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Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

helionenergy.com

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Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#181

Post by soco »

skrebbel wrote: post #169
deweller wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8 years ago, HN was a place full of optimism and excitement. I've noticed a marked increase in cynicism in this place. Like most of the world, it suffers from extreme tribalism and group think. I miss the former positive HN. And the positive world. sigh

Fwiw to my memory, 8 years ago people complained about cynicism and negativism on HN just as much. Eg people never stopped quoting that famous top comment on Dropbox's HN launch ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863#9224 ). I strongly doubt this attitude ever changed. It's always been - first comments are dismissive gut reactions - a bit later some nuanced/positive comments arrive - depending on mood and luck,…

I can confirm this. If I happen to contradict some cynical comment, 5 minutes and I'm at minus-something. Then the positives start to build back up. Always. There could be some psychological explanation to this, why the quick reaction is negative and the better thought-of positive?

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#182

Post by MichaelZuo »

matrix_overload wrote: post #159
deweller wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8 years ago, HN was a place full of optimism and excitement. I've noticed a marked increase in cynicism in this place. Like most of the world, it suffers from extreme tribalism and group think. I miss the former positive HN. And the positive world. sigh

Startups used to be a way to create your own solution to a non-trivial problem, and make money off selling it to people that will benefit from it and enjoy it. It was a highly rewarding experience for those who didn't want to play corporate politics (or at least, play it to a lesser extent). But then it attracted too many people that would just emulate the KPI in order to get funded, and instead of letting it crash a…

To be fair to Uber and AirBnB, they did introduce some genuinely novel innovations. But the business model does heavily rely on the non-technological aspects for their competitive advantage.

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#183

Post by pfdietz »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #148

Reminds me of a similarly vague "statement" made by BOOM supersonic, another YC company. [0] Here's an excerpt: United will purchase 15 of Boom’s ‘Overture’ airliners, once Overture meets United’s demanding safety, operating and sustainability requirements, with an option for 35 more aircraft. Slated to carry passengers in 2029, the net-zero carbon aircraft will fly on 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Let me tel…

Boom had the problem that no jet engine maker ended up wanting to make an engine they could use.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzyOIwjYK7E

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#184

Post by p_j_w »

thepasswordis wrote: post #58

HN, what the heck has happened to you? What is with all of these cynical comments? Helion is an awesome company, their technology is real, and this is cool. >oh no this might not work! Do you guys not understand that you’re posting on the forum of a venture capital firm/startup accelerator?

The cynicism may come from the fact that no one has been able to generate system level break even on a fusion plant in a lab setting after decades of work. How can one be anything but skeptical that it'll be commercially available five years from now?

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#185

Post by creato »

deweller wrote: post #67
thepasswordis wrote: post #58

HN, what the heck has happened to you? What is with all of these cynical comments? Helion is an awesome company, their technology is real, and this is cool. >oh no this might not work! Do you guys not understand that you’re posting on the forum of a venture capital firm/startup accelerator?

8 years ago, HN was a place full of optimism and excitement. I've noticed a marked increase in cynicism in this place. Like most of the world, it suffers from extreme tribalism and group think. I miss the former positive HN. And the positive world. sigh

I genuinely think HN has been overrun by influence operations designed to make people resigned to the world being terrible. It sounds stupid and paranoid, but I can’t explain the patterns I observe any other way. I think the way HN is operated makes it impossible to avoid: no real authentication other than an email address. It is (or at least was) a juicy target due to the concentration of influential people in an influential industry.

I’m specifically not going to post examples because that will invite the same old conversations to be rehashed, and any one example is useless anyways. People will claim confirmation bias and they may even be right.

