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The Stuff You Should Know Doin’ Science Playlist: Can Nuclear Fusion Reactors Save The World? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, I'm back. I first heard about Eider, which
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: is the nuclear fusion reactor being built in Europe, from
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: a New Yorker article called Star in a Bottle by
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Rathi Kachadourian. And if you find this episode floats your boat,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I highly recommend reading that article too. The whole idea
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: of what they're trying to do, which is to contain plasma,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: that crazy intense fourth state of matter that the sun
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: and lightning are made up of, into a chamber here
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: on Earth where it has no business being really really
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: caught my attention. And if they can do it, extremely cheap, abundant,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: climate friendly energy will be unlocked for all, and who
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: knows what will follow after that. The Eider group was
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: shooting for twenty twenty five to start, but recently changed
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: their date to twenty thirty four. You can pass the
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: time while you wait by enjoying this episode.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry, who's Barrel laughs, And
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: this is stuff you should know.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: She gave us the old quick start. Yeah, like, I
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: don't want to hear any more impressing record.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she knows that it shuts me up, or at
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: least cuts off whatever conversation I'm chiding her.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: It's great. I'm telling you. If we could release the
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: twenty seconds before each show as its own show, yeah,
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: that would be terrible. Yeah, no, one who cares.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: No, we'd think it was funny and everybody else would
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: be like, you edit this out for a reason. Yep,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: So Chuck, how you doing great? Have you ever been
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: to as on Provence, France? No? Is that a place?
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah? No, I haven't.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: It is a rustic little town in Provence, and it
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: is strangely, maybe even ironically, in the non hipster you've
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: been in.
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: The actual Yeah, it's a real word.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Definition of the word also cite to one of the
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: most futuristic engineering projects humanity's ever undertaken.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: Meat or meat that's a sound it makes.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Oh, I thought you're mocking me. No, no, no, for being
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: thrilled by the thought of this thing.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: No, it is kind of funny that this thing's in
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: a sleepy little town. It's like a Hamlet may Bee
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: Cern in Switzerland. That's not in the city, is it No,
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: you can't build these things in cities. That's why they're
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: in sleepy towns exactly, because no one knows they're being poisoned.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you can push the mare around pretty easy, exactly.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: This thing is called eider ITER, which is an acronym
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. That's right, which really
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: gets the point across.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: Did you know the word acronym is an acronym. That's
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: not true. Okay, I just want to see how long
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: you would try and sort it out in your head.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: I would have kept going on what it means thirty seconds?
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: Maybe that would have been a great joke. Could it
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: just kept it going. I'm not gonna tell you.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: I would have been. I would have it maybe fifteen seconds,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: because you would have gotten that much more sure. So
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't have looked it up. I would have figured
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: it out myself. Anyway. EIDER is this colossal engineering project.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Somebody compared it to the pyramids at Giza. Oh wow, Yeah,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: that's that's exciting stuff.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: The thing is is it's a nuclear fusion reactor, and
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: it's the culmination of decades of attempts to create a
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: nuclear fusion reactor. Because we've got fission down and we'll
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: talk about the difference in a minute, but fusion has
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: been very elusive, and nowhere is it more apparent than
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: in the Eider project. Because this thing is going to
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: cost it approximately fifty billion dollars when it's completed, fifty
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: billion dollars. They started in nineteen ninety three. They're hoping
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: to turn on the switch in twenty twenty, but it's
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: looking like twenty twenty three or twenty twenty four, and
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: it won't be starting to produce anything until the two
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: thousand and forties at the earliest.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: So what's the.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Point, I'll tell you the point. Yeah, if we can
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: figure out nuclear fusion chucking the world's literally the world's
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: energy problems will be solved for millennia. If we can
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: just figure this out, we will have a almost no
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: radioactivity nuclear option, almost limitless fuel supply, yeah, totally green,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: yeah clean.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: No pollution, no greenhouse emissions, right.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: And with plenty of energy to spare using the already
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: extant infrastructure we have to supply power like, you don't
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: have to completely rebuild everything. You can just to the
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: electrical cables outside. It'll be the exact same thing.
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you can just go to a nuclear fission reactor
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: and press the button that says fusion and it'll all
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: of a sudden join atoms instead of split them.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: It's that easy.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: That's what the difference is. With fission, you're splitting atoms
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: and you're gaining energy from that. With fusion, you're smacking
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: them together. Yeah, and you're gaining even more energy because
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: we're you're exploiting a different fundamental force.
