
Y Combinator And Mithril Invest In Helion, A Nuclear Fusion Startup - gwintrob
http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/14/y-combinator-and-mithril-invest-in-helion-a-nuclear-fusion-startup/
======
rdl
It's interesting that you can justify this investment in at least four
separate ways, independently:

1) Even if there is a low chance of success, it would be wildly profitable if
successful, and investing early gets you a good share if it's successful.

2) Fusion power would make the world a better place; investing in this way,
when you already have huge returns and it's someone else's money, is actually
rational even if you think it's not the best financial investment.

3) This looks like an amazingly smart team; even if they fail at fusion, they
might find something worthwhile in the process. Just handling magnetics and
high power well could be a useful toolkit for other problems.

4) "Halo effect" \-- both because it's awesome science/engineering and because
it shows a willingness to take extreme risks -- boosts YC (which probably
doesn't need it) and Mithril (which is maybe even more awesome than YC, but
nowhere near as widely known). If it loses $1.5mm but makes it more likely the
next Facebook comes to either of these funds, it's a win.

~~~
ChuckMcM
The risk of #3 is that they don't create fusion but they do develop a machine
that can emit streams of hot plasma which is then turned into the Navy's
weapon of choice for close weapons support on carrier battle groups.

That said, I am looking forward to at least one of the fusion efforts bearing
fruit. I'm something of an optimist here but I expect a durable solution to
the 'energy problem' to emerge from our developing understanding of both
quantum mechanics and particle physics. I am also cognizant of the fact that
it also raises the bar on both good and bad things that humans can do. The
tricky parts are in the transitions, pre and post event.

~~~
TillE
We've already weaponized nuclear fusion into the most destructive bomb ever
created. It probably couldn't get a whole lot worse than that.

I think there are other paths to sustainable energy, but certainly viable
fusion power is the holy grail.

~~~
malandrew
I don't understand why this was downvoted. I'm not going to discount the
possibility to invent something worse then our most powerful fusion bomb, but
if we talk probability here, developing processes that allow greater control
is likely to result in a worst case scenario where we have a weapon that is at
most as powerful as what we already have, but more focused.

IMHO focused fusion destruction is likely to be far more humane than the
indiscriminate destruction caused by the weapons currently in our arsenal.
i.e. a highly focused weapon is likely to to result in instant death for the
victims instead of minutes to months to years of suffering for victims
depending on their exposure levels.

~~~
soperj
I'll never understand being able to kill someone in a humane way(through acts
of war). You're killing someone.

~~~
jerf
I won't deny it's complicated, but there's more to thinking about how we
conduct war than just the proximal individual act of killing. Two cultures
that, for instance, respect military vs. civilian distinctions may war with
each other with much less total damage than two cultures that practice Total
War, even if the political outcome is the same in the end.

Just because war is bad does not mean we are forced to throw up our hands and
stop making distinctions between degrees of badness. War is not simply
infinitely bad... that's ultimately a very sophomoric view.

~~~
rosser
War, itself, is a pretty damned sophomoric thing.

~~~
marvin
This is a simplification. Defending yourself against unprovoked attack is not
juvenile, although there are moral systems that advocate rolling over and
giving up if you are attacked. And there is a whole spectrum of combat actions
where "defense against unprovoked attack" is one extreme.

In industrialized countries, wars of aggression are usually never profitable,
but the same can unfortunately not be said for less-developed societies. Even
Europe didn't find this obvious until after World War 2. So I guess it ends up
being a question of how you define "sophomoric".

~~~
tjradcliffe
Actually, wars of aggression are almost never profitable. Accumulating riches
via conquest is almost always a myth, because armies a) destroy much that is
of value and b) are unbelievably expensive.

"Wealth through superior firepower" has hardly ever been achieved. Even Rome
mostly got rich through trade after its armies conquered Europe and North
Africa, and a lawful peace was imposed. Had everyone been economically
rational pretty much the same end could have been achieved through trade
(spoiler: not everyone is economically rational.)

Simple looting of the kind the Spanish engaged in in the New World was never a
very good path to wealth, partly because its first effect was to create
massive inflation (if you use gold as money and inject vase amounts of gold
into your economy without increased productive capacity, you get inflation,
not wealth.)

