5 ms·

> Uh, no. Even a horrifically expensive to build but working fusion reactor would have been released in that time frame. The military in the US is secretive, bu

> Uh, no. Even a horrifically expensive to build but working fusion reactor would have been released in that time frame. The military in the US is secretive, but not that much... The Glomar Explorer is an example of the US Military doing exactly that, they made a boat specifically for recovering a sunk sub and told every one it was a research vessel they kept it a secret for over 20 years. There are countless other examples of this like the black bird. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_Explorer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_Explorer

alexhutcheson 7y ago
> they kept it a secret for over 20 years. They were only able to keep the project secret for less than 5 years - the operation leaked and details were published in the LA Times and other newspapers in Feb. 1975, which forced them to cancel plans for a second attempt to recover the rest of K-129.
eesmith 7y ago
You omitted the "... but there's a much bigger one from your whole country having large amounts of cheap, clean power" There's no corresponding big advantage to the US for having the Glomar Explorer be public. BTW, the CIA has paramilitary forces, but is not formally part of the military/armed forces.
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  >You omitted the "... but there's a much bigger one from your whole country having large amounts of cheap, clean power" Not to go tinfoil hat here but... if we had a relatively small fusion reactor, lobbyists would do all they could to make sure they never became operational for connection to the grid. - Fossil fuel lobbyists - Power company lobbyists - Fossil fuel worker union lobbyists - Ship, train and semi industry/union lobbyists (that transport the insane amounts of coal and oil-related products) You'd also possibly see the unions that cover anyone working with power lines as you'd be able to set up a bunch of independent grids and stop servicing/repairing, and start removing, high transmission lines that blanket the country which also could get various metal worker unions lobbying against it as production of these massive amounts of cable (if done domestically) would drastically be reduced as why bother crossing vast stretches of land when you can just drop a reactor in a rural area and just serve the region. When/if we develop fusion reactors that are economically viable, you will remove thousands to hundreds of thousands of jobs in a relatively short period in the United States alone. Voters aren't too found of losing their jobs and the lobbyists of their industries have lots of money to burn fighting such changes (this is why you'll never see the IRS thrown out in exchange for something like a federal income tax only, it would cut 75,000 federal jobs over night and their union + the voting power of them and ever tax preparer, CPA etc would fight hard to prevent it). --- AS far as secrets, there are very few people that know where the United States keeps any of it's various strategic stock piles. Those remain extremely closely guarded secrets where a very small number of people know at any given time where that stuff is stored/warehoused, how much, what variety etc. That's not conspiracy, that's just cold hard fact, and that's stuff like vaccines/medicine/fuel etc. --- A hypothetical stretgic use: The strategic value of keeping such a reactor/technology secret. If you can power your known underground bases/alleged DUMBs (deep underground military base), without needing any energy input from the surface you'd want to keep that very hush hush because it gives you far longer backup power capabilities than generators and fossil fuels stored onsite could provide. Having such a technology also allows you to actually create DUMBs. You can make an electrically powdered tunnel boring machine, go to something like a known cave or mine site, point it in a direction and go for mile after mile if you felt so inclined. If you're doing this in an area with known caverns/an old mine you never even need to bring what you bore out up to the surface, you just fill caverns/mine shafts. Such tunnels and bases have been alleged to exist since the cold war days and they may or may not exist, but if you had a compact fusion reactor technology that was classified from the start, the longer you keep it a secret the longer you have to exploit it for such hypothetical situations as this. --- Edit: Previous HN comment about him/his work https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19229721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19229721 Looks like he's previously worked on systems for 'Hybrid Aerospace-Undersea Craft' for something to operate both underwater and as an aircraft a compact fusion reactor would probably be what took it from being a novelty (like the various goofy boat-cars and car-planes) to an effective vehicle. That's an interesting idea on its own. You could travel fast distances, presumably quite rapidly, through the air and drop below radar, slow down to enter the water and submerge, then proceed to whatever. Or you could act as a sub, if you're detected launch out of the water and accelerate away in the seconds of confusion you create when you suddenly go from a water target to an air target. Similarly, it could simply be an awesome power source for a rather large seaplane. Rapid troop/cargo transport, even better if you could submerge for travelling in deep water then pop up in coastal water and seaplane in the rest of the way. loses the rest of his afternoon to daydreaming about a compact fusion reactor.