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that I was being coy Clearly there is
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: no button because we would have pushed it a long
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: time ago.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: And when I say no pollution and no greenhouse emissions
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: before the pedantic among you right in we know that
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: just even shipping something from here to there causes pollution
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: and greenhouse emissions.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Good, but we're.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: Talking about that the output of the reactor itself is
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: very green.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: So if you want to know all about Eider, well
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: we're going to talk about it here or there, because
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: it's just you just can't talk about nuclear fusion reactors
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: and not mentioned Eider. But if you want to know
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: a lot about Eider, there is a really great article
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: called A Star and a Bottle, and it's by a
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: person named rock Fee cutcha Duran or Durian. And it
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: was written in the New Yorker not too long ago. Yeah,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: and man, it is every detail you want to know
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: about the IDE project written really well, and it's long,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: but it's totally worth the read.
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's all over the news lately, and for good reason.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: You said a lot of energy. I have a stat
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: I'm going to throw back to the old days here.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: Per kilogram of fuel, if we're talking fusion and fission,
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: fusion produces four times more energy than fission.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: I saw seven.
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: It's probably only things where it's like four to five
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: to ten or something. I found four times and ten
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: million times more than coal. Yeah, ten million times. Yeah,
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: the energy is coal. And that's with equal fuel per
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: kilogram of fuel. Right, It's just I mean, it is
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: the future.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And you can say, well that's great because we
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: want eighteen million times the amount of power that coal provides.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: You can say, weather buddy, you can also bring it
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: backwards because you can supply an awful lot of power
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: then with a lot less fuel. Yeah, where we're like
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: the advantage of nuclear fusion are mind boggling.
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: Sure, and very few downsides, which we'll get to, of course.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, like really genuinely, it's not just
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: like some like here's all the great stuff about it
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: and just don't pay attention to all these like really
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: horrible aspects. Yes, like there really aren't too many downsides.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: The downside is we are at this moment incapable of
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: successfully creating a commercially viable nuclear fusion reactor. That's right,
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: But we've got an an understanding of what the challenges
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: are ahead of us thanks to the last fifty or
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: so years of really really really smart physicists working on
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: the problem of nuclear fusion. And the great inspiration for
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: nuclear fusion is the Sun. The Sun and all stars
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: like it are enormous, immense nuclear fusion reactors. So if
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: you are building a nuclear fusion reactor here on Earth,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: you're essentially creating a star, and that is a very
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: difficult thing to do.
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: It turns out, yeah, the Sun creates I know, we
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: talked about the Sun in our very famous episode on
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: the Sun. The Sun creates six hundred and twenty million
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: metric tons. It fuses six hundred and twenty million metric
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: tons of hydrogen at its core every second, So every
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: second at the Sun's core. It produces enough power to
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: light up New York City for one hundred years, New
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: York City every second. And that's the Sun. And all
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: we want to do is do the same thing on
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: a much smaller scale. Cret. I think the guy there's
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: this kid who built one in his garage and he
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: said he wanted to cress all this ted talk. He
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: wanted to create a star in a box is what
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: he called it.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've seen it, like this New Yorker called it
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: a star in a bottle.
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah. This kid's name is Taylor Wilson, and he's nuclear
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: physicist and he's like sixteen, wow. And he created Yeah,
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: he created a successful one. And the key, though, is
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: not to be able to create the fusion. The key
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: is to be able to harness enough plasma, which we'll
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: get to at a high enough temperature and density for
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: there to be a net power gain. Right, you can
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: create fusion, but in order to get out more than
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: you're putting in is the only thing that matters, because
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: what you want to do is create electricity exactly.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: That's there's two huge challenges right now to nuclear fusion.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: We pretty much understand it enough to start it going
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: and get energy from it. The problem is is material
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: science isn't at a point where it can build a
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: containment vessel to really house a thermonuclear reactor.
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: And then the other big obstacle is, like you said,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: net energy gain, Like if you're putting in as much
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: or more energy then you're getting out of your nuclear reactor.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Then you're wasting energy and it's the opposite of what
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: you're supposed to be doing.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they're not just trying to impress people with their
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: science knowledge, no, but up to trying to create energy.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Up to now, though, Chucklake, every single thermonuclear reactor that's
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: ever been built has just been impressing people with knowledge.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: Like they haven't gotten any net energy out of a
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: single thermonuclear fusion reactor.
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, would see, I have that they have there right now.
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: They're up to like ten presently they're at ten megawatts.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Oh is that right? Yeah, and that's more than they
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: put into.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: A net gain of ten megawatts currently.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Everything I saw was when we turn this thing on,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: it should have a net gain. Yeah, but I didn't
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: see that they've actually done it.
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, ten megawatts now in Eider is going to produce
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: five hundred megawatts right once it's fully operational.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Right. So the next challenge then is this, if we're
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: already getting a net energy gain out of it, then
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: that means that the net energy gain is it's not sustainable.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Like you said, you want to keep the thing going,
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: so you don't have to keep starting from scratch to
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: power it up. You want it to basically be self sustaining,
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: so you just have to add a little more fuel.