So the conditions of gaining wealth by war are very, very narrowly defined.
It's not impossible, but it's amazingly difficult.

There are defensible moral reasons for engaging in mass organized violence--I
support the current American efforts to kill people in Northern Iraq, for
example--but economic rationality (profitability) is never one of them,
because the first step to creating wealth is never to engage in the wholesale
destruction of everything the creation of wealth depends on.

~~~
marvin
Interesting that wars of aggression have almost never been profitable; this
fills a hole in my understanding. I've always understood that this fact only
became obvious after WWII, and almost 10 years of terribly destructive
fighting in Europe and elsewhere.

------
cwal37
Nature had a fun article a few weeks back on the current trickle of VC into
fusion startups.

[http://www.nature.com/news/plasma-physics-the-fusion-
upstart...](http://www.nature.com/news/plasma-physics-the-fusion-
upstarts-1.15592)

It's certainly interesting, and I wish these companies all the best. The
consternation I see occasionally over a company like this getting a
(relatively) small amount of funding confuses me. There are so many software
startups that receive equivalent or greater funding that eventually die or
pivot into something else. Here, you have physical cutting edge engineering
with potential implications that blow something like Slack, or Square, or even
Uber away. Personally, I love seeing companies in the physical space get in on
today's Silicon Valley high.

Semi-related, but I've been to NIF (National Ignition Facility), since I spent
a summer at LLNL, and the inside of that facility is like the dream vision of
every little kid that was into science and science fiction. Unfortunately (as
my physicist significant other who was not working there found out) the public
tours are far more restricted and you don't get to see the cool stuff.

~~~
ForHackernews
> or even Uber

Talk about an understatement. Uber is just a cheaper cab. Commercially viable
fusion is a game-changer on a planetary scale: Halting global warming by
replacing fossil fuels, hydrogen fuel cells become viable by generating
hydrogen through hydrolysis, energy-intensive desalinization plants deliver
fresh water for drinking and irrigation.

~~~
cwal37
I was trying to be nice. I'm a strong environmentalist via academics (BS/MS in
environmental science), and currently a research analyst in renewable energy
economics, so I have very strong feelings (and I like to think a well-grounded
sense) about how fucked the environment and incentives around it are.

I was giving a (very) charitable reading of the occasional claim that Uber
will change the way everything works via its framework. A more tempered tone
normally does better on HN, but to be totally honest, I don't think any of
those companies I mentioned could even come near what Helion would achieve if
successful.

~~~
syntern
Maybe offtopic, but what do you think about the economics of plug-in hybrid
cars (like the Chevy Volt)?

~~~
ansible
You didn't ask for my opinion, but I'll give it anyway. We need cheaper
batteries, period. That's the limiting factor to wider spread adoption of
electric vehicles.

------
sbierwagen

      Safe: With no possibility of melt-down, or hazardous nuclear 
      waste, fusion dose not suffer the drawbacks that make 
      fission an unattractive alternative.
    

Eyeroll. D-He3 fusion produces less neutron flux than D-T, but it's hardly
aneutronic-- otherwise they couldn't breed He3 from it. After a decade, the
whole reactor will be nuclear waste.

I wonder what the service interval on an installed reactor will be? Or are
they doing isotope separation on the produced helium on-site?

(Fun fact: you can get deuterium from water[1] but helium comes from natural
gas fields![2] It's literally a fossil gas, which is why we're running out of
it:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium#Occurrence_and_productio...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium#Occurrence_and_production)
)

1: Commercially, heavy water is a byproduct of electrolysis plants: since
deuterium doesn't electrolyze quite as easily as light water, it tends to
accumulate in electrolysis stacks

2: The same rock formations that trap natural gas also trap helium.

~~~
scythe
>D-He3 fusion produces less neutron flux than D-T, but it's hardly
aneutronic-- otherwise they couldn't breed 3He from it.

You can't "breed" 3He; you have to breed tritium, which decays to He3 with a
half-life of 12 years. D-3He reactors do produce some neutrons, roughly 1% of
the flux of D-T, and almost entirely from D-D side-reactions.