  - solotronics 7y ago
    Unlocking new cheaper energy grows the economy more than anything else. Can you think of an example in the past where a new source of energy has caused a negative effect on productivity?
    - ryanmercer 7y ago
      Fair question. In hypothetical situations I tend to think more towards the darker consequences/outcomes that get pushed aside or forgotten for an article/story/daydream so here's how I see it: Increasing productivity means more resources are needed though. During previous expansions, this wasn't much of an issue however now it could be the genesis for a new world war so 'the powers that be' whether our known governments and militaries or some 'secret shadow government' both would likely be hesitant to unleash really cheap and bountiful energy. It would be great for powering our homes sure, but you'd suddenly get every major automotive manufacturer seriously looking at EVs because who wants to pay 2.85 a gallon of gas when the equivalent in electricity is ten cents? So great, EVs for everyone... but where do you get the precious metals and the lithium and other rare earths from when you suddenly increase the demand one or more orders of magnitude? Then electronics developers stop worrying about being as energy efficient as possible, so you start generating a ton more waste heat and you've got people being more liberal with their air con or heating at their homes which goes through refrigerants faster and goes through heating elements faster. And with cheaper energy people start driving more for road trips, even with EVs, you start to see more and more rubber going into the environment via the tires. And with that cheaper energy, fuel prices go down and more people start flying places and further disrupting resource allocation/logistics globally. And with that cheaper electricity, those autonomous EV delivery vehicles become the norm and you're always 30 minutes away from Uber eats or Amazon Prime Now and "oh man, I dropped my toothbrush in the toilet, well I'll order another and it should be here while I shower" and that's 20 miles more of rubber deposited onto the roads, another cardboard box, another insulated container because once you got out of the shower you decided you wanted some ice cream and placed a second order which is another 20 miles worth of rubber and an insulated container into your trash... Dirt cheap, clean, unlimited energy would be the greatest thing ever to happen to humanity and quite possibly the worst thing to ever happen to humanity as it would be a genesis for even greater amounts of disposable goods. The impact it would have on mining alone could be incredibly damaging to the planet. A lot of mining equipment is still fossil fuel powered which severely restricts how deep/far/etc you can go and at what concentrations mining a given location stops being worth it. When you effectively remove the energy costs, you can mine much lower concentrations and go much deeper and even mine far more remote (and pristine) areas because you could fly in a reactor in cargo containers and assemble it on site. I'm all for fusion, for space exploration alone it would be monumental. We could send probes to nearby stars and have return missions within a decade or two if you spend the bulk of the first half accelerating with ion propulsion, then flip and start reversing thrust, get some data in system, slingshot around the local star and start accelerating back... But I see a lot of potential bad that would come from affordable and scalable fusion (or magical zero point energy for the sake of argument) as we've become a "use my phone for 18 months and throw it away for a new one" and "let's fly to see the pandas/tigers/whales/elephants/penguins next week for our third international exotic animal trip this year" society. We're generally pretty poor stewards of our planet as a species and while unlimited clean energy would certainly get us off fossil fuels, it wouldn't stop the many other ways we harm our natural and man made environment.
- dangerface 7y ago
  > but there's a much bigger one from your whole country having large amounts of cheap, clean power Thorium reactor's are supposed to deliver more cleaner energy than uranium reactors but the technology was ditched because you cant fit a thorium reactor in a sub. When it comes to nuclear power the needs of the country have always been second place over giving the military an advantage, there is no reason to believe this has changed.
  - eesmith 7y ago
    The US isn't the only country with nuclear reactors. Some of them, like Sweden and Japan, have high technological capabilities, and existing nuclear reactors, and don't have a nuclearized miliary to influence policy.

