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Founders of Amazon and Microsoft funding little-known fusion energy companies

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Re: Founders of Amazon and Microsoft funding little-known fusion energy companies

#21

Post by paulydavis »

darawk wrote: post #11
nxzero wrote: post #10

Has anyone since reasonable explanation of what the future would look like with fusion? To me, there will never be enough energy, this effort is about control, not power; even if there was (relatively speaking) an unlimited source of energy, the bounds of it's use would quickly be found, and as such, would not be "universally" available.

While I think that is true in general, and we will eventually saturate whatever fusion may provide - it will take a good while to do that. And in the mean time, we'll have a near perfect source of energy, that's cheap, plentiful and clean. Fusion is truly a pretty revolutionary thing if we can make it work.

Why is it cheaper than now? I mean coal is really cheap. You still have to pay people to operate these reactors. It is not like we have a scarcity of coal. I get clean I do not get cheap. Yes the fuel will be water but these things must have large overhead to maintain and run and build.

Re: Founders of Amazon and Microsoft funding little-known fusion energy companies

#22

Post by ridgeguy »

nxzero wrote: post #10

Has anyone since reasonable explanation of what the future would look like with fusion? To me, there will never be enough energy, this effort is about control, not power; even if there was (relatively speaking) an unlimited source of energy, the bounds of it's use would quickly be found, and as such, would not be "universally" available.

I think the first world would look much like it does now, except that fusion would replace most current nuclear, coal, and oil-fired plants - the technologies that supply base load. Natural gas plants will continue in service as fast response peaking plants.

Renewable energy sources will continue to replace older generation technologies so long as they continue to get cheaper and grid modernization keeps pace with the special requirements of renewables wrt variability.

All that depends on whatever fusion tech proves to be both technically feasible and cost competitive. If that doesn't happen, or is really delayed, then grid storage technology may win out as a cost-effective energy "source".

If storage becomes cheap and effective I'd expect to see renewables + storage expand to serve base load. Also, we'd see faster electrification of areas that currently can't afford classic distribution grids. This might accelerate significant changes in the developing world.

But whatever the generation technology, energy won't be "unlimited". There will always be cost limits.

Re: Founders of Amazon and Microsoft funding little-known fusion energy companies

#23

Post by bpodgursky »

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #20
bpodgursky wrote: post #15

It's really pathetic how HN has degenerated from an actual community of builders / startup founders / creators to reddit-style vitriol and populist complaints about the 1%. Every comment right now is complaining about billionaires and the problems with of capitalism. Not even about the technology, much less being happy about this being funded. Genuine question -- is there a community somewhere which is actually full…

I checked your post history, of about 9 top-level comments on the first page (not including this one) I see seven normative posts and two technical ones.

Very few of those are actually top-level comments. I usually only comment as a reply when a top-level comment makes me angry.

Re: Founders of Amazon and Microsoft funding little-known fusion energy companies

#24

Post by YZF »

I have some friends at General Fusion and I've been following them relatively closely from the beginning. I had an opportunity to invest some in the beginning and decided not to - mostly because the problems they're trying to solve seemed so hard.

They've pivoted a little bit on their approach since then. In the beginning it was all about focussed pressure waves. Now they're starting with plasma. Fusion is really hard (well, at least for power generation, perhaps the "level a city" kind is easier). I think it's harder than self driving cars (for example) or landing rockets on barges (as another example). There are many fundamental problems in different areas that have to be solved and not all these areas are well understood.

I'm pleasantly surprised they are still going strong and that they were able to raise money to continue their progress. Obviously if they are successful the business opportunity of all power generation in the world is a pretty big one...

Re: Founders of Amazon and Microsoft funding little-known fusion energy companies

#25

Post by daveguy »

daviddumenil wrote: post #16
nxzero wrote: post #10

Has anyone since reasonable explanation of what the future would look like with fusion? To me, there will never be enough energy, this effort is about control, not power; even if there was (relatively speaking) an unlimited source of energy, the bounds of it's use would quickly be found, and as such, would not be "universally" available.

My first thought was that an electricity cost at maybe 20% of what it is now would be result in a good economic uplift but not a seismic change. But the interesting cases are those where much cheaper electricity unlocks new opportunities. Imagine the coast of sub-Saharan Africa transformed by the agriculture enabled by cheap desalinated water.

Is it really just a 5x reduction in power cost that would allow "cheap" desalination? Would it require a 50x reduction in cost? I wonder if cheap desalination and cheap desalination are on the same order of magnitude. Do you know the current cost of desalination? Is there any sort of accurate estimate of how cheap power would be? (I guess not since everything is a prototype and nothing has been able to produce excess power from fuel).