Actually, a big problem with D-3He as of today is the lack of neutrons --
since you only get one neutron per 100 (e.g.) reactions, you can't possibly
breed enough tritium to break-even. You have to come up with some other
neutron source, or send rockets to Jupiter.

>After a decade, the whole reactor will be nuclear waste.

Fusion reactors are generally made from boron carbide -- a material unique for
the fact that it does not become very radioactive when irradiated with
neutrons. 14C which is produced can be extracted by oxidation and
centrifuging, and in any case is not nearly as scary as, say, 90Sr. No other
concerning radioactive isotopes exist with atomic masses between 10 and 21 (cf
22Na).

>commercial helium comes natural gas fields! It's literally a fossil gas,
which is why we're running out of it:

Nope, that's 4He. There's basically no 3He in natural gas (because the helium
there is radiogenic), so obtaining fuel that way wouldn't work even if we
wanted to.

~~~
dkirtley
Great reply. The wiki also has a long discussion about Helium 3.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3)
Fusion produces neutrons either in the first or secondary reactions, but there
are ways to minimize the amount of them and their energy (and
damage/radioactivity)to where you don't generate "nuclear waste". There is an
interesting continuum of fusion reactions from pure D-D (which produces little
energy, but lots of lower energy neutrons) to D-He3 (that produces some
neutrons and lots of energy) to pure He3-He3 (that is called 'anuetronic').

D-D fusion makes Tritium (that decays into He3), Helium 3, or Helium 4 through
the fusion process itself, with no breeding.

We believe that there is a correct ratio called Self-Supplied in which you
have a small amount of 2.4 MeV neutrons, only deuterium as an input fuel, and
the majority of the energy is from the Helium 3 fusion. The hard part is how
to separate out the right isotope mixture from the exhaust between pulses.

~~~
sbierwagen
He3 is never added? How long can a reactor run without supplying He3?

(This thread is having a hard time settling on a single isotope notation.)

~~~
dkirtley
The best way to make Helium 3 is with Deuterium fusion. Its a very interesting
bootstrap question -- how do you build new reactors, if you have to have
working reactors to generate fuel?

~~~
sbierwagen
So really it's a mixed-mode D-D/3He-D reactor? How much more common are D-D
reactions than 3He-D reactions while the reactor is running normally?

How much does the initial charge of 3He cost, given that the stuff costs
$7,000 a gram?

------
sam
What's the plasma configuration of the machine? I think there's a research
group at U of Washington working on merging spheromaks which create a field
reversed configuration. Is this a spinoff of that group?

edit: looks like it is - this is the group:
[https://www.aa.washington.edu/research/plasmaDynamics/phdx.h...](https://www.aa.washington.edu/research/plasmaDynamics/phdx.html)

~~~
dkirtley
Yes! Prof. John Slough is the Chief Scientist at Helion and the inventor of
the Fusion Engine. UW has been leading the field of 'alternates' fusion for
decades. Our 'About Us' page has a short blurb:
[http://www.helionenergy.com/](http://www.helionenergy.com/)

~~~
tim333
There's a video of him talking about his earlier fusion rocket engine
prototype [http://on.aol.com/video/peripheral-vision-003--professor-
joh...](http://on.aol.com/video/peripheral-vision-003--professor-john-
slough-517930800)

------
marcell
Can someone explain why this team is confident that they can build a
commercially viable reactor in 3 years? Conventional wisdom is that nuclear
fusion is "decades away". What does this team know that others don't?

~~~
ghshephard
The type of Nuclear Fusion they are talking about is quite different than what
ITER is working on. It's on a much smaller scale - around 50 MW, which is on
the scale of a large diesel generator. The cost is also not that ground
breaking - around $0.04/kWh, which is around where Natural Gas and Coal plants
are.

~~~
bjelkeman-again
To say that electricity from fusion at a price similar to coal is "not that
ground breaking" is quite the understatement. That would be huge.

