Indisputable

[Lerner]

[Note: These posts have been given their own thread. Previously they were here.]

Tulse, no matter what the results of the experiment, they will be disputed. 100% chance. So no matter how well we do (and we don’t know that yet) , or how well we feel we have proven it, it will not be “indisputable” as people will dispute it.

Think about it. Some tiny group operating on a shoestring says they have done something that billions of dollars could not. Do you really think everyone will roll over and shout hosannahs? Is that how science works today?

[Brian H]

Lerner wrote: Tulse, no matter what the results of the experiment, they will be disputed. 100% chance. So no matter how well we do (and we don’t know that yet) , or how well we feel we have proven it, it will not be “indisputable” as people will dispute it.

Think about it. Some tiny group operating on a shoestring says they have done something that billions of dollars could not. Do you really think everyone will roll over and shout hosannahs? Is that how science works today?

No, Eric. I think there will be waves of fear and exaltation that sweep through various sub-sets of scientists and administrators and others. One such sub-group is the large and largely MSM-excluded community of AGW skeptics, who above all do not want the world to buy a carbon-control pig-in-a-poke on the basis of extremely dodgy science and grotesquely incompetent computer modelling. Having a prospect like FF which renders the entire issue moot, and does so by means of a back door opened by human genius, will make them (us) very, very happy.

As for the fusion science community per se, the gauntlet will be well and truly thrown down. You are, of course, familiar with the “existence proof” phenomenon: once something is known (or very likely) to have actually been achieved by someone, over half of the heavy lifting is done. “How” is then much easier to attack. Many will do so, urgently.

In any case, the “engineering” phase will in all likelihood be much easier to fund if scientific unity is demonstrated. And once there is a prototype which actually generates net current from boron, it’s game over. Sell a few manufacturing licenses to a few outfits or utilities anywhere in the world, and the rush will be on. The payoff ratios are so huge, and the penalties for abstaining so dire, that no one will be able to refrain from checking it out and acting with great dispatch.

So I believe.

[Brian H]

I have just come across yet another “opinion leader” worth twigging, I think. David JC MacKay* of Cambridge, UK, has written a book called Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air. It dissects the plausibility of many aspects of AGW and its proposed remedies, in the course of which he discusses fusion as a possible fossil fuel substitute. But he restricts his consideration to DD and DT versions. He has a deeply backed-up email inbox, so there’s no saying how soon he’ll get to see it, but I submitted the following though his official site:

In your Sustainable Energy book, you spend some time on DD and DT fusion. Did you look at all at pB11 fusion?

I ask because the research firm Lawrenceville Plasma Physics has made exquisitely good use of <$2 million in funding over the last 2 years to reach the point of testing their design for a tiny (hand with fingers pointed up) generator of the DPF type. It now appears that they may reach "scientific breakeven" by year-end or thereabouts. If so, everything changes.

It is an aneutronic variety of fusion which takes much higher temps to ignite and returns less overall energy, but the energy is in a directly usable ion stream, almost none in “hot” neutrons that other fusion models use to heat water to run a Carnot Steam turbine. The resultant payoff is very large.

Bottom line, if it works it will permit installation of capacity just about anywhere at 1/20 the cost of best current plant prices, and sell power at 1/50 – 1/20 of current best retail pricing. [UK and US, respectively.]

It uses no Lithium, btw, so will not compete with the battery industry! The fuel is boron, about 1 lb. per GW-yr.

It would require extensive revisions to your book. Every single renewable you consider would be economic roadkill, so fast it wouldn’t know what hit it. Most conventional power sources would never be upgraded or even given expensive maintenance; it wouldn’t be worth doing anything except running the least expensive plant down for a while and then scrapping it.

The physical footprint is about 400 cu.m. per 5MW unit.

If you don’t want to be blindsided like the rest of the world in a few months, check it out.

(The mention of lithium is because he takes it as an input for the DT fusion models, and considers global supply as a concern.)

* David MacKay FRS is a Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge. He studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge and then obtained his PhD in Computation and Neural Systems at the California Institute of Technology. He returned to Cambridge as a Royal Society research fellow at Darwin College. He is internationally known for his research in machine learning, information theory, and communication systems, including the invention of Dasher, a software interface that enables efficient communication in any language with any muscle. He has taught Physics in Cambridge since 1995. Since 2005, he has devoted much of his time to public teaching about energy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Climate Change.

Nine months after the publication of ‘Sustainable Energy – without the hot air’, David MacKay was appointed Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

[Tulse]

Lerner wrote: Think about it. Some tiny group operating on a shoestring says they have done something that billions of dollars could not. Do you really think everyone will roll over and shout hosannahs? Is that how science works today?

