Posted by sudohalt 10/25/2024
https://www.wired.com/story/plaintext-pacific-fusion-eric-la...
The best third-party article tends to be preferable to a corporate press release on HN (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...), though interested readers may want to look at both.
— imagine having $900 million and you don't need to show any positive results for nearly a decade.
> Taneja proposed that investors commit a sum to be paid over time, with tranches released only if Pacific Fusion reaches certain milestones. “The team was a little skeptical at first,” he says of the Pacific Fusion people. “But it became clear that that structure resonated, because everybody takes early-stage risk in these really capital-intense, long-duration moonshots.”
> "The problems faced by MCF systems involving reactor structures made radioactive and physically weakened by neutron bombardment can be almost eliminated in ICF systems where the fusion fuel capsule must be enclosed in a one-meter-thick flowing liquid metal sphere or cylinder to accommodate the gigajoule-level impulse loading.34 This containment approach can take the form of liquid falls comprising jets of molten metal.35 The incoming fusion neutrons sustain the temperature of the circulating liquid metal, whose heat would be extracted to drive a turbine. Relatively few neutrons would strike the solid outer chamber."
https://inference-review.com/article/the-quest-for-fusion-en...
Here's the original 2021 laser-ignition experiments:
https://www.llnl.gov/article/48866/three-peer-reviewed-paper...
I doubt we'll see any fusion-based power plants in the next 50 years, but who knows? Certainly there are worse things to do with a billion dollars.