[Apocryphon]

If no one is building fusion power plant, what money or effort is being wasted? Also, do you think all of these nuclear physicists are able to pivot to working on renewable energy, as if they are Silicon Valley tech startups? From what point of view of action are you even operating from?

[Schroedingersat]

Doing science is fine.

It's the thousands of scam artists that will divert resources from actual solutions as soon as their lies are plausible to rubes that are not.

If we're busy paying for 100s of victoria county stations that will never open, the coal plants will remain on.

[Apocryphon]

But that has literally never happened nor is likely to happen, given the political marginalization of nuclear power.

The previous poster is ranting against a tiny threat, if even that, to wind and solar while the fossil fuel lobby reigns supreme. Just a completely disproportionate response.

[Schroedingersat]

So to pick one of hundreds of examples, the money that SCE&G's customers are forced to pay for infrastructure that will never be turned on while the contractors make out like bandits was always going to be scammed out of them by the nuclear industry?

Props for honesty I guess.

[Schroedingersat]

> The previous poster is ranting against a tiny threat, if even that, to wind and solar while the fossil fuel lobby reigns supreme.

The current tirade of nuclear shilling serves the fossil fuel industry. As does directing funding (often including public money) to all the 'fusion' startups like helion with massive, obvious, unpatchable deal breakers in their plans. A billion going to general fusion could fund tens or hundreds of hysatas or natrons, a non-zero proportion of whom are making real progress towards actual solutions.

Vogtle, Hinkley, VC Summer... the list goes on and on. The people wind up paying for decades even if no power is ever produced. There has never been a commercially viable fission reactor even with the free unlimited insurance.

The fission industry has been burning enough public money every few years for decades to have kick started the renewable economy. A large portion of the massive cost reductions we saw in the last ten years have been technologically available for a very long time -- the only thing needed was investment in the engineering. There are still problems and technologies best served by primary research that will help and have a far better chance of paying off than more money down the fission toilet or towards snake oil fusion scams.

The same tired lines get rolled out every time and they're always wrong. Every discussion about the actual solution gets derailed by some combination of fission shilling, fud about variability or 'don't invest in renewables, fusion will save us'.

[Apocryphon]

Is there any actual book or article or any sort of source at all that shows that nuclear is an existential funding threat to renewables, rather something that has been politically moribund in the U.S. ever since Chernobyl, if not Three Mile Island?

Given how disadvantageous a position nuclear has been at for all of this time, it's probably trivial for pro-nuclear adherents to turn around and call the anti-nuke lobby shills for the fossil fuel industry. And so round and round the circular firing squad goes.

[ncmncm]

Nobody said "nuclear is an existential funding threat to renewables". You made that up from whole cloth.

Stop doing that.

[Apocryphon]

You are the one claiming that any money into nuclear funding detracts from funding of renewables. If that in fact is not an existential threat, then you should probably tone down your verbose vehemence to the former. If it is not an existential threat, then you are thundering against a non-issue.

You stop doing that.

[pfdietz]

What is Helion's showstopper? I mean, they're a longshot, but as far as I know there's nothing that guarantees their effort doesn't work.

[Schroedingersat]

Two things.

1) World helium-3 reserves mean they can only be an irrelevant amount of total energy. Otherwise it's just D-D or D-p fusion with extra steps (and all the neutron problems involved).

2) The magnetic energy recovery can at best reach parity with the thermal, which makes it yet another solar freakin' roadways if not a theranos. They play sleight of hand with this in all their marketing materials which indicates they know it's a show stopper but do not want anyone paying attention to it.

The slick marketing, the sexy story, the massive hole in their story, and the startup posturing put them with every other scam startup that promises the world and then folds after an IPO with VCs disappearing with a the later investors' money.

[pfdietz]

In DD followed by D3He most of the energy is coming from D3He, especially if you let the tritium decay (admittedly that takes a while.)

The magnetic energy recovery scheme would allow the energy of compression to be recovered at high efficiency. If this worked, they could have a practical, energy producing system even with Q < 1. I believe they are aiming for Q = 0.2.

The idea that it "can at best reach parity with thermal" seems without any justification. Perhaps we could debug the source of your misunderstanding?

[ncmncm]

There is no such "threat".

Investors are being defrauded. Money that could be going for important, useful research is being diverted to pockets of fraudsters promising sky castles.

[Apocryphon]

There's no telling that that money would be going to renewable research anyway. So why all of this concern? There is no imminent decision between the two. Those investors would not be spending the money on endeavors you care about. If it is a fraud, then let that money be wasted to prove the concept a fraud once and all. You should welcome that, as that would further your position in a definitive way before the public.

[arbitrandomuser]

>" If it is a fraud, then let that money be wasted to prove the concept a fraud once and all. You should welcome that, as that would further your position in a definitive way before the public."

No Fraud does damage , it's not money wasted to disprove a fusion is viable , its resources and time just wasted. Just because "oh that money will never be used for other stuff anyways" doesn't mean one shouldnt voice for better utilisation of it.

Theranos was Fraud , doesn't mean we've proved minitiarized blood tests are impossible

[Apocryphon]

That is an excellent point conveyed excellently and I agree with it.