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

Fusion News Ignites Optimism

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 95 posts

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#81

Post by eru »

wnkrshm wrote: post #48
blake1 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first point is not supported by the data. The US Energy Information Agency keeps track of this[1], and the per capita energy use peaked around 2000. And we are much better at running an energy-efficient economy: energy use/real $ GDP has halved in the last century. The trend may not continue. People might start to do much more air travel (which would require massive runway building). Global warming might increas…

It is good to see that the per capita trend has reversed, maybe if the global population would not increase steadily we may actually not increase energy consumption steadily. Edit: I found an interesting nature article[0] that looks at different correlations of population and consumption to identify if there is an anthropocene epoch. There are pretty clear-cut trends but who knows, maybe Earth's population will actua…

Global population is expected to plateau soonish.

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#82

Post by eru »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #72
Someone wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure whether you’re serious, but: Bigger cars? Supersonic city trips to the other side of the world? Weekends in Antarctica? A week in one of SpaceX’s hotels? High-resolution screens on every wall of your home, plus the AC needed to keep your house cool? Reshape a mountain to improve your view? Transform lead into gold? Mine bitcoin? If energy were free, I foresee accelerated destruction of nature. At best, t…

> If energy were free, I foresee accelerated destruction of nature. Perhaps the reverse, eventually. If costs of space travel dropped enough, we could push polluting industry out into orbit and further, and start repairing Earth. It's impossible now, but if there were little difference on the margin for the businesses between working on the surface and upwell, then businesses would hesitantly say "ah, what the hell,…

The market is very much an engine for social progress. See eg https://www.econlib.org/jim-crow-more-racist-than-the-railro...

> Jim Crow laws established apartheid, that is, legally enforced segregation. Railroad companies provide an interesting historical example of business incentives. These private companies were often willing, against the political correctness of the times, to sell tickets to both blacks and whites and to not segregate their customers in different cars or compartments. Poor whites and poor blacks purchased second-class tickets, while rich whites and occasionally rich blacks rode in first-class cars. The situation was far from perfect, and violence sometimes erupted, but it was better than the segregationist state-enforced laws that followed.

> A historian of populism observes:

>> More than any other institution, train cars and railroad stations exemplified the modern dilemma of the racial order. They were places where mobile, unsupervised, anonymous travelers met in close quarters. Making the situation more explosive, those whites, including most farmers, who could not afford a first-class ticket met blacks on equal terms. In contrast to the workplace where blacks served white employers, or in the supply store where blacks owed debts to white merchants, in a railroad car blacks and whites paid the same fare for the same right to a seat. Accordingly, whites made the railroads a primary target of the new segregation laws. Reform-minded southerners considered these laws a mark of modern and progressive race relations. (Charles Postel, The Populist Vision, Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 178)

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#83

Post by eru »

jeffparsons wrote: post #34
wnkrshm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use of fusion as an energy source removes a lot of threats our civilizations are facing but it also comes with some caveats rooted in human behavior. Human energy consumption has always gone up when the supply got more efficient, from coal to oil to fission. While here, the power generation itself won't have such a drastic impact (unless humanity overdoes it, though, we seem to always do that) but maybe more power me…

> Lots of processes that were considered too wasteful suddenly become feasible. I worry about this, too, but couldn't there be some positive effects here, too? E.g. what if it made desalination a lot cheaper?

Why do you even worry?

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#84

Post by eru »

hutzlibu wrote: post #51
danpalmer wrote: post #4

While I'm excited for this, I'm also cynical about the public reaction to fusion power as it gets closer to success and eventual general availability. These past 2 years have highlighted to many how a combination of poor critical thinking and politicisation of so many aspects of our lives can lead to literal catastrophes. Will the public see Fusion as the wonderful advancement for humanity that it will likely be, or…

"green energy sector not making their minds up and flip flopping between solar/wind/fusion/etc" Since fusion does not work sustainable yet (or at all), I would not classify it as green energy. (Where is for example the tritium coming from?) But once it works - it likely will not magically supply all of humanity at once in a way, that is way cheaper than what we can have with wind, water and sun now . So why flip flop…

> (Where is for example the tritium coming from?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Production

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#85

Post by hutzlibu »

eru wrote: post #84
hutzlibu wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"green energy sector not making their minds up and flip flopping between solar/wind/fusion/etc" Since fusion does not work sustainable yet (or at all), I would not classify it as green energy. (Where is for example the tritium coming from?) But once it works - it likely will not magically supply all of humanity at once in a way, that is way cheaper than what we can have with wind, water and sun now . So why flip flop…

> (Where is for example the tritium coming from?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Production

Yeah, I know that. Mostly from nuclear fission reactors. So currently not really sustainable. Or is the plan, to keep the fission reactors running, to fuel the fusion reactors?

