> “focusing on military vessels … [we] come from SpaceX and Tesla”
So you guys are basically part of the MAGA military complex? Why do you need YC?
Is funding your moonshot concept a way for YC to signal something politically?
Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
21–30 of 267 posts
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#22Very cool. If you could also make a smaller one with ~3kw output that fits on a locomotive frame you'd literally have the entire freight rail industry the world over as customers.
3kW output? I think you mean 5MW output... large electric locomotives are in 2.5 to 3.5MW continuos power. Some diesel-electric huge ones are even larger, like 5MW.
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you! Household fission reactors: my take is that from a technical perspective we could definitely do it. It's more from a proliferation and nuclear waste perspective, will it be allowed and accepted by the public? Not sure, maybe though.
If that's a concern, how do you solve that for shipping? What if some somali pirate steals your fusion ship? Would they have to have armed protection (on top of the guards they already have, that's probably not enough when nuclear proliferation is the issue)?
With fusion, there is no Uranium or Plutonium or highly radioactive materials. The main concern is Tritium which is a categorically reduced concern from enriched Uranium (but still needs to be secured and accounted for).
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#24> “focusing on military vessels … [we] come from SpaceX and Tesla” So you guys are basically part of the MAGA military complex? Why do you need YC? Is funding your moonshot concept a way for YC to signal something politically?
Nothing to do with the hot news of the moment. It's just YC doing what it always does.
I think there is probably some kind of headline bleedover effect where, because of repetition, we start seeing these things everywhere, like the afterimage of a bright light.
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you though? A lot of freight lines in europe are already electric, wouldn't it be much more efficient to have a stationary high-power reactor than carrying around a smaller one on each locomotive?
That might be balanced somewhat by not needing to maintain thousands of miles of caternary wire.
The underlying technology does not exist in a production form, to the extent that it's not clear which basic reactor design option is going to be the future. So we can't know what the maintenance burden from a fisson rector is, much less one mounted on a train. Don't plan on tearing down those overhead cables just yet.
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#26Excellent initiative. From the 1st reading, it does seem "within the realms of current technology". All the best.
I have a small question. Which CAD / 3D / Physics software is used for such design and simulations ?
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#27Really excited about this! Congrats on the launch. Ships make sense as a first target, but I'm curious -- do you see a future in which we have household fission reactors? E.G. power an entire house (city block, etc...) with fission reactors?
why do we continue to discount solar and batteries for home use?
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
The stellarator design makes more sense to me as well and speaking of it, those guys will build a stellarator on land: https://www.proximafusion.com/press-news/proxima-fusion-and-... Problems are still many, though (Paper:) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092037962...
Saw that this morning as well, it's awesome. I do think long term especially for grid applications stellarators could be great... note that their design is ~2.7GW I believe. We're talking gigantic traditional power plant size, which the world needs, but the first generation of these facilities will cost multi billions of dollars. Also with the stellarator, doing non planar HTS coils and the associated manufacturing c…
Well, definitely good luck with your approach as well!
I guess the biggest hurdle will be stable operation, without having to replace too many broken parts too often?
Tokamak requires regular shutdown as far as I understood and that is quite a lot of heat stress for all the parts I believe, along with the radiation etc.
(But I lack the background to really debate on the pro vs cons of tokamak vs stellarator, I just have opinions here)
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#29Excellent initiative. From the 1st reading, it does seem "within the realms of current technology". All the best. I have a small question. Which CAD / 3D / Physics software is used for such design and simulations ?
Thank you! We're probably going to have to eventually use every engineering software in existence haha for CAD, mainly solidworks and CATIA, for EM Physics modeling: COMSOL. But most of the analysis is done with specialized plasma physics and radiation transport codes like MCNP or Open MC.
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#30Why specifically target maritime? Getting a stationary reactor to 25MWe at all would be an incredible feat in itself.
It seems like if you can get the reactor working then you're floating right on top of all the fuel you could ever want, provided you're doing hydrogen fusion.