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Do they even have the design of an actually working fusion reactor? This seems like a crucial detail that is suspiciously ommitted. "but said it remains on tra
by captain_coffee 1y ago
Do they even have the design of an actually working fusion reactor? This seems like a crucial detail that is suspiciously ommitted.
"but said it remains on track to deliver power by 2028" - so casually written! I HIGHLY doubt this.
- AIPedant 1y agoNo, of course they don't. This is Sam Altman's fusion company, backed by Microsoft in 2023 with a signed power purchase agreement: either Altman has some serious dirt on Satya Nadella, or (more likely!) Satya Nadella is a gullible idiot who thought "Sam Altman is the Boy Genius Who Invented AI, so he can solve fusion too!" (Remember this is same same Satya Nadella who offered Altman an unspecified CEO-level position after he got fired... while publicly admitting he didn't know why Altman was fired! If I was a MSFT investor I would be pretty upset about this.) Presumably 2025 MSFT is more sober-minded about Altman. I wonder if they're gonna try to wiggle their way out of the PPA. Otherwise I am truly baffled.
- trhway 1y ago>Presumably 2025 MSFT is more sober-minded about Altman. If nothing else, that, after all the good they had done to him, should do it: "OpenAi v. Microsoft: Altman ready to sue for unfair competition ... OpenAI has put a potentially devastating weapon on the table: accusing Microsoft of anti-competitive practices and raising the attention of the Federal Trade Commission. It would be a low blow... " https://en.ilsole24ore.com/art/openai-v-microsoft-altman-ready-unfair-competition-complaint-AHiksSIB?refresh_ce=1 https://en.ilsole24ore.com/art/openai-v-microsoft-altman-rea...
- hinkley 1y agoUgh. Didn’t realize this was Altman. That’s disappointing. Seemed like there was a certain amount of magic thinking about neutron damage but a bit less than fission typically does. Guess we’ll see.
- SilverElfin 1y agoIt is not exactly Altman’s company. It was founded in 2013 by David Kirtley, John Slough, Chris Pihl, and George Votroubek. These three won the ARPA-E competition around then. Altman funded the company more recently and is on the board. But he isn’t a founder or executive there.
- HarHarVeryFunny 1y agoAltman's a major investor, but not the founder.
- paddw 1y agoPresumably, if it's just a per-agreement to purchase power, there's no downside in the likely case the project implodes.
- AIPedant 1y agoThe problem is that the agreement does not seem to specify that the electricity has to come from fusion![1] This is actually common in renewable PPAs - if the specific project doesn't come online then the provider has to find an alternative. But those are usually done with established providers which have > 0MW overall capacity. Helion does not. If the PPA is fixed amount vs fixed price, Microsoft might end up on the hook for inflated wholesale prices instead of cheap fusion. FWIW I agree with the author of that Data Center Dynamics post, it's quite likely that MSFT and Helion are essentially in cahoots by stoking investors with vaporware. But it also seems like Altman might have sold Nadella 50MW of magic beans. [1] https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/opinions/microsoft-and-helion-have-fused-hype-and-greenwash/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/opinions/microsoft-and... This is second-hand, the agreement is not public.
- xorcist 1y agoInvestors gets ruined on PPAs all the time. With renewables, there's usually some sort of wind turbine or solar park attached, so after declaring bankrupcy the new owners can settle out of court and continue production. Here there's realistically no way to continue electricity production so the assets will likely be chopped up and sold, if possible. Nobody owns anyone anything and Microsoft doesn't have to pay a dime. They won't get their power of course, but there's no downside for them. These types articles where a PPA contract is confused with an investment is really common, mostly for nuclear and renewables, but that doesn't make them any more true. Microsoft hasn't invested anything, likely because they know this is (pardon the pun) hot air.
- dehrmann 1y ago> either Altman... Another option is this was to sweeten the pot during OpenAI negotiations.
- cornholio 1y agoI'm not aware of Helion publishing any peer reviewed data claiming a physics breakeven (the point where the total energy generated by the reactor exceeds the external energy fed in to maintain the reaction going); let alone an engineering breakeven (the point where the fission generates about an order of magnitude more energy, to allow for the energy conversion losses, cooling and fuel breeding etc. so as to actually output any useful amount of electricity); let alone an economic breakeven, where the reactor generates sufficient useful energy that its market price can allow the capital and operating costs of the reactor and associated infrastructure to be recovered in a certain number of decades. If fusion had all three today, it would still e a though sell; fission has them and is still failing economically.
