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>they and their team have built a generator that produces electricity. Helion has a clear path to net electricity by 2024, Explanation required. Does the first

>they and their team have built a generator that produces electricity. Helion has a clear path to net electricity by 2024, Explanation required. Does the first sentence have any bearing on fusion, and how does it relate the the second? I mean, I have a generator that produces electricity (it doesn't use fusion). What is the point of having one that uses fusion, but doesn't have net output?

qeternity 5y ago
> but doesn't have net output? Well, this is what the investment is for.
- creeble 5y ago
  Then what is the meaning of "have built a generator that produces electricity" other than meaningless hype? Edit: fix quote
  - qeternity 5y ago
    Because building a reactor that actually works is part of the process. The next step is making it efficient. It's like any other business: you invest to establish it, and then you make it profitable.
    - OnlineGladiator 5y ago
      Investing in a prototype and believing it will turn into a successful product, when that prototype can't even demonstrate the fundamental technology itself, just seems like wishful thinking. And I see no evidence to suggest they have a path to viability other than "trust me bro." I see a bunch of patents and hand-waving that seems intentionally complicated. I spent much of my career helping companies raise money based on demos (I'm talking billions of dollars) and this just seems like more bullshit to me. And all of those demos I worked on were smoke and mirrors, despite building quasi-functional prototypes you could interact with. I'd love to be wrong but they aren't make an effort to convince me otherwise, they just want to raise a shitload of money.
      - kneel 5y ago
        Sam is probably one of the most well connected VCs around. I'm willing to bet his due diligence is decent.
      - throwawaygh 5y ago
        It's called Research. It's much riskier than traditional investments and you need to know the technology deeply and have high trust in the team in order to effectively make such risky investments. But the payoffs of net-positive fusion energy are nearly incalculable. Step change in humanity type of thing. > I spent much of my career helping companies raise money based on demos And I've made a bunch of money sitting on my ass watching a few stocks go to the moon. Knowing how to invest in webshit or getting lucky picking stocks can make you rich much easier than R&D can make you rich. Sam isn't investing because this is the best risk-adjusted return for his portfolio. He's investing because, if it does pay out, it also very literally changes the course of humanity in the process. > And all of those demos I worked on were smoke and mirrors, despite building quasi-functional prototypes you could interact with. The investment isn't being made on the basis of an existing reactor. There are tons of existing fusion reactors. The investment is being made on the basis of the team's plan to get to net positive energy. * I'd love to be wrong but they aren't make an effort to convince me otherwise* Luckily there are other folks in this world who are willing to make risky investments in important ideas. (BTW, no one's getting rich on fusion research until fusion works... every year the fusion community leaks a bunch of folks to finance and tech because even entry level positions pay 3x and offer more stability.)
        OnlineGladiator 5y ago
        > Knowing how to invest in webshit or getting lucky picking stocks can make you rich much easier than R&D can make you rich. It seems like you missed my point, because I make all my money investing nowadays too after failing forever trying to turn R&D into viable products. It's easy to raise money on bullshit and almost impossible to actually make it work. In fact, it likely is actually impossible, we just don't know yet. > Sam isn't investing because this is the best risk-adjusted return for his portfolio. He's investing because, if it does pay out, it also very literally changes the course of humanity in the process. I've met Sam and I don't think he cares about making the world a better place. I think he just likes money and attention. You seem awfully idealistic. I'm terribly cynical. We're not going to agree and that's fine.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      My understanding is that most of the fusion net balance problems are proportional to scale. Machinery to initiate fusion must be at least this big, consume at least this much power, and cannot be scaled down arbitrarily. However, if one were to scale it up in size, the same doesn't hold. Output power scales faster than increased input requirements. Consequently, most current fusion work is (a) find a design that theoretically has those scaling characteristics, (b) build a prototype to investigate / prove any unknowns (net negative power, but not ITER/NIF expensive), & (c) if able to prove (b) then scale up into a net positive example.
  - moralestapia 5y ago
    It produces less energy than what it spends producing it.
    - creeble 5y ago
      What is the point of that? Edit: I'm not trying to be (too) pedantic. But the brief investment announcement went to the trouble of saying "they built a generator that produces electricity" and (effectively) "but no net electricity". Isn't thathat generator a nothing-generator then? Why even mention it?