Re: Founders of Amazon and Microsoft funding little-known fusion energy companies

#26

Post by welterde »

YZF wrote: post #24

I have some friends at General Fusion and I've been following them relatively closely from the beginning. I had an opportunity to invest some in the beginning and decided not to - mostly because the problems they're trying to solve seemed so hard. They've pivoted a little bit on their approach since then. In the beginning it was all about focussed pressure waves. Now they're starting with plasma. Fusion is really har…

Fusion is easy. Lots of fusion (but not quite city leveling kind) is hard.

As far as I can tell most of the difficulty arises in the plasma physics part instead of the actual fusion bit (the latter being fairly well understood now for quite a long time now). That's where 90% of the work has to go get fusion power and also the reason the early estimates for when fusion power would be available were so optimistic. It wasn't clear back then how difficult and unforgiving plasmas can be (and making the plasma extremely hot, applying strong magnetic fields and running high currents through it doesn't make it easier to work with - quite the opposite).

Re: Founders of Amazon and Microsoft funding little-known fusion energy companies

#27

Post by daveguy »

dang wrote: post #8
abhi3 wrote: post #5

TLDR There are a handful of private companies working on new/not well researched approaches to cracking fusion using private capital while Government projects like National Ignition Labs and ITER suck most of the public funding to work on mainstream methods. There are two companies of note, 1) General Fusion (funded in part by Bezos) working on something called magnetised target fusion Here's how it works: first, mag…

We've banned your account because we asked you not to post these. If you don't want it to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com.

I would like to say that 1) I think TL;DR summaries are a good thing (especially the detailed and accurate ones this user has posted). And 2) it would be an excellent way to promote an apply HN that does exactly that.

I think you just banned someone who is a positive contributor to HN.

Re: Founders of Amazon and Microsoft funding little-known fusion energy companies

#28

Post by gizmo686 »

YZF wrote: post #24

I have some friends at General Fusion and I've been following them relatively closely from the beginning. I had an opportunity to invest some in the beginning and decided not to - mostly because the problems they're trying to solve seemed so hard. They've pivoted a little bit on their approach since then. In the beginning it was all about focussed pressure waves. Now they're starting with plasma. Fusion is really har…

Evan in thermonuclear bombs, most of the benefit in fusion does not from the energy released by the fusion itself, but rather from the neutrons released that trigger fission surrounding U-238 (the non-bomb isotope of uranium).

Re: Founders of Amazon and Microsoft funding little-known fusion energy companies

#29

Post by YZF »

welterde wrote: post #26
YZF wrote: post #24

I have some friends at General Fusion and I've been following them relatively closely from the beginning. I had an opportunity to invest some in the beginning and decided not to - mostly because the problems they're trying to solve seemed so hard. They've pivoted a little bit on their approach since then. In the beginning it was all about focussed pressure waves. Now they're starting with plasma. Fusion is really har…

Fusion is easy. Lots of fusion (but not quite city leveling kind) is hard. As far as I can tell most of the difficulty arises in the plasma physics part instead of the actual fusion bit (the latter being fairly well understood now for quite a long time now). That's where 90% of the work has to go get fusion power and also the reason the early estimates for when fusion power would be available were so optimistic. It w…

Sure. I believe there's some fusion happening around us all the time. It's a statistical event. But to get a useful amount of fusion is different.

Yes, plasma is very difficult. You need to get it hot enough and in the right shape and in the right position at the right time. But even when you do that there are still many hard problems to solve. One of them is irradiation embrittlement. Capturing all the energy efficiently and converting it efficiently into power is also difficult (steam turbines I guess). The efficiencies of the input side are also a problem (the energy intake of creating the plasma, managing it, "fusing" it). All these inefficiencies eat into your energy budget making it harder to get significantly more energy out than you put in... Anyways, I'm not a physicist, but every little problem I hear about related to this process seems to be of monumental proportions and there are many of those...

Re: Founders of Amazon and Microsoft funding little-known fusion energy companies

#30

Post by semi-extrinsic »

ridgeguy wrote: post #22
nxzero wrote: post #10

Has anyone since reasonable explanation of what the future would look like with fusion? To me, there will never be enough energy, this effort is about control, not power; even if there was (relatively speaking) an unlimited source of energy, the bounds of it's use would quickly be found, and as such, would not be "universally" available.

I think the first world would look much like it does now, except that fusion would replace most current nuclear, coal, and oil-fired plants - the technologies that supply base load. Natural gas plants will continue in service as fast response peaking plants. Renewable energy sources will continue to replace older generation technologies so long as they continue to get cheaper and grid modernization keeps pace with th…

There are also fundamental thermodynamic limits that you hit at some point. All production and usage of electricity produces waste heat, it's unavoidable (see Carnot). Even neglecting global warming, you can't keep 20th century energy growth going for much more than another century or two before waste heat alone causes catastrophic climate change.
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