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The concern I have here is that "unlimited free energy" is too good to be true. A bit of healthy skepticism is important in my opinion, and when a promise like

The concern I have here is that "unlimited free energy" is too good to be true. A bit of healthy skepticism is important in my opinion, and when a promise like that is made based only on theory and a belief that it can be done with enough research it raises alarms for me. The 10 year, $6bn project is now 14 years old and already spent $20bn. Where did they get so far? Well they not apparently are confident that it was a 29 year, $60bn project all along. They simply can't know that and it seems likely that we would get further down the road with little to show for all the effort and expense. By all means people should continue to research fusion, but that should be done on a scale more reasonable than asking for a blank check to build a full reactor when we don't even know how it needs to work. In the meantime, we could make real strides in reducing our total energy use if we really did care about that metric.

lyu07282 2y ago
[flagged]
- _heimdall 2y ago
  Your comment is very condescending, not sure if you meant it that way or not. I wouldn't begin to claim that I understand all the intricacies of the theoretical physics behind fission research, but I do understand plenty to hold an opinion. I'm well aware of the argument hat they must go full scale to do the research, I simply disagree with that approach and don't consider it worth the cost and tradeoffs. They are asking society to write a blank check to fund research that they claim is well understood and provide estimates of cost and time that they believe to be accurate. Neither have panned out, and that's okay. At the end of the day we don't know if a fission reactor is even viable. What we do know is that the project has run well over budget and over time with little to show for it but more questions and unknowns. It seems reasonable to expect that pattern to continue, and to have concerns that those who provided such poor estimates in the past are still providing poor estimates today. Arguing that scale is necessary to do the work at all is all well and good, but that's a huge ask and a big risk. When it doesn't pan out we have to be able to pull the plug without and endless treadmill of promises bolstered by threats that the work can only be done at full scale.
- dang 2y ago
  Yikes, please don't cross into personal attack on HN. We have to ban accounts that do that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
lazide 2y ago
It’s actually a bit worse - we don’t actually know it’s doable in theory - when you dig into all the steps involved. We only know it’s doable in the sense that fusion itself has a large net energy release. We don’t know if it’s even theoretically possible (net energy release wise) in the conditions we can potentially create on earth outside of a nuclear explosion.

lyu07282 2y ago

[flagged]

_heimdall 2y ago
Your comment is very condescending, not sure if you meant it that way or not. I wouldn't begin to claim that I understand all the intricacies of the theoretical physics behind fission research, but I do understand plenty to hold an opinion. I'm well aware of the argument hat they must go full scale to do the research, I simply disagree with that approach and don't consider it worth the cost and tradeoffs. They are asking society to write a blank check to fund research that they claim is well understood and provide estimates of cost and time that they believe to be accurate. Neither have panned out, and that's okay. At the end of the day we don't know if a fission reactor is even viable. What we do know is that the project has run well over budget and over time with little to show for it but more questions and unknowns. It seems reasonable to expect that pattern to continue, and to have concerns that those who provided such poor estimates in the past are still providing poor estimates today. Arguing that scale is necessary to do the work at all is all well and good, but that's a huge ask and a big risk. When it doesn't pan out we have to be able to pull the plug without and endless treadmill of promises bolstered by threats that the work can only be done at full scale.
dang 2y ago
Yikes, please don't cross into personal attack on HN. We have to ban accounts that do that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

lazide 2y ago

It’s actually a bit worse - we don’t actually know it’s doable in theory - when you dig into all the steps involved. We only know it’s doable in the sense that fusion itself has a large net energy release. We don’t know if it’s even theoretically possible (net energy release wise) in the conditions we can potentially create on earth outside of a nuclear explosion.