------
iLoch
Can someone with some knowledge on nuclear energy explain to me how this
solution varies from say, General Fusion
([http://www.generalfusion.com](http://www.generalfusion.com))? They're a
company more local to me, and while these companies are looking to accomplish
the same thing, their approaches are wildly different.

~~~
dkirtley
Both GF and us (Helion) are attempting to dramatically shrink the size and
cost of fusion reactors. We are doing that by compressing a fusion plasma
repeatedly to generate energy, rather than trying to heat and confine it for
long periods. The main difference is that Helion uses high field pulsed
magnets to compress the plasma, GF uses pistons to generate liquid metal
shocks.

~~~
omegant
Are you guys thinking in a crowdfounding campaign, I'll give money to help
projects like yours.

~~~
dkirtley
Not yet, right now we are focused on pushing the technical milestones as fast
as possible. This is a great question, what do people here think about a
crowdfunding campaign for something like fusion, is it worth it?

~~~
DennisP
I helped out with the recent Focus Fusion crowdfunding. Our goal was $200K, we
raised $180K, but it also brought in some new investors who took us well over
the goal, and who gave the crowdfund the credit for their interest.

We had a very low budget so our marketing was bare-bones.

We had a lot of excitement, but also a lot of skepticism and pushback. Our
hired marketing team insisted on an extremely optimistic presentation and that
turned a lot of people off. Of course I don't know whether we would have done
better with a more measured approach. With LPP being such a small team and so
far off the beaten path we faced a lot more skepticism to start with.

The Solar Roadways campaign ran on Indiegogo at the same time and raised over
$2 million. They managed to make a video go viral.

[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/focus-fusion-
empowerthewo...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/focus-fusion-
empowertheworld--3)

[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/solar-
roadways](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/solar-roadways)

~~~
mrfusion
That's very interesting. So what do you think solar roadways did better? Or is
their concept just more reportable by media because it's more understandable.

What role did you play? Do you think a marketing team is necessary for a
successful campaign?

By the way, email me if you want to chat sometime. I've been kicking around an
idea for a better kickstarter.

~~~
DennisP
This video helped a lot:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlTA3rnpgzU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlTA3rnpgzU)

I don't know whether they had a bigger marketing budget or were just good at
it. It does seem like an easier-to-understand hook. Various people have
criticized the idea's practicality but say "solar roadways" and you've got the
concept. That probably helped media coverage. For us, it was complicated to
explain why it was more than "here's another guy in a garage who thinks he's
solving the world's energy problems."

I'm on the board of the Focus Fusion Society so I debated and voted on various
decisions, got interviewed a couple times, and spent a lot of time commenting
online various places, mainly reddit.

A marketing team at least helps do a lot of legwork. If you want to pay more
for expert advice it can be hard to determine who's expert enough to give good
advice for your particular situation.

I'll email later.

------
lquist
The New Yorker wrote an amazing article on ITER and the pursuit of nuclear
fusion: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/03/a-star-in-a-
bot...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/03/a-star-in-a-bottle).

------
tomp
> Helion Energy [...] says it has a plan to build a fusion reactor [..], a
> challenge whose solution has been considered decades away for, well,
> decades. Helion CEO David Kirtley says that his company can do it in three.

Three decades? Either this is a very long-term investment, or a very
confusingly written article.

~~~
xexers
Yeah, that's a clumsy sentence. He means 3 years.

In this article, he estimates commercial viability by 2019:

[http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/07/helion-energy-plans-to-
enab...](http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/07/helion-energy-plans-to-enable.html)

------
mbesto
Guess that explains this:

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/499448951372660736](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/499448951372660736)

 _I had office hours today with a co in the current YC batch whose (genuine)
TAM is so big I worry investors won 't be able to parse it._

------
abstractbill
YC used to get a lot of criticism for only funding "trivial web companies".
You don't hear that so much these days.

~~~
jes5199
I'm not up to date on everything YC funds - what other non-web companies have
they funded?

~~~
abstractbill
Cruise Automation, for example, is working on self-driving cars.

There are some biotech companies too, but I don't know much about those.

------
beambot
They're using a deuterium reaction? That's not bad (per se), but the neutron
production can create difficulties: major regulatory hurdles (can be used for
nuclear material refinement?), difficult to extract energy, and causes a lot
of nearby material fatigue.

Another big contender (IMHO) is Tri Alpha's aneutronic approach:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri_Alpha_Energy,_Inc](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri_Alpha_Energy,_Inc).

Either way, cool stuff!