Once the device is demonstrably showing over-unity, Dr. Lerner, the issue won’t be one of science, but technology, and you won’t have to convince the physics establishment, but possible licensees of your design. I think that will be a much easier process, as there will always be companies eager to get in on this kind of groundbreaking “product” with such obvious benefits, companies without the kind of entrenched bias against the underlying process that may exist in the scientific world.

Heck, the jokers at Blacklight Power already have actual commercial licensees for a completely undemonstrated “product” that defies basic physical laws! (And if I recall correctly, even the cold fusion folks had money given to them by power companies.) Surely if scam artists like that can convince people to give them money without any sort of prototype, a genuine, proven technology with solid data behind it will have people lining up. The world is hungry for clean cheap power. Successful aneutronic fusion will simply be too valuable to ignore or suppress.

[Brian H]

Tulse wrote:

Think about it. Some tiny group operating on a shoestring says they have done something that billions of dollars could not. Do you really think everyone will roll over and shout hosannahs? Is that how science works today?

Once the device is demonstrably showing over-unity, Dr. Lerner, the issue won’t be one of science, but technology, and you won’t have to convince the physics establishment, but possible licensees of your design. I think that will be a much easier process, as there will always be companies eager to get in on this kind of groundbreaking “product” with such obvious benefits, companies without the kind of entrenched bias against the underlying process that may exist in the scientific world.

Heck, the jokers at Blacklight Power already have actual commercial licensees for a completely undemonstrated “product” that defies basic physical laws! (And if I recall correctly, even the cold fusion folks had money given to them by power companies.) Surely if scam artists like that can convince people to give them money without any sort of prototype, a genuine, proven technology with solid data behind it will have people lining up. The world is hungry for clean cheap power. Successful aneutronic fusion will simply be too valuable to ignore or suppress.
Tulse, you get smarter with every post.

[Rezwan]

Again, “Once the device is demonstrably showing…” – I think we need to focus more on the disputability THIS side of the experiment. That the device will demonstrably show…. is the question now, and the only way to address that is to do the experiment. However, with focus on the speculation of what will happen AFTER, it makes it seem like a done deal and sells the current effort short. It gets people into fantasy mode rather than responsibility mode.

Brian H wrote:
No, Eric. I think there will be waves of fear and exaltation that sweep through various sub-sets of scientists and administrators and others. One such sub-group is the large and largely MSM-excluded community of AGW skeptics, who above all do not want the world to buy a carbon-control pig-in-a-poke on the basis of extremely dodgy science and grotesquely incompetent computer modelling. Having a prospect like FF which renders the entire issue moot, and does so by means of a back door opened by human genius, will make them (us) very, very happy.

To me, the issue isn’t who is going to be thrilled AFTER it’s figured out – it’s who can we find to materially support it BEFORE, while proof of concept is ongoing.

If you can get your AGW folk to fully fund the project up front, carte blanche, beforehand, now – that’d be splendid. (Heck, we can then merge this back with the thread on documentaries from whence it came. AGW’s funding an obscure fusion project that ends up working and saving the world? Decades of gloating ahead! Classic Doc!)

Otherwise it’s all a bunch of speculators, sitting there, waiting to be made happy – loquacious, yet ultimately passive. Spectators in the unfolding drama with no greater claim to its realization than any other spectator.

[Rezwan]

Tulse wrote:
Once the device is demonstrably showing over-unity, Dr. Lerner, the issue won’t be one of science, but technology, and you won’t have to convince the physics establishment, but possible licensees of your design. I think that will be a much easier process…

What will the process be? That is the question. Phase I of LPPX is designed to show feasibility. Assuming they show that, it will be – not so much disputed – but there will be a lag time for peer review and validation overlapping with phase II, and there are some powerful interests who might like to see the venture fail. It’s not that they can do much – but there’s some potential turbulence the shape of which we can’t know at this time. In the face of uncertainty, it’s best to be prepared for any eventuality.

For FFS, being prepared means having a strong network of diverse supporters from many walks of society in place and a strong web platform to coordinate activities. It means having a pro-fusion culture globally, paying attention.

For LPP, being prepared means having a strong and committed network of investors, advisors, and resources to weather any storm.

What will or won’t happen is speculation. What we can do to be prepared for anything is proactivity.

[Tulse]

I agree there will be some lag time between Phases I and II, but I think the emphasis on “peer-review”, at least in the traditional sense, is misplaced. As far as I know, a great many technological innovations didn’t have a peer-review as traditionally defined (i.e., a formal paper submitted to a scientific journal, with the journal editor appointing reviewers to examine the paper, and potentially several cycles of revision and re-submission). Intel doesn’t typically “peer-review” its new chip designs, and auto makers don’t “peer-review” new engine technologies (at least as far as I know). And pharmaceutical manufacturers wouldn’t bother with publishing peer-reviewed studies if that were not a requirement for licensing their products for sale.

