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

Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 827 posts

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#71

Post by CodeGlitch »

unfocussed_mike wrote: post #62
CodeGlitch wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you think they are nonsensical, you do not understand what I am saying. And I thankyou for clarification :) > but trade is not the limit of what Brexit changed. Here in lies the problem that many Brexitiers had with the EU - it wasn't just a trading bloc, the "club" had a lot of baggage that few people understood - and when people don't understand something, they fear/misstrust it. The message around leaving was…

I think there are some specific failings with the remain argument -- people failed to make the case that is surely now obvious that you can't just unpick this without major fallout. Though they definitely did try. The problem is they also came up against vile, populist hate about Syrian immigrants, Romanian neighbours, people not speaking english on buses, fake news about pillow regulations; it went on and on. And a…

> The problem is they also came up against vile, populist hate about Syrian immigrants, Romanian neighbours, people not speaking english on buses, fake news about pillow regulations;

Except there is some truth/validity in all of these - they are proxies. The pillow/banana stuff was about over-regulation by the EU. People not speaking the native language on buses is an indication of a a loss of British culture (people will be generally protective of their own culture). Romanian neighbours is about a fear of losing one's low-paying job to an immigrant.

These are all valid worries of many people in the UK.

Calling them "vile", "populist" is what I'm talking about with regard to remain arrogance. Ignore voter's fears at your peril.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#72

Post by unfocussed_mike »

spuz wrote: post #67
unfocussed_mike wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah!! I actually rewrote it to the form it is now, about 15 seconds after posting it, to try to remove any suggestion it's about the report; it's possible I suppose that some people reacted to it before I did. I went from "paragraph" (as in, in an article) to "parenthetical" in the colloquial sense. Like, literally every process or discussion about anything going on in the country has to have this sidebar about how mu…

Honestly, I didn't and still don't really understand the phrase "disaster capitalists" which probably aided the confusion. What is it supposed to mean? Someone who promotes capitalism to the point of disaster? Someone who trades with disaster as their currency? It also doesn't help that you start with "Further evidence that...". You can't assume any of your readers are already on board with your conclusions. In my ex…

"Disaster capitalism" is a well-established, pretty well known rhetorical term coined by Naomi Klein, a good 15 years ago now. (The book it came from is called The Shock Doctrine)

It refers to a kind of capitalism (and capitalist policy-making) that is poised ready to financially exploit the negatives of any economic shock precisely because the people involved have proximity to the very power structures that are unleashing that economic shock.

It was a prediction that came true.

The Brexit-leaning establishment has made a lot of money out of economic predictions and money movements triggered by Brexit, and the overlap between politicians and hedge funds/investment funds/large non-EU exporters etc. was so close as to suggest the possibility that the legislation has designs for them.

"Further evidence that" is just dry humour from a Brit. We are in absolutely deep, deep **** in this country for the next two years; everything is going to be bad because the Brexit transition has unilaterally, not bilaterally, failed.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#73

Post by gandalfian »

spuz wrote: post #6

> The experiments produced 59 megajoules of energy over five seconds (11 megawatts of power). > This is more than double what was achieved in similar tests back in 1997. > It's not a massive energy output - only enough to boil about 60 kettles' worth of water. But the significance is that it validates design choices that have been made for an even bigger fusion reactor now being constructed in France. I thought this…

Well my kettle is 3kw and takes about 2 minutes to boil so about 200 of my kettles... BUT they don't say how big the kettle is or how much water it contains so it could be 60 BBC kettles. I bet they drink a lot of tea...

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#74

Post by willis936 »

azalemeth wrote: post #68
willis936 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are used for the confinement coils. Incredibly, JET uses copper coils. You can't run those all day, so the flywheels are used. The last machine I worked at worked the same way. 16 train motors with 1 ton flywheels spinning at 1600 RPM to be an 11 MW power supply for 1 second every few minutes. Plasma heating in JET is done via NBI+ICRH and is about 59 MW.

