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I think Nuclear Fusion is the single most exciting up-and-coming technology. I can't believe we're not throwing a hundred billion dollars at it. Make fusion, n
by Jormundir 13y ago
I think Nuclear Fusion is the single most exciting up-and-coming technology. I can't believe we're not throwing a hundred billion dollars at it.
Make fusion, not war.
- angersock 13y agoRight, but what's its viral coefficient? How can we get it as a mobile app?
- beambot 13y agoObligatory Nikola Tesla pitching VCs video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zngK13FMgXM&noredirect=1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zngK13FMgXM&noredirect=1
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- pyre 13y agoI'm torn. Should we focus on gamifying it or making it web-scale?
- 1qaz2wsx3edc 13y agoBetter yet let's get one of those growth hackers on it.
- marknutter 13y agohashtag nextgenpower!
- khalidmbajwa 13y agoLet's A/B Test that !
- foobarian 13y agoDo you want to disrupt the power grid? Fusion.ly is hiring!
- samstave 13y ago>F.co
- samstave 13y agoClearly the synergistic benefits of leveraging this technology to cohesively move Humanity into a new paradigm cannot be oversubscribed! If only we capture 1% of the social graph we can make freemium Fusion the next killer energy product!
- kcbanner 13y agono
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- cheeseprocedure 13y agoI giggled at this, but a serious question for those in the know: is computer simulation a significant factor in the development of fusion experiments, and can it be distributed (a la SETI@Home, Folding@Home, et al)?
- Shivetya 13y agoToo bad shovel ready money wasn't spent on more long lasting impact projects like this. Where has all that money gone from the drawn down of the wars? Where is the investments going in alternative energy? Well that last is easy, groups who contribute politically, hence solar and wind. They receive far too much in ways of support whereas hard science projects like this with incredible payoffs are pushed off because they don't payback in political contributions. There are a myriad of ways to finance such an ambitious project through clean energy taxes but unfortunately they suffer the changing whims and needs of politicians. Yeah certain industries would go by the way side with this type of power available but many of them have big money invested in energy creation and distribution many would simply shift some columns in their spreadsheets and still balance out. Considering the deficits the US runs, just in a day or two of deficit spending is more than what this facility budgets for this research.
- chc 13y agoIt seems to me that the more plausible explanation is something like "Solar and wind power are proven to work, whereas fusion research is still trying to find something that even looks like it might work." Even after this "milestone," fusion still requires more energy from us than it gives back. Basically, the funding is going toward practical technologies, in the sense that you can actually put them into practice today and reap rewards.
- aeturnum 13y agoExactly. If one were to give a hundred billion to fusion research, how much faster would we get results? Would we be funding needs that are critical to help the science into its next phase, or just be funding the N next-best ideas that previously were set aside? For a community that has such high praise for bootstrapping businesses, there's a surprising love of throwing money at unproven scientific research avenues. We're in this for the long haul, if we get fusion in twice the time for half the money, we'll still have fusion.
- Jormundir 13y agoExcellent points. I certainly know that with much more funding, there could be much more efficient research, though I wonder where the limit is. How many more world-class physicists are there to put on this problem? Are the other theories really "next-best" ideas, or are they simply unexplored avenues, or perhaps more appealing with recent technology advances, but we've already committed to the current paths.
- devx 13y ago> Soon after, the $3.5bn facility shifted focus, cutting the amount of time spent on fusion versus nuclear weapons research - which was part of the lab's original mission. That was so disappointing to read. Don't we have enough nuclear weapons to blow up the planet 10x over already? Why would that still be the focus instead of inventing new sources of virtually unlimited energy??
- icegreentea 13y agoNIF's nuclear weapons research was in support of maintaining the current arsenal of nuclear weapons. Most notably, it helps solve the question of how to ensure current stockpiles are reliable without actually detonating a nuke (since that's a huge no-no). It also kept a generation of nuclear physicists and engineers in employment, and also providing a method by which to test future weapons designs. So really, the answer is, it doesn't matter how many nukes we have right now, NIF was created (in part) to ensure that the capability to blow up the world could be maintained. As depressing as it is, it's pretty much how it goes with nearly all defense technology spin offs. Why the hell did we spend all that time working on rockets that purposefully crashed back onto the Earth (on top of people!) instead of doing something like getting communications satellites up, or getting to the moon.
- foobarian 13y agoWhen thinking about nukes, always remember, the bigger and scarier they are, the less likely to be used, and the less likely are we to engage in land wars where we gut each other with bayonets.
- waps 13y agoWithout weapons research 1) we never would have had nuclear power in the first place. (or it would have taken decades more) 2) It would even have taken a lot longer to develop oil energy and widespread cars (allied research on oil) 3) We wouldn't know about co2 separation (since the nazi state was cut-off -mostly- from oil, they researched liquefaction and nuclear power) Nobody ever gives cruel losers credit, I guess. Heh. But the nazis certainly did a lot of useful research.
- Raticide 13y agoIt has the word "nuclear" in it, so the crazies will hate it no matter what it is.
- hetman 13y agoJust take the word "nuclear" out, like they did with Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging. No one will ever suspect a thing ;)
- lostlogin 13y agoJust laughed at that - I just scanned a patient who was concerned about the radiation dose from the MR scanner in front if me.
- drakeandrews 13y agoFunctional Fusion Reacters! Strategic Functional Warheads! Functional Containment Disasters[1]! This is fun. [1] This is tongue in cheek.
- eru 13y agoThat's why we do Nuclear Programming.