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  • Michael Buschmichael_w_busch@mastodon.online
    Aug 26, 2026, 6:50 PM

    Mastodon.online moderators: "Here is an option to report posts that share information widely-known to be false or misleading."

    I am glad for this. But I have a question:

    What counts as "widely-known"?

    Since we have a great many things right now that all relevant experts have explained are false or misleading; but the general public may not understand as such.

    For example:

    Commercial fusion power will not be a thing any time soon and anyone claiming it will is lying.

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  • Michael Buschmichael_w_busch@mastodon.online
    Aug 26, 2026, 9:55 PM

    @thematic

    ITER and DEMO after it can work; but there is no way to build a fusion power plant at a smaller scale.

    And helium-3 fusion would still produce a very high neutron flux from side reactions in the mix.

    Despite all of the groups pretending otherwise.

    But I can't exactly put Introduction To Plasma Physics into a spam report.

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  • Charlie Strosscstross@wandering.shop
    Aug 27, 2026, 8:05 AM

    @michael_w_busch @thematic I keep telling people: if you want "clean" fusion power you really need to go to Boron-11 plus P, which is *even harder* than 3He (and we can barely do 3He fusion in lab tests). The 3He fusion folks just want an excuse to go vandalize the moon for dollar bills. Fundamentally not serious (except at mining their investors' wallets.)

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  • Michael Buschmichael_w_busch@mastodon.online
    Aug 27, 2026, 1:12 PM

    @cstross @thematic

    I keep pointing out that it takes more energy to bake helium-3 out of lunar regolith than could be released by burning it in a hypothetical reactor.

    But, to my more general point above, that I would grant is not that widely known.

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