Built, physically operational reactors that operate as close to Q=1 as they can, with all the diagnostics included.

The diagnostics are very important, as plasma instabilities have been, and continue to be, the critical issue preventing anything useful coming out of our decades of fusion reactor design. All these companies are sharing data on overcoming plasma instability issues, with multiple geometries aimed at evaluating how plasma responds to different inputs in different environments. We’re all trying to understand how to control and compress something far too hot to physically touch.

@naturalgasbad@lemmy.ca scaling fusion isn’t a trivial problem, and saying it like it is indicates a lack of background knowledge. This isn’t a competition between companies (no matter what our CEOs suggest), as we in industry quietly all agree that any of us that cracks this unchains humanity from the solar system. Because government funding has unfortunately sucked so much ass, we’re sort of using private money to get the basic research done. We’d be so much farther ahead otherwise.

Good points and questions. First wall interaction is going to be an interesting problem for this team to work around.

No??

I’ve supported engineering at several privately funded nuclear fusion companies, though all of them, this Chinese company included, are building a product out of public school research.

Off the top of my head there’s:

• CFS
• TAE technologies
• Thea
• Zap Energy

And several more…

No. As an engineer, I can and will vouch for building a larger, stronger chain of regret against greed, lest this type of shit happen again years down the line.

The more people scarred by touching and feeling the results of their own greed and hubris, the longer it’ll be before we see such disregard for human life in an engineering firm.

The trick is how many more of us there are. The aristocracy seemed pretty complacent and untouchable, until one day when that changed.

Not saying it’s gotta get to that point, but making people see the direct consequences of their greed would be so good for us all.

Bullshit, these fucks led to hundreds of terrified deaths in pursuit of profit alone.

Accountants, engineers, manages, round em up and make them look through the wallets and personal possessions of the people who perished.

Nothing but time. So long as their testing is rigorous, they will catch up to Boeing… But will they be rigorous? History has repeatedly suggested, no.

But we in the west shouldn’t count on that continually being the case.

Well… At least all the ones related to platform IO and other embedded development. Can’t say every extension, since I’ve not tried them all.

Represent! (It’s vscode with all telemetry and crap removed, all your vscode extensions still work fine)

How so?

I agree with you, but I urge you to spell it out a bit more. We still need to transport lots of goods across large distances, from distinct areas where an industry perhaps cannot be moved closer, eliminating the long distance transport.

More importantly, we do have options for recycling lithium from expended cells, not a zero-carbon process, but definitely better than continued mining.

Look, real talk: I think there very genuinely may be too many humans for this planet to naturally sustain. Even within society there are hints, in spite of the powers that be’s attempts at obfuscation. Look how many bullshit jobs there are. Late stage capitalism is a lot more than a bogeyman from what I can see.

What are your thoughts?

It turns out that the lithium is very recyclable. The process of disassembly is what’s tricky, but one of Tesla’s pre-musk founders is working specifically on this problem.

We can already do it. Mining is (for now) cheaper. Something legislation, applied carefully, can resolve.

I’d like to prefix this all by pointing out that coal is absolutely terrible to use in several ways.

However: most thermal plants get about 45% efficiency, based on using very high steam temperatures. We all know that the theoretical max efficiency for a thermal process is limited by the Carnot cycle, which explicitly depends on the difference in temperature between the working fluid and the surroundings.

I’d also like to point out an important point: carbon plants are not constricted by the need to keep the engine lightweight, we can capture most fly ash and other process exhaust.

I again, do not care to bring such an arcane tech back online, it’s terrible to mine, process and use. Just remember there’s a bit more to all of this that engineers have indeed thought of.

E: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0196890415007657

Sorry sorry. Where are you getting the “all losses are equivalent to ice engine inefficiency”?

I don’t expect you to be an ME/EE, but there’s a lot of variables in that calculation, I’d just like to clarify for everyone here what you mean.

I’d argue that expanding the zones a bit doesn’t incur costs other than updating some maps, as existing radar systems etc were already reaching into the newly claimed areas, undoubtedly.

Am I worried about my country’s creeping reach, and have I suddenly realized there’s yet another way to slowly encroach on territory? Yes.

E: why the downvotes?

Thanks for explaining the reasonably obvious, without adding much here.

Nobody is naive enough to think it’s solely motivated by cost, nor can we ignore the successes and failures of historical action.

The US has a pretty long history of industry watering down industrial action, either directly, or indirectly by tying things like healthcare to employment right? So, if in spite of pretty serious risks, people collectively decide to strike, it’s no longer a half-measure; to your point, the ideological part applies just as strongly to the membership, who will want to follow leadership that expressly works for the benefit of the members. Petals we haven’t all worked in manual/production environments, but no matter what, less people familiar with a process and its tooling is all but guaranteed to result in more/many mistakes which will absolutely cause money problems for the organization.

But Amazon! Amazon hasn’t cared much about the unionization efforts publicly because a) they’ve got tremendous marketplace inertia, which strikes and stuff still negatively effect, b) incredible profit margins and c) lack of marketplace alternatives. But look at how pernicious their anti-union messaging inside the warehouses has been. Almost seems like they know who actually has the power.

So: things are bad, but don’t be pessimistic. This past year alone has plenty of loudly successful efforts to improve working conditions for the avg joe/Jane.

Sure, strikes have been broken before.

Let’s put it in terms of expense: All it takes is a couple of mistakes (honest or not) by the temporary replacements to cost the organization more money than meeting demands would have. If the organization is doing manufacturing, that’s recalled parts, low productivity, and damaged public image.

Is it a health or safety organization? Lawsuits relating to missed/bad service can cost the tax payers a lot, and again, negative sentiment causing latent damage.

What do you think? The only downside to some of this process is that people have relatively short memories, so some profit oriented execs will try to sweep the monetary damages under the rug for the next sap to be accused of, albeit after helming a lower-esteemed org than previously.

If they dismissed everyone… I mean follow the logical conclusion there.