I've seen those copper busbars -- they drill holes for water throughout them. The whole design of high-B field environments is fascinating; you end up with things like Bitte designs with split rings and a whole lot of engineering to stop the copper vapourising. Highly recommended if you're ever in the area – they do two sorts of tours (or did, prior to covid), the "general public" tour and the "scientist" tour. I wen…

I should visit JET sometime. Of all the systems on the machine I worked on (https://hsx.wisc.edu/), the coil current feeds were the most difficult. Trying to cram that much current through a small piece of copper with a discontinuity takes years of effort.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#75

Post by unfocussed_mike »

mns06 wrote: post #54
unfocussed_mike wrote: post #4

[flagged]

I found it a valid and unambiguous comment. Brexit has been a disaster for UK science. If the BBC found it relevant enough to be included in the article, surely it merits a discussion here without being downvoted.

FWIW I am wholly willing to concede, in retrospect, that all the downvotes were because of the way I formulated my comment.

(Not least because I snarked about Marco Arment yesterday. ;-)

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#76

Post by unfocussed_mike »

mavhc wrote: post #53
johlindenbaum wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ITER is doing that, no? Large scale test of fusion energy output.

Problem with ITER is it's not 1 country, it's lots, and they all want their piece of the pie instead of doing it efficiently

Does one country have all the smart people needed to go it alone?

(This is not a further joke about Brexit I pinky promise)

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#77

Post by gameshot911 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #69
nicoburns wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A $50b program from 1 country would likely have the same problem (as indeed would a large private program). Injecting a large amount of capital all at once into a project just isn't efficient.

> Injecting a large amount of capital all at once into a project just isn't efficient. SpaceX would beg to disagree here. The reason why they are so cheap, agile and sustainable (=reusable rockets) is precisely because SpaceX got a load of money without the "pork" requirements that were commonplace with ULA & friends. That enabled SpaceX to embrace vertical, on-site integration and go for what was technically the bes…

SpaceX is so much more than just the capital. It's the capital plus the unwavering vision of the leadership. The latter is much harder to find.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#78

Post by unfocussed_mike »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #71
unfocussed_mike wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are some specific failings with the remain argument -- people failed to make the case that is surely now obvious that you can't just unpick this without major fallout. Though they definitely did try. The problem is they also came up against vile, populist hate about Syrian immigrants, Romanian neighbours, people not speaking english on buses, fake news about pillow regulations; it went on and on. And a…

> The problem is they also came up against vile, populist hate about Syrian immigrants, Romanian neighbours, people not speaking english on buses, fake news about pillow regulations; Except there is some truth/validity in all of these - they are proxies. The pillow/banana stuff was about over-regulation by the EU. People not speaking the native language on buses is an indication of a a loss of British culture (people…

The pillow stuff was fraudulent, sorry. You can't hold up a bed pillow and say all these regulations cover pillows when almost all of the uses of the word "pillow" were from engineering safety regulations (pillow blocks etc.)

The Syrian immigration thing was based on a lie (and about specific fearmongering concerning Turkey's supposed accession to the EU -- a process that has entirely stalled and is even in reverse because Turkey cannot join the EU until it satisfies the EU's demands). It was backed up by one of the most despicable political leaflets in British history:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum...

(I received this pamphlet and it remains the only thing I have ever ceremonially burned while cursing people)

They were vile, populist-oriented slurs. It was awful, disgusting politics.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#79

Post by DrBazza »

unfocussed_mike wrote: post #47
DrBazza wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And 2 seconds of googling: "The UK will remain part of Iter" https://www.iter.org/newsline/-/3551

Your googling would also show that the article dates from more than a year ago. A lot changed. Basically, fundamental disagreements with Europe over predicate treaties mean that the thing we committed to do (remain part of ITER) is under threat, because other things we committed to do (uphold transition agreements regarding Northern Ireland) are in default. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/08/uk-and-euro…

> Your googling would also show that the article dates from more than a year ago. > A lot changed.

What changed? The UK participate in ITER still, via F4E. ITER is not just the EU, it's funded by China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States.

Frankly, I don't see what Brexit has to do with HN. There are better places to "discuss" Brexit, and politics, than on HackerNews.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#80

Post by dfdz »

> This is more than double what was achieved in similar tests back in 1997.

The experiment produced

> 11 megawatts of power

and at Jet

> two 500 megawatt flywheels are used to run the experiments

log_2(2*500/11)*(2022-1997) + 2022 = 2185

At this rate we will have fusion by 2185 I guess?

Post reply on HN