Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 466 posts

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#201

Post by admax88q »

valuearb wrote: post #164
godelski wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I'm particularly upset about SSC's[0] failure to be built. There are many advantages to housing the smartest scientists in the world within the borders of your country, and those benefits aren't limited to scientific output. After all, a big part of these multi-national projects is the culture war. And let's be real, which is worth more? A super collider that runs for decades or the F35 (which cost more,…

My software startup was a huge beneficiary of the SSC cancellation, it freed up a nuclear physicist to write graphics software for us, which became one of our biggest products. I’m in favor of pursuing basic research, but there is always a cost. When you take a group of your smartest people and focus them on non-economic activities, the economy loses something.

Do you think that a nuclear physicist writing graphics software rather than doing nuclear physics was a net win for society in the long term?

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#202

Post by Jugurtha »

ksm1717 wrote: post #197
Jugurtha wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Science, as an institution imo undervalues good marketing and good PR. For profit enterprises are under no illusion that they can succeed without good marketing and public perception. Not to mention, this could be an attraction. Sell tickets for guided tours. I would gladly give money to have a guide walk me through that. Granted, at $100 a ticket, and 10,000 people a year, it'll take 20,000 years to recoup the inv…

Man, you’re just giving out ideas like this for free?

They also have to change the name. ITER --> GLITTER, to go with the fusion --> sun --> star theme.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#203

Post by ClumsyPilot »

worik wrote: post #189
Godel_unicode wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's incredibly short-sited. I'm glad for you that your startup was able to make money, but do you really think that the long-term economic value created is higher by making yet another piece of graphics software than from fundamental research? I would argue this entirely the other way; whenever the smartest people are sucked away from foundational work to make money "up the stack", it makes us all the poorer.

Pie in the sky when you die....

Says the man living in a world plagued by short termism, where companies forsake their future to improve their quarterly report, where we have condemned generations to suffer climate change just so that we could have 15% cheaper electricity and enjoy oversized cars.

This going further down this path only lead to misery

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#204

Post by ClumsyPilot »

valuearb wrote: post #164
godelski wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I'm particularly upset about SSC's[0] failure to be built. There are many advantages to housing the smartest scientists in the world within the borders of your country, and those benefits aren't limited to scientific output. After all, a big part of these multi-national projects is the culture war. And let's be real, which is worth more? A super collider that runs for decades or the F35 (which cost more,…

My software startup was a huge beneficiary of the SSC cancellation, it freed up a nuclear physicist to write graphics software for us, which became one of our biggest products. I’m in favor of pursuing basic research, but there is always a cost. When you take a group of your smartest people and focus them on non-economic activities, the economy loses something.

Lets we free up all these physisics and engineers working on long-term projects that may or may not succed and send them to trade stocks on wallstreet. Who needs real progress

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#205

Post by iso8859-1 »

worik wrote: post #191
arkh wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But (almost) everyone would be opposed to a fission plant or nuclear waste facility next door - and rightfully so. Reading this kind of debate from France is a good laugh. If you're interested you can check where our electricity comes from here: https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/la-production-delectricit... (between 60 and 70 percent of nuclear energy today).

Because France was desperate to have its own nuclear weapons. It was not economic for them either (tho back in the day it displaced coal - try having a coal plant next door)

What is the point of bringing up economics when we are talking about life and death? How can you even measure if something is economic or not if you haven't defined what a human life is worth?

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#206

Post by oraphalous »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #178
valuearb wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My software startup was a huge beneficiary of the SSC cancellation, it freed up a nuclear physicist to write graphics software for us, which became one of our biggest products. I’m in favor of pursuing basic research, but there is always a cost. When you take a group of your smartest people and focus them on non-economic activities, the economy loses something.

That's incredibly short-sited. I'm glad for you that your startup was able to make money, but do you really think that the long-term economic value created is higher by making yet another piece of graphics software than from fundamental research? I would argue this entirely the other way; whenever the smartest people are sucked away from foundational work to make money "up the stack", it makes us all the poorer.

Cool your boots...

The claim was that there is a trade off - which is a pretty common sense assertion... The comment you to which you are responding even asserted that basic research does have value - and does not assert that the trade offs go one way or another.

The implication of the comment as I read it was that we should at least critically think about those trade offs rather than just writing a blank check to whatever basic science scientists are requesting to pursue.

Your comment, in contrast, claims that the tradeoff always is worth it - that 'whenever' money is not diverted to basic research, then we are all poorer. You have no evidence for this claim.

In fact - no one really understands much about how best to evaluate this tradeoff. A helpful contribution to the discourse would provide us with tools to think about how to evaluate it, rather than just the endless tribalistic drum beating for one side or the other.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#207

Post by tyre »

valuearb wrote: post #164
godelski wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I'm particularly upset about SSC's[0] failure to be built. There are many advantages to housing the smartest scientists in the world within the borders of your country, and those benefits aren't limited to scientific output. After all, a big part of these multi-national projects is the culture war. And let's be real, which is worth more? A super collider that runs for decades or the F35 (which cost more,…

My software startup was a huge beneficiary of the SSC cancellation, it freed up a nuclear physicist to write graphics software for us, which became one of our biggest products. I’m in favor of pursuing basic research, but there is always a cost. When you take a group of your smartest people and focus them on non-economic activities, the economy loses something.

> the economy loses something

like…graphics software?

I think the trade-off is more than worth it to better understand the nature of our universe.

You seem to imply that basic research has no long-term economic benefit, or maybe that the long-term benefit does not outweigh the short term cost. That seems like a pretty difficult implication to defend.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#208

Post by ClumsyPilot »

cameldrv wrote: post #149
Scarblac wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gains the space underneath. Flat roofs (of large commercial buildings, for instance) sound like a good place for them. I don't understand why they are put on the ground instead so often.

Because it's difficult to install them at scale like that. For example, if you want to do a big solar project, you have to negotiate with the owner of every building you want to put panels on, you have to find a place in every building for inverters, you have to install metering, you may have to upgrade the grid to handle the extra power going out, then you have to have an account and customer service and payments fo…

It does not out any kind of cao on our energy usage, the amount of land that needs to be covered in solar panels to supply a country is a tiny percentage of it's area, and is basically a rounding error.

The limiting factor is cost of instalation and eqioment, not land. Additionally there are mnay deserts which are totally uninhabbited and uninhabbitable.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#209

Post by platz »

bjackman wrote: post #163
kristianp wrote: post #56

18b doesn't seem like a huge amount of money these days with the economic stimulus funds being announced around covid-19.

For some reason I often think about things like this in terms of NHS budgets. 18bn is, very roughly, 2 years of healthcare for London.

so, how many healthcare's do we have budget for in a year?

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#210

Post by foobiekr »

godelski wrote: post #146
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>nuclear power is the only realistic way to solve the looming energy crisis of the 21st century while still maintaining the same standard of living for everyone This is also not true if we dealt with the massive overpopulation of the earth instead of acting as its some sort of moral crisis not to stuff as many people as possible onto a planet with finite renewable resources.

This appears to be a problem that is solving itself. Developed countries have birth rates below replacement and more countries are becoming developed (with the same trend happening as those countries develop).

That’s all well and good if you reach stability below a level that is sustainable. We aren’t going to be anywhere near that from an environmental point of view.
Post reply on HN