~~~
DennisP
Fwiw, high school kids build small reactors and fuse deuterium with basically
no regulatory hassle at all. Lots of larger fusion experiments use deuterium
too and do fine. Getting permission to experiment with fission is far more
difficult. I'm sure there will be some regulation but it's unlikely to be very
burdensome.

Boron fusion is pretty much the ultimate of course.

------
aetherson
> Helion CEO David Kirtley says that his company can do it in three.

Three... years? Decades? Days? Millennia?

~~~
dkirtley
We are hoping three years, three decades is just too late to matter. Part of
what was not mentioned are the years that we have put into this already.
Fusion is definitely a tough problem, but one that is worth it to solve.

~~~
cwal37
Forgive me if this is forward, but are you guys hiring? I'm in no way a
physicist, but I do know a few with strong experimental backgrounds (mostly in
nuclear), and I try to keep my ear to the ground for intriguing job
opportunities for my friends.

~~~
dkirtley
We are hiring for Redmond, WA, but only people that are excited and forward!
Our Contact page [http://www.helionenergy.com/](http://www.helionenergy.com/)
has the link.

~~~
cwal37
Thanks!

------
cletus
As much as I hope this succeeds and as glad as I that HN is betting on such
"moonshots", I remain skeptical about the practicality of nuclear fusion as a
commercially viable power source.

Fusion works particularly well for stars because of gravity. We're trying to
use magnets to contain superheated plasma.

The Sun generates less energy on a kg-for-kg basis that compost [1]. And it
has gravity to contain the byproducts (other than energy).

But the real problem is neutrons. To start a fusion reaction with a small
amount of matter we use heavy isotopes of hydrogen (specifically deuterium = 1
neutron, tritium = radioactive isotope with 2 neutrons). The fusing material
releases neutrons that damage the containing reactor.

This is using the most "promising" deuterium-tritium reaction.

Alternatives are suggesting using He3. Unfortunately that's super-rare, which
kinda defeats the point of "free" energy.

I remain skeptical but hoping to be proven wrong.

[1]:
[http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/04/17/3478276.ht...](http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/04/17/3478276.htm)

~~~
DennisP
The second-easiest reaction is deuterium-deuterium. Half the time it produces
He3, and the other half it produces tritium, which decays into He3. So start
with D-D and bring in He3 as you get it to reduce neutron output.

Even with D-D alone the neutrons are a lot less energetic than with D-T.

------
curtis
I think these guys are using MagLIF (Magnetized Liner Inertial Fusion).

Here's an article about MagLIF research using the Z Machine at Sandia Labs:
[http://www.nature.com/news/triple-threat-method-sparks-
hope-...](http://www.nature.com/news/triple-threat-method-sparks-hope-for-
fusion-1.14445)

~~~
cpihl
Close but with some important differences. We've tried that approach and it
has some interesting potential applications but, when it comes to building a
power plant that has to last decades, we think the engineering is just too
difficult. Instead of pushing on a liner that then pushes on the plasma, we
directly push on the plasma with magnetic field. The engineering, while still
difficult, is much easier to tackle.

~~~
curtis
Is this a purely magnetic approach? I recall recently reading about a MagLIF
variant that used lasers for pre-heating.

~~~
cpihl
It is. We use electromagnets to make the plasmas, move them, and finally
compress them all without moving parts, just magnetic field.

------
jonknee
Amazing that this kind of research can be funded with a mere .0015 Instagrams
(or even better, .00008 Whatsapps).

------
grondilu
When talking about breaking even, does that include the energy needed to make
the deuterium? Or rather to collect it, considering it has to be extracted
from water or something. IIRC deuterium costs quite a lot of energy to produce
and as a result for a while it was only produced by countries having large
amount of hydroelectricity available.

Not exactly related, but this made me wonder : inside a tank full of liquid
hydrogen, do the DH and DD molecules lie on the bottom? Is it possible to just
siphon them from there?

~~~
cpihl
That's a good question. The short answer is the energy that it takes to
extract D2 from water is so small compared to the fusion energy released it
isn't a factor. That is reflected in the cost of D2O at about $0.70 per gram.
In a fusion reactor, even with inefficiencies, that gram of D2O will create
about $1000 worth of electricity.