      - qeternity 5y ago
        Proof of concept.
        creeble 5y ago
        What concept has been proven? Have they achieved fusion? Or the concept of generating electricity from heat, proven long ago?
        apendleton 5y ago
        Neither: their proposed design doesn't generate electricity from heat, so what they're talking about here is proving out the alternative mechanism of electricity generation that they propose to use. That's a valuable to demonstrate because it's novel, and necessary to eventually being net-positive, so showing that's possible shows that their eventual plan could work.
        creeble 5y ago
        Yes, I figured that out long after my original post. It's just that Sam's post didn't mention any (semi-)novel method for generating electricity from fusion, so the actual words - "they and their team have built a generator that produces electricity" - appear as either hype or non-information outside that context.
  - jccooper 5y ago
    You don't think there's some benefit to working subscale hardware?
JacobDotVI 5y ago
My understanding is that fusion power theoretically has net positive output, but practically no one has achieved this yet. If they are able to achieve such it would be a scientific and commercial breakthrough.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  We know that it does, all you have to do is look up at that big ball of fusion in the sky. However, can we humans harness it? We don't know for sure but it sure looks like it. In our lifetimes? who knows, I certainly hope all these new ideas spark some fusion though.
halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
I have a clear path to the bathroom, doesn't mean I'm gonna make it there. Pure hype.
throwawaygh 5y ago
Have you watched The Imitation Game? This is exactly the same question that the antagonist had about Turing's computer. "The human computers can do 10 things a day and your machine does 0 things a day". Well, yeah, until you get it working it's useless. But once it works it does all the things. Getting a fusion reactor to work is trivial; at least one 12 year old has done it [1]. Getting net energy out of the reactor is much more difficult. The point of the funding is to figure out how to increase the gain factor. Once that's figured out, the rest (manufacturing and deploying reactors) is comparatively trivial. [1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a34312754/12-year-old-builds-working-fusion-reactor-world-record/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a34312754/12...
gorkish 5y ago
Their "generator" in this case appears to be the reactor which generates helium-3 fuel by fusing deuterium fuel. Their eventual endgame is a first stage D->3He (dont know the exact process) fusion generator followed by the second stage D+3He->He+p (or 3He+3He->He+p+p) fusion reactor. They claim that even the precursor process of fusing Deuterium into He3 is net-electricity-positive overall, which is a claim that kind of works on a napkin as long as there is a physicist nearby engaging in some wild hand waving. It will be quite amazing if true.
rkangel 5y ago
By analogy, imagine an aeroplane in a wind tunnel. It's not the real aeroplane - it's a scale model. It has no engine and it's not moving, the wind is moving over it. On one level the experiment hasn't achieved anything - that model can never do anything useful in the real world. But we are making measurements on aerodynamic performance - on another level we have learned that if you can make an aircraft that shape and give it an engine that moves it at the same speed as the airflow, then the aeroplane will generate enough lift to keep it in the air. That's a really important result that gets us significantly closer to a useful aeroplane. If separately someone has demonstrated an engine with suitable weight and power characteristics to match, then we can say "now we just need to build the aircraft and it should fly". Helion involves a unique method of extracting energy from the fusion process (direct extraction from the magnetic field). That's new and therefore uncertain. Producing a reactor that performs something fusion-like and generates electricity in that way is a great result even if the fusion process isn't generating as much power as it should and is fundamentally driven by electricity. Like the plane above, if they have separately demonstrated a fusion process that is powerful enough, "all" they need to do now is put the two things together.
- creeble 5y ago
  I guess I'll forever be apologizing for that post, but (as I mentioned in another, after digging into their technology) there was no mention of the novelty of their approach to generation in Sam's announcement. So "they have built a generator that produces electricity" has little meaning outside of the context of most commonly-known methods of generating electricity from fusion, i.e., heat. I think if I were a billionaire investing in fusion technologies, I think I'd be sure to mention my investment's special sauce when I drop a few sticks on it.
  - rkangel 5y ago
    It was a reasonable question based on the linked article. Fusion announcements (like new battery chemistries) are almost worthless on their own - you have to read more about the company, what stage they're at, what the tech actually is etc.

