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Raenir Salazar posted:Metaphor's aren't literal comparisons. I'm aware. But a bad metaphor is still a bad metaphor
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Jan 7, 2022 10:16
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Phanatic posted:The Manhattan Project cost about $23 billion in today-dollars. B-29 cost $43 billion in today's money. Then Russians reverse engineered it as one had to land in Siberia and got Tu-4 practically for free. 
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Jan 7, 2022 10:27
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this conversation about cost is a loving joke rightquote:Lockheed Martin claims that it could reduce operating costs to $25,000 per hour by 2025 — but only if it’s awarded an exclusive maintenance contract. the f35 program is expected to cost $1.7 trillion so anyone complaining about the cost of funding any of this poo poo as being an unrealistic achievement is fundamentally duplicitous
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Jan 7, 2022 14:30
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Oklo tried to be lazy on their license paperwork, and the NRC was having none of that https://twitter.com/NRCgov/status/1479151465230909444?s=20
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Jan 7, 2022 14:42
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Raenir Salazar posted:Metaphor's aren't literal comparisons. Whenever you make these kinds of analogies for boondoggle science and engineering projects with dubious social benefit, you are implicitly wildly misrepresenting the challenges and benefits of the project. E.g. no, funding fusion research isn’t the same thing as funding a hyper-applied program for The Ultimate Weapon in the middle of a great World War. No, building a base on Mars isn’t the same thing as white Americans settling Coastal California, one of the best climates and productive areas in the world, etc. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 15:16 on Jan 7, 2022 |
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Jan 7, 2022 15:05
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silence_kit posted:Whenever you make these kinds of analogies for boondoggle science and engineering projects with dubious social benefit, you are implicitly wildly misrepresenting the challenges and benefits of the project. Wrong thread.
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Jan 7, 2022 15:16
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i’d argue we’re in the middle of a massive global war (against climate change) but nobody cares about it. the only difference is propaganda
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Jan 7, 2022 16:53
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Comedy option: "Fix" climate change by using a massive nuclear pulse propulsion system to adjust Earth's orbit a bit further from the sun. We'll figure out the calendar changes later. Why not just reduce the intensity of the sun by reducing its mass via star lifting?? We'll even get plenty of stellar mass and increase the sun's lifespan to boot, it's a win-win-win solution! 
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Jan 7, 2022 16:59
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QuarkJets posted:I'm aware. But a bad metaphor is still a bad metaphor Not really? I explained this in an earlier post. Raenir Salazar posted:The Manhattan Project in this case is just a short hand for "massive industrial project requiring political will and a major pooling of the states resources not just to reach a goal, but to reach it first, to meet an existential crisis head on." It should be a trillion dollars basically; or more, at several fusion projects simultaneously. The actual cost of either the Manhatten Project or the B-29 project is myopically irrelevant; the fact that the US not only threw the resources during WW2 at not one, not two, but at least three uncertain programs in order to win the war is the point, because such willingness, the political will to make expensive risky decisions doesn't exist anymore; and climate change isn't seen as the existential threat that ze Germans or later the Ruskies were. I'm not even the only person who makes this comparison, its actually a very common comparison used by the mainstream press! Forbes, the NYT, the Hill, Time Magazine, several major outlets have all used this comparison because it's a useful short hand that describes a majorly transformative industrial project. It's like tut-tut'ing people for suggesting a "Green New Deal" because "Well Actually..."
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Jan 7, 2022 17:28
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Raenir Salazar posted:Not really? I explained this in an earlier post. Like I explained earlier, a fission bomb is orders of magnitude simpler to make than a commercial fusion reactor, and that's why it's silly to compare the two. It's even sillier to compare fusion energy to a really big propeller plane. Seriously, fusion energy is really hard and will continue to be so. I'm a proponent of giving scientists and engineers all of the money in the world to do amazing important things but I think it's also good to temper optimism, because otherwise you wind up in a situation where people are expecting the moon and when they're disappointed they start shouting "Well what does the Large Hadron Collider even do that's useful, isn't it just a huge waste of money??" Please don't ask me how many times people have asked me this specific question. "Big news outlets make this stupid comparison all the time" actually undermines your argument because journalists are notoriously awful at reporting on science and engineering. You call it "useful shorthand", but every technical person who has ever had their work reported on by a journalist rightfully cringes at the notion of the press doing anything better than well-intentioned harm with this kind of poo poo. I understand the intention, I'm just saying that it's really stupid and papers over what the real challenges are. It's like saying "we landed on the moon in the 1960s, why haven't we sent colony ships to Alpha Centauri yet?" Raenir Salazar posted:It's like tut-tut'ing people for suggesting a "Green New Deal" because "Well Actually..." What the gently caress?
