/sci/ - Science & Math

>>12627231
musk seems neg on nuclear-i'm hopeful aneutronic fusion redpills him in the near future. could also allow borderline torchship levels of performance in future rockets assembled in space

>>12562661
No no no...man fuck Momota I feel like he memed helium 3 from the moon 30 years ago and it's still getting brought up.

The lunar concentration of that shit in soil is abysmally low. You'd needd to proess colossal amounts of regolith-billions of cubic meters-to get reasonable amounts of helium. The only practical way to get helium-3 for fusion is to make reactors that breed helium 3 via d-d fusion, like Helion's Fusion Engine concept.

>>12476967
unless...

Pulsed d-He3 fusion will probably hit the market before proton-boron. Recent job postings from Helion Energy have led me to think they're really REALLY close to having a SMR ready for commercial applications. At this point the key thing is making sure the NRC appropriately regulates fusion. Trying to staple fission safety autism to fusion is just stupid since it has a completely different means of action and risks.

The small scale price is striking because that's as expensive as it gets. Once you scale up the price per unit falls off a cliff. we could have .25 cent per kilowatthour by 2030

>>12249613
Helion Energy. They've been funded by Peter Thiel and ARPA-E and have recently moved to hiring an expanded engineering team to move from experimental to commercial operations. If you know about fusion then their recent job postings on linkedin make this very clear-they literally talk about building fusion GENERATORS now and speak openly about using crazy high power capacitors. They've gone radio silent on papers and largely on PR, so I think they're planning a dramatic reveal of their progress soon after the NRC sets up regulations for the commercial fusion industry sometime next year.

>>12122478
Fusion concepts that rely on steam turbines irritate me. It's so inefficient and primitive.

Direct energy capture of alpha particles is the sex.

>>11643946
Some next-gen fusion concepts like the one out of Helion Energy are tritium free. Only about 5% of the energy is neutrons, and the system is run somewhat D rich to generate a steady supply of He3 in the exhaust, eliminating the always slightly goofy idea of moon mining that people like Momota were interested in with previous conceptualizations of D-He3 tech.


At these lower amounts of neutrons and reduced neutron energies, the compression chamber should only need to be replaced every few years and won't get crazy radioactive-you stick it under water for ten years and them throw it in a concrete cask for 300 and then it's harmless.

Fission power is great, but it is terminally poisoned by negative PR, NIMBY retards and mountains of red-tape. I wish the vanguard of new companies luck, but it's a major uphill battle. Fusion is inherently meltdown-proof and has far less baggage.

We sometimes talk about ITER, but rarely are the private companies like General Fusion, Helion Energy, Tri Alpha,etc brought up.

Could someone with a strong knowledge of nuclear tech please give me a critical rundown on them? a wealthy friend of mine is interested in potentially investing but he's smart enough to do research and I said I'd give him a hand with it. So far it seems that Tri Alpha has the most muscle and capital but the kind of fusion they're trying to do is supposed to be balls to the wall hard. The other groups seem less well funded but they have shown progress and the type of fusion they're doing is by all accounts easier albeit not as advanced as TAE. I'd like more info on Helion, but right now the most info is coming from General Fusion, who i'm interested in but wondering if the fundamental design is too weird to actually be workable.