theoatmealarsonist t1_j05oxwu wrote on December 14, 2022 at 6:28 AM

Reply to comment by Robo-Connery in National Ignition Facility (NIF) announces net positive energy fusion experiment by Robo-Connery

I appreciate you taking the time to add context to the announcement today!

Given that ICF and tokamak MCF reactors are still decades out from commercial viability, what are your thoughts on private companies like Helion and General Fusion? It sounds like their approaches are matured enough that they could be generating electricity in the relatively short term. I'm guessing that the theoretical net energy gain for their approaches is a lot lower, but appears commercially viable and ready to use in the relatively short term. For example, General Fusion is essentially making a pulsed fusion driven piston engine, and Helion doesn't actually need ignition as they're inducing a current from the magnetic field fluctuations in a pulsed fusion reaction. There are others out there as well, I've just seen them highlighted recently and was curious how they stacked up against conventional research directions.

Robo-Connery OP t1_j06qymk wrote on December 14, 2022 at 2:01 PM

Some of them are blowing hot air for investment reasons, some of them are just flat out scams. The remainder are simply doing very simple jobs and acting like they are reinventing the universe.

I've seen some propositions that rely on things like magnetic bottles for confinement rather than tokamak designs and they just will not ever work, we moved on from those designs 60 years ago for good reason.

More players in the game means more progress too so I'm not bothered by their presence - as long as it doesn't reduce funding for the mainstream experiments by virtue of having to necessarily criticise them in order to justify their own work.

Mobile-Ground-2226 t1_j088e1l wrote on December 14, 2022 at 7:52 PM

But if more players are in the arena doing things that are just scams or marketing (the tech bros "out-innovating" the problem) doesn't it discredit the entire field for a while after the inevitable flop and cause a reactionary effect to funding? I saw this happen in biofuels with the algae and cellulosic fuels, it only recently started to recover, and probably mostly thanks to high oil prices and CA LCFS incentives.

Robo-Connery OP t1_j08d4r0 wrote on December 14, 2022 at 8:21 PM

Maybe. Fusion is sometimes seen as a bit of a joke already because while experts are very realistic amongst each other at some point in the dissemination of results the headlines become inaccurate and exaggeratory.

Mobile-Ground-2226 t1_j08njys wrote on December 14, 2022 at 9:26 PM

Yeah, but a lot of the investment crowd is discovering it for the first time. I did a summer internship at D3-D back in the '90's and people were making the 25 years away joke back then, so I'm glad there are people like you who will chat with us laypersons about ground truth.