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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

#191

Post by hutzlibu »

SeasonalEnnui wrote: post #145
hutzlibu wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The world doesn’t suck, it’s much better than it used to be" Better then when and by what meassure? It is quite subjective I think. One satirical person offered this quote: We optimized for the minimum of individual luck, to get the maximum of people. I am not fully behind this quote, it is satirical, but I think there is too much truth behind it. Ecologically things look bad. Geopolitical the same. But yes, the sun…

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

Hm. From the description I am not really convinced. It starts with people think "rich gets richer, poor gets poorer" ... and then states this is all wrong.

Except, it is not, by all the data that I know.

E.g. "https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/global-income-inequal..."

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#192

Post by switchbak »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #180
sebzim4500 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cynicism has nothing to do with nuance.

Nor does unbounded positivity and optimism.

Honestly I think in this case the subject is so complex you'd have to be an expert to separate the wheat from the chaff.

The techno optimists really do a lot of grifting these days (especially on YouTube), and the knee-jerk cynics are predictably annoying as well. The fact that a knowledgeable fusion insider is criticizing this speaks volumes to me, and his criticisms seem on point.

I'm a lay person so my take on it is effectively of zero value. And I don't think I'm the only one in this thread in that position :)

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#193

Post by haswell »

jackmott42 wrote: post #70
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 for me at least is a result of reality actually getting markedly worse (at least in the USA) over the last 10 years. However, none of that has anything to do with fusion tech, so I remain hopeful about that!

I think it’s worth examining what we believe to be “reality”.

If your reality is the Internet, the apocalypse is upon us.

I’ve spent the past year reducing Internet one and increasing immersion in my local community and the world looks like a very different (better) place.

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#194

Post by soulbadguy »

tokai wrote: post #187
MichaelZuo wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

+1

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#195

Post by piloto_ciego »

nescioquid wrote: post #160
piloto_ciego wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

In reading about the Weimar Republic, I encountered an observation (I think it was by Hannah Arendt) that cynicism emerges from a society that no longer believes in itself. In trying to confirm the quote, I found perhaps a better quote to explain (found on Arend't wiki article): >> ...leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the…

I also think that cynicism is the path of least resistance.

It’s dangerous to be optimistic. When you’re excited about stuff and it doesn’t work out culturally you look like a moron, when you’re a cynic if you’re wrong nobody cares because we’re all lucky that things didn’t turn out shittily. When things do turn out poorly you look like a genius because “you predicted the calamity.”

The “easy money” comes from being a pessimist because you don’t have to commit to anything.

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#196

Post by kataklasm »

bequanna wrote: post #146
schainks wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AIUI Helion’s bottleneck is the number of capacitors needed to run a sustained reaction at a given scale. The numbers don’t seem out of this world to me, and it’s probably smarter money than what we are throwing at ITER given time to market.

Having watched a short documentary on ITER it seems like an incredible waste. A bunch of mismanagement and bureaucratic nonsense. As an American, it seemed like exactly what we would expect from a Euro-based project. By the time any actual work can be done at ITER, won't the technology have progressed beyond they design they are trying to test?

Why the anti-European sentiment in your comment? Let's not talk about the Space Shuttle or the SLS, should we?

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#197

Post by DennisP »

zardo wrote: post #188
DennisP wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fu…

True, but FRCs like Helion uses are thought to be workable.

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#198

Post by switchbak »

dj_gitmo wrote: post #90
thepasswordis wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the hell is this cynicism? Seems completely inappropriate. Helion isn’t vaporware.

Even if it doesn't work, it's more noble to work on this than say, Juicero.

A century from now, Juicero will be honored for the wonderful stupidity that it was. That's an achievement in itself.

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#199

Post by slaw »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #129
ramraj07 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be optimistic when you’re just making an app to rent your room out or to find a dog walker. You can hustle and sell useless SaaS services long enough to get acquired for no real reason except managerial power plays in large companies. In the world of software you can kinda make almost any idea work with sweat and political maneuvering. You can literally see that they’re trying to play the same games here. How…

That's almost exactly what they said to Elon Musk when he started SpaceX, and now they are on a streak of >100 successful missions in a row.

SpaceX uses technology that started to work in 1961.

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#200

Post by switchbak »

gcheong wrote: post #158
sebzim4500 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your argument at all. In a world where people can produce power through fusion cheaper than they can through coal or oil, why would use of non-clean materials increase?

There's more to environmental destruction than just emissions. If we're net zero emissions with something like nuclear energy, and clean energy is ubiquitous and cheap, people are still going to want to do things with the energy and that will potentially dramatically increase consumption of finite resources in general. For example, clean-fueled fishing boats don't matter much if we still fish the oceans to extinction…

Well sure, but that's a bit of a dead end conclusion.

I think it's still better than belching out coal soot, and with abundant energy we can power other processes to help clean things up. Well - we could, but we'll probably just mine bitcoin with it and zip around in our flying cars :( But unbounded consumption and our awful societal structure is a bit of a different problem compared to how we fuel it.

See Jevons paradox - increased efficiency often leads to increased demand and usage.

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