Posted on 11/17/2023 11:35:43 AM PST by Red Badger
Earlier you posted that they were inspired by their
‘iterative process”.
CFS is building SPARC and ARC in parallel. Definitely no iterative ...
“So people with deep pockets have been convinced that they will get a return on capital in a reasonable amount of time.”
Bill Gates, the major funder, has vowed to give away all his monet!
He hasn’t posted in about 18 months.
“I believe these guys.”
The fusioneers don’t really even have to fake anything. Unlike Theranos, which built (terribly flawed) hardware that was used to analyze patient samples, not a single one of the nuclear fusion “startups” has produced a prototype machine that they propose to base their business upon. Nobody has demonstrated that they’re even close to building a fusion device that produces—rather than consumes—energy. Luckily for them, assurances of honorable intentions have been sufficient for investors. These companies are able to trade on promises, not products. Yet despite the short history of purely commercial fusion, those promises already have a history of being broken. In 2016, Tokamak Energy promised energy production in five years. General Fusion: prototype plant within a decade—and that was in 2009. Most recently, the press went gaga in November over Helion Energy’s raising $2.2 billion in venture capital to build a working reactor by 2024. Almost none of that coverage mentioned Helion Energy’s business plan of building “a useful reactor in the next three years” way back in 2015, when it had only raised some $10 million. It’s the exact same promise, resold six years later at 200 times the price.
https://slate.com/technology/2021/12/nuclear-fusion-climate-change-theranos.html
” Until disproven, I believe these guys.”
Disproven
———————August 2015-————
David indicated a breakeven fusion machine would need about $35 million in funding (2015-2016) and the target is to develop it in 2016.
If all proceeds on schedule then a Helion Energy machine that that proves commercial energy gain would be a 50 Megawatt system built in 2019. $200 million will be needed for the commercial pilot plant. The plan would be to start building commercial systems by 2022.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2015/08/helion-energy-raised-109-million-and.html
Altman ouated from OpenAI, joins Microsoft
Strange bedfellows. Peter Thiel was first outside investor in Facebook. Peter put $1700 in his Roth IRA. into the company that became PayPal. Now worth $5 billion which becomes tax free!
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I think that —based on its investors —that helion has a best chance of performing. What brought helion to my attention was Sam Altman. He’s one of their main investors. He has headed up OpenAI the company that does Chatgpt. When that was released last year—I was on it within the first week of its release. After a week or so of using it—I emailed all my relations in tech related businesses and told them that chatgpt is as significant as the andresson’s netscape in 1994 which made the worldwide web available to everyone. Or similarly, back in the 1980’s the graphic user interface and the desktop computer brought computing to everyone’s desktop.
Sam Altman says that the primary constraints to civilization are the cost of energy and the cost of intelligence. You wanna advance civilization? or say pay for everyone’s old pensions and social security? kill the cost of power and intelligence.
that’s the name of the game. that’s the solution to the global debt crises. make the debt a smaller fraction of gdp by vastly increasing gdp by vastly increasing productivity—. by killing the cost of energy and intelligence.
without AI that would not happen. with AI that and more will happen.
on the intelligence side —it looks like sam altman’s company achieved artificial general intelligence —internally —a couple months ago. That caused his company, Open AI to blow up here in the last week.
My relations have all reported that AI has vastly accelerated the rate at which they get things done. The same will be the case for scientists doing research. AI is enabling them to vastly accelerate the trial and error process for get to net positive energy for fusion.
I gather that you’re likely an old light water reactor guy. If admiral rickover didn’t approve it—then it ain’t right. And there is decades of failure of every other design to prove his point. Back in 2000 Kirk Sorenson—started looking into LFTR reactors because Light water reactors would be too dangerous in space. Now there are half dozen or so more 4th generation fission reactors in development—do you know if AI is being used to accelerate their development? If so, do you hear reports back that AI is enabling scientists to accelerate the pace of their work?
I don’t think any of the fourth generation fission reactors or the various smr’s will achieve the kinds of price cuts that fusion promises but you never know.
Helion 2015: Fusion plant in 3 years. Send us your money.
Helion 2023: Fusion plant in 4 years. Send us your money.
Helion 2015: Fusion plant in 3 years. Send us your money.
Helion 2023: Fusion plant in 4 years. Send us your money.
.......
Its not government money.
Its money from people with green eyeshades and engineers who are better than you.
As the greatest poet of the 21st century said.
There are things we know we know.
There are things we know we don’t know.
And there are things we don’t know we don’t know.
Your trade is all about the first of the three above. But that doesn’t get us where we want to go. The current us nuclear industry is in about the same position as the US space launch industry before elon musk came along.
Helion 2023: Fusion plant in 4 5 years. Send us your money.
“Its money from people with green eyeshades and engineers who are better than you.”
Sam Altman doesn’t say when, he says IF on Helion fusion! He is also partnered with a fission reactor startup.
Me: What is today?
ChatGPT: I cannot provide the current date.
You might be right. It might be all a pipe dream. But if you have put your money where your mouth is—I trust that means you have not relied on the government to pay for your old age. Why?
If you did not rely on the government to support you in old age—that would mean you have thought through the implications of what you are saying—at least for yourself.
“I believe these guys”
Helion Energy
“The Helion Fusion Engine will enable profitable fusion energy in 2019,” from NBF 7/18/2014.
