a concrete disagreement.

Fair point about the hard nosed realist tactic often being used to discredit dissenting views. That wasn't my intention, I was more trying to say that the conclusions presented should not be used to infer some political position of the author.

There are a ton of studies paid for by the oil industry that paint all kinds of pictures, I just meant it's not a book like that. If I realized you'd already read it, I wouldn't have included that part.

Having read the book the specific fault with it is that the results it comes up with from its simple back of the envelope calculations, bear no resemblance to actual reality and are therefore wrong.

Including imports is wrong. In your hypothetical country, fixing those unsustainable actions is up to the country they're importing goods from. Show that they can't use wind/solar on their landmass if you want. The idea that every area of a country (or indeed the world) are equally good at generating power is obviously incorrect. Claiming that this makes wind and solar power unusable is equally incorrect.

The book reads like it was paid for by the nuclear industry (I don't think it was; it just reads that way).

According to [1] in 2012 for the UK renewables provided 11.3% of electricity demand and 3.94% of total energy demand. It's an important distinction, because petrol natural gas and jet fuel aren't renewable.

MacKay is the author of a book - "Sustainable Energy without the hot air" - which lays out all his calculations and the rationales behind the inputs. And it's available online [2]. So if you want to audit his calculations, have at it!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Renewable_energy_... [2] http://www.withouthotair.com/

I've looked at the book, there's when I checked his figures and they seemed to disagree with reality.

So, electricity is about 1/3 of total energy. The 15% figure is the latest one for the last quarter of 2013[1] (PDF, see page 13). That means that (according to Prof Mackay) 5% of the UK is covered in renewable electricity generation.

No, it's still not.

[1]https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...

> On a somewhat related note. Despite the setbacks and the bad rep nuclear gets, fusion really could be a better future.

It sure could be a better future but the "bad rep" problem is bigger than I ever thought. The coalition of green parties in the European council (or Commission? Parliament? EU bureaucracy is confusing-) have the following in their program (paraphrased): "Cancel the funding of all nuclear power projects, like the ITER project".

This is a purely political move that is made solely to appeal to the feelings (not intelligence) of their voters. Nuclear fusion should be the project for the Green movement, but instead they are doing the complete opposite, just because of the reputation issues.

I was interested for a source, so I found this:

http://www.greens-efa.eu/nuclear-safety-in-europe-following-...

"23. Calls on the Commission, the Member States, the European Investment Bank (EIB), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and other public banks to freeze public funding for nuclear fusion, including ITER, or fission, except for the decommissioning of nuclear facilities;"

What the hell? I just don't understand the Green parties sometimes and could never support them while they still do rubbish like this.

It's because even ITER produces radioactive waste, and the greens are only interested in clean energy. In their view, with hydro, geothermal, wind and solar we have all the clean energy sources we need, if people cut back their energy consumption. That is, ofcourse, a big if.

Pandora's Promise is a very interesting documentary about plain nuclear fission power, created by an environmentalist who decided to think for himself and investigate the power source that his movement hates.

The film highlights much of the misinformation campaign about fission, with particular emphasis on Chernobyl. I highly recommend watching, no matter the what you believe about nuclear power.

> "Cancel the funding of all nuclear power projects, like the ITER project"

This is so very sad indeed. Fusion and fission are entirely different technologies, and both show immense promise to meet the energy needs of the future.

I would also add that YC investment boosts nuclear stuff as a legitimate thing. Could lead to copycat investment (which we dearly need in the nuclear field).

Well if they really "Developed complete self-supplied He3 fuel cycle" like it says on their website, that is number 3) right there.

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