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: To that's the dream.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about the history of fusion reactors.
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: Chuck, Yeah, it kind of goes back to this guy
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: named Lyman Spitzer. He's a thirty six year old Princeton
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: astrophysicist and this was in the nineteen fifties and he
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: was recruited to work on the H bomb and went
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: out and got a copy of a paper that was
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: released from Germany.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: I think, right that Argentina.
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: Oh, Argentina.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they announced that they had to get that wrong.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: They had successfully built a fusion reactor.
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: Right. So he gets this paper, goes on a ski trip,
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: starts thinking about how he can do this, takes a
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: little break from his job building the H bomb, and
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: figures out, you know, I think it's possible if we
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: can harness this plasma, I guess we should just go
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: ahead and to find what plasma is. Since we keep saying.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: It, Well, there's the normal three energy states that we're
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: familiar with, water solid and gas, liquid solid and gas.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Right right, there's a fourth one. It's plasma. And plasma
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: is basically like an energetic gas where the temperatures are
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: so high that whatever atoms you put into it, the
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: electrons are stripped off and allowed to move around freely. Basically,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: the surface of the Sun is plasma. That's what plasma is.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: It's a gas. It's a roiling gas that's really hard
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: to control and is really unpredictable.
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: Which is when you see the Sun like that rippling,
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: wavy looking thing.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: That's plasma, right, And the reason the Sun manages to
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: stay together is because it is enormously massive and has
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: a ton of gravity at its core.
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we don't have that advantage here on Earth.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: We don't, so we try to make up for that
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: by increasing the temperature.
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: That's right. He was onto it way back then in
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: the nineteen fifties. If we can just harness this, if
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: we can just get it hot enough and he created
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: a tabletop device called the Stellar Raider, and it was
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: in a figure eight position. It was a pipe and
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: a figure eight. Yeah, and this would keep things from
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: banging into walls theoretically. Yeah, and he was onto something
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: because well, we'll get to Lockheed later, but they're using
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: a similar device now, a figure eight.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, Well I didn't realize that was a
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: figure eight it is, which is weird because what they
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: eventually found out was that a donut shape was really
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: the key to get that net gain. So and the
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: reason that they found out that a donut shape worked
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: was because in the I think the late fifties, the
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: US had run up against the wall. They're saying like, okay,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: we've got this, but we can't control the plasma because
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: think about it, what you're trying to do is create
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: a star inside something, but it can't touch any of
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: the vessel that it's in or else it'll just completely
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: erupt it. Right.
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah. They compared it to holding jelly and rubber bands, right.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: It was just like you can't They couldn't figure out
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: how to control the plasma. So when when the US
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: ran up against this wall, they said, hey, rest of
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: the world we're going to declassify what spitz limon Spitzer
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: has been doing us out and like we'll share if
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: you guys share. And it turns out that the Russians
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: had already come up against this problem and licked it.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: They figured out that if you put the thing in
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: what's called the toroidal shape, a donut shape using electromagnets,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: you con tame the plasma essentially, And the donut shape
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: itself was pretty ingenious, but the real stroke of genius
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: was by running electromagnets in rings around the donut. So
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: it's like you have a donut and you put a
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: bunch of ear rings around it, right, and those are electromagnets.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: So you're creating an electromagnetic force field which contains the plasma.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: But then you also put an electromagnetic force field in
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: the middle of the plasma. So not only does it
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: heat it up to the temperatures you want, it also
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: stabilizes it further. So the Russians have invented what they
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: call the TACOMAC, which is this doughnut shape nuclear fusion
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: reactor that basically became the standard for the next fifty
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: years or so.
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you basically could achieve a really dense, super hot plasma.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: And we'll get into temperatures and stuff in a bit.
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: But since we can't create that kind of pressure that
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: they have in the Sun due to their gravity, their gravity,
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: the Sun's gravity, right, you know, the Sun, all those people. Yeah,
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: like you said, we had to make up for it
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: here on Earth with temperatures.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: Right, because apparently if you are in a in the
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: middle of a nuclear reactor, a nuclear fusion reactor, you're
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: going to find that the temperatures inside are about six
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: times hotter than the core of the Sun, not even
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: the service of the Sun, the core of the Sun.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: And the reason why it has to be so much
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: hotter is because, like you said, we can't replicate that density.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: We can get to those temperatures that we need, but
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: we can't get to the density, so we have to
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: make up for it. So we'll talk about kind of
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: the physics of what's going on here and why you
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: have to have high temperatures and what we're making up
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: for with density and everything right after this. So, Chuck,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: we're talking about nuclear fusion, and it's actually surprisingly understandable
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: at its most basic core.
