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If China gets fusion energy first they will obtain unimaginable power, hell the same applies to the US. While stopping climate change would be great I also fear

If China gets fusion energy first they will obtain unimaginable power, hell the same applies to the US. While stopping climate change would be great I also fear for what we might put in its place.

stjohnswarts 7y ago
you fear for what we might put in place of climate change? I'm not sure what you're getting at with this??
- faissaloo 7y ago
  What I'm getting at is giving a tyranical, abusive, genocidal country world domination vs suffering the effects of pollution and ecological collapse isn't a choice I want to make
  - trasz 7y ago
    But we’re not talking about the US here.
    - faissaloo 7y ago
      It doesn't matter which tyranical regime it is, it's still bad news.
      - dang 7y ago
        We've banned this account for repeatedly posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments and ignoring our requests to stop. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        faissaloo 7y ago
        We live in a society.
onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
You don't get unimaginable power from a fusion plant. Fusion plants don't generate unlimited energy. You'd need to build several of them to even power your country for "free". Energy is usually 20% of GDP -- probably higher in China -- so you'd get a ~20% GDP growth. It would take time to build these plants, and they're unlikely to have a 100% ROI, meaning that they'd still come at some cost. Yes, it would be huge. Probably a one-time 20% boost in GDP. Maybe a percentage point continually for having cleaner air. Maybe a little more if they could hypothetically commercialize this for other countries.
- faissaloo 7y ago
  It doesn't matter whether it's unlimited or not if it's practically free. Do you know how many manufacturing processes could become practical and how much research could be done given inexpensive energy?
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    Fusion energy is not going to be "practically free". It would almost certainly be more expensive than other alternatives we already have. The notion that fusion is a wonderful wet dream technology is a meme that just won't die, even though it has no basis in anything real.
    - de_watcher 7y ago
      Less FUD more numbers maybe to dispel the myth?
      - pfdietz 7y ago
        The claims that it's going to be wonderful don't get subject to this sort of scrutiny, but whatever... There are multiple reasons to think fusion can't win. The simplest is that fusion is a thermal power technology. Heat is produced, which heats a working fluid, which drives turbines, which makes power. ALL thermal power technologies are struggling now, particularly "external combustion" ones that transmit the heat into the working fluid through heat exchangers or boilers. Nuclear fission, coal, geothermal, solar thermal: all of them are having trouble competing. Only combustion turbines are doing ok (internal combustion, avoiding expensive heat transfer stages). Even if the fusion heat source were free, a fusion power plant would not be competitive. And the expensive non-nuclear part is mature technology in which not a lot of improvement can be expected. But beyond that, there's good reason to think fusion would be more expensive than the other thermal power sources. Compare the volumetric thermal power density of ITER vs. a PWR primary reactor vessel: ITER is worse by about a factor of 400 (0.05 MW/m^3 vs. 20 MW/m^3). Smaller concepts, like ARC or Lockheed's are better (about 0.5 MW/m^3) but still far inferior to fission. A fusion reactor would be far larger, and far more complex, than a fission reactor. Fuel is not a large part of the cost of fission power, btw. This failure to be competitive is not an accident. It follows from the square-cube law: a fusion reactor must transmit its output through the surface of the reactor vessel, while fission and coal can transfer heat to the working fluid through the surface of thin fuel rods or boiler tubes. This generic handicap, which is independent of anything to do with plasma physics, has been known for nearly four decades, if not longer. There are other showstoppers (materials, reliability/maintainability, tritium breeding) but those two are enough. The only hope fusion has, and it's a thin one, is advanced fuels that would allow direct conversion, skipping the thermal stage entirely. But all advanced fuel concepts will still produce a large fraction of energy in photons, which will strike surfaces and be thermalized. And they either depend on 3He, which is science fictional in its sources (moon mining?!), or H-11B, which is likely impossibly difficult at the plasma physics level (and 2000x less reactive than DT, best case.) And even advanced "aneutronic" fuels will leave the reactor too radioactive for hands-on maintenance, due to unavoidable side reactions. Given how large and complex a fusion reactor would be, that is also a showstopper.
hcurtiss 7y ago
Not sure why you're being downvoted. The most likely use of a new abundant energy source will be force projection.
- Barrin92 7y ago
  having nuclear fusion available will be good in the long term because it's a clean source of energy, it won't magically give China superpowers. We already have very simple means to give anyone access to abundant energy, ordinary coal and gas plants work just fine in that regard.
- 4ntonius8lock 7y ago
  Because it hasn't historically worked that way. This isn't a first to market huge advantage. Developing the plants is slow (many years) and the lag between super powers in cracking tech is generally only a couple of years (see space programs/nuclear energy programs) It's playing into divisive tribal thinking, when this is literally objectively good for everyone on the planet.
  - faissaloo 7y ago
    This is a nation that is currently conducting a second holocaust, I don't think there's anything 'tribal' about not wanting them to have power.
    - dang 7y ago
      We've asked you repeatedly to stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News. If you can't or won't stop, we're going to have to ban you. (No, that isn't a political position, it's a site guidelines position. Please follow them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.)
      - Avamander 7y ago
        If genocide is unsubstantiated, can he just bring up the organ harvesting?
rsynnott 7y ago
If anyone demonstrates a 'working' (that is, economical) tokamak, that will swiftly prompt about ten other national and international projects to catch up via better funding. It's not like this is a magic ring pulled from a volcano by an elf or something; it's extremely copy-able.