qeternity 5y ago

> but doesn't have net output? Well, this is what the investment is for.

creeble 5y ago
Then what is the meaning of "have built a generator that produces electricity" other than meaningless hype? Edit: fix quote
- qeternity 5y ago
  Because building a reactor that actually works is part of the process. The next step is making it efficient. It's like any other business: you invest to establish it, and then you make it profitable.
  - OnlineGladiator 5y ago
    Investing in a prototype and believing it will turn into a successful product, when that prototype can't even demonstrate the fundamental technology itself, just seems like wishful thinking. And I see no evidence to suggest they have a path to viability other than "trust me bro." I see a bunch of patents and hand-waving that seems intentionally complicated. I spent much of my career helping companies raise money based on demos (I'm talking billions of dollars) and this just seems like more bullshit to me. And all of those demos I worked on were smoke and mirrors, despite building quasi-functional prototypes you could interact with. I'd love to be wrong but they aren't make an effort to convince me otherwise, they just want to raise a shitload of money.
    - kneel 5y ago
      Sam is probably one of the most well connected VCs around. I'm willing to bet his due diligence is decent.
    - throwawaygh 5y ago
      It's called Research. It's much riskier than traditional investments and you need to know the technology deeply and have high trust in the team in order to effectively make such risky investments. But the payoffs of net-positive fusion energy are nearly incalculable. Step change in humanity type of thing. > I spent much of my career helping companies raise money based on demos And I've made a bunch of money sitting on my ass watching a few stocks go to the moon. Knowing how to invest in webshit or getting lucky picking stocks can make you rich much easier than R&D can make you rich. Sam isn't investing because this is the best risk-adjusted return for his portfolio. He's investing because, if it does pay out, it also very literally changes the course of humanity in the process. > And all of those demos I worked on were smoke and mirrors, despite building quasi-functional prototypes you could interact with. The investment isn't being made on the basis of an existing reactor. There are tons of existing fusion reactors. The investment is being made on the basis of the team's plan to get to net positive energy. * I'd love to be wrong but they aren't make an effort to convince me otherwise* Luckily there are other folks in this world who are willing to make risky investments in important ideas. (BTW, no one's getting rich on fusion research until fusion works... every year the fusion community leaks a bunch of folks to finance and tech because even entry level positions pay 3x and offer more stability.)
      - OnlineGladiator 5y ago
        > Knowing how to invest in webshit or getting lucky picking stocks can make you rich much easier than R&D can make you rich. It seems like you missed my point, because I make all my money investing nowadays too after failing forever trying to turn R&D into viable products. It's easy to raise money on bullshit and almost impossible to actually make it work. In fact, it likely is actually impossible, we just don't know yet. > Sam isn't investing because this is the best risk-adjusted return for his portfolio. He's investing because, if it does pay out, it also very literally changes the course of humanity in the process. I've met Sam and I don't think he cares about making the world a better place. I think he just likes money and attention. You seem awfully idealistic. I'm terribly cynical. We're not going to agree and that's fine.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    My understanding is that most of the fusion net balance problems are proportional to scale. Machinery to initiate fusion must be at least this big, consume at least this much power, and cannot be scaled down arbitrarily. However, if one were to scale it up in size, the same doesn't hold. Output power scales faster than increased input requirements. Consequently, most current fusion work is (a) find a design that theoretically has those scaling characteristics, (b) build a prototype to investigate / prove any unknowns (net negative power, but not ITER/NIF expensive), & (c) if able to prove (b) then scale up into a net positive example.
- moralestapia 5y ago
  It produces less energy than what it spends producing it.
  - creeble 5y ago
    What is the point of that? Edit: I'm not trying to be (too) pedantic. But the brief investment announcement went to the trouble of saying "they built a generator that produces electricity" and (effectively) "but no net electricity". Isn't thathat generator a nothing-generator then? Why even mention it?
    - qeternity 5y ago
      Proof of concept.
      - creeble 5y ago
        What concept has been proven? Have they achieved fusion? Or the concept of generating electricity from heat, proven long ago?
        apendleton 5y ago
        Neither: their proposed design doesn't generate electricity from heat, so what they're talking about here is proving out the alternative mechanism of electricity generation that they propose to use. That's a valuable to demonstrate because it's novel, and necessary to eventually being net-positive, so showing that's possible shows that their eventual plan could work.
        creeble 5y ago
        Yes, I figured that out long after my original post. It's just that Sam's post didn't mention any (semi-)novel method for generating electricity from fusion, so the actual words - "they and their team have built a generator that produces electricity" - appear as either hype or non-information outside that context.
- jccooper 5y ago
  You don't think there's some benefit to working subscale hardware?