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#86

Post by wnkrshm »

eru wrote: post #82
TeMPOraL wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If energy were free, I foresee accelerated destruction of nature. Perhaps the reverse, eventually. If costs of space travel dropped enough, we could push polluting industry out into orbit and further, and start repairing Earth. It's impossible now, but if there were little difference on the margin for the businesses between working on the surface and upwell, then businesses would hesitantly say "ah, what the hell,…

The market is very much an engine for social progress. See eg https://www.econlib.org/jim-crow-more-racist-than-the-railro... > Jim Crow laws established apartheid, that is, legally enforced segregation. Railroad companies provide an interesting historical example of business incentives. These private companies were often willing, against the political correctness of the times, to sell tickets to both blacks and whit…

But, didn't the market trade the same people as property? How is the market an engine for social progress there? Isn't that a bit cherry picked?

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#87

Post by pas »

pfdietz wrote: post #56
pas wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly we'll have all of the above. > Will it be spun as the green energy sector not making their minds up and flip flopping between solar/wind/fusion/etc? Well, the green energy sector is big. Solar companies push solar, wind folks push wind, and well, fusion folks are pushing for funding and VC money. But the important thing is, we need all of them. Plus batteries (and battery-like systems). And, yes, there will…

> But the important thing is, we need all of them. Why do we need fusion?

Philosophically we don't _need_ anything of course :)

But fusion as a power source: abundant fuel source, cleanest (no emissions, minimal raw materials required, minimal waste to bury), safest (no proliferation risk, safest to install and operate, no need to climb towers), no intermittency problem.

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#88

Post by pfdietz »

pas wrote: post #87
pfdietz wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the important thing is, we need all of them. Why do we need fusion?

Philosophically we don't _need_ anything of course :) But fusion as a power source: abundant fuel source, cleanest (no emissions, minimal raw materials required, minimal waste to bury), safest (no proliferation risk, safest to install and operate, no need to climb towers), no intermittency problem.

All of those are desirable, but in no sense do any imply the necessity of fusion. They don't even imply the overall desirability of fusion, since one must also weigh the negatives, like cost.

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#89

Post by pas »

pfdietz wrote: post #88
pas wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Philosophically we don't _need_ anything of course :) But fusion as a power source: abundant fuel source, cleanest (no emissions, minimal raw materials required, minimal waste to bury), safest (no proliferation risk, safest to install and operate, no need to climb towers), no intermittency problem.

All of those are desirable, but in no sense do any imply the necessity of fusion. They don't even imply the overall desirability of fusion, since one must also weigh the negatives, like cost.

The cost of development is amortized over infinity. (Sure, on the other hand the NPV of a perpetuity bond is finite.)

Of course (economically) the optimal allocation of current resources/funds probably would not involve fusion research, but instead instant (ASAP) replacement of coal, oil, gas power plants. Then working on fusion. But if we look at what fusion researchers should do, either they could be retrained or we can simply go ahead and print some money to pay them to work on what they want to do anyway (fusion research).

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#90

Post by aristophenes »

cstross wrote: post #20
aristophenes wrote: post #9

I don’t understand the appeal of this type of fusion (as opposed to the plasma reactor approach). We’ve known how to get positive energy out of fusion fuel since thermonuclear weapons in 1952. The really hard part would seem to be capturing that energy efficiently. This experiment is stuck at the ignition phase. When that’s positive energy they won’t be done, they’ll be able to start working on the practical problems…

What you're missing is that since the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty came into effect it's illegal to test-detonate nuclear weapons. Which are narrowly defined in terms of fission devices, with or without a fusion booster. Fission devices have been very well understood since the early 1950s, but fusion reactions are somewhat less so. The NIF provides an instrument for probing the plasma densities and temperatures that…

This is why I often read the comments more than the articles here on hacker news.
Post reply on HN