“If our physics holds, we hope to reach that goal (net energy gain) in the next three years,” D. Kirtley, CEO of Helion, told The Wall Street Journal in 2014.
“Helion will demonstrate net energy gain within 24 months, and 50-MWe pilot plant by 2019,” from NBF 8/18/2015.
“Helion will attain net energy output within a couple of years and commercial power in 6 years,” Science News 1/27/2016.
“Helion plans to reach breakeven energy generation in less than three years, nearly ten times faster than ITER,” from NBF 10/1/2018.
“You might be right.”
Even Helion say “If” on their website!
-—————Helion-————————
If successful, Polaris will be the first fusion machine to demonstrate electricity production from fusion.
“But if you have put your money where your mouth is—I trust that means you have not relied on the government to pay for your old age. Why?
If you did not rely on the government to support you in old age—that would mean you have thought through the implications of what you are saying—at least for yourself.
Huh?
Modern Fusion Fantasies
During the last decade a host of fusion energy “startups” have captured the attention of the technology press and blogosphere. These startups promise to develop practical fusion electric power generators in 5 to 15 years, and incidentally will achieve ITER’s planned performance in a fraction of the time at 1% of the cost. With few exceptions, journalists have accepted these claims without criticism and propagated them with enthusiasm.
But these projects are nothing more than modern-day versions of Ronald Richter’s arc discharges of 1948-54, the inaugural fusion energy brouhaha [1]. Just as Richter’s contraption could not generate a single fusion reaction, none of the current projects has given evidence of more than token fusion-neutron production, if any at all.
...
This discussion excludes Tokamak Energy and Commonwealth Fusion from the voodoo class despite their preposterous and insupportable declarations of near-term electrical power production [8], solely because their schemes are based on tokamaks. For 50 years many tokamak facilities have demonstrated that they are capable of producing a significant level of D-D fusion reactions,
...
The permanent fusion R&D organizations, mainly government-supported labs, are the silent spectators of the parade of naked emperors, only occasionally challenging their insupportable assertions and predictions. One feature that voodoo fusion schemes do share with their neutron-producing rivals is that while they will never put electricity onto the grid, all of them take plenty of energy from the grid. The voracious consumption of electricity is an inescapable feature of all terrestrial fusion schemes.
https://news.newenergytimes.net/2022/04/28/voodoo-fusion-energy/
(I expect some word games from Helion next year)
Financial Times, among others, reported Sunday “Fusion energy breakthrough by US scientists boosts clean power hopes. Net energy gain indicates technology could provide an abundant zero-carbon alternative to fossil fuels.”
Scientifically, the National Ignition Facility result is relevant and honest. But the exaggeration and misrepresentation of the result is not.
Omar A. Hurricane, chief scientist for the inertial confinement fusion program at the NIF lab, explained the facts to New Energy Times:
The total laser energy delivered to the target was 2.05 MJ and the total fusion yield was 3.15 MJ of energy. The laser pulse duration was about 9 nanoseconds long. The duration of the fusion reaction was 90 picoseconds long. Very short time-scales, obviously, which are the nature of inertial fusion systems.
Practically speaking, the result is irrelevant. The NIF device did not achieve net energy. The scientists who are promoting this result to the news media are playing word games. They use multiple definitions for the phrase “net energy.” Only the fuel pellet achieved “net energy.” This does not account for the energy required to operate the device.
The 3.15 megajoules of fusion output energy were produced at the expense of 400 megajoules of electrical input energy. A fusion device that loses 99.2 percent of the energy it consumes, in a reaction that lasts for 0.00000000009 of a second, does not indicate technology that could provide an abundant zero-carbon alternative to fossil fuels.
By Daniel L. Jassby, Princeton Plasma Physics Lab (ret.)
April 27, 2022
look how many fusion start ups there are worldwide and how much money is going into the space.
Something is happening—but you don’t know what it is.
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US to announce global nuclear fusion strategy at COP28
November 20, 20236:17 PM EST
The source said COP28, which runs from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12, will “be the starting gun for international cooperation” on nuclear fusion, which Kerry will tout as a climate “solution, not a science experiment”.
In 2023, international fusion companies have garnered about $1.4 billion in investments for a total of about $6.21 billion in mostly private money, the Fusion Industry Association (FIA) said, down from about $2.83 billion in new investment last year.
But the number of companies getting investments rose to 43 from 33, spanning a dozen countries, according to the FIA, including the U.S., where Commonwealth is one of about 25 companies. Other countries pursuing fusion include Australia, China, Germany, Japan, and the UK.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/us-announce-nuclear-fusion-strategy-cop28-2023-11-20/#:~:text=But%20the%20number%20of%20companies,%2C%20Japan%2C%20and%20the%20UK.
7 Jun 2023
There are currently 33 nuclear fusion startups in the world, and all in countries with a heritage in international fusion research. The US and UK lead, home to five and four fusion startups respectively, with a further two in Germany, and one each in Japan, Canada, France and Australia. But fusion reactors come in a number of different flavours, from “traditional” magnetic confinement, or impact fusion and inertial confinement. The question of which, if any, will be the first to attain grid-ready fusion power remains an open one.
https://app.dealroom.co/lists/25184
From your post, IF:
” The question of which, if any, will be the first to attain grid-ready fusion power remains an open one.”
Even Helion says IF!
“which Kerry will tout”
I need to check with AlGore before I can comment.
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