Ugh, I rdread this topic because nuclear is as close to as a religion as you get on HN. SMRs just arne't better in any way that matters [1].

And while I personally hope we have economical commercial power generation in the future, I'm not convinced that'll ever happen due to one massive problem: energy loss from high-energy neutrons, which have the added problem that they destroy your very expensive containment vessel. Stars deal with this by being massive, having fusion happen in the core (depending on the size of the star) and gravity, none of which is applicable to a fusion reactor.

I'm reminded of the push recycling of plastic. Evidence has surface that this was nothing more than oil industry propaganda to sell more plastic [2]. A lot of "recycling" is simply dumping the problem into developing countries and then just looking the other way. We used to do this to China until they stopped taking plastic to "recycle".

I can't help but think that Microsoft issuing some press releases about nuclear is nothing more than marketing to contributing to the data center explosion that will inevitably drive up your electricity bills because you'll pay for the infrastructure that needs to be built and will be paying the generous (and usually secret) subsidies these data centers engotiate.

[1]: https://blog.ucs.org/edwin-lyman/five-things-the-nuclear-bro...

[2]: https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...

Ironically, I'm fairly sure that it is in fact big oil propaganda claiming that plastic recycling is big oil propaganda.

You could for example look at China, a country that has embraced nuclear and solar and wind and batteries and EVs because they don't have good access to oil and don't have much government influence from that group.

Do they recycle more or less of their plastic waste than the USA?

Google suggests in 2023 it's 30% in China vs 12% in the USA.

It's a confusing topic, as some anti-plastic campaigners seize on this intentional failure of the US to recycle more and better to try to push total plastic bans.

Which are good policy for specific items, and again we see these being done in China too, as a complement to recycling, not a replacement.

> I'm not convinced that'll ever happen due to one massive problem: energy loss from high-energy neutrons

That's just one of many massive problems? You touched on the reason for this:

> Stars deal with this by being massive, having fusion happen in the core ... and gravity, none of which is applicable to a fusion reactor.

As a result of this, we actually have no good reason to believe that commercially viable fusion power could ever be possible.

While we can create conditions comparable in relevant ways to the core of a star, it's extremely uneconomic to do so, for obvious reasons.

And we haven't even achieved the scientific breakeven point for a sustained reaction, let alone one that remotely approaches being viable from an engineering or economic perspective.

Neutron energy loss would be a good problem to have, because it'd mean we're much further along than we are now. The fact that, after half a century and enormous expenditures, we haven't even reached the point where neutron energy loss is the main problem, gives an idea of just how unrealistic this all is.