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Jan 8, 2022 03:23
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QuarkJets posted:Like I explained earlier, a fission bomb is orders of magnitude simpler to make than a commercial fusion reactor, and that's why it's silly to compare the two. It's even sillier to compare fusion energy to a really big propeller plane. Seriously, fusion energy is really hard and will continue to be so. I'm a proponent of giving scientists and engineers all of the money in the world to do amazing important things but I think it's also good to temper optimism, because otherwise you wind up in a situation where people are expecting the moon and when they're disappointed they start shouting "Well what does the Large Hadron Collider even do that's useful, isn't it just a huge waste of money??" Please don't ask me how many times people have asked me this specific question. I don't see this as a relevant distinction (maybe because as I think I see later there's still a miscommunication). My point is about how to communicate priorities using shared symbols; I don't really care that a fission bomb is "easier", and generally I don't think the average voter cares either; it's how Michiu Kaku can have an extremely successful show despite questionable science. Everything of importance from this very moment to 5000 years in the future is going to become increasingly impossibly more difficult; by that logic it is impossible to sell the public on something by appealing to past achievements. I see zero reason to hamstring ourselves because there's of a difference in scale. I don't think there's really any doubt that if nuclear fusion funding was a lot higher there would be a lot more scientific results and that has nothing to do with its difficult but to do with how it hasn't been a priority for policy makers; that's entirely within the wheel house of manhatten project comparisons. Maybe we still wouldn't have been "closer" until better room temperature superconductors became possible to manufacture; but have several "operational" research reactors a decade earlier I also imagine would have been very useful at providing data about the scope of the problems and what solutions are needed until material sciences catch up. quote:It's like saying "we landed on the moon in the 1960s, why haven't we sent colony ships to Alpha Centauri yet?" Hard disagree, first if you're going to say I'm making a bad metaphor/comparison, making up such an example as this is strawmaning. Second, I think its weird to phrase it as a matter of "why haven't we gotten to X yet", that doesn't make any sense to me. We're not playing Jeopardy here; no one said anything from which "Because we need a Manhatten Project for Climate Change" was the offered answer. That seems like a massive misrepresentation of my position; I only said "It'd be nice if we treated Fusion research as seriously as the US treated racing for the atomic bomb", which prompted unhelpful "Well Actually..." type responses. quote:What the gently caress? I don't think I stuttered. What people are asking for in a hypothetical GND to actually tackle Climate Change is several orders of magnitude larger in scope to the original New Deal under FDR. There's no comparison in terms of the actions required; but there's a valid rhetorical comparison.
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Jan 8, 2022 03:49
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Raenir Salazar posted:I don't see this as a relevant distinction (maybe because as I think I see later there's still a miscommunication). My point is about how to communicate priorities using shared symbols; I don't really care that a fission bomb is "easier", and generally I don't think the average voter cares either; it's how Michiu Kaku can have an extremely successful show despite questionable science. Everything of importance from this very moment to 5000 years in the future is going to become increasingly impossibly more difficult; by that logic it is impossible to sell the public on something by appealing to past achievements. I see zero reason to hamstring ourselves because there's of a difference in scale. I said that it's a silly and counterproductive comparison to make because of the expectations that it sets. I am not saying that you personally have those expectations. Does that clear up what I'm trying to say? It's a bad metaphor on its own merits
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Jan 8, 2022 04:24
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QuarkJets posted:I said that it's a silly and counterproductive comparison to make because of the expectations that it sets. I am not saying that you personally have those expectations. Does that clear up what I'm trying to say? It's a bad metaphor on its own merits Again, the idea it sets these expectations I don't think holds water. Regardless of how easy with 20/20 hindsight you're saying it was to create a fission bomb, or the B-29 bomber; most people didn't know that at the time; this is why it is analogous (there was in fact an entire parallel longer range strategic bomber project just in case the B-29 failed!). Because it was a risk, at great cost to the tax payer, with no certainty of its success, with a large war winning upside. Which 100% describes fusion research. Who is it unproductive for? It's already not happening. It cannot get any less funded short a colossal scale industrial accident. "We need nuclear power because it harnesses the power of zeus" isn't an endorsement of wanting to be ruled by literal gods. Schrodinger's Cat doesn't put a literal cat at risk, the plot of a movie doesn't literally dictate any real life circumstances. Analogies are about communicating an idea in its broadstrokes, not about saying everything about the things that are the target of the topic are comparable in every respect.