JacobDotVI 5y ago

My understanding is that fusion power theoretically has net positive output, but practically no one has achieved this yet. If they are able to achieve such it would be a scientific and commercial breakthrough.

stjohnswarts 5y ago
We know that it does, all you have to do is look up at that big ball of fusion in the sky. However, can we humans harness it? We don't know for sure but it sure looks like it. In our lifetimes? who knows, I certainly hope all these new ideas spark some fusion though.

halfmatthalfcat 5y ago

I have a clear path to the bathroom, doesn't mean I'm gonna make it there. Pure hype.

throwawaygh 5y ago

Have you watched The Imitation Game? This is exactly the same question that the antagonist had about Turing's computer. "The human computers can do 10 things a day and your machine does 0 things a day". Well, yeah, until you get it working it's useless. But once it works it does all the things. Getting a fusion reactor to work is trivial; at least one 12 year old has done it [1]. Getting net energy out of the reactor is much more difficult. The point of the funding is to figure out how to increase the gain factor. Once that's figured out, the rest (manufacturing and deploying reactors) is comparatively trivial. [1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a34312754/12-year-old-builds-working-fusion-reactor-world-record/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a34312754/12...

gorkish 5y ago

Their "generator" in this case appears to be the reactor which generates helium-3 fuel by fusing deuterium fuel. Their eventual endgame is a first stage D->3He (dont know the exact process) fusion generator followed by the second stage D+3He->He+p (or 3He+3He->He+p+p) fusion reactor. They claim that even the precursor process of fusing Deuterium into He3 is net-electricity-positive overall, which is a claim that kind of works on a napkin as long as there is a physicist nearby engaging in some wild hand waving. It will be quite amazing if true.

rkangel 5y ago

By analogy, imagine an aeroplane in a wind tunnel. It's not the real aeroplane - it's a scale model. It has no engine and it's not moving, the wind is moving over it. On one level the experiment hasn't achieved anything - that model can never do anything useful in the real world. But we are making measurements on aerodynamic performance - on another level we have learned that if you can make an aircraft that shape and give it an engine that moves it at the same speed as the airflow, then the aeroplane will generate enough lift to keep it in the air. That's a really important result that gets us significantly closer to a useful aeroplane. If separately someone has demonstrated an engine with suitable weight and power characteristics to match, then we can say "now we just need to build the aircraft and it should fly". Helion involves a unique method of extracting energy from the fusion process (direct extraction from the magnetic field). That's new and therefore uncertain. Producing a reactor that performs something fusion-like and generates electricity in that way is a great result even if the fusion process isn't generating as much power as it should and is fundamentally driven by electricity. Like the plane above, if they have separately demonstrated a fusion process that is powerful enough, "all" they need to do now is put the two things together.

creeble 5y ago
I guess I'll forever be apologizing for that post, but (as I mentioned in another, after digging into their technology) there was no mention of the novelty of their approach to generation in Sam's announcement. So "they have built a generator that produces electricity" has little meaning outside of the context of most commonly-known methods of generating electricity from fusion, i.e., heat. I think if I were a billionaire investing in fusion technologies, I think I'd be sure to mention my investment's special sauce when I drop a few sticks on it.
- rkangel 5y ago
  It was a reasonable question based on the linked article. Fusion announcements (like new battery chemistries) are almost worthless on their own - you have to read more about the company, what stage they're at, what the tech actually is etc.