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Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships

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Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships

#32

Post by gpm »

So your approach to fusion is "the same CFS but stay at roughly the size of the SPARC prototype instead of scaling up"?

When you say "Q > 1 within a few (say 3) years" are you talking about your own reactors, or others? For that matter, are you trying to partner with CFS and license their technology or are you intending on starting "from scratch" (from whatever is publicly available)?

If that timeline is for fusion in general, what do you think your timeline looks like? Assuming adequate access to funding how soon can you build a Q>1 reactor? How soon after that can you actually go to market and sell a reactor?

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On an unrelated note, I'm curious what you think of the current approaches to commercial fusion being attempted. Are Tokamaks the only game in town in your mind? Or do the various other approaches also being tried out right now have a good shot (MIF/Zpinches/etc)? Any particular approaches you think are particularly likely to succeed.

This being ycombinator and a startup I'm obligated to say that I don't ask this question because I think it impacts your commercial viability much, the greatest risks in fusion definitely aren't the competitors. I ask it just because I'm curious what people willing to start a fusion company think of the competitors.

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Ships make a ton of sense to me as an early market. An 11 figure market (according to my own napkin calculations awhile back) where power is much more expensive than on land. At the same time it's never struck me that the hardest part of building a fusion company is finding a market.

Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships

#34

Post by dghlsakjg »

jtcohen wrote: post #23
echoangle wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Is the tritium a different isotope than the one I can have shipped to my house on the internet?

https://tritiumworkshop.com/products/megaglow-tritium-marker...

Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships

#37

Post by dghlsakjg »

mclau156 wrote: post #27
elijahbenizzy wrote: post #13

Really 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?

The argument that I've heard is that roof installed solar is incredibly expensive compared to all other solar. Add in the other compromises with orientation and obstructed sunlight, and you quickly realize that it is likely better to install solar and batteries at dedicated power facilities that scale better than to distribute the infrastructure in residential neighborhoods.

Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships

#38

Post by uranium »

"Downtime for maintenance is part of normal operations, making this a far more forgiving early application of fusion, unlike the grid where every down hour is lost revenue."

Planned maintenance, sure, but unplanned maintenance means the same lost revenue, plus you're stuck floating in the middle of the pacific ocean, possibly in need of parts or debugging expertise that only exists half a planet away or, for that matter, food. It's certainly a good idea to find a niche to make market entry easier, but I would guess that reliability requirements are actually higher for ships than for microgrids. Find some isolated town or island running off flaky diesel generators on shipped-in fuel and negotiate a reasonable SLA.

This ignores, of course, the bigger problem: making fusion work at all at Q > 1. If it were me, I'd work on solving that before worrying too much about optimizing market entry. So far every single fusion effort has failed to clear that hurdle, and any effort on the other parts is wasted if you can't actually make power.

Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships

#39

Post by mikeyouse »

Borg3 wrote: post #22
kposehn wrote: post #6

Very 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.

Yeah must’ve meant MW.. I’ve got more than one 3KW generator at my house and they can barely run my AC much less a locomotive.

Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships

#40

Post by phtrivier »

> and we believe we’ll witness Q > 1 within a few (say 3) years. That’s huge.

I think it fits squarely in the "requires extraordinary evidence" bucket - what makes you so bold ?

Also, what's you intermediate plans between :

2025 -> Post on HN

2028 -> Q>1 achieved (by you ? by someone else ?)

???? -> ????

20xx -> a ship goes to sea powered by a fusion reactor

???? -> ????

2060 -> fusion is so easy, let's use it for baseload

Sorry if I sound stark, but I'm already burnt out and fed up with the "breakthroughs" on batteries that never materialize - I have a very low tolerance threshold for startups promising fusion for next week ;)

If you're on to something, more power to you - we need that yesterday.

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