this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2024
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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

Remember that time when a physicist proposed a Thorium Potassium reactor which woudl run at a lower temperature and the feature that the reaction would destroy itself before ever going critical and the world was like "interesting" and then he said "and it even prevents weaponised uranium" and then the world went "no thank you"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

So it's a turbine then?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Pretty much everything that's not totally inert produces heat, but the point (they claim!) is that these newfangled doodads don't generate power using that heat.

So far we've mainly been generating power with more and more ingenious ways of heating up water.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There are other more efficient working fluids for power transfer but water is pretty hard to beat due to it not being toxic or an environmental hazard.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If your water isn't an environmental hazard, you're not trying hard enough.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

water coolant in nuclear reactor enters the chat

Marketing person looking for fancy drinking water enters the chat

Narrator: you wouldn't guess what happens next

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I'll believe it when they actually generate net electricity output. I don't necessarily think they're a scam per se, but given the relative resources available and difficulty even for international projects to get fusion power working, I don't suspect their efforts will be successful. Would love to be proven wrong of course, or if not for their work to at least contribute useful progress to the effort.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I mean they’re using an effectively off the shelf reactor which if outputted as promised would fatally irradiate anyone in the area, so i’m not sure the’re really set up to do much beyond separation of fools and money.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

I have, that was how I heard about them in the first place actually

[–] [email protected] 75 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Wiggling magnetic fields make electricity

Fusion reactors have wiggling magnetic fields.

Simple as

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

But it takes wiggling magnetic fields to confine fusion reactions, seems like taking energy from inefficient containment, or there's more energy than required being used on containment which is lowering the overall efficiency....

I am just a chemist.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

I really cant decide if that's a joke.

But you have to move from "Fusion reactors have wiggling magnetic fields." into "Fusion reactors create wiggling magnetic fields."

I'm out of the loop here, but I can almost guarantee that whoever people are talking about, they didn't achieve that change.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Here's a video explaining the principal. They haven't achieved more outpit than input yet, but fusion creates giant magnetic fields that can in theory generate electricity. It's really fascinating

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

yeah I don't trust that video one bit, when I watched it it sounded like just a recruitment ad for the company. same with his hermeus video

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Hard agree, unsubscribed from real engineering the moment I realised they made ads without ever declaring it. It's literally just propaganda at this point

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

Oh, man. They are working on direct electricity generation from 2H + 3He.

First, that's not new. But then, everything coming out of the mouth of that guy is bullshit. No idea why he doesn't want to explain it, but it's not "hot plasma creates magnetic field and we harvest it".

Anyway, assuming it's not a scam, good luck to them. Google offers me another video saying that one is a scam, though. And given that 2H + 3He fusion is about an order of magnitude harder than what everybody else is doing, I'm prone to believe the title.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Simple as

There’s your clue

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Consider me clued

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

ITER isn't figuring it out, I doubt this tiny private corporation is going to contribute anything meaningful.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They're taking completely different approaches to fusion though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Without good instrumentation. Almost purposely lacking..

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 months ago

What a novel and interesting idea! If only it wasn't all a huge scam to take money from investors!