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Jan 8, 2022 05:04
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Raenir Salazar posted:Again, the idea it sets these expectations I don't think holds water. Regardless of how easy with 20/20 hindsight you're saying it was to create a fission bomb, or the B-29 bomber; most people didn't know that at the time; this is why it is analogous (there was in fact an entire parallel longer range strategic bomber project just in case the B-29 failed!). Because it was a risk, at great cost to the tax payer, with no certainty of its success, with a large war winning upside. Which 100% describes fusion research. Who is it unproductive for? It's already not happening. It cannot get any less funded short a colossal scale industrial accident. I'm not saying that the research is unproductive, I'm saying that the comparison you are making is counterproductive, in that it actually harms the cause that you're trying to support. It doesn't matter that you don't understand the mechanism of harm. It is the kind of stupid thing that a tech journalist would write, by your own admission
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Jan 8, 2022 05:55
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QuarkJets posted:I'm not saying that the research is unproductive, I'm saying that the comparison you are making is counterproductive, in that it actually harms the cause that you're trying to support. It doesn't matter that you don't understand the mechanism of harm. It is the kind of stupid thing that a tech journalist would write, by your own admission There's a bit to unpack here; first I at no point suggested you were saying that the research was unproductive. Second, I absolutely did not "admit" to it being a "stupid thing a tech journalist would write" when I was obviously using it as evidence to support my position? Why would I say its stupid? Or even think that? Thirdly, you speak to a mechanism of harm, but your position is speculative no? I don't think I'm forced to agree that a speculative position must mean I reassess my position. 4th, I think its unnecessarily condescending to describe the problem as me not "understanding" the mechanism of harm; I can understand your arguments just fine, I just don't agree with them.
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Jan 8, 2022 06:31
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I've got a bit of a dumb question with regards to fusion - there's sometimes a mention of the amount of energy extracted from the reactor, how is it measured? The energy of photons in some specific wavelengths? How much it heat up water or something? Would you just stick a steam engine to generate electricity?
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Jan 8, 2022 09:50
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QuarkJets posted:I'm not saying that the research is unproductive, I'm saying that the comparison you are making is counterproductive, in that it actually harms the cause that you're trying to support. It doesn't matter that you don't understand the mechanism of harm. It is the kind of stupid thing that a tech journalist would write, by your own admission You're being extremely neckbearded about this. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jan 8, 2022 11:21
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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mmkay posted:I've got a bit of a dumb question with regards to fusion - there's sometimes a mention of the amount of energy extracted from the reactor, how is it measured? The energy of photons in some specific wavelengths? How much it heat up water or something? Would you just stick a steam engine to generate electricity? we take the heat and boil water with it and use it to run turbines, which means we get about half the energy out of the reaction as electricity iirc another thing to remember with pop discussion of fusion is that you often hear about the q factor in terms of being a ratio of power consumed to power used by the reaction (i.e., getting more power out of fusion than it takes to get it up and going). most news only discusses the q factor for the plasma itself and not everything else (iter uses 500MW) let alone that the power out of the reaction will be halved in terms of useful power output thanks to the inefficiencies in the ways we transmute that energy into useful electricity. fusion researchers tend to play up the confusion around this in the media because it makes the work look more palatable
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Jan 8, 2022 14:10
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The process of actually using the heat from a fusion reactor is still an active area of research. There is no plan to actually use the energy produced by ITER. The NIF isn't even looking into the problem, their energy calculations are based on measurements of neutron flux iirc Basically there is still a long road to a power producing facility, even if ITER winds up working perfectly as designed QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Jan 8, 2022 |
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Jan 8, 2022 22:46
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Yeah it seems a little uncharitable to describe researchers broadly as "playing up the confusion", like "palatable" here seems to be doing a lot of lifting; I don't think fusion research ever been conveyed as anything other than as a dauntingly long and expensive road to maybe get the intended result. It's always been a "if it does work, it would be awesome! But it's a long road until then." I feel like we should shy away from implications that are nefarious-adjacent in regards to researchers who aren't obvious cranks. The Q factor is important because IIRC once it reaches numbers larger than 1 (iirc ideally 10 to 20, but even 6 to 8 would be pretty fantastic progress) researchers and engineers can start figuring out how to make commercialized fusion reactors.