alexhutcheson 7y ago

> they kept it a secret for over 20 years. They were only able to keep the project secret for less than 5 years - the operation leaked and details were published in the LA Times and other newspapers in Feb. 1975, which forced them to cancel plans for a second attempt to recover the rest of K-129.

eesmith 7y ago

You omitted the "... but there's a much bigger one from your whole country having large amounts of cheap, clean power" There's no corresponding big advantage to the US for having the Glomar Explorer be public. BTW, the CIA has paramilitary forces, but is not formally part of the military/armed forces.

ryanmercer 7y ago
>You omitted the "... but there's a much bigger one from your whole country having large amounts of cheap, clean power" Not to go tinfoil hat here but... if we had a relatively small fusion reactor, lobbyists would do all they could to make sure they never became operational for connection to the grid. - Fossil fuel lobbyists - Power company lobbyists - Fossil fuel worker union lobbyists - Ship, train and semi industry/union lobbyists (that transport the insane amounts of coal and oil-related products) You'd also possibly see the unions that cover anyone working with power lines as you'd be able to set up a bunch of independent grids and stop servicing/repairing, and start removing, high transmission lines that blanket the country which also could get various metal worker unions lobbying against it as production of these massive amounts of cable (if done domestically) would drastically be reduced as why bother crossing vast stretches of land when you can just drop a reactor in a rural area and just serve the region. When/if we develop fusion reactors that are economically viable, you will remove thousands to hundreds of thousands of jobs in a relatively short period in the United States alone. Voters aren't too found of losing their jobs and the lobbyists of their industries have lots of money to burn fighting such changes (this is why you'll never see the IRS thrown out in exchange for something like a federal income tax only, it would cut 75,000 federal jobs over night and their union + the voting power of them and ever tax preparer, CPA etc would fight hard to prevent it). --- AS far as secrets, there are very few people that know where the United States keeps any of it's various strategic stock piles. Those remain extremely closely guarded secrets where a very small number of people know at any given time where that stuff is stored/warehoused, how much, what variety etc. That's not conspiracy, that's just cold hard fact, and that's stuff like vaccines/medicine/fuel etc. --- A hypothetical stretgic use: The strategic value of keeping such a reactor/technology secret. If you can power your known underground bases/alleged DUMBs (deep underground military base), without needing any energy input from the surface you'd want to keep that very hush hush because it gives you far longer backup power capabilities than generators and fossil fuels stored onsite could provide. Having such a technology also allows you to actually create DUMBs. You can make an electrically powdered tunnel boring machine, go to something like a known cave or mine site, point it in a direction and go for mile after mile if you felt so inclined. If you're doing this in an area with known caverns/an old mine you never even need to bring what you bore out up to the surface, you just fill caverns/mine shafts. Such tunnels and bases have been alleged to exist since the cold war days and they may or may not exist, but if you had a compact fusion reactor technology that was classified from the start, the longer you keep it a secret the longer you have to exploit it for such hypothetical situations as this. --- Edit: Previous HN comment about him/his work https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19229721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19229721 Looks like he's previously worked on systems for 'Hybrid Aerospace-Undersea Craft' for something to operate both underwater and as an aircraft a compact fusion reactor would probably be what took it from being a novelty (like the various goofy boat-cars and car-planes) to an effective vehicle. That's an interesting idea on its own. You could travel fast distances, presumably quite rapidly, through the air and drop below radar, slow down to enter the water and submerge, then proceed to whatever. Or you could act as a sub, if you're detected launch out of the water and accelerate away in the seconds of confusion you create when you suddenly go from a water target to an air target. Similarly, it could simply be an awesome power source for a rather large seaplane. Rapid troop/cargo transport, even better if you could submerge for travelling in deep water then pop up in coastal water and seaplane in the rest of the way. loses the rest of his afternoon to daydreaming about a compact fusion reactor.