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you're fusing atoms. It's not the hardest thing in
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: the world to wrap your head around. Yeah.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: So with fission, we're splitting atoms. You're taking an atom
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: and you're splitting its nuclei apart. You're splitting the neutrons
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: and the protons apart from one another. And when you
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: do that, one of the four fundamental forces, electromagnetic force,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: pushes them away and you get this burst of in energy.
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: With fusion, you're taking nuclei from different atoms. You're taking
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: protons and neutrons, and you're smashing them together. And when
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: you do that, you're unleashing what's called the strong force,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: which appropriately enough is stronger than electromagnetic force, which is
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: why nuclear fusion yields more energy than nuclear fission.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Einstein himself said, you know, each time you smash
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: these things together, you're gonna lose a little bit of mass,
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: and that little bit of mass is a ton of energy.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: As it turns out.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: That's right, the famous equals MC squared.
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I don't think he realized in nineteen oh five,
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: or maybe Einstein did.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Einstein probably did.
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Einstein probably did.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: I would guess he did.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: So the problem is, even though it is very easy.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: Just smash some protons together. There is a tremendous amount
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: of resistance to that smashing together.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: They don't want to smash together.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: No, because it's just like if you take a magnet,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: two magnets, yeah, and you put the positive poles toward one,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: they repel one another, right, Yeah, same thing. That's that's
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: the same principle on an atomic level too. If you
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: take protons, which are positively charged particles, and try to
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: put them together, they repel one another. And the closer
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: you get them together, the stronger. The repellent force is
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: the electromagnetic force, right, But if you can get them
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: close enough, the electromagnetic force is overcome by that strong force,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: the strong nuclear force, and they become bound together because
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: the strong force is that one of those four fundamental
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: forces of the universe, and that is the force that
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: keeps atoms together, and that is that force is stronger
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: than the force that repels like charged particles.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And when you talk about close, they need to
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: be within one times ten to the negative fifteen meters
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: of one another.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Right. So use if you'll indulge.
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: Me, sure you're gonna read a bunch of zero s.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: zero zero zero zero zero zero zero one meters apart. Right,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: that's how close they have to be.
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: That's right, to get them to accept one another in
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: to fuse. I think I have a theory that if
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: they they are not fusing because they think they're going
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: to be made into a bomb, And if we told
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: them that when we're creating energy, they might be more
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: willing to fuse together.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because protons are piece next. Everybody knows that. Sure,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: So when they do fuse together, right, when you do
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: cross that threshold and the strong force takes over and
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: overcomes the electromagnetic force, like we said, a tremendous amount
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: of energy is released, and it's released in part in
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: the form of neutrinos neutrons, right, which are right, neutral
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: particles which suddenly start carrying a tremendous amount of kinetic energy.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: So let's say you have one atom, you got another atom,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: and they're both like, I'm not getting close to you.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: We're not going to get to Okay, we got together. Yes,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: that force that mass that's displaced is transferred through the
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: neutron that gets kicked off of the atom, right, Yeah,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: And it's carried out. Now, a neutron doesn't have any
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: kind of positive or negative charts. It's neutral. It's a neutrone,
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: which means that it can pass through the very electromagnetic
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: fields that are keeping this plasma where this reaction is
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: taking place together. Once that happens, Chuck, it can go
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: out to what's called the blanket wall and a thermonuclear
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: reactor warm it, and then that heat is transferred into
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: a water cooling system. The water's warmed up turns steam,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: which generates a which I guess moves the turbine, and
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, the turbine is producing electricity.
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny how just it gets so complex, but
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: all you're still trying to do is create steam.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like it's like hooking the iss up to
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: a horse, right, you know, move it over there.
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: So, so there are a few types of fusion reactions.
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: The ultimate goal right now, what we can do on
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: a small scale is what's called a deuterium tritium reaction. Yeah,
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: that's the one that we can currently achieve. That's one
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: atom of deuterium and one atom of tritium combining to
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: form a helium four atom and a neutron the ultimate goal.
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's good, and that'll create a lot of energy,
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: but there are a few downsides. Tritium is radioactive.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: For one, you have to mine it from lithium. Yeah,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: and lithium's fairly rare.
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: Sure, the ultimate goal is to reach deuterium. Deuterium reactions,
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: which is two deuterium atoms combining to form that helium
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: three in a neutron, and you can get that from
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: the sea water. It's abundant, almost limitless. And I couldn't
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: find this, but I think clean water can be a
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: residual effect of this. Am I wrong?
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it's if well, you're probably not injecting,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: but to get the deuterium, I mean, desalination plants are
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: the key to the future as far as supplying the
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: world with fresh water.
