Have you considered making long haul tugboats?
Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
241–250 of 267 posts
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
Batteries are steadily improving, at least in the cost factor. We haven't seen any 2x leaps in density from sulfur or solid state or aluminum air. But LFP and Sodium Ion are making undeniable progress in cheap usable EV batteries that don't require nickel or cobalt.
> cheap usable EV batteries I know this is going to sound harsh, but I will personnally consider EV batteries "cheap" only when they pass the very scientific "my mom can use the EV exactly like shes uses her car, and she does not notice" test: * on one charge, drive 10-50km daily for 350 days in a year * on one charge, drive 1000km in one go for the holidays * it must be less than 10kE at a local car dealership * it…
Dude, get a PHEV.
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#243Greybeard 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…
> I'm sure these guys could work somewhere getting paid to get more people to click on stuff. That, right there, that is what makes me go: You know what, go for it. Best of luck, go make something, go try something. You're absolutely right. So much talent is wasted on getting people to click an ad, stay on a page just a few minutes longer, watch the next video. So much time, so much money thrown into the dumpster fir…
Not just that, but fusion will never happen if no one tries their hands on it because everyone says it can’t be done.
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#244I think your timeline is at best optimistic. I would personally like to see fixed land based fusion power work before we start trying to build them into moving vessels. Your claim that the shipping industry is "desperate to decarbonize" also needs a citation. From what I've seen shippers top three concerns are "how to minimize costs", "how to reduce costs", and "how to save money". Can you make this system cheaper to…
> Your claim that the shipping industry is "desperate to decarbonize" also needs a citation. If anything, I think the shipping industry will be the last to de-carbonize, in the same way it's been the refuge of burning dirty fuels and NOx emissions.
Nearly 40% of shipping volume worldwide is moving fossil fuels (coal, oil, gaz). The easiest way to reduce drastically shipping emission is reducing usage of fossil fuels...
https://www.ics-shipping.org/resource/shippings-role-in-the-...
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have it reverse wind turbines need mooring, stay upright and so on. That's highly impractical. No, you build a fast-going sail vessel (using big traction kites, because it's not the 19th century anymore) and power the generator from much smaller turbine blades in the water. Hydrogenerator is the term established in recreational boating. I sure would not expect any returns in days, more like months or years. But i…
The main issue is that prevailing winds have a direction, and there's not a continuous open ocean path other than the Southern Ocean which is harsh even by the standards of oceans. Sure you can steer along trade winds in the Atlantic or Pacific but there's quite some efficiency loss. (Give climate change another decade or so and the Arctic Ocean maybe becomes an option, although by then we'll have bigger fish to fry,…
Sailing technology has gone beyond "we can go downwind, yay!" for quite a while now...
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting concept. Let's run the numbers... The largest Q-Max-class gas tanker is 345 meters long [1]. Let's say you manage to fit 3 giant Siemens wind turbines on it, with 100m long blades [2]. It's a bit cramped but let's say you have extenders on the side to make room for all 3 of them. And also let's say you found a way to prevent the ship from tipping over when the wind is strong. By deploying floaters on the…
It strikes me that having the turbine and hydrolysis plant fixed in place, and having ships visit those sites to refuel, is probably an easier setup than mobile turbines. But I think your maths is wrong somewhere. Hydrogen supplies 33MWh/tonne, and you've stated the ship capacity as 18620 tonnes. 18620/(33*24) gives a generation time of 23 days, even before we allow for hydrolysis overheads. Marine hydrogen isn't a t…
There are only so many windy places to affix turbines to. There's a lot of ocean to cruise on.
The mobile hydrolyser (not a boat to solve shipping in a quasi perpetuum mobile away, but an energy harvester that focuses on just that) would solve mooring: the "lateral lift" of the boat would take care of that, just how your plain old America's Cup boat isn't just slowly dragged downwind. It would solve linkup: a serious cost component in not all too conveniently located off shore wind installations is the grid connection. And it would solve intermittency: hydrogen is inconvenient compared to hydrocarbons, but it's super convenient compared to getting even more electricity at a time demand on your grid is already satisfied to saturation.
(GP's math is likely wrong, but the assumption that you could somehow cram multiple turbines from the bigger end of market offerings on a boat and call it a day seems so far off to me that I never really looked at the numbers)
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)
trains in the US have electric motors that actually make the wheels turn. The issue with the US is the distances trains have to go. Mostly short distance trains will be(are?) fully electric but long distance and frieght is diesel series hybrid engines.
Sorry, I wasn't clear in my comment. I was talking about trains that can use grid or diesel engine to power those electric motors.
And hydrogen comment was about this: https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/articles/usdot-announc... . My tinfoil hat theory is that every carbon-fuel company pushing for hydrogen knowing well it's energy density isn't enough, so the experiment will fail, and they're going back to diesel saying that green tech isn't ready.
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Your claim that the shipping industry is "desperate to decarbonize" also needs a citation. If anything, I think the shipping industry will be the last to de-carbonize, in the same way it's been the refuge of burning dirty fuels and NOx emissions.
Nearly 40% of shipping volume worldwide is moving fossil fuels (coal, oil, gaz). The easiest way to reduce drastically shipping emission is reducing usage of fossil fuels... https://www.ics-shipping.org/resource/shippings-role-in-the-...
That's... not what's being discussed, though?
We're talking about whether the shipping industry will choose to improve how their ships operate, but you're talking about new powerplants on land would remove the need to even have those/as-many ships at all.
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
> before we start trying to build them into moving vessels Why wait, though? I agree that the timeline - the whole project! - seems extraordinarily optimistic, but I don't see why development of potential maritime applications should create any obstacle to the simultaneous development of grid power applications.
Lots of potential complications when building something on a vessel and failure is more likely to be deadly, if for example it fails because the ship is being battered too much by a storm. Plus there is the complicating factors with needing to miniaturize the equipment enough to fit in the available space.
That all sounds reasonable. Sometimes the economic problems are harder to solve than the technical ones, though, and that's what interests me about this proposal. I have had a bearish outlook on fusion power in recent years, because utility-scale grid power is the most competitive market there is, and the cost of solar & batteries have been dropping so fast that it's not clear there would be any economic justification for a fusion power plant even if we knew how to build one. An intermediate market, willing to pay much more money for far less power, where renewables cannot compete, seems like it might be just the thing fusion needs to transition out of research and into practical use - even if it does take more engineering to cope with the rigors of the sea.
Re: Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
The main issue is that prevailing winds have a direction, and there's not a continuous open ocean path other than the Southern Ocean which is harsh even by the standards of oceans. Sure you can steer along trade winds in the Atlantic or Pacific but there's quite some efficiency loss. (Give climate change another decade or so and the Arctic Ocean maybe becomes an option, although by then we'll have bigger fish to fry,…
Sailing technology has gone beyond "we can go downwind, yay!" for quite a while now...
Certainly of course, but not while delivering maximum continuous energy from a kite to a turbine.