Comment by boringg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by boringg | Hacker News Reader

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Listen I'm all for these kinds of investments. Its very high risk and potentially a high reward. I think likely the reward will be some technology development in the process that helps something else but not in the direction they currently are going. Thats just the way things typically shake out. Especially grandiose plans like this.

They need to prove that the research works to actually produce net electricity - which requires a scientific breakthrough. Next after a research breakthrough - they need to make this a product -- then a commercial product. During that process they need to make this a commercially viable economically viable product that can compete against other forms of energy in the marketplace. They will need to get through serious regulatory requirements. And remember that they need to make this commercially viable to produce electricity at a very low cost - its super competitive at baseload power cost range.

By the time this comes to market the energy landscape will be completely different. It is already moving incredibly quickly.

Like I've said on other post - we need these kinds of moonshots but let's not have them distract against the other important work of deploying already commercially ready technology into the market.

Helion might not work out like they hope but if it does, it'll use aneutronic fuel, producing only 6% of its energy as neutron radiation. That's low enough that they don't need a heat cycle, which gives them a shot at a pretty low cost per kWh. I think they've estimated four cents, which is pretty good for scalable, dispatchable power without batteries.

The UK recently announced a regulatory regime for fusion, with significantly lighter requirements than fission since safety and proliferation issues are much less troublesome. That would be even more the case for aneutronic fusion. Possibly the US would be silly enough to get in the way but many other countries certainly wouldn't, including China.

> Possibly the US would be silly enough to get in the way but many other countries certainly wouldn't, including China.

As an American this is accurate and depressing.

How is anybody supposed to regulate a nonexistent technology? And why? We cant even regulate internet stalkers… why is fusion more of a target?

The term nuclear and that energy is a highly regulated marketplace

> - they need to make this a product -- then a commercial product. During that process they need to make this a commercially viable economically viable product that can compete against other forms of energy in the marketplace.

They’re in a really good position here because they actually don’t. Being a no-carbon power source puts them in an almost new market. The government can (should) regulate carbon fuel away, and pour money into this in a non-market way to tip scales. Energy is heavily regulated but also heavily government funded.

Actually not quite - it still needs to be economically attractive in order for it to be a viable product in an energy marketplace that is already deploying @ scale zero carbon generation.

Externalities are not baked into the current price of eg coal power. The fully loaded price should be compared.

Externalities are actually starting to get baked in (depending on jurisdiction) or are essentially getting mandated in by policy (i.e. no coal in-state via political process). For most of North America coal isn't financially viable unless it gets political beneficial treatment - its been losing to natural gas for awhile now.

To be fair to your comment though air pollution relating to climate warming has been treated as a tragedy of the commons problem for ever.

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