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From an outsider's perspective, it kind of seems like fusion research is picking up recently, especially in terms of the diversity of approaches by relatively c

From an outsider's perspective, it kind of seems like fusion research is picking up recently, especially in terms of the diversity of approaches by relatively credible teams. Before it seemed like the credible effort was the tokamak and everything else was the domain of crackpots. If so, this seems like a good thing to me, even if most of these approaches might be doomed to failure. Should have been happening years ago. I'm curious if that's just some kind of perception filter thing, though, or if not what's causing it.

phreeza 12y ago
Putting on my tinfoil hat for a moment here, something I picked up on a similar fusion story here on HN a while ago: there have recently been a lot of news stories that may be interpreted as being aimed at bringing down the oil price. Not sure if I buy it, but if it is the case, it seems to be working.
- XorNot 12y ago
  Fusion energy doesn't replace oil. It doesn't substantially reduce dependence on it - oil fired power plants are uncommon compared to the quantity of coal ones, and we have a lot of coal to go through (well, not so much I guess - Australia has 400 years worth, but that's what, 5-6 generations + blasting our country into an uninhabitable wasteland?) Fusion energy replaces coal powerplants, and probably fuel bunkers on container ships/air craft carriers. No concept is small enough or dense enough to replace oil, although cheap fusion energy would make all sorts of crazy synthetic hydrocarbon schemes viable.
  - phreeza 12y ago
    Yea I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense either, but then again the oil price isn't completely determined by rational arguments... FWIW, here is the original comment I was referring to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8459658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8459658
  - ChuckMcM 12y ago
    Actually it can replace oil. Making long chain hydrocarbons through a process like the Fischer-Tropsch one is fairly straight forward if you have the energy. You would still have a refinery but sitting on the ocean with your fusion power plant your refinery would never need to have an oil tanker offload, instead your fusion plant would be supplying the energy to pull CO2 out of the air, hydrogen and oxygen out of the water and converting them into what the base for what ever the refinery needed.
    - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
      We're also now at the point where there exist practical fully electric cars. They're currently too expensive for everyone to own one but that's not a physics problem and is likely to change.
    - dredmorbius 12y ago
      A technology I've only recently learned of, though the concept dates back 50 years. It was first pursued by Meyer Steinberg, a nuclear physicist working at Brookhaven National Labs. The US Navy's picked it up on the basis that they 1) have a great deal of nuclear experience and 2) consume large volumes of fossil fuel. Check my recent post history for more on the topic, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8665101 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8665101
      - ChuckMcM 12y ago
        That is an excellent summary. One of the more interesting developments here has been the development of zeolites for CO processing that you run through a concentrated solar facility for heat. (Zeolites suck up CO2 while cold, you ferry them to the focal point of the CSP, they outgas the CO2 which is collected, and get returned to the pile below.)
        dredmorbius 12y ago
        Thanks. The advantage of seawater extraction is that the carbon concentrations are ~140x those of the atmosphere by volume. Oh, and for those who are curious, freshwater doesn't have the same concentrations -- this really is a seawater method, not a "water-based" method. I'll look for information on the zeolite processes. Of all places, the West Virginia Coal Association has a wealth of information on carbon sequestration research. I suspect it's because the industry's counting on this for its future lease on life.
Tombone5 12y ago
Well, the strongest connection is probably to the recent DOE plan to spend $30 million on the more fringe fusion researchers. That certainly would provoke people doing that sort of thing to call attention to their research. What caused the DOE to spend the money in the first place I don't know. http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2014/sep/30/us-targets-novel-fusion-research http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2014/sep/30/us-targ...
ChuckMcM 12y ago
I'm guessing it is a bit of both. There are story 'waves' as a story in a publication gets a lot of attention other publications try to out similar stories to catch some of the wave. I believe fusion in particular has a particular cycle as there seems to be a tendency to use 'in 10 years this is going to ...' and every 10 years folks come back and say, "Ok, its been ten years and ?" only to be disappointed. That said, I read the papers on the UW design and the design seems a lot more credible than the Lockheed press release. The optimist in me believes that if you work at the problem long enough, eventually you will discover something of use. And of course once we do, well then a lot of intractable problems become tractable.

phreeza 12y ago

Putting on my tinfoil hat for a moment here, something I picked up on a similar fusion story here on HN a while ago: there have recently been a lot of news stories that may be interpreted as being aimed at bringing down the oil price. Not sure if I buy it, but if it is the case, it seems to be working.