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought I saw somewhere where it was an
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: actual byproduct, but yeah, but then I couldn't find it,
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: so I'm not sure if that's right.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: You know what, you just drug my memory. I feel
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: like in a hydrogen powered car, water is one of
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: the by products.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: So maybe so yeah, all right, don't quote me on
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: that though. For the very least, it's a great way
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: to create energy.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: Right, And what's you also can get tritium from helium,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: I believe. So even now with the the deuterium tritium
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: reactions that we're working on, there's there's already a there's
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: a workaround, you know, like you can create a thermonuclear
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: reactor that's a breeding reactor to where the byproduct helium
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: can be used to harvest more of the fuel you're
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: using tritium.
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And aren't we running low on helium?
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: We are? Which is like remember when we were talking
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: about the dirt the Zeppelin, which one was it? How
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: blimps work?
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah? And then a long time ago we did one
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: on the Mars turbine. Yeah, Mars turbine react actually, but.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Yes, there is very clearly a helium shortage, and the
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: idea that we're just using it for party balloons rather
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: than this yeah, is scary.
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And don't be confused if we say things like
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: deuterium and it sounds super complex. All that is hydrogen
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: with an extra neutron.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an isotope.
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: So there's three isotopes of hydrogen and they're all still
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: the same element. They're all still hydrogen, but they have
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: different configurations as far as their neutrons go. So protium
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: is a hydrogen isotope with one proton and no neutrons.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: Deuterium is a hydrogen isotope with one proton and one neutron,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: and tritium is a hydrogen isotope with one proton and
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: two neutrons. And like you said, tritium is radioactive. But
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: the beauty of it is you need very very very
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: little of it to fuel a nuclear fusion reactor, and
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: it becomes a stable helium, a non radioactive helium in
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: the reactor, so you don't have this leftover radioactive fuel.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: I think they said there's an it would be equivalent
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: of the radiation we just see every day and walking
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: around on the street.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Right, Yes, the background radiation. I believe I saw that too.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: The thing is is the parts to the nuclear reactor
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: themselves will become irradiated over time. Apparently, though compared to
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: the kind of radio activity that's generated from nuclear fission,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: this stuff you could just disassemble and bury in the
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: desert for one hundred years, go back and dig back up,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: and it will be totally inactivated. So it's the stuff
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: that is radioactive is extraordinarily manageable.
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it is. And like I said, we don't want
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: to make it sound like this is perfect. There is.
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: They do predict the short to medium term radioactive waste
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: problem and they say that's due to activation of the
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: structural materials.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: The actual thermonuclear device itself.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and while you don't need much tritium, even a
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: few grams of tritium is problematic. But hopefully you know,
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: there's no accident, although they say accidents with these as
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: if you just turn the power off, it stops everything. Yeah,
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: it's not like a chain reaction can occur like a
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: fission reactor, there's out of your control.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: There's not a meltdown. There's which Also if you want
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: to know more about that, go listen to how Nuclear
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: Meltdowns Work episode. That was pretty good. We released it
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: right after Fukushima, but it applies to all fission reactors.
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: So the goal is ultimately deuterium deuterium reactions where your
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: pair together. It does. And the reason why is again
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: it's abundant fuel. You can get it from desalinating seawater.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: And then secondly, it's not radioactive at any point, so
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: it wouldn't make the the thermonuclear reactor itself radioactive, that's right.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: The reason why we're not doing that already is because
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: we can't achieve the temperatures necessary.
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: That's right, which leads us to the two big stumbling blocks.
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: Everyone knows this is a great idea. There's no one
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: out there saying, oh, I don't know about this fusion thing.
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: Creating a star in a box sounds kind of weird.
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: The problem is the barriers that we have here on
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: planet Earth, which is one temperature and two pressure. We
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: have achieved the temperature, which is the requirements, is one
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: hundred million kelvin and like you said, that's about six
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: times hotter than the Sun's core, which is pretty intense.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: And the other is pressure, Like we said, we need
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: to get them within I'm not going to make you
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: read all those zeros again, but smash them that close
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: in order to fuse. And since we don't have that
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: kind of mass and gravity that the Sun does, there
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: are a few pretty genius ways that we're working around that.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's basically two as it's stands, and then the
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: locky Martin one, which a lot of people are skeptical about.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: We should say it's kind of a variation on one theme.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: But there's basically there's two ways that we've figured out
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: to create nuclear fusion reactors so far. One is using
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: magnetic confinement and the other is using inertial confinement. So
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: magnetic confinement uses that tacomac technology.
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's sort of like CERN. You know, it's using
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: magnets to create pressure. I guess in CERN's case, you're
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: using it to create speed, right, but in this case
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: is to create pressure.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Right. So what you're doing is is you have a
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: you have this donut shaped chamber and that's your reaction chamber,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: and then again rings around the donut that go on
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: around the inside and outside of the donut. I know,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of imagining wonderful donuts.
