Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

ft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 833 posts

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#401

Post by wiredfool »

doctor_eval wrote: post #327
jonathanoberg wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't Yes, it is. You just contradicted me No, I didn't Yes, you did No, no, no You did just then That's ludicrous Oh, this is futile No, it isn't I came in here for a good argument No, you didn't. You came in here for an argument Well, argument isn't the same as contradiction Can be

"An argument is a connected series of statements intended to form a proposition. Contradiction is merely the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says" "No it isn't!"

I’ve had enough of this.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#402

Post by zbobet2012 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #339
billiam wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not as always. The laser confinement mechanism works, it has been shown, lasers that are more than 20 times as efficient as these NID lasers are now available, so the improvement needed to scale and "commercialize it," whatever that really means looks more like 10x than 200x. In the world of fusion, that counts as really good progress. For one thing, perhaps a lot of the research money will move to lasers now.

ICF works for its purpose - research into thermo-nuclear weapons (fusion bombs). It has nothing to do with energy generation though, and never has.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_confinement_fusion#As...

That's utterly incorrect:

"Fast ignition and similar approaches changed the situation. In this approach gains of 100 are predicted in the first experimental device, HiPER. Given a gain of about 100 and a laser efficiency of about 1%, HiPER produces about the same amount of fusion energy as electrical energy was needed to create it (and thus will require more gain to produce electricity after considering losses). It also appears that an order of magnitude improvement in laser efficiency may be possible through the use of newer designs that replace flash lamps with laser diodes that are tuned to produce most of their energy in a frequency range that is strongly absorbed. Initial experimental devices offer efficiencies of about 10%, and it is suggested that 20% is possible."

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#403

Post by root_axis »

SllX wrote: post #296
root_axis wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reflexive contrarianism is far healthier than blind credulity. Skepticism should be the default state, especially for claims of amazing scientific breakthroughs.

Neither is particularly healthy. Either staying level-headed and analytical or simply admitting ignorance would be healthier. Skeptical/Gullible are two ends of the same crutch for when we are unable or unwilling to do either.

I think skepticism is healthy, rational, and intellectually economical, especially when we're talking about popular media stories. The skeptic isn't harmed by dismissing grandiose headlines about scientific breakthroughs which are selling a false narrative 99.9% of the time (yes, real science is happening, but the media's narrative about the impact of research is pretty much always false), and in the cases where someone is a little too dismissive, they might end up looking like an idiot one day, but layperson skepticism has no bearing on the validity of the claim, no amount of skepticism can overcome the reality on the ground, if it's real it doesn't matter what anyone believes.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#404

Post by RobertRoberts »

qayxc wrote: post #340
boc wrote: post #251

It’s insane how much cynicism I’m seeing here. I know people who are nuclear scientists at LLNL - if they’re excited about this then it’s a big deal. The experiment actually created more energy than expected and damaged the sensors. This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy.

> This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy. I don't know. Looking closely at the article reveals that the researchers achieved 1.2x energy gain from the lasers, which are about 1% efficient. Given the SOTA for such lasers is closer to 20% efficiency, this means that they achieved about 60% of break-even. But that's energy, no electricity. Even with the best current methods,…

> ...I do think it's VERY healthy to approach sensationalist headlines with a level-headed and down to Earth attitude instead.

My experience on HN is there is a bias for critical thinking. If it's traditional nuclear power or climate change, the bias is for it. If it's new battery tech or fusion power the bias is against.

Does it only feel "very healthy" to be critical because you are being critical of the idea?

I have been called "contrarian" to my face. I understand the deep seated need to be "absolutely certain", but maybe there _is_ something going here other than that?

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#405

Post by Retric »

nwiswell wrote: post #399
Retric wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see a lot of handwaving such as that very close to 0 statement with nuclear but someone’s got to be on the hook. The rate and cost of failures directly relate to insurance costs. A 1 in 100,000 chance per year to cause a 500 billion dollar accident represents a ~5 million per year insurance cost to offset that risk before considering the risk premium associated with insurance. And that’s on top of the normal risk…

> but there hasn’t been a power plant built and operated in the last 20 years that come even close to these numbers If we are being honest, that also has a lot to do with why nuclear is so expensive.