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#186

Post by switchbak »

piloto_ciego wrote: post #101
deweller wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8 years ago, HN was a place full of optimism and excitement. I've noticed a marked increase in cynicism in this place. Like most of the world, it suffers from extreme tribalism and group think. I miss the former positive HN. And the positive world. sigh

The cynicism is an op, or something - because I don’t have the evidence to say it’s definitively an “op” - as the kids say. But legitimately, there is a strong cynical bubble in the zeitgeist now, and it’s dangerous. There are a few things this cynicism says. 1. “People suck and are terrible.” 2. “People are stupid.” 3. “We can’t change anything.” 4. “Great calamity is going to happen and we are powerless to stop it.…

Thank you. I think we really do need a return to some form of optimism. Growing up I was told endlessly that by now we'd be out of fossil fuels and things would be terrible for a variety of other reasons. Some of that has come to pass, some not, some has reversed (ozone).

Sometimes the positive effects of sustained efforts have had a real impact over time. Having a cynical and defeatist attitude works against that. I don't know the roots of those attitudes exactly, but from the people I know they're not related to climate change, the country's leader, cultural issues, etc. It's more like those are a good reason for them to be more vocal about their underlying cynicism which has different roots (family life, general temperament, etc).

We have real problems. Very big ones. A defeatist attitude will ensure we end up in the worst of all outcomes. I wonder if we just have too much change too fast for our society to keep up and figure out ways to function better with the new constraints.

Edit: clarification

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#187

Post by tokai »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #182
matrix_overload wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Startups used to be a way to create your own solution to a non-trivial problem, and make money off selling it to people that will benefit from it and enjoy it. It was a highly rewarding experience for those who didn't want to play corporate politics (or at least, play it to a lesser extent). But then it attracted too many people that would just emulate the KPI in order to get funded, and instead of letting it crash a…

To be fair to Uber and AirBnB, they did introduce some genuinely novel innovations. But the business model does heavily rely on the non-technological aspects for their competitive advantage.

Non-technological aspects is an interesting euphemism for breaking the law.

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#188

Post by zardo »

DennisP wrote: post #80
next_xibalba wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you’re probably right about GP’s cynical tone, this announcement does seem fairly meaningless. Does Helion have a working prototype that can be reasonably moved into production? Or is that still years away?

Their sixth reactor achieved 100M degree temps, ran for 16 months under vacuum, did thousands of fusion shots, and demonstrated D-He3 fusion. Their seventh will start up in 2024, and is supposed to demonstrate net electricity from D-He3. Their eighth is supposed to be the commercial reactor. If they don't achieve that, they will have to pay penalties to Microsoft.

> Their sixth reactor achieved 100M degree temps, ran for 16 months under vacuum, did thousands of fusion shots, and demonstrated D-He3 fusion.

I don't have anything near the expertise to evaluate Helions approach, but I know enough about fusion to say that just because you have a design that can achieve fusion conditions does not mean the approach could even theoretically lead to a power plant. e.g. electrostatic fusors

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#189

Post by piloto_ciego »

moron4hire wrote: post #162
SeasonalEnnui wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World" is a book that makes an excellent attempt to answer this.

Isn't this book about the low-hanging fruit stuff like universal access to healthy drinking water? And isn't it about basically the course of history through the 20th century compared to the previous millennium? That's much more macro, world-wide kind of stuff than whether or not startups in developed countries nowadays feel almost exclusively exploitative versus how they felt innovative 15, 20 years ago.

They were just as exploitative 15 years ago (or 20, or 50).

We can still fix things. We can still change the world - and for the better. Largely we have to slough off the outdated and pernicious idea that “more money == better” first.

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#190

Post by DennisP »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #149
bmitc wrote: post #117

Does anyone have some thoughts on whether fusion will actually help fight climate change? Of course, fusion is far more clean than coal or gas and less environmentally destructive, aside from the mining of materials required, than say hydro power plants. But from what I can tell, the primary contributor to damaging the climate and environment is consumption, as a process. I currently see no end result where fusion do…

I think it's a long term great option that will have to prove itself based on a cost/performance basis in an extremely competitive market. Therefore, short term the impact is going to be minimal/negligible. There are no plants yet, no approved plans to build any, no validated designs for any, etc. The first few plants are going to be very research/prototype focused and won't produce any impressive amounts of energy r…

If Helion actually works, their plan is to build a factory making twenty 50MW reactors each day, shippable by rail. That could replace the world's fossil-based electricity production in six years, and that's just one factory.
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