If China gets fusion energy first they will obtain unimaginable power, hell the same applies to the US. While stopping climate change would be great I also fear for what we might put in its place.

stjohnswarts 7y ago

you fear for what we might put in place of climate change? I'm not sure what you're getting at with this??

faissaloo 7y ago
What I'm getting at is giving a tyranical, abusive, genocidal country world domination vs suffering the effects of pollution and ecological collapse isn't a choice I want to make
- trasz 7y ago
  But we’re not talking about the US here.
  - faissaloo 7y ago
    It doesn't matter which tyranical regime it is, it's still bad news.
    - dang 7y ago
      We've banned this account for repeatedly posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments and ignoring our requests to stop. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - faissaloo 7y ago
        We live in a society.

onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago

You don't get unimaginable power from a fusion plant. Fusion plants don't generate unlimited energy. You'd need to build several of them to even power your country for "free". Energy is usually 20% of GDP -- probably higher in China -- so you'd get a ~20% GDP growth. It would take time to build these plants, and they're unlikely to have a 100% ROI, meaning that they'd still come at some cost. Yes, it would be huge. Probably a one-time 20% boost in GDP. Maybe a percentage point continually for having cleaner air. Maybe a little more if they could hypothetically commercialize this for other countries.

faissaloo 7y ago
It doesn't matter whether it's unlimited or not if it's practically free. Do you know how many manufacturing processes could become practical and how much research could be done given inexpensive energy?
- pfdietz 7y ago
  Fusion energy is not going to be "practically free". It would almost certainly be more expensive than other alternatives we already have. The notion that fusion is a wonderful wet dream technology is a meme that just won't die, even though it has no basis in anything real.
  - de_watcher 7y ago
    Less FUD more numbers maybe to dispel the myth?
    - pfdietz 7y ago
      The claims that it's going to be wonderful don't get subject to this sort of scrutiny, but whatever... There are multiple reasons to think fusion can't win. The simplest is that fusion is a thermal power technology. Heat is produced, which heats a working fluid, which drives turbines, which makes power. ALL thermal power technologies are struggling now, particularly "external combustion" ones that transmit the heat into the working fluid through heat exchangers or boilers. Nuclear fission, coal, geothermal, solar thermal: all of them are having trouble competing. Only combustion turbines are doing ok (internal combustion, avoiding expensive heat transfer stages). Even if the fusion heat source were free, a fusion power plant would not be competitive. And the expensive non-nuclear part is mature technology in which not a lot of improvement can be expected. But beyond that, there's good reason to think fusion would be more expensive than the other thermal power sources. Compare the volumetric thermal power density of ITER vs. a PWR primary reactor vessel: ITER is worse by about a factor of 400 (0.05 MW/m^3 vs. 20 MW/m^3). Smaller concepts, like ARC or Lockheed's are better (about 0.5 MW/m^3) but still far inferior to fission. A fusion reactor would be far larger, and far more complex, than a fission reactor. Fuel is not a large part of the cost of fission power, btw. This failure to be competitive is not an accident. It follows from the square-cube law: a fusion reactor must transmit its output through the surface of the reactor vessel, while fission and coal can transfer heat to the working fluid through the surface of thin fuel rods or boiler tubes. This generic handicap, which is independent of anything to do with plasma physics, has been known for nearly four decades, if not longer. There are other showstoppers (materials, reliability/maintainability, tritium breeding) but those two are enough. The only hope fusion has, and it's a thin one, is advanced fuels that would allow direct conversion, skipping the thermal stage entirely. But all advanced fuel concepts will still produce a large fraction of energy in photons, which will strike surfaces and be thermalized. And they either depend on 3He, which is science fictional in its sources (moon mining?!), or H-11B, which is likely impossibly difficult at the plasma physics level (and 2000x less reactive than DT, best case.) And even advanced "aneutronic" fuels will leave the reactor too radioactive for hands-on maintenance, due to unavoidable side reactions. Given how large and complex a fusion reactor would be, that is also a showstopper.

hcurtiss 7y ago

Not sure why you're being downvoted. The most likely use of a new abundant energy source will be force projection.

Barrin92 7y ago
having nuclear fusion available will be good in the long term because it's a clean source of energy, it won't magically give China superpowers. We already have very simple means to give anyone access to abundant energy, ordinary coal and gas plants work just fine in that regard.
4ntonius8lock 7y ago
Because it hasn't historically worked that way. This isn't a first to market huge advantage. Developing the plants is slow (many years) and the lag between super powers in cracking tech is generally only a couple of years (see space programs/nuclear energy programs) It's playing into divisive tribal thinking, when this is literally objectively good for everyone on the planet.
- faissaloo 7y ago
  This is a nation that is currently conducting a second holocaust, I don't think there's anything 'tribal' about not wanting them to have power.
  - dang 7y ago
    We've asked you repeatedly to stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News. If you can't or won't stop, we're going to have to ban you. (No, that isn't a political position, it's a site guidelines position. Please follow them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.)
    - Avamander 7y ago
      If genocide is unsubstantiated, can he just bring up the organ harvesting?

rsynnott 7y ago

If anyone demonstrates a 'working' (that is, economical) tokamak, that will swiftly prompt about ten other national and international projects to catch up via better funding. It's not like this is a magic ring pulled from a volcano by an elf or something; it's extremely copy-able.