~~~
grondilu
Yeah that makes sense. Now that I think about it, I realise the energy needed
to extract deuterium is related to the chemical energy binding water molecules
together. This chemical energy is orders of magnitude lower than the nuclear
energy released by fusion. So the cost of fuel production will likely be
irrelevant for fusion power.

------
kayhi
Anyone have more insights into how this works?

The figure, deuterium fuel is confusing as deuterium is an isotope and am
unsure what they mean 'extraction' (how?).

~~~
sloughj
Right now we just buy deuterium off the shelf, it is low cost and plentiful.
You can get deuterium by electrolysis of heavy water, see here:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water)

~~~
kayhi
Perhaps low cost (25L, ~$600) is relative, depending on the purity, but am
unsure how much scale a project like this would use.

~~~
malandrew
I wouldn't be surprised if that cost is still a drop in the bucket compared to
salaries though. How much deuterium is a startup like this likely to go
through in a month?

~~~
cpihl
Totally correct. Right now we simply purchase D2 gas in small quantity so the
price is relatively high. But even at those prices we'll probably spend on the
order of only $100 per month on D2 when we're operating.

------
keerthiko
Am I the only one who finds the names in this headline SO FRICKIN AMAZING?!

They are all so apt -- A steampunk-sounding mechanism for combining things[1],
a mythical element/alloy of magical powers, and a naked Helium nucleus. It
just tickles something very artistic for me.

Edit: [1] ok fine it's actually a math function, but I like my perception of
the name better.

------
higherpurpose
For that kind of money they could've just kickstarted it.

~~~
NortySpock
Focus Fusion tried that, and it netted them only $180k plus some private
investments.

[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/focus-fusion-
empowerthewo...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/focus-fusion-
empowertheworld--3)

~~~
DennisP
True but their goal was only $200k, and they started with minimal funds for
marketing.

------
Symmetry
They're using deuterium, but the figure mentions that they're fusing it with
helium. But helium-3 is very expensive, and I'd been under the impression that
deuterium / helium-4 fusion required impractically high temperatures to work?

~~~
dnautics
helium 4 is stable (it's the alpha particle) so fusion with helium 4 either
doesn't produce energy or it produces very little.

It's possible that the reactor does two reactions: 1) D + D -> 3He + n, 3He +
D -> 4He + p.

------
SideburnsOfDoom
One thing that I am curious about: What does it mean by "the expanding plasma
is converted directly into electricity" ?

Directly how? No boiling water driving pistons, no intervening steps at all?
It seems a bit like "and then a miracle occurs" to me.

~~~
sbierwagen
There's a couple of ways of doing it:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_energy_conversion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_energy_conversion)

------
todd8
This whole discussion about weapons seems strange. It's true that the words
"nuclear fusion" appear in the article, but my reading of the article doesn't
make me feel that this research will lead to some terrible, existential risk
to mankind.

For comparison, consider robotics, drones, nanotechnology, and AI. I am
fascinated by these subjects (and, apparently, so are many other HN readers),
but I have some concerns that these non-nuclear technologies may end up having
very negative consequences. Yet these high tech areas, with which I would
guess the HN readers have a better understanding than fusion, don't engender
such negative reactions here.

------
fuddle
Excellent news, I can't wait to drive a Tesla powered by fusion power.

~~~
bellerocky
I don't think mobile fusion reactors are what they're going for. And if you're
looking to reduce global carbon emissions try walking, biking or using public
transportation. It's true electric cars don't emit carbon the way a fuel based
car does, but the production and maintenance of an electric vehicle certainly
does.

~~~
cbr
fusion plant -> mains electricity -> your tesla

~~~
fuddle
Yes that's what I meant, I think this is the future of transport.

------
kumarski
The reasons Nuclear Fusion presents a difficult problem:

1.) There's no chain reaction mechanism. 2.) The probability of a reaction
constrains reaction size. 3.) The absurd amount of heat generated by fusion. I
think I once heard it was 100M degrees.

Curious, anybody know how they design around this? Are they using some form of
magnetized containment?

Excited to see this funded.

