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Founders of Amazon and Microsoft funding little-known fusion energy companies
- godzillabrennus 10y agoWe are just 20 years away...
- GunboatDiplomat 10y agoHey, if they can pull it off, good on them.
- abhi3 10y agoTLDR There are a handful of private companies working on new/not well researched approaches to cracking fusion using private capital while Government projects like National Ignition Labs and ITER suck most of the public funding to work on mainstream methods. There are two companies of note, 1) General Fusion (funded in part by Bezos) working on something called magnetised target fusion Here's how it works: first, magnetic fields are used to confine a superheated plasma of volatile deuterium and tritium isotopes. This plasma is then injected into a sphere, where it's briefly contained in a vortex of liquid metal. Next, pistons converging towards the centre of the sphere simultaneously strike an anvil at the end of their cylinder, sending a shock wave into the plasma. This burst of energy causes the plasma to compress and the deuterium-tritium fuel to ignite – producing, in theory, a tremendous burst of energy. 2)Tri Alpha (Paul Allen) using a reactor tech called called a “field-reversed configuration.” This type of device has more in common with Iter's tokamak-style reactor than General Fusion’s machine: it uses magnetic confinement and heat, rather than compression, to induce fusion, and it produces energy continuously, instead of in bursts. The advantage of a field-reversed configuration over a tokamak is that its engineering is much simpler. But from a physics perspective, the technology is far less well-developed. Conclusion is that both these companies are following long shot techs and it's challenging for them to raise capital since they'll take a long long time to give VC an exit, if ever. But if they work, then their investors hit jackpot.
- dang 10y agoWe've banned your account because we asked you not to post these. If you don't want it to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com.
- nxzero 10y agoWhy was this user ban? ________ EDIT: So, much for any calms of transparency[1]: (1) It's not clear why the user was ban. (2) Mod requested to deal with the issue offline. -- To be clear, this is NOT about debating the matter, it's about transparency and helping the community understand how things work. To be more clear, I've posted and seen others post TLDR and unclear if these shouldn't be posted on HN, or if there's something else going on. [1] When dang took over HN, the topic of transparency was covered, and though I may have misunderstood, more transparency was promised.
- dang 10y agoI explained why: "because we asked you not to post these". Brevity and transparency are not incompatible. When we ban someone and they email us, we simply ask them to promise not to do it again, and if they do, we unban them and welcome them back. Edit: abhi3 emailed and is now unbanned.
- justifier 10y agoas pointed out in the comment dang has requested he stop posting 'these' types of comments and if you showdead:yes you'll see 'these' types are 'TLDR' summaries a previous example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11537818 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11537818 also, dang even gave him an out if just requests it.. all seems very reasonable
- reitanqild 10y ago> When dang took over HN then topic of transparency was covered, and though I may have misunderstood, more transparency was promised. IIRC before dang people used to be shadowbanned. Again IIRC pointing out that someone has been banned now is a huge step towards transparency.
- fhrjfjc 10y agoMaybe it's just me, but I wish our society's future wellbeing wasn't placed at the whim of a handful of oligarchs.
- sberder 10y agoI 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.
- nxzero 10y agoHas 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.
- darawk 10y agoWhile I think that is true in general, and we will eventually saturate whatever fusion may provide - it will take a good while to do that. And in the mean time, we'll have a near perfect source of energy, that's cheap, plentiful and clean. Fusion is truly a pretty revolutionary thing if we can make it work.
- paulydavis 10y agoWhy is it cheaper than now? I mean coal is really cheap. You still have to pay people to operate these reactors. It is not like we have a scarcity of coal. I get clean I do not get cheap. Yes the fuel will be water but these things must have large overhead to maintain and run and build.
- icehawk219 10y agoFor things like coal and oil the cost is in acquisition, transportation, and storage of the fuel and the infrastructure that goes with that. You can't just go out and find coal lying around. You need to hallow out or level an entire mountain to get it. That requires a lot of people and equipment. And you need to transport large quantities of it around to where it's needed which requires special infrastructure dedicated to that task. The same goes for oil/natural gas.
- benevol 10y agoCapitalism is always about control. At the center of our society/culture is the human being's desire to dominate others. We use capitalism/money as a means to achieve that. Money/power always has a systemic property to create monopolies and reinforce them. That being said, technological advance usually benefits more than just the owners of capital. But the balance usually is tipped in their favor. In short: There's enough food for everybody on this planet, but we currently prefer to have more of it for ourselves and let others starve. If we don't like this system, then we need to move away from capitalism (as we know it) and put different values than domination/power/money at the center of our culture.
- bpodgursky 10y agoIt'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.
- hendzen 10y agoCheck out lobste.rs.
- fhrjfjc 10y agoHave you considered that there may be many qualified people who want to work on innovative projects like fusion power, but are prevented from doing so because the necessary capital is locked up with the hyper-wealthy? Only by having inside connections and luck can you hope to acquire capital for your projects, but even then you work for years only to concentrate even more capital in the hands of your lender, making the problem worse. This is a legitimate problem holding back innovation.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y agoI 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.
- bpodgursky 10y agoVery few of those are actually top-level comments. I usually only comment as a reply when a top-level comment makes me angry.
- YZF 10y agoI 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...
- welterde 10y agoFusion is easy. Lots of fusion (but not quite city leveling kind) is hard. As far as I can tell most of the difficulty arises in the plasma physics part instead of the actual fusion bit (the latter being fairly well understood now for quite a long time now). That's where 90% of the work has to go get fusion power and also the reason the early estimates for when fusion power would be available were so optimistic. It wasn't clear back then how difficult and unforgiving plasmas can be (and making the plasma extremely hot, applying strong magnetic fields and running high currents through it doesn't make it easier to work with - quite the opposite).
- YZF 10y agoSure. I believe there's some fusion happening around us all the time. It's a statistical event. But to get a useful amount of fusion is different. Yes, plasma is very difficult. You need to get it hot enough and in the right shape and in the right position at the right time. But even when you do that there are still many hard problems to solve. One of them is irradiation embrittlement. Capturing all the energy efficiently and converting it efficiently into power is also difficult (steam turbines I guess). The efficiencies of the input side are also a problem (the energy intake of creating the plasma, managing it, "fusing" it). All these inefficiencies eat into your energy budget making it harder to get significantly more energy out than you put in... Anyways, I'm not a physicist, but every little problem I hear about related to this process seems to be of monumental proportions and there are many of those...
- hokuriku 10y agoI'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.
- iaw 10y agoSerious 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.
- paulsutter 10y agoAneutronic 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 10y agoI thought it was also proven that it couldn't be energy positive.
- iLoch 10y agoI 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.