Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correct. Energy generation >1 is targeted for 2030. So it fits "fusion is 5 years away" trope.
Fusion used to always be 30 years away, more recently 15 years.
Less science personal company has, shorter the due date.
Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
141–150 of 267 posts
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#142Do you plan to use AMSC as a vendor?
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#143Very 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.
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?
In europe sure, in the US most of freight rail isn't and companies operating those rail roads don't want to spend money on eletrifying railroads.
Currently they're trying to gas light us that hydrogen-hybrid locomotives are the futures (why not use diesel-hybrid locomotives that already exist is a mistery)
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#144Greybeard former fusion founder here. Wishing you guys all the luck in the world! Email in profile in case you wish to chat. For all the naysayers, as a fusion startup, targeting the marine market is a good move. They aren't even the first fusion startup to do so; IIRC Rostoker's group got their first major funding from the NRL. The marine market pays a premium for not having to refuel, and historically emerging ener…
No naysayer here, just curious:
- What does this bring to the table beyond marine fission power?
- Why do they think they can make it cheaper than military fission marine power?
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#145This feels a bit like launching a startup that offers services based on fully working quantum computing, depending on others to provide their fully working quantum computer.
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#146I thought we need Q > 10 to really get enough power out of the reactor, due to our inability to capture all the energy efficiently.
Do you have any clever ways to capture the energy output?
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#147How do you intend to address the crew training issue? Merchant vessel operators tend to hire low wage seamen with limited technical training, plus a few qualified engineering officers. Marine diesel engines are pretty simple and robust but I would imagine that operating a fusion plant might require more technical training.
Back of the envelope (and some quick googling), a large container ship burns hundreds of tons of fuel per day, at a cost of 700-1000 $/t. Plus, all that fuel occupies tonnage that isn't carrying paying cargo. If you can save on that with a magic new reactor, the cost of a well trained tech on every ship isn't going to break the budget.
Fusion fuel isn't going to be free. Fusion reactors aren't magic: in a sense they're very traditional in that they will be used to turn water into superheated steam that spins a steam turbine to drive the propeller. Just like in 1897. Even if the fusion reactor could somehow magically be made maintenance free, the steam plant will be maintenance intensive. Ask any engineering officer who worked on a steam plant, regardless of whether the heat source was fossil fuel or fission. This is part of the reason why merchant ships switched from steam turbines to diesel engines decades ago: lower maintenance costs and lower crew training requirements.
Maritime fusion power could be a good idea but you have to evaluate complete system lifecycle cost instead of looking at just one component.
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#148Greybeard former fusion founder here. Wishing you guys all the luck in the world! Email in profile in case you wish to chat. For all the naysayers, as a fusion startup, targeting the marine market is a good move. They aren't even the first fusion startup to do so; IIRC Rostoker's group got their first major funding from the NRL. The marine market pays a premium for not having to refuel, and historically emerging ener…
No naysayer here, just curious: - What does this bring to the table beyond marine fission power? - Why do they think they can make it cheaper than military fission marine power?
There is at least the possibility that fusion power could eventually be viable for privately owned civilian merchant ships. Fission power is a non-starter in that market due to concerns (valid or not) over security, terrorism, proliferation, and meltdowns. Even if someone builds a new fission powered merchant ship it would be useless because many nations wouldn't allow it to enter their ports.
Military fission power plants were never optimized for cost. They have always been hand built in tiny numbers with a focus on safety, durability, and maximal output.
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#149This feels a bit like launching a startup that offers services based on fully working quantum computing, depending on others to provide their fully working quantum computer.
Thank you for putting it this way.
I watched people scam VCs with drone tech, and Theranos, and other things.
Can people please do any amount of critical thinking around this sort of stuff? It steals funding from serious efforts and pollutes the pool.
What is special in this approach compared to literal decades in the field?
What is special about these young dudes compared to better-funded ventures that haven't pulled it off yet and who have been working on it longer?
What is the difference between "yeah we can do design work look at all this stuff (that's the easy 60-80% of the problem space)" versus "we can actually solve the remaining work that's got everybody so screwed up"?
This feels like a scam y'all, knowingly or not.
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#150Hi guys.
I don't claim to understand any of the physics and engineering challenges of fusion, but from all the general-interest material published, and the long history of fusion research, it seems that the capital cost of a fusion propulsion system is going to be far in excess of a conventional marine engine. I guess the hope is that the very cheap fuel might reduce the operational expenses such that it can compete economically.
However, if you've got a fusion power plant that a) has essentially free and practically-massless fuel, and b) the relationship between rated power output and capital cost is less than linear (again, not an expert on the physics but true of pretty much all such systems), I wonder whether the way to make a fusion ship economically competitive against conventional shipping is to max out the power and build a ship capable of much faster speeds than conventional ships.
I mean, we used to operate passenger liners back in the 1950s that averaged about 35 knots across the Atlantic, so presumably we could do considerably better than that.