~~~
drjesusphd
> 1.) There's no chain reaction mechanism.

There's something like it. Fusion happens because plasma is hot -> fusion
products heat the plasma to keep it hot -> more fusion happens. A chain
reaction is exactly what you don't want in a nuclear reactor.

> 2.) The probability of a reaction constrains reaction size.

Can you be more specific? The probability of reaction does constrain the
design, but via the Lawson criterion [1].

> 3.) The absurd amount of heat generated by fusion. I think I once heard it
> was 100M degrees.

That's about right, but temperature != heat. Even though the plasma has a very
high temperature, it is also extremely diffuse: about 3 million times less
dense than air.

The main concern is keeping it hot in the proximity of colder stuff and
managing the electromagnetic energy (the fields have many times more energy
than the thermal energy, and has the potential to all be dumped in a single
spot), not necessarily worrying about the heat.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawson_criterion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawson_criterion)

edit: lots of silly typos

------
misterfusion
Nuclear fusion is a good investment for the world. Truthfully, fusion power is
the final answer to our future energy needs.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8n7j5k-_G8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8n7j5k-_G8)

------
pinaceae
is this the equivalent of throwing shit at the wall and see what sticks?

why do vcs with a specialty in software suddenly stray into completely unknown
territory? nothing left to fund in software? rarely does this end well.

~~~
lukasm
Expected value.

~~~
_delirium
I would guess either personal interest or PR, rather than a solid return
calculation. YC doesn't want to be seen as the "web startup incubator", even
if that's where they can best maximize ROI. And besides PR, the principals
likely don't want to _be_ that, either, but have loftier goals. Which is
perfectly fine; maximizing investor returns is rarely a good way to do
anything important or interesting.

------
netcan
Slightly tangental but "end energy dependance on other nations" grates me. It
sounds so nationalistic.

~~~
cycrutchfield
It's not really a nationalistic sentiment, but rather one of economic
independence. See, for example, Europe kowtowing to Russia because they supply
a large fraction of their natural gas.

------
philip1209
$1.5 million is not much runway.

~~~
mjhouse
especially for a product that is just hoping to break even on power
generation.

~~~
venomsnake
They break even and are billionaires. They manage to create 2+ EROEI and we
are talking trillions.

~~~
baq
or dead; possibly both (i dearly hope not for both cases!). a working fusion
reactor with advertised properties will disrupt the current political balance
of power on the planet. intelligence agencies of certain fossil fuel-driven
countries might get orders to not let the situation go that far. hopefully
certain other intelligence agencies will be able to protect the effort.

~~~
mikeyouse
This is needlessly conspiratorial. Oil companies and sovereign wealth funds
are some of the biggest investors in renewables on earth. Everyone knows we
will reach peak oil at some point, whether through increasingly costly
extraction/taxation or increasingly cheap renewable competitors. There is no
'grand conspiracy' to quash alternative energy sources.

~~~
swalsh
He takes it a bit far... but its true that fuel is a primary driver of
politics in our current times. What that means though is a bit less known.
Honestly i'd assume it would be a stabilizer more than anything. It could lead
to the end of propping up regimes in the middle east for instance.

------
crassus2
The most important question: what are the demographics of the founding team?

------
porter
another perpetual motion machine?

~~~
tormeh
Nah. Just a very risky investment. ITER uses "safe" physics that we know how
works - it's a magnificent engineering exercise, but there are no new insights
in fusion per se required. These guys seem to be aiming for an alternative
solution with more eccentric science behind it. It will probably not work out,
but neither does most start-ups.

~~~
sillysaurus3
What is meant by eccentric science? Would you be specific?

~~~
tormeh
Well, I don't know much about the subject, but the way I've understood it
there's ITER and then there are a couple other reactor projects. Everyone
except ITER is violating some kind of popularly held belief among physicists -
they could be cheaper and better, but it's far from certain that they'll work
at all. This just looks like another one of those.

~~~
DennisP
I don't think it violates physicists' beliefs, it's just that they're more
confident in tokamaks like ITER because they've been studied a lot more.