Sure, I have no issue saying nuclear could in theory cost 40% less with reasonable regulation and a large scale deployment across decades. I just have problems with people saying well it could in theory cost X, therefore it does cost X.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#406

Post by brudgers »

boc wrote: post #251

It’s insane how much cynicism I’m seeing here. I know people who are nuclear scientists at LLNL - if they’re excited about this then it’s a big deal. The experiment actually created more energy than expected and damaged the sensors. This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy.

I am skeptical, not cynical.

When I read what USDOE announces, I hope to be less skeptical.

The basis of my skepticism rests on having written a term paper titled ’Nuclear Fusion, Infinite Energy for the Future’ in 1982, and after the semester sharing my ‘it’s only 20 years away’ enthusiasm with my father -a PhD scientist working for the DoD. Hence it’s forty years since I first heard ‘fusion is always 20 years away.’

Of course I don’t know any LLNL scientists but don’t question their or your sincerity or motivation.

The difference between those and the incentives of financially oriented news reporting, doesn’t make me less skeptical. Their mandate is to present potentially market moving ideas before the market can move.

And because I lived through Pons-Fleischman. Which is to say I have forty years of experience with reports…I mean I see excitement for Tokamaks and I wrote about them in 1982.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#407

Post by rocqua »

paxys wrote: post #352
wolverine876 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many on HN have the same response to many things in every domain, not just research.

For being a tech entrepreneur forum people here are strangely very anti science and technology. The top voted responses to every new product announcement are essentially "why do we need this? Pen and paper work just fine".

Products better have sn answer to that question, and that answer tends to be very informative.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#408

Post by torben-friis »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #353
boc wrote: post #251

It’s insane how much cynicism I’m seeing here. I know people who are nuclear scientists at LLNL - if they’re excited about this then it’s a big deal. The experiment actually created more energy than expected and damaged the sensors. This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy.

We're hackers, engineers. We poke around for problems before there are problems and we pry open the black box to make sure it's not just filled with Bullshit. If you want to unquestioningly lap up everything that's offered to you, then I've got some ocean-front property in Afghanistan I'd like to sell you.

That’s definitely how many people here see themselves, but excessive scepticism can also be a problem, something which is overlooked by this crowd.

If you don’t push and help the many small steps that come before the big leap, many big leaps will never become feasible.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#409

Post by throitallaway »

melling wrote: post #84
toomuchtodo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar and batteries are already cheaper than fossil fuels in most markets. Nuclear isn’t competing with renewables, it’s competing against batteries and almost free renewables that charge them. Nuclear is still possibly a great fit for niche locales where renewables aren’t feasible at all. Not a nuclear hater by any means (we need every innovation we can get), just show your math. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/…

That’s great! Because there are [ONLY] 8500 coal power plants producing 20% of the CO2 emissions globally. Removing 20% of emissions will make a huge difference. ETA on this should be around 2030? What I don’t get is since solar is cheaper, why are we building so many coal power plants? https://www.newscientist.com/article/2317274-china-is-buildi...

Solar generates electricity during the day. It would have to be overprovisioned and paired with storage in order to handle dark hours. There are some battery banks out there (Tesla), but I don't think they're very common.

Coal handles baseline load. We should be using nuclear for baseline instead.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#410

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

boc wrote: post #251

It’s insane how much cynicism I’m seeing here. I know people who are nuclear scientists at LLNL - if they’re excited about this then it’s a big deal. The experiment actually created more energy than expected and damaged the sensors. This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy.

"Announcing a breakthrough" without replicated results is exactly what made cold fusion a taboo subject in the first place.

We are not 'reflexive contrarians' for going "I don't believe it until a lot of separate research groups show the same results". The whole point of the scientific method is to not believe somebody just because you personally know them or they are "respected". Their work has to be replicated for Science to take it seriously.

Post reply on HN