As I see it, LPP’s research is ultimately more in the model of this kind of technology development than pure scientific research — the end goal is to produce a practical energy source very quickly after showing over-unity, certainly far more quickly than any research tokamak or other Big Fusion technology can. It’s really much more on the model of “garage inventor” than “huge bloated multi-year physics experiment”. And inventions get adopted when someone is convinced of their utility enough to purchase/license them. One way to do such convincing is indeed through peer-reviewed publications, but frankly, given the funding that often goes to clearly crackpot energy ideas, such rigorous formal proof is certainly not necessary for initial success.

As always, this is just my two cents, and someone with more experience in science-heavy technology startups might be able to shed more light on how this kind of thing works in practice. I would strongly suggest that the FFS or LPP seek out such folks (perhaps from the biotech and/or biofuels arenas, since those are both very hot currently, and involve similar issues of investing in unconventional technology).

[emmetb]

If LPP manages to demonstrate feasibility (or just establish new science with the strong magnetic field effect for example), there will most likely be a flurry of interest in theirs, but also in other, related, proposals.

It’s phase II that you should be worried about because that’s where the skeptics will most likely direct their arrows, and justifiably so, in particular they will: nag about electrode erosion, skin the “onion”, snifle about the ultra-fast-yet-to-be-invented switches with unheard of duty cycles. But this will all be fine. Because, and i completely agree with Tulse here, it puts you in the hands of the engineers (that’s what ITER is: it’s not big science, rather it is big engineering; and admittedly, a tiny bit of science as well 😉 ).

I’m not saying they can lean back and rake in the money after achieving phase I. But let’s face it: it would be a monumental contribution in it’s own right and, once replicated, would lend LPP a tremendous credibility.

[Brian H]

I’ve heard it said that what’s truer is revealed by what works better. If FF can continue its superior progress (even as far back as the Oct. ’07 Google Tech Talk it had moved far closer to breakeven than any alternatives, and is now far in advance of that) then we will see “the proof of the pudding is in the eating” demonstrated.

Peer review is nice — depending on who picks the peers! In practice it means an editor selects some people in the field, keeps their names confidential, and passes their comments on to the authors being reviewed, and decides to print/not print based on their opinions. But a recent study of peer review quality has found that it rises briefly, and then declines so that after about 5 yrs. a reviewer is somehow “burnt out”, and no longer can provide quality objective assessments. Counseling, coaching, and setting standards have no influence on this; it seems to be inevitable. Reviewers are unpaid, so the task is stressful and personally unrewarding after a while, so maybe that’s the reason.

In any case, it’s secondary to results. If a FoFu once generates net energy, theorists, reviewers, and “competitors” will have to accommodate the fact as best they can.

[Brian H]

Re: my post #2, above.
David MacKay just replied, “Thanks for the information! I will check it out.”
🙂

[Aeronaut]

Indisputable is LPP’s objective, as I read their pattern, and I agree with that motivation driving LPP. My hunch is that it will take another generation until fusion power plants enjoy the universally indisputable status that cars and airplanes eventually earned through a combination of their everyday utility and the economics of providing them to markets in large numbers.

[Brian H]

Aeronaut wrote: Indisputable is LPP’s objective, as I read their pattern, and I agree with that motivation driving LPP. My hunch is that it will take another generation until fusion power plants enjoy the universally indisputable status that cars and airplanes eventually earned through a combination of their everyday utility and the economics of providing them to markets in large numbers.

Nah. The new generations aren’t as slow to adapt as us Old Croakers! They intuit the purpose and uses of iPads with a glance, and consider exponential electronics improvement to be the norm — why not a mega-quantum leap in electric sourcing? 😆 :coolgrin: :cheese:

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote:

Indisputable is LPP’s objective, as I read their pattern, and I agree with that motivation driving LPP. My hunch is that it will take another generation until fusion power plants enjoy the universally indisputable status that cars and airplanes eventually earned through a combination of their everyday utility and the economics of providing them to markets in large numbers.

Nah. The new generations aren’t as slow to adapt as us Old Croakers! They intuit the purpose and uses of iPads with a glance, and consider exponential electronics improvement to be the norm — why not a mega-quantum leap in electric sourcing? 😆 :coolgrin: :cheese:

Nah- enough of the Old Guard has to lose it’s power to influence attitudes and decisions. Just like in Moses’ day.

[Brian H]

Haven’t you hear of the Kurzweil Singularity? When exponential change goes vertical (to human perception)? This is just another step/lurch towards that ultimately confusing moment.

Of course, the rate of change has been just beyond the outer limits of what the previous generation can tolerate or grasp for a century or two …

[Author]

Posts