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: To doing Homer Simpson area.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: They create electromagnetic fields. Now, remember this plasma is hydrogen
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: gas that's been heated up to ature so hot that
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: the electrons just float off and move around freely. And
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: because of this higher temperature, these particles have become really
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: really energized, so they're moving and bouncing all over the
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: place and the pressure is building up. But because electrons
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: are negatively charged, and because protons are positively charged, if
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: you use alternating electromagnetic fields, you can contain this plasma.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: So that's this incredibly hot gas that's six times hotter
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: than the core of the Sun can be contained within
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: the electromagnetic fields.
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: That's right. And we talked about power and power out.
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: You need about seventy megawats of power to create this
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: to start this fusion reaction, but you're going to yield
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: about five hundred megawats.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: That's the Eider project, I believe.
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the Eider and that's only a three hundred
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: to five hundred second reaction. But like we said earlier,
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: the eventual goal is that it's sustaining itself, which is
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: just a beautiful concept.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So basically what they do is they have the
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: gas is injected into the chamber, the hydrogen gas, and
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: then there's the electromagnetic fields that are holding the plasma
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: in place. But then remember we said, the Russians figured
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: out that if you put an electromagnetic field in the
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: middle of the whole thing, it will stabilize that plasma,
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: but it also heats it up, so it serves this
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: double purpose. And then just to add a little extra temperature.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: They shoot it with microwaves and some other stuff and
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: then heat it up. And then as the plasma goes
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: crazy and all the fusion energy is released, the neutrons
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: move their way outside of the electromagnetic field into the blanket,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: which they heat up, and the heat energy is transferred
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: to power that turbine or move the horse down the lane.
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: And it's just creating steam.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's I mean, that's like, that's what Eider
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: is doing right now. That's what they're trying to prove.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: And then also as Eider is spending billions and billions
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: and billions of dollars and running into tons of delaysh
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: it's an amazing project. Lockheed Martin basically just came out
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: and said, oh, by the way, this thing that you're
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: trying to do that's going to be one hundred feet
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: tall and require staggering amounts of energy and money. We're
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: doing one that puts out the same amount of energy
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: as yours, but it's a tenth of the size, which
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: means it's almost out of the gate commercially viable.
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah. That is their skunk Works division of Lockheed, and
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: they announced this like three days ago here in mid October,
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: and they've gotten a lot of blowback from the scientific community.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: Because they wouldn't release data.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: They don't have data. They said it's a high beta
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: device right now, and kind of shut out the scientific
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: community as far as questions go. And every scientist that
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: I saw interviewed for this said they're trying to get
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: some attention, to get some partners to join in.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Well. Yeah, plus it makes you want to run out
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: and buy Lockheed Martin stock because if one company you
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: can figure out how to create a thermonuclear fusion reactor
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: here on Earth that's scalable, it fits, Yeah, that that
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: person would be very wealthy.
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So it's a dubious claim, but they are, you know,
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: they're working toward a good thing. I'm not like poopooing
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: the whole thing, right, But until they have hard data
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: and like some proof, than I think the scientific community's
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: got their arms holded right now.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean they have released some details, it's
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: just not detailed enough for a scientist. It's detailed enough
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: for Aviation Week.
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: I bought it.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they wrote an article on it, and basically, what
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: the what The guy they interviewed was saying was that
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: over at Eider they have a low beta ratio, which
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: is the amount of electro magnetism that you need compared
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: to the amount of plasma you can put into the chamber. Yeah,
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: so there's like five percent plasma to ninety five percent
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: electromagnetivity or electromagnetism just to keep this plasma thing from
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: just blowing up, right, because that can happen. Sure, they
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: might not melt down, but if everything went wrong, the
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: whole thing could blow up.
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: Well, and you know, you know what an atomic bomb is.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: It's a fusion reaction, right, and this.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Is a lot of those all put together in one
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: hundred foot tower. This guy was saying that the beta
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: ratio for their machine is like one. So what he
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: was saying is they figured out a way and again
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: it's not very detailed, sure, but they figured out a
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: way to contain the plasma, but in a way that
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: also allows it to expand because if you think about it,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: the more plasma there is, the more hydrogen atoms there are,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: more hydrogen atoms, more isotopes there are, the more nuclear
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: fusion reactions or events you can have, the more energy
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: you can yield. Right, So they're saying they figured out
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: how to contain the plasma, but again, like you said,
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: the scientific community is really skeptical because they think it's
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: just a pr sign.
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: Well, I think they made the mistake by saying they
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: invented a magicometer to make it all happen and that's
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: it and don't ask about it.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right.
