
Founders of Amazon and Microsoft funding little-known fusion energy companies - Perados
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160428-the-secretive-billionaire-backed-plans-to-harness-fusion
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YZF
I have some friends at General Fusion and I've been following them relatively
closely from the beginning. I had an opportunity to invest some in the
beginning and decided not to - mostly because the problems they're trying to
solve seemed so hard.

They've pivoted a little bit on their approach since then. In the beginning it
was all about focussed pressure waves. Now they're starting with plasma.
Fusion is _really_ hard (well, at least for power generation, perhaps the
"level a city" kind is easier). I think it's harder than self driving cars
(for example) or landing rockets on barges (as another example). There are
many fundamental problems in different areas that have to be solved and not
all these areas are well understood.

I'm pleasantly surprised they are still going strong and that they were able
to raise money to continue their progress. Obviously if they are successful
the business opportunity of all power generation in the world is a pretty big
one...

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tachim
How does the design process for these reactors work? How much design is done
in simulation vs experimentally and how high-fidelity are the simulations?

~~~
mng2
This is not my field (just an enthusiast) but consider that a typical fusion
plasma has a density of 10^20 particles per cubic meter. Even if your plasma
is 1 cubic centimeter, that's still 10^14 particles! Thus a full-on EM
simulation, where every charged particle interacts with every charged
particle, is not practical. A full-scale simulation is still unrealistic even
if you typically cheat by breaking the problem up into cells and ignoring the
Coulomb interaction beyond cell boundaries.

Fusion machine design is a combination of hard-won experimental knowledge and
theoretical guesswork. I'm skeptical of the current wave of fusion startups
simply because they don't have the weight of the decades of experimental work
that have gone into tokamak research. But hey, they might make a breakthough,
who knows.

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nxzero
Has anyone since reasonable explanation of what the future would look like
with fusion?

To me, there will never be enough energy, this effort is about control, not
power; even if there was (relatively speaking) an unlimited source of energy,
the bounds of it's use would quickly be found, and as such, would not be
"universally" available.

~~~
daviddumenil
My first thought was that an electricity cost at maybe 20% of what it is now
would be result in a good economic uplift but not a seismic change.

But the interesting cases are those where much cheaper electricity unlocks new
opportunities. Imagine the coast of sub-Saharan Africa transformed by the
agriculture enabled by cheap desalinated water.

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mattgrice
Electricity already makes up around half or less of the cost of desalination.
Even free electricity would at best halve the cost.

~~~
gizmo686
Assuming current designs. There may be less energy efficient designs that are,
ignoring the cost of energy, cheaper to builder and operate.

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iaw
Serious question for those with actual knowledge of Controlled Fusion
Economics:

Does the smaller size of this reactor design mitigate the challenges that the
Tokamaks face with material radioactivity? With the level of neutron
bombardment those pistons undergo what material can they be made of to assure
an economically viable operational lifetime?

I remember this being one of the bigger challenges for all of injector and
heating equipment in Tokamak designs. After a point the devices are composed
of different radioactive isotopes and have to be replaced/disposed of, making
the economics... challenging.

Is it possible for this project to be successful without a Materials
breakthrough? I don't think the Physics challenges are insurmountable with
enough time, but finding new materials can be a rabbit hole.

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paulsutter
Aneutronic fusion[1] releases 100x fewer neutrons, but requires 10x higher
temperature, among other challenges:

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion)

~~~
Natsu
I thought it was also proven that it couldn't be energy positive.

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hokuriku
I'm really proud of General Fusion, they're a rare Vancouver success story.
And good on the Trudeau government for backing them!

I just hope that Christy Clark doesn't sabotage GF with her goal of turning
mining, LNG, fracking and real estate into BC's economic engines.

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iLoch
I know Michel Laberge, he's from my home town of Bowen Island, BC. I went to
school with his son, and my earliest memory of his mad scientist work was when
his son brought in a mechanical hand controlled by a glove for his grade 6
science project. I think I was experimenting with lemons as a power source...

Of course we didn't learn until much later that he had rented the old gas
station in the middle of town to conduct experiments with nuclear energy.

I still believe General Fusion's approach to be the most practical of the
solutions I've seen. I'm continually following their progress, and am hoping
for great news to come from them. I would love to be able to tell this as the
story of how we accomplished nuclear fusion.

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fhrjfjc
Maybe it's just me, but I wish our society's future wellbeing wasn't placed at
the whim of a handful of oligarchs.

~~~
sberder
I think it's debatable, do you prefer our energy future being at the hands of
lobbyists? Because that's what's happening today in the US and Europe as far
as I can tell.

EV were always dubbed too complex and impossible in Europe until tesla came
around and made it happen.

I follow the general skepticism about money and control of mankind's future
(space resources, energy, water, etc) but also have to keep faith in a certain
humanity.

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godzillabrennus
We are just 20 years away...

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GunboatDiplomat
Hey, if they can pull it off, good on them.

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bpodgursky
It's really pathetic how HN has degenerated from an actual community of
builders / startup founders / creators to reddit-style vitriol and populist
complaints about the 1%.

Every comment right now is complaining about billionaires and the problems
with of capitalism. Not even about the technology, much less being happy about
this being funded.

Genuine question -- is there a community somewhere which is actually full of
not-shitty people? I would like an invite.

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GFK_of_xmaspast
I checked your post history, of about 9 top-level comments on the first page
(not including this one) I see seven normative posts and two technical ones.

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bpodgursky
Very few of those are actually top-level comments. I usually only comment as a
reply when a top-level comment makes me angry.