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Jan 8, 2022 23:01
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Raenir Salazar posted:I feel like we should shy away from implications that are nefarious-adjacent in regards to researchers who aren't obvious cranks. I wouldn’t say that people making bald faced lies is common in applied science research, but lies of omission/focuses on misleading figures of merit are not uncommon, at least in areas I’m familiar with, IMO. Applied science researchers are selling their research service to the government and, similar to how companies do in their advertising copy, are incentivized to exaggerate the relevance/novelty of their work. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Jan 9, 2022 |
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Jan 9, 2022 00:14
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QuarkJets posted:The process of actually using the heat from a fusion reactor is still an active area of research. There is no plan to actually use the energy produced by ITER. The NIF isn't even looking into the problem, their energy calculations are based on measurements of neutron flux iirc I wonder (as a completely uninformed naif) about what research is being done into solving the containment vessel problem and the energy extraction problem at the same time? Maybe there's some way of using some of those energetic neutrons damaging the walls due to radiation to get useful work out of the reactor? Two birds with one stone and all that.
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Jan 9, 2022 03:02
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QuarkJets posted:The process of actually using the heat from a fusion reactor is still an active area of research. There is no plan to actually use the energy produced by ITER. The NIF isn't even looking into the problem, their energy calculations are based on measurements of neutron flux iirc yeah i wasn’t trying to suggest that iter was bad because of the power ratio. of course that’s not the point. but it is worth discussing because other power stations will and they’ll definitely need to have the equations going in the right direction. you’re right tho still a ways away. im still fingers crossed for the canadian piston powered fusion company
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Jan 9, 2022 03:07
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I was watching a video about the Canadian company and its interesting because they interviewed other researchers who had a chuckle; obviously they're hopeful that they do good research and make progress but IIRC whats happening with them is a similar story to other fusion nuclear research; at first you go in with bright ideas but you slowly accumulate all sorts of engineering challenges and the problem grows in complexity and challenge necessitating more funding and so on. So my thinking is its very novel and maybe has some progress relative to other designs but faces its own problems that slows down said progress? e: A question, I've heard you could use fusion to create other elements, if I recall correctly it can be used to make the rarer isotopes that are easier to fuse? How difficult would that be in either of the three main design "templates" currently, how would that looks like? Having tanks/plates around the reactor to catch stray particles? Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Jan 9, 2022 |
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Jan 9, 2022 03:23
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Nenonen posted:B-29 cost $43 billion in today's money. Then Russians reverse engineered it as one had to land in Siberia and got Tu-4 practically for free. Including the bullet holes.
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Jan 9, 2022 07:09
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I have a hard time believing that a trillion dollars + an all-hands-on-deck effort dumped into fusion research would yield better results than a trillion dollars dumped into any currently-existing renewable energy construction + fossil fuel retirement. 70+ years of active development, and we're still decades away from a breakeven fusion power reactor. Solar cells, on the other hand, were practical for specialized applications within 15 years, low-power consumer electronics within 30 years, and are now cost-competitive for grid-scale generation in a large percentage of the world. And there's still a ton of room for improvement in both near-term refinement of existing PV tech and developing next-gen PV. It took a long time to get here, but the tech was very clearly progressing the entire time. I think a fair argument can be made for keeping fusion research going in case unexpected breakthroughs in all of the prerequisite engineering fields eventually converge enough to make it workable. That said, if it hasn't yielded fruit in all these decades, I have a hard time believing that somehow we're just around the corner now. I doubt I'll see a practical demo of fusion power in my lifetime.