- staplung 1y agoI don't disagree with any of what you say but if Helion's approach works (and that's a huge if) it would generate electricity directly, without need for a steam turbine or any of the associated plumbing. My understanding is that a big part of the cost for fission is the turbine etc.
- hinkley 1y agoAnd danger. Turbines are more powerful at high temps, and now you have hot liquids near your reactor. Or you use molten salt as a middleman so the potential steam explosions are a little farther from the reactor.
- captain_coffee 1y agoAnd how would you "generate electricity directly", specifically? Let's talk physics and engineering, not vague statements. How would that energy generated from nuclear fusion be transformed into electricity "directly"? By which process / series of processes?
- cyberax 1y ago> And how would you "generate electricity directly", specifically? Using a particle accelerator (decelerator?) in reverse. I'm an investor in Tri-Alpha Energy, and they have tested a direct converter with the claimed 90+% efficiency.
- fcpguru 1y ago[flagged]
- salynchnew 1y agoWow. A lot to unpack here. "Propose new alloys or composites" is certainly quite a phrase, given the context. Has an LLM ever generated any complex CAD design like this that has been built & worked?
- captain_coffee 1y agoNot sure if that reply is intentional trolling or schizophrenia to be honest.
- fcpguru 1y agowas just watching this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUIn-ZLdtkk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUIn-ZLdtkk what are the odds?
- Alive-in-2025 1y agoI know some friends who are total believers in llms solving all problems. I keep pointing out the issues you are raising. They just want to believe in magic. They also believe in this WA fusion company, even though it has problems as raised here, never demonstrated a working system really. I see similar behaviors in people that believe tesla has almost cracked self-driving, just trust them because it will start working "real soon now", and also optimus robots from tesla will take over (but there's no brain for the robot, not even a demo, all the demos were remote controlled but they don't care!).
- ben_w 1y agoMy experience using them to make OpenSCAD code is marginally better than you may expect from @simonw's pellican-on-a-bike challenge, but only marginally.
- xorcist 1y agoIf only someone told me proposing new allows is the bottleneck to fusion engineering! I could have been rich!
- Animats 1y agoThey've been through a few generations of test machines. They have something called "Polaris". It was supposed to be finished around the end of 2024.[1] Their own site still talks of it as being under construction. Discussion on Reddit.[2] They previously built something called "Trenta".[3] That generates two balls of plasma and fires them at each other. There's no fusion or fusion fuel. It's a test rig for plasma generation and manipulation. That was running two years ago. "Polaris" is a scale-up of Trenta, with something to fuse, and with energy recovery. It's very unclear how far that project has progressed. If they were getting energy out, that would be big news. Helion is vague about how that's progressing. [1] https://www.helionenergy.com/polaris/ https://www.helionenergy.com/polaris/ [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/fusion/comments/1hlojqu/any_news_on_the_polaris_reactor_from_helion_dec/ https://www.reddit.com/r/fusion/comments/1hlojqu/any_news_on... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bDXXWQxK38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bDXXWQxK38
- WJW 1y ago> If they were getting energy out, that would be big news. That's rather underselling it. If they have a proven, working, commercially viable design for a fusion power plant, they could probably just write a paper about how it works and collect their Nobel prize for physics next year.
- creato 1y agoI'm ambivalent about whether their design can work but if they were confident in their design and have the necessary funding, a paper and a nobel prize are going to be very far down their priority list.
- matthewdgreen 1y agoA Nobel prize is about the best marketing you could ask for. You can raise money in an environment where everyone (quite reasonably) doubts you have goods, or you can raise money in an environment where you’ve earned a Nobel prize for actually inventing the thing you claim you have. If you actually have the thing (at the point where you’re ready to deliver power at scale by 2028) this should not be a huge lift.
- jjjggggggg 1y agoMaybe they’ll go the Theranos route. Don’t mind the hydroelectric dam behind the “fusion reactor.”
- throwawaymaths 1y agoyou could speculate that about 90% of hard tech startups at some point in their early stage, even the ones that made it.
- johnnienaked 1y ago[flagged]
- 31carmichael 1y agoThe photos indicate that they are already pouring the foundations, so don't worry about these pesky details.