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: I did see though, that we're was using the figure
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: eight stellarator configuration. Yeah, and I think that's true. I
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: tried to. I found a couple of more sources that
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: were kind of vague about it, and I think the
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: details on it are just a vague period. But I
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: don't know why they would abandon the donut shaped if
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: the Figure eight was you know, nineteen fifties technology that's
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: sort of been disproven.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: Well, supposedly their whole jam was that even in the
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: donut in the Tacomac. Yeah, this donut shaped reactor, plasma
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: has a tendency to just move around and make its
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: way out. Sure like it's not. It's still not fully contained,
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: and they're using something basically mirrors to catch the plasma
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: that's getting out and moving it to parts of the
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: electromagnetic field that are less dense. So there's a bunch
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: of protons in this part of the field, that field
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: is being strained, but then maybe there's not that many
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: protons over here, so they use mers to direct the
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: protons to the low density area.
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: To keep it all even of the field.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, to even the whole thing out, which makes sense.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: But again, if you're not releasing data, don't expect the
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: scientific community to buy it.
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: You got that right.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: So there's another way to build a thermonuclear reactor that's
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: currently being work done too, and we'll talk about that
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: right after this.
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: Fish. So, buddy, Magnetic confinement is pretty neat, and we
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: talked about that, and that's understandable and I love it.
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: I want to date it. But internal confinement I want
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: to marry because it has lasers. At the National Ignition
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: Facility at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, they are actually using laser beams.
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: They have a device called the NIF device where they
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: focus one hundred and ninety two laser beams on a
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: single point and a ten meter diameter target chamber called
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: a haul realm that's got to be German, and basically
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: inside that target chamber they have a little tiny pie
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: sized pellet of deterium, tritium, and a little plastic cylinder.
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: It's funny that it can be plastic somehow.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you'd think it would introduce like impurities or something
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: into it.
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, or it would need to be like iron or something.
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: I don't know. It just seems unstable. But uh, that
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: is one point eight million jewels of power from these lasers.
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: They're going to heat the cylinder up, generate some X rays,
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: and then that radiation will convert that pellet into plasma
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: and compress it. So again they're creating plasma, but instead
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: of smashing it together with magnets, they're superheating it with lasers.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: So that that's your Your money's on that one. You
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: like that.
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: I just think it's neat because I like lasers.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: But that's your preference of the two.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: Yes, well, actually whichever one works is going to be
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: my preference, okay.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: And that one'll yield fifty to one hundred times more energy,
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: more energy out than energy put in, So that's that's
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: a good goal.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I guess basically the whole point of magnetic
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: confinement is that if you can do without electromagnets, you're
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: you have a more simple and elegant.
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: You mean internal confinement or inertial inertial.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I mean, inertial confinement. Basically, the whole
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: thing just happened so fast. You don't even need these
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: magnets to confine plasma because you're not creating the sustained ignition, right.
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I might have said internal confinement before.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: By the way, it's inertial.
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I know.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: That's all right.
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: So what about cold fusion, buddy? That was all the
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: rage I remember back in the eighties.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because in nineteen eighty nine some researchers said that
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: they successfully created nuclear fusion using just room temperature stuff
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: like palladium. They took palladium and.
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: Banana peels and beer cans.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: Pretty much heavy water which had deuterium in it, and
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: they put the whole thing together and created nuclear fusion
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: without the high temperatures, hence the name cold fusion. And
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: if you can get around these high temperatures, then you
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: work out the whole material science problem, right, And if
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: you work out the whole material science problem, then this
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: is it's a desirable thing. They have cold fusion. The
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: problem is is a lot of scientists tried to replicate
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: these guys' findings and weren't able to so basically they
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: were kicked to the curb.
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: So does that mean has cold fusion been abandoned or
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: are people still trying to get on that train.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: No.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: In two thousand and five, some UCLA researchers basically said,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: we think we might have this thing down, and they did.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: It's something called pyroelectric crystal fusion. Pyroelectric fusions, yeah, where
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: basically it's the same result they do what would be
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: called cold fusion. The problem is that has a negative
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: net energy yield. You have to put in a lot
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: more energy than you get out of it.
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: Right, Well, that's no good.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: No.
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: Eider seems like they are making headway more than Lockheed
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: despite their claim they are, Like we said, it's in
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: Europe and it's being financed by a bunch of different countries.
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: The US is in, but they're kicking in. I think
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: the least amount only about seventeen million euros last year.
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: Of course we contributed dollars, but they're giving it to
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: us in euros. I think the EU spends the most
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: about eighty million. South Korea and China kicked in about
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: twenty and nineteen million. Respectively each And I saw earlier
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: where Russia was involved, but then I didn't see what
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: they had contributed financially.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely.
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: Are they still all right? Well, maybe they're just we're
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: writing a chit for them for later. They'll just pay
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: us back. But it is a very expensive prospect and
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: you need, you know, countries getting together for something like this.
