If this isn't a Sputnik and/or an Apollo 11-level wake up call to the western leaders I don't know what has any chance of working.
If this isn't a Sputnik and/or an Apollo 11-level wake up call to the western leaders I don't know what has any chance of working.
I think "western leaders" should be more worried about another thing: Constituents(?) exhibiting totally uncritical acceptance of a literal corporate press-release.
I don’t have a problem with that if it results in funding fusion research properly for once
Except you won't get to that point, because first the crowd will be incited against it on the basis that fusion power is heretical against the Sun. God and also causes cancer and migraines and belly-button lint.
I don't understand. They built a thing. We also have similar things, don't we?
Wouldn't the Sputnik moment require actual energy generation? It doesn't sound like they're any closer than we are.
> We also have similar things, don't we?
Yes. Commonwealth Fusion and MIT are building a superconducting fusion reactor at Devens, Massachusetts right now. It's called SPARC and the site has been under construction since 2021. The plan expects to achieve first plasma sometime in 2026.
It's impressive but there are multiple startups in the US working on fusion power.
With currently half the western population pushing a significant anti-science agenda (even greater than half if you consider that there’s also not insignificant anti-science ideals in various left wing groups as well, albeit not usually to the point of ripping kids out of education), that seems like a nearly impossible proposition unless there’s a significant political awakening.
The space race has shown that America hates losing more than it hates science. We're kind of early but e.g. the race back to the Moon is on. If there's a credible threat of losing a race to fusion power I'm pretty sure US politicians would be able to sell that threat to the public in a single afternoon.
I'm not sure why you are being downvoted. The original question is political in nature and polls run by both major sides of the political spectrum in the USA support your argument.
Anything political or feeding the flames is not encouraged on HN. Especially if it appears bipartisan, personally. And many of us are in other countries so the whole subject is usually annoying.
Why?
Assuming this is real and not exaggerated propaganda, does China think IP theft is a one way street?
> Why?
IP theft is a thing and yet China can't make Nvidia GPUs and I can bet $10 it won't be able to in 2030. I don't see why the west could 'just' copy a Chinese energy-positive tokamak even if it had all the plans. (Yes I know this one isn't that.)
The wake up call is for the west to be able to do that at the very least.
To be fair the US also can't make Nvidia GPUs and neither can anyone outside of Taiwan. Agreed that IP isn't everything but the chip shortage during covid sure as hell WAS a wake up call to the west.
Now they are finding that actually its going to take a decade to reproduce what the chip fabs in Taiwan have built even with their help.
Fusion is never, ever going to be economical. The fuel is basically free, which is great. Meanwhile, the reactors themselves are arguably the most complex and expensive machines ever built, and they are essentially disposable due to the nature of fusion reactions.
There's a reason that the wise engineers who built our only working fusion reactor put it about 1 AU away from us. Much cheaper and easier to just catch the energy it sends us.
Given the impact the world has already seen because we let two companies tie up LiFePO4, after we let a few companies tie up other battery patents for hybrids before that...
TBH I would judge the world if they just went ahead and 'stole' it vs RAND licensing...
At the same time, I can see it being one hell of a hypothetical 'carrot' for lots of things, and of the current major powers, China is the only one with enough overall (political+humanpower+etc) will (at this time, anyway) to possibly make Fusion happen sooner than ITER can.
Strategically speaking, it would 'make sense' for them to pursue... Would the European union force NL's hand, to make ASML sell machines for whatever comes after EUV, in exchange for Fusion tech? Or all sorts of other fun things for the right Q factor?
Things become murkier.