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.
“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