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Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

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Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#421

Post by [deleted] »

latchkey wrote: post #373
PaulHoule wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lotsa reasons. (1) We are used to the same "news" story being cycled again and again. I think a year ago we heard about a previous breakthrough in ignition. When I hear a story like this my first instinct is that the old story has been recycled and I'm not sure that there is any actual news. A few months back it was announced that scientists had discovered a black hole that was nearest to the earth and it still gets…

I'm just glad these scientists are working on something other than nuclear bombs.

[deleted]

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#422

Post by pclmulqdq »

pianoben wrote: post #363
ShivShankaran wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took only 8 months because covid has been in existence for decades. Covid 19 strain was new and the vaccines had to be adjusted to new strains not created from ground up

Not so; the mRNA technology used to develop and deliver the vaccine has been in progress for decades. The hardest parts were done before SARS-CoV-2 ever existed, but it's wrong to claim that "the vaccines" needed to be tweaked - they never existed .

For people confused about this, there were prior commercial attempts at coronavirus vaccines, with mixed success. They were not RNA vaccines. The COVID-19 vaccines built on that research (regarding what proteins to target, in particular), but the COVID vaccines that were rolled out were completely novel technology.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#423

Post by Robotbeat »

nine_k wrote: post #388
paxys wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Rather, very anti science and technology hype . Many visitors of this website measure experience by decades, and have seen many waves of hype resiting in not much progress in unyielding areas, from self-driving car and silver-bullet methodologies to, well, commercial fusion. When demonstrable, measure progress is achieved, visitors of this site get very excited and positive, from things like the Rust language all the…

This is the very opposite to silver bullet approaches to fusion, though. This is a methodical, military-industrial-complex style development that was decades in the making.

I think it’s just the Zeitgeist. Social media has trained us that a certain reasoning style is rewarded, quick takes that don’t dig into the first principles and instead serve as shibboleths that you’re not one of THOSE types of unintellectual pseudo tech bros who bought NFTs or whatever.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#424

Post by kranke155 »

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.

It’s been clear like that for a while. Crypto threads are infested with nonsense, ignoring anything that’s even distantly related and ignoring any breakthroughs. Any new tech is poo pooed immediately.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#425

Post by concordDance »

stuckinhell wrote: post #304
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.

People have been burned time and time again by scientists over hyping stuff in the last 10 years, then combine that with the replication failures over nearly every single scientific field. Then look at the extreme amount of business fraud in the last 10 years with places like Theranos and FTX Hackernews is not infested with reflexive contrarians. Hackernews has healthy amounts of skepticism and doubt. Extraordinary c…

Note that there's multiple bits of hype compounding on each other. The scientists hype it up a bit, the University PR guys do it a lot more and the popular press goes nuts.

The scientists are like 10% to blame here.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#426

Post by jxramos »

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.

that's a brilliant phrase, a reflexive contrarian. They just go the opposite of, I've been thinking about this behavior of late, great way to characterize it.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#427

Post by PaulHoule »

zargon wrote: post #419
latchkey wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just glad these scientists are working on something other than nuclear bombs.

The entire point of LLNL is to study nuclear bombs.

The original point of LLNL was to develop nuclear bombs. There is such as thing as "mission creep", also the challenge of maintaining the ability to develop bombs in the future if we need to.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#428

Post by toomuchtodo »

kelnos wrote: post #385
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree, though I don’t know how wind performs in extended and deep subzero / heavy snow conditions. Hydropower is the traditional baseload for the Midwest, but it’s tough to square the destruction to natural beauty that entails in comparison with a remote nuclear set-up. EDIT: It seems not too badly [1]. [1] https://empoweringmichigan.com/how-do-wind-turbines-work-in-...

What does the geothermal story look like? I expect it's expensive to first set up, but after that, maybe it's cost-effective and reliable? Asking because I genuinely don't know, but haven't seen it mentioned in this subthread.

https://www.nrel.gov/geothermal/resource-assessment-mapping....

https://www.nrel.gov/geothermal/assets/images/resource-asses...

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#429

Post by rafaelero »

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 can't imagine what it is like to be in their heads. Even for things I am skeptical about, I still want them to be true if they are truly transformative. My worst case scenario is being cautious, but never, ever, negative.

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