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The Great Fusion Debate: How Far Away Are We Really? · What's Your Problem?

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. One of the biggest, wildest dreams in technology is
0:24
Speaker 1: nuclear fusion, smashing atomic nuclei together in order to make energy.
0:30
Speaker 1: And just to be clear, fusion is different than fission,
0:32
Speaker 1: different than splitting nuclei, which is the way nuclear power
0:36
Speaker 1: works now. Fusion has the promise of being an incredibly cheap,
0:40
Speaker 1: abundant source of energy without some of the risks associated
0:44
Speaker 1: with fission, like, for example, nuclear meltdowns. As you'll hear
0:48
Speaker 1: in a minute, fusion could profoundly change the world for
0:51
Speaker 1: the better. But crucially, nobody has figured out how to
0:55
Speaker 1: do nuclear fusion in a practical economic way. A bunch
0:59
Speaker 1: of companies are working on it, and Google and Microsoft,
1:02
Speaker 1: among others, have promised to buy fusion power from these
1:05
Speaker 1: companies if they figure out how to deliver it. So
1:09
Speaker 1: the stakes are high. The money is flowing in, but
1:12
Speaker 1: it's still unclear if or when fusion will work to
1:15
Speaker 1: deliver power at scale. I'm Jacob Goldstein, and this is
1:30
Speaker 1: what's your problem. I recently went to south By Southwest
1:33
Speaker 1: to host a conversation about fusion with an analyst, an investor,
1:38
Speaker 1: and a guy who runs a fusion company. It was
1:41
Speaker 1: billed as the Great fusion debate, how far away are
1:44
Speaker 1: we really? And as you'll hear, we talked about the
1:48
Speaker 1: promise of fusion and what it'll take to realize that promise,
1:52
Speaker 1: and we also talked about how the AI boom and
1:54
Speaker 1: the related demand for more and more power is shaping
1:57
Speaker 1: the industry. Also, interestingly, why having a ton of money
2:02
Speaker 1: flowing into the industry is not necessarily a good thing.
2:06
Speaker 1: Here's the conversation. So I want to make the case
2:10
Speaker 1: that the fusion industry is a testament to twenty first
2:13
Speaker 1: century capitalism. Capitalists have put more than ten billion dollars
2:19
Speaker 1: into fusion companies, something like four billion last year. And
2:23
Speaker 1: the amazing thing is most of those companies are probably
2:26
Speaker 1: going to fail, and most of the ones that succeed,
2:29
Speaker 1: if they do succeed, won't make a profit for many years.
2:32
Speaker 1: So this is an incredible bet and it's not just
2:36
Speaker 1: sort of gambling slash speculation. Right. If it works, it'll
2:40
Speaker 1: be great. It'll be the abundant, cheap energy we've been
2:45
Speaker 1: dreaming of for years. So the question that we're going
2:49
Speaker 1: to try and answer today is is it going to work?
2:52
Speaker 1: And when will it work? And what do we mean
2:54
Speaker 1: by work? Fortunately, we have some of the smartest, most
2:59
Speaker 1: knowledgeable people in the world on this question right here
3:03
Speaker 1: to try and help us answer it. Can you guys
3:05
Speaker 1: just briefly introduce yourselves. Say your name and your job
3:08
Speaker 1: as we say podcasts. Yep, I'm Luke.
3:12
Speaker 2: I work for a company called Baylor Giftwood, which is
3:13
Speaker 2: an institutional asset manager.
3:17
Speaker 3: Hi.
3:17
Speaker 4: I'm Melanie Windridge. I'm complicated. I'm the founder of Fusion
3:24
Speaker 4: Energy Insights. We keep people up to date with developments
3:27
Speaker 4: in the fusion industry. Also the co founder of Fusion X,
3:31
Speaker 4: which runs Fusion x invest conferences brings together capital and
3:34
Speaker 4: the opportunity in fusion, and the founder of Fusion Advisory Services.
3:39
Speaker 4: We help people make decisions in the fusion industry, so
3:42
Speaker 4: we provide information basically all of those. I provide information
3:45
Speaker 4: to people who need to know about fusion to help
3:47
Speaker 4: them make better decisions.
3:49
Speaker 5: I'm Greg Paifer.
3:50
Speaker 6: I'm the founder and CEO of a company called Shine Technologies.
3:53
Speaker 6: We are one of said companies. Of course, we expect
3:57
Speaker 6: to succeed, as that is all of them that I'm
3:59
Speaker 6: sure do. But we're taking a little bit of a
4:01
Speaker 6: different approach to fusion, which is we've actually identified commercial
4:05
Speaker 6: applications of the technology today where these can really meaning
4:09
Speaker 6: fully impact lives and improve the world, and are using
4:12
Speaker 6: that as a path to practice and make fusion cheaper
4:15
Speaker 6: over time.
4:16
Speaker 1: So just to start, we'll get into the details in
4:18
Speaker 1: a sec but just to start, give me the dream, like,
4:21
Speaker 1: give me the long term. Why will it be amazing
4:24
Speaker 1: if this works capital w in a big way?
4:27
Speaker 6: Yeah, So I think you know a lot of people
4:29
Speaker 6: are focused on the human energy needs over the next
4:31
Speaker 6: ten or twenty years, but that's not what makes fusion
4:33
Speaker 6: interesting to me. Fusion is fundamentally has the access to
4:39
Speaker 6: fuel is unlimited, is a way to think about it.
4:41
Speaker 6: So as this technology becomes cost effective and we get
4:44
Speaker 6: better and better and better at it over time, the
4:46
Speaker 6: cost will continue to drop as technological sophistication continues to improve,
4:52
Speaker 6: and with no fundamental ceiling set by the availability of
4:57
Speaker 6: raw materials, fusion is going to move humans into this
5:00
Speaker 6: world where we can access energy at ten one hundred
5:03
Speaker 6: one thousand, a million times more at a low cost
5:08
Speaker 6: then we can today. And that's what's really exciting to
5:11
Speaker 6: me about fusion. It's not just like can we decarbonize today?
5:15
Speaker 6: Can we meet the needs of AI. But what is
5:18
Speaker 6: it going to do to society? I think it's very
