21–30 of 41 posts
If I have learned anything about fusion articles in the tech news, it is that fusion research is always really expensive and everyone is always tantalizingly close to a breakthrough whenever they need more funding.
Lerner has been beating this drum for years, and presented at many conferences. And yet no one has invested. I'd love to know why. Either there's a catch to the technology that he's not disclosing (and the smart money doesn't have a motivation to disclose), or he's asking for unreasonable business terms. The only thing I know for sure is there's no lack of capital available for good fusion research. Not if the money…
investing means some ROI. There is no way to have any ROI here (to illustrate - try to imagine how you can get any ROI by investing back at the time in Einstein developing GR). They aren't going to build a lot of power plants themselves and for selling their tech - there should be some "secret sauce", and the current fusion development is at the stage when results of one team can easily be replicated by any other team (given sufficient access to money). I.e. current investing in fusion is more like scientific/humanitarian grants (and big thanks to those guys like Allen for pushing our civilization forward) than VC for profit.
For example, once a team develops high-performance sensors and software to efficiently manage say that plasma ball at the end of a DPF shot so that there would be a real power gain, that would be an item suitable for investing by VC.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My dad was a navy nuke and said that the cost v safety v portability of fission was far superior to that of fusion. That was back in the 90s, so I wonder if it's still relevant, but a quick search [1] seemed to confirm the general idea. [1] diffen.com/difference/Nuclear_Fission_vs_Nuclear_Fusion
I think you should listen to him. Fusion is still vapourware. For it to ever be viable outside a few niches, it will have to beat fission in price, because it will probably share many characteristics with fission plants (high capital costs, low cost of fuel, radioactive waste, huge plants). Fusion somehow ended up being branded as the future of energy. But the prospects aren't looking good so far. Fission plants are…
Lerner has been beating this drum for years, and presented at many conferences. And yet no one has invested. I'd love to know why. Either there's a catch to the technology that he's not disclosing (and the smart money doesn't have a motivation to disclose), or he's asking for unreasonable business terms. The only thing I know for sure is there's no lack of capital available for good fusion research. Not if the money…
>And yet no one has invested. I'd love to know why. investing means some ROI. There is no way to have any ROI here (to illustrate - try to imagine how you can get any ROI by investing back at the time in Einstein developing GR). They aren't going to build a lot of power plants themselves and for selling their tech - there should be some "secret sauce", and the current fusion development is at the stage when results o…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My dad was a navy nuke and said that the cost v safety v portability of fission was far superior to that of fusion. That was back in the 90s, so I wonder if it's still relevant, but a quick search [1] seemed to confirm the general idea. [1] diffen.com/difference/Nuclear_Fission_vs_Nuclear_Fusion
I think you should listen to him. Fusion is still vapourware. For it to ever be viable outside a few niches, it will have to beat fission in price, because it will probably share many characteristics with fission plants (high capital costs, low cost of fuel, radioactive waste, huge plants). Fusion somehow ended up being branded as the future of energy. But the prospects aren't looking good so far. Fission plants are…
Elon Musk addressed the idea of creating nuclear fusion on earth by saying something along the lines of, "why would we do that, there's a huge nuclear fusion generator in the sky that we can use to generate all the power we need"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you should listen to him. Fusion is still vapourware. For it to ever be viable outside a few niches, it will have to beat fission in price, because it will probably share many characteristics with fission plants (high capital costs, low cost of fuel, radioactive waste, huge plants). Fusion somehow ended up being branded as the future of energy. But the prospects aren't looking good so far. Fission plants are…
Fusion has a huge political benefit in not being the same thing as fission. Fission isn't perfect, but it's way better than you'd think if you only looked at what we invest in. If it can be spun as a separate thing from Chernobyl/Three Mile Island/Fukushima then it might fare closer to what it should from a purely objective standpoint.
Elon Musk addressed the idea of creating nuclear fusion on earth by saying something along the lines of, "why would we do that, there's a huge nuclear fusion generator in the sky that we can use to generate all the power we need"
Thats what I‘d say if I was selling energy storage.
Tesla's at the upper end of the market, but just today I saw on HN an article that GM is selling an EV in China for ~5k USD. In the mid-90s it was GM who, after an experiment, neglected the idea of an EV. See e.g. the documentary Who Killed The Electric Car? [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy#Potential
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F