this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2024
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This is probably why he's invested so much into Helion Energy, who are trying to make a small and cheap nuclear fusion reactor.
Aneutronic fusion isn't happening on this planet. We don't even have the fuel for it. It's a dumb thing to market when we can't even break even on D-T fusion and turning the neutrons into heat.
While I’m too much of an optimist to say that we’ll never figure out viable fusion power, I do think you’re more right than wrong.
Fission power is essentially us discharging a fusion battery, where the battery was charged by a supernova. We don’t get any free help with fusion, and we have to replicate input energies only seen in nature with stellar amounts of gravitational mass. It is (IMO) an important area of research, but I don’t expect it to power our cities in my lifetime.
Yeah, but what they're marketing specifically is aneutronic fusion. That's helium fusion, which has never been demonstrated outside of a star. Hydrogen fusion, which we haven't actually achieved much with beyond bombs is more managable. The difference is hydrogen fusion creates a big neutron flux, which needs to be isolated (the small part) and creates waste by neutron activating whatever it's around (the cheap part, volume wise hydrogen fusion creates more radioactive waste than fission but it's much easier to manage low level waste).
It doesn't help that the helium is a primordial resource that has literally escaped the crust of our planet and floated out into space. Supposedly the moon has more.