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: It's not the kind of thing that like the US
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: can take on on their own, I guess unless you're
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: Luckheed Martin, right, and you don't have to prove your data, right.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: So this nuclear fusion, we'll see what happens.
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you got anything else?
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Man? No? I just say everybody should go read a
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: Star in a Bottle on the New Yorker. It's really
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: really good.
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty neat there. You can also go to instructibles.
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: If you want to build a nuclear fusion reactor in
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: your garage, you can do so. You're not going to
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: create energy, because, like we said, you're going to be
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: putting more than you get out. But there are instructions
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: and that kid did it. His was a little more
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: advanced than the instructibles one, obviously.
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: But yeah, nice, the sixteen year old kid.
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, He's amazing because his was legit. He's done more
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: than that too. His TED talk was pretty impressive.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: Cool.
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: He's like working on UH with homemand security already for
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: various projects that have nothing to do with this.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Sure, yeah, Well, if you want to learn more
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: about nuclear fusion, you can type those words in the
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: search bar at HowStuffWorks dot com. And since I said that,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: it's time for a listener mail and Chuck. Before we
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: do listener mail, I want to give a shout out
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: to our Kiva team.
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for the that you don't know, we did a
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: podcast many years back on micro lending in Kiva. Kiva
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: dot org is an organization where you can loan entrepreneurs
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: and well it used to be just developing countries. Now
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: you can do it here in North America as well,
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: twenty dollars at a time that you can get paid
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: back for. You can get your money back if you're
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: not happy, or you can just keep reloaning that money
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: and it helps them get their small business going. And
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: we started a Kiva team many years ago and it
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: is killing it. So you got some stats for us.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: So basically, as of October nineteenth, we have loaned our
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: team has loaned two point seven million dollars to people
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: in developing countries nice and in the US here there,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: And the big one is we've exceeded one hundred thousand
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: loans man by our team. Our team only has eight
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: seventy nine members, so a eight seventy nine of you guys,
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: Thank you, way to go.
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: Congratulations, Yes, and thanks as always to Glenn and Sonia
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: are de facto Kiva. Uh what would you call them? Presidents? Presidents,
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: Presidents of the stuff you should know, Team yep, captains
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: of the stuff you should know Team no presidents, okay,
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: presidents presidentes. Glenn's like, yes, president.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they've been really like keeping it going for us.
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and when you know, sometimes we'll forget and Glenna nudges. Hey, guys,
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: remember the Kiva team.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: We should mention it, right, So the nice though, the
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: next goal we have is for three million dollars in
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: loans and we're on our way to it. So come
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: join us. We uh, don't begrudge people who are late
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: to the party. Just go to kiva dot org slash
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: teams slash stuff you should know and you can sign up.
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: So now it's time for listener mail right.
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: Indeed, sir, I'm going to call this sky writing follow
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: up from Australia. Hey, guys, recently listened to how sky
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: running works and it reminded me of something. Although this
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: may not be suitable for listener mail, which I disagree actually,
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: because I'm reading it clearly. I was maybe eight or
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: nine when a few friends and I were out on
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: the street playing and doing things that nine year olds
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: would do. It's so awkward to say that.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: So you're not replacing something right there, No.
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: Huh, they were just doing nine year old things, okay,
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: good clean fun. We looked up and saw a plane
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: starting a skywrite and were instantly intrigued what was being written.
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: They started with an H and then an O. This
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: went on for maybe twenty eight minutes until finally the
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: word Hooters was scrawled across the sky, albeit backwards. So
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: I guess they have the Hooters restaurant chicken wing chain
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: in Australia.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: I guess a rich kid, yeah, really immature rich kid yeah?
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: Or that. My brain couldn't comprehend how this person managed
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: to screw up writing a word backwards. The best reason
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: my childish brain could come with is that skywriting took
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: place somewhere between us and a group of people that
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: it was initially intended for, or that I just thought
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: it was written up and downwards rather than across the sky.
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: Until now, I'd never understood or bothered to learn why
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: it was like that. So thank you for keeping the
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: podcast great and allowing me to figure that out. That
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: is from Marlin. Oh boy, uh hapourachichi happerachichi.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: Nice?
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: Have you ever seen a word like that?
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: Ha?
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: Poor Rachi hapoor rochi Marlin from Sydney, Australia.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: Man, thanks a lot, Marlin.
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: H And that's Marlin with an a even Oh yeah, Marlan.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: Huh, Well, thanks a lot, Marlin. We're gonna say it
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: like that.
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: If you have an awesome last name and want to
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: share it with us, you can tweet to us at
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: s YSK podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: slash stuff you should Know. You can send us an
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: email to Stuff Podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com, and as always,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: joined us at our home on the webs uf you
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: should Know dot com.
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: HowStuffWorks dot com.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: H