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Comment by ethbr0 | Hacker News Reader

Everything is still either magnetic- or inertial confinement-based, right?

And within those there are the variety of designs.

I hate to say it, but a tiny part of me doesn't discount the possibility of energy majors subtley killing small-scale fusion approaches and pushing internation-scale huge projects (i.e. ones unlikely to be delivered quickly).

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> Everything is still either magnetic- or inertial confinement-based, right?

Pretty much, but there are some that are kinda-sorta both (General Fusion's approach is "magneto-inertial"), and also a lot of variety within each bucket. Like, Zap Energy's approach is magnetic, but involves no external magnets, whereas developing the fancy magnets is a key operational challenge for CFS.

There's some interesting arguments in favor of the combination of magnetic and interial approaches. This is broadly known as 'magneto-inertial fusion', and there's a continuum of ideas between 'mostly inertial' and 'mostly magnetic'. I'd put Helion's approach far toward the magnetic side.

How else? Soundwaves or Lightpressure confinement? Diamond Anvil hammered?

Most of the fusion energy we are consuming uses gravity for containment.

It's a proven method, but I have concerns about its scalability.

It scales just fine in the 'up' direction.

Up to a point. Such reactors hit a size threshold above which they violently explode, leaving a dense, radioactive core that cannot be disposed of.

I mean, that's just a failure in the EOL decommissioning mechanism of large instances, in terms of making them bigger, there becomes a point where it becomes difficult (or even impossible) to add more fuel [1], but they don't violently explode until the decommissioning phase.

[1] https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/328/is-there-a...

I think we can safely leave that to the next generation to clean up, like with all those other contaminated zones.

With all the extra energy, I'm sure we'd be able to find and budget for an EOL solution.

After all, I'd be insanity to consume massive amounts of energy without accounting for its future costs.

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