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Jan 10, 2022 09:16
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The problem is that solar power isn't enough on its own, we need basically all green technologies on deck: solar, wind, fission, geothermal, etc. And hopefully some day fusion
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Jan 10, 2022 10:39
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QuarkJets posted:The problem is that solar power isn't enough on its own, we need basically all green technologies on deck: solar, wind, fission, geothermal, etc. And hopefully some day fusion TBH as batteries and electrolysis come down in price, the question of what fusion is actually for will be increasingly posed. Right now, I can only see its use being relevant for something like space travel. Which is to say, we should absolutely keep researching it, because space is cool.
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Jan 10, 2022 12:08
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Aethernet posted:TBH as batteries and electrolysis come down in price, the question of what fusion is actually for will be increasingly posed. Right now, I can only see its use being relevant for something like space travel. Which is to say, we should absolutely keep researching it, because space is cool. Terraforming at an energy intensive level? Desalination, Ozone production, Carbon capture?
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Jan 10, 2022 12:20
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Total Meatlove posted:Terraforming at an energy intensive level? Desalination, Ozone production, Carbon capture? You certainly could take a fusion plant to Mars. Everything else you can do with solar panels across the Sahara.
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Jan 10, 2022 13:43
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Aethernet posted:You certainly could take a fusion plant to Mars. Everything else you can do with solar panels across the Sahara. ah yes the fusion plant too expensive to build so let’s just cover all of northern africa with solar panels that need to be replaced every 20 years or something
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Jan 10, 2022 14:11
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I'm sure those panels are easy to keep clean. What's transmission cost anyway. Solar fanatics are weird.
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Jan 10, 2022 14:34
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Definitely no ecology to be disrupted by blanketing 1/6th of the surface of the planet in panels either.
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Jan 10, 2022 14:42
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Aethernet posted:You certainly could take a fusion plant to Mars. Everything else you can do with solar panels across the Sahara. Paving the Sahara in solar panels is fun in a vacuum but as far as I know we still lack all of the following things to make it work: The storage or energy transfer capacity to move the power to where it is needed Political will of both the users and producers Material resources Local stability to be able to use that efficiently. In essence if you are going to centralize electricity production it would be better to plop down a powerplant nearer to the end point users in a safe place, be that a massive fusion plant in Paris or Accra or wherever else that needs it.
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Jan 10, 2022 14:42
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Harold Fjord posted:I'm sure those panels are easy to keep clean. What's transmission cost anyway. HVDC cables lose about 10% transmitting over 3,000km ranges. The Mediterranean, where you might want to site desalination plants, is not that far away from the Sahara. This was in response to someone trying to find a use case for fusion in a world of cheap batteries and electrolysis - which is likely to come faster than fusion.
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Jan 10, 2022 14:48
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mediaphage posted:ah yes the fusion plant too expensive to build so let’s just cover all of northern africa with solar panels that need to be replaced every 20 years or something How frequently do you think you're going to need to replace the walls of a fusion reactor? Which you'll need to switch off while doing so.
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Jan 10, 2022 14:48
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QuarkJets posted:The problem is that solar power isn't enough on its own, we need basically all green technologies on deck: solar, wind, fission, geothermal, etc. And hopefully some day fusion What renewables really need is storage, cheap, scalable energy storage.
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Jan 10, 2022 14:56
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Zudgemud posted:Paving the Sahara in solar panels is fun in a vacuum but as far as I know we still lack all of the following things to make it work: An artificial sun for when tour Sun isn't shining
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Jan 10, 2022 15:03
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Aethernet posted:How frequently do you think you're going to need to replace the walls of a fusion reactor? Which you'll need to switch off while doing so. lmao id hoped you try this. are you seriously comparing as equivalent the replacement of a single (admittedly complex!) unit, which in the future could very well be one of a pair or trio in a single-location plant vs replacing every single solar panel across half of a continent in the same periods of time also this whole “let’s cover africa in solar” is mega racist. africa isn’t any of ours to cover with anything. we need to be able to generate power where we are until society is cohesive enough for something like a planetary power grid
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Jan 10, 2022 16:03
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mediaphage posted:lmao id hoped you try this. are you seriously comparing as equivalent Yes I am. Work the numbers on cost; I bet you solar still comes out as cheaper. And again, this is a desalination question: I don't know why you think people in Africa wouldn't be the ones running and owning these panels to provide power that they need.
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Jan 10, 2022 16:54
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