XorNot 12y ago
Fusion energy doesn't replace oil. It doesn't substantially reduce dependence on it - oil fired power plants are uncommon compared to the quantity of coal ones, and we have a lot of coal to go through (well, not so much I guess - Australia has 400 years worth, but that's what, 5-6 generations + blasting our country into an uninhabitable wasteland?) Fusion energy replaces coal powerplants, and probably fuel bunkers on container ships/air craft carriers. No concept is small enough or dense enough to replace oil, although cheap fusion energy would make all sorts of crazy synthetic hydrocarbon schemes viable.
- phreeza 12y ago
  Yea I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense either, but then again the oil price isn't completely determined by rational arguments... FWIW, here is the original comment I was referring to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8459658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8459658
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  Actually it can replace oil. Making long chain hydrocarbons through a process like the Fischer-Tropsch one is fairly straight forward if you have the energy. You would still have a refinery but sitting on the ocean with your fusion power plant your refinery would never need to have an oil tanker offload, instead your fusion plant would be supplying the energy to pull CO2 out of the air, hydrogen and oxygen out of the water and converting them into what the base for what ever the refinery needed.
  - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
    We're also now at the point where there exist practical fully electric cars. They're currently too expensive for everyone to own one but that's not a physics problem and is likely to change.
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    A technology I've only recently learned of, though the concept dates back 50 years. It was first pursued by Meyer Steinberg, a nuclear physicist working at Brookhaven National Labs. The US Navy's picked it up on the basis that they 1) have a great deal of nuclear experience and 2) consume large volumes of fossil fuel. Check my recent post history for more on the topic, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8665101 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8665101
    - ChuckMcM 12y ago
      That is an excellent summary. One of the more interesting developments here has been the development of zeolites for CO processing that you run through a concentrated solar facility for heat. (Zeolites suck up CO2 while cold, you ferry them to the focal point of the CSP, they outgas the CO2 which is collected, and get returned to the pile below.)
      - dredmorbius 12y ago
        Thanks. The advantage of seawater extraction is that the carbon concentrations are ~140x those of the atmosphere by volume. Oh, and for those who are curious, freshwater doesn't have the same concentrations -- this really is a seawater method, not a "water-based" method. I'll look for information on the zeolite processes. Of all places, the West Virginia Coal Association has a wealth of information on carbon sequestration research. I suspect it's because the industry's counting on this for its future lease on life.

Tombone5 12y ago

Well, the strongest connection is probably to the recent DOE plan to spend $30 million on the more fringe fusion researchers. That certainly would provoke people doing that sort of thing to call attention to their research. What caused the DOE to spend the money in the first place I don't know. http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2014/sep/30/us-targets-novel-fusion-research http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2014/sep/30/us-targ...

ChuckMcM 12y ago

I'm guessing it is a bit of both. There are story 'waves' as a story in a publication gets a lot of attention other publications try to out similar stories to catch some of the wave. I believe fusion in particular has a particular cycle as there seems to be a tendency to use 'in 10 years this is going to ...' and every 10 years folks come back and say, "Ok, its been ten years and ?" only to be disappointed. That said, I read the papers on the UW design and the design seems a lot more credible than the Lockheed press release. The optimist in me believes that if you work at the problem long enough, eventually you will discover something of use. And of course once we do, well then a lot of intractable problems become tractable.