- solotronics 7y ago
  Unlocking new cheaper energy grows the economy more than anything else. Can you think of an example in the past where a new source of energy has caused a negative effect on productivity?
  - ryanmercer 7y ago
    Fair question. In hypothetical situations I tend to think more towards the darker consequences/outcomes that get pushed aside or forgotten for an article/story/daydream so here's how I see it: Increasing productivity means more resources are needed though. During previous expansions, this wasn't much of an issue however now it could be the genesis for a new world war so 'the powers that be' whether our known governments and militaries or some 'secret shadow government' both would likely be hesitant to unleash really cheap and bountiful energy. It would be great for powering our homes sure, but you'd suddenly get every major automotive manufacturer seriously looking at EVs because who wants to pay 2.85 a gallon of gas when the equivalent in electricity is ten cents? So great, EVs for everyone... but where do you get the precious metals and the lithium and other rare earths from when you suddenly increase the demand one or more orders of magnitude? Then electronics developers stop worrying about being as energy efficient as possible, so you start generating a ton more waste heat and you've got people being more liberal with their air con or heating at their homes which goes through refrigerants faster and goes through heating elements faster. And with cheaper energy people start driving more for road trips, even with EVs, you start to see more and more rubber going into the environment via the tires. And with that cheaper energy, fuel prices go down and more people start flying places and further disrupting resource allocation/logistics globally. And with that cheaper electricity, those autonomous EV delivery vehicles become the norm and you're always 30 minutes away from Uber eats or Amazon Prime Now and "oh man, I dropped my toothbrush in the toilet, well I'll order another and it should be here while I shower" and that's 20 miles more of rubber deposited onto the roads, another cardboard box, another insulated container because once you got out of the shower you decided you wanted some ice cream and placed a second order which is another 20 miles worth of rubber and an insulated container into your trash... Dirt cheap, clean, unlimited energy would be the greatest thing ever to happen to humanity and quite possibly the worst thing to ever happen to humanity as it would be a genesis for even greater amounts of disposable goods. The impact it would have on mining alone could be incredibly damaging to the planet. A lot of mining equipment is still fossil fuel powered which severely restricts how deep/far/etc you can go and at what concentrations mining a given location stops being worth it. When you effectively remove the energy costs, you can mine much lower concentrations and go much deeper and even mine far more remote (and pristine) areas because you could fly in a reactor in cargo containers and assemble it on site. I'm all for fusion, for space exploration alone it would be monumental. We could send probes to nearby stars and have return missions within a decade or two if you spend the bulk of the first half accelerating with ion propulsion, then flip and start reversing thrust, get some data in system, slingshot around the local star and start accelerating back... But I see a lot of potential bad that would come from affordable and scalable fusion (or magical zero point energy for the sake of argument) as we've become a "use my phone for 18 months and throw it away for a new one" and "let's fly to see the pandas/tigers/whales/elephants/penguins next week for our third international exotic animal trip this year" society. We're generally pretty poor stewards of our planet as a species and while unlimited clean energy would certainly get us off fossil fuels, it wouldn't stop the many other ways we harm our natural and man made environment.
dangerface 7y ago
> but there's a much bigger one from your whole country having large amounts of cheap, clean power Thorium reactor's are supposed to deliver more cleaner energy than uranium reactors but the technology was ditched because you cant fit a thorium reactor in a sub. When it comes to nuclear power the needs of the country have always been second place over giving the military an advantage, there is no reason to believe this has changed.
- eesmith 7y ago
  The US isn't the only country with nuclear reactors. Some of them, like Sweden and Japan, have high technological capabilities, and existing nuclear reactors, and don't have a nuclearized miliary to influence policy.