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The author's assertion that this project will be impacted by the Japanese disaster shows that she doesn't understand the technology. Fukushima incident wil

The author's assertion that this project will be impacted by the Japanese disaster shows that she doesn't understand the technology. Fukushima incident will impact any project (at least in PR sense) that has "nuclear" in it, no matter how different process is. Germany's actions (hey massive cunami caused problems in some reactors in Japan, let's shut down ours!) is a good example that rationality has little to do in such cases :(

jeffreymcmanus 16y ago
It must be a truism of hacker news that public relations appears to be the biggest impediment to what is likely the biggest scientific breakthrough of the next 10-20 years. The first team to reach net power out (and there are many teams around the world working on different paths to this at the moment) will have no trouble explaining it to people in a way that will differentiate it from dirty nuclear power. Getting to net power out will be, by far, the more challenging part.
- hugh3 16y ago
  Actually, I think the National Ignition Facility will have no trouble in getting net power out, very soon. The real challenge is getting a significant amount of power out at some non-insane cost, since the NIF in its present form costs billions of dollars and can only do one fusion shot every couple of weeks. The NIF's plan for a commercial inertial confinement fusion reactor looks like the NIF, except that shots occur ten times a second. At the moment they have no way of firing the lasers that often, or of extracting all the energy thus produced.
  - Retric 16y ago
    Is NIF getting close to breakeven in terms of laser input energy, energy generating the lasers, or thermal energy to power a turbine to power the lasers? Because, useful power generation requires ~30-100x breakeven in terms of laser energy and last time I checked they where several orders of magnitude from that standpoint.
- billswift 16y ago
  Fusion has been "the biggest scientific breakthrough of the next 10-20 years" since I before I was a teenager 35 years ago. Like AI, it has become an "I'll believe it when I see it" technology.
  - jeffreymcmanus 16y ago
    The difference between what's going on with fusion today and what was going on when you were a teenager is pretty huge, actually. When you were a teenager there wasn't a gigantic international consortium (ITER) dedicated to making fusion happen in our lifetimes. The US government effort was limited to fringe experimentation; in contract, today, the NIF and France's Laser Megajoule are both aiming for net power out in the next few years. And, perhaps more importantly, unlike in the 80s there are now private startups looking to commercialize fusion processes -- that wasn't even being seriously considered 10 years ago. Just because there isn't net power out today doesn't mean that an enormous amount of progress hasn't been made.
    - Confusion 16y ago
      This touches upon another important point: fusion has never received the amount of funding it should have received in order to make true on their claim. It would have been available right now if only countries would have freed up reasonable amounts of funds. The JET project in the UK was extremely succesful and it is completely incomprehensible that it wasn't followed up upon swiftly and strongly. I believe lobbying by those invested in traditional sources of energy has everything to do with that.
lispm 16y ago
Germany did not shut down the reactors because of Tsunamis. There are none in Germany. Germany did shut down the more problematic reactors for a security check. The question is whether the reactors survive a scenario, where multiple systems are failing (like in Japan). This can be caused by operator errors, terrorist attacks, earth quakes (yes, germany has earth quakes), etc. Compare that with the US, which has several reactors which are much more dangerous than most German ones, has some in very dangerous earth quake zones, etc. The US did mostly nothing. I know which government I prefer.
- pyre 16y ago
  There's an alternative way of looking at it: * The US government did nothing because they've already considered and inspected for these contingencies, knowing that the reactors are in earthquake zones. * The German government is displaying their incompetence because it took a huge disaster somewhere else for them to decide to look at these issues, rather than being more proactive about it. You're assuming that because the US did nothing that it's reactors are vulnerable and the government must be turning a blind eye to it. You've provided no evidence to back this claim.
  - lispm 16y ago
    Several US reactors share a lot of the design of the Japanese and are built and designed by GE. That Lone would make me nervous. The accident in Japan provided knew knowledge: it showed multiple scenarios which were thought to be extremely unlikely or which were not thought about at all.
    - pyre 16y ago
      So Germany was inspecting that their nuclear power plants could stand up to a 9.0 earthquake followed by a tsunami?

jeffreymcmanus 16y ago

It must be a truism of hacker news that public relations appears to be the biggest impediment to what is likely the biggest scientific breakthrough of the next 10-20 years. The first team to reach net power out (and there are many teams around the world working on different paths to this at the moment) will have no trouble explaining it to people in a way that will differentiate it from dirty nuclear power. Getting to net power out will be, by far, the more challenging part.

hugh3 16y ago
Actually, I think the National Ignition Facility will have no trouble in getting net power out, very soon. The real challenge is getting a significant amount of power out at some non-insane cost, since the NIF in its present form costs billions of dollars and can only do one fusion shot every couple of weeks. The NIF's plan for a commercial inertial confinement fusion reactor looks like the NIF, except that shots occur ten times a second. At the moment they have no way of firing the lasers that often, or of extracting all the energy thus produced.
- Retric 16y ago
  Is NIF getting close to breakeven in terms of laser input energy, energy generating the lasers, or thermal energy to power a turbine to power the lasers? Because, useful power generation requires ~30-100x breakeven in terms of laser energy and last time I checked they where several orders of magnitude from that standpoint.
billswift 16y ago
Fusion has been "the biggest scientific breakthrough of the next 10-20 years" since I before I was a teenager 35 years ago. Like AI, it has become an "I'll believe it when I see it" technology.
- jeffreymcmanus 16y ago
  The difference between what's going on with fusion today and what was going on when you were a teenager is pretty huge, actually. When you were a teenager there wasn't a gigantic international consortium (ITER) dedicated to making fusion happen in our lifetimes. The US government effort was limited to fringe experimentation; in contract, today, the NIF and France's Laser Megajoule are both aiming for net power out in the next few years. And, perhaps more importantly, unlike in the 80s there are now private startups looking to commercialize fusion processes -- that wasn't even being seriously considered 10 years ago. Just because there isn't net power out today doesn't mean that an enormous amount of progress hasn't been made.
  - Confusion 16y ago
    This touches upon another important point: fusion has never received the amount of funding it should have received in order to make true on their claim. It would have been available right now if only countries would have freed up reasonable amounts of funds. The JET project in the UK was extremely succesful and it is completely incomprehensible that it wasn't followed up upon swiftly and strongly. I believe lobbying by those invested in traditional sources of energy has everything to do with that.

lispm 16y ago

Germany did not shut down the reactors because of Tsunamis. There are none in Germany. Germany did shut down the more problematic reactors for a security check. The question is whether the reactors survive a scenario, where multiple systems are failing (like in Japan). This can be caused by operator errors, terrorist attacks, earth quakes (yes, germany has earth quakes), etc. Compare that with the US, which has several reactors which are much more dangerous than most German ones, has some in very dangerous earth quake zones, etc. The US did mostly nothing. I know which government I prefer.

pyre 16y ago
There's an alternative way of looking at it: * The US government did nothing because they've already considered and inspected for these contingencies, knowing that the reactors are in earthquake zones. * The German government is displaying their incompetence because it took a huge disaster somewhere else for them to decide to look at these issues, rather than being more proactive about it. You're assuming that because the US did nothing that it's reactors are vulnerable and the government must be turning a blind eye to it. You've provided no evidence to back this claim.
- lispm 16y ago
  Several US reactors share a lot of the design of the Japanese and are built and designed by GE. That Lone would make me nervous. The accident in Japan provided knew knowledge: it showed multiple scenarios which were thought to be extremely unlikely or which were not thought about at all.
  - pyre 16y ago
    So Germany was inspecting that their nuclear power plants could stand up to a 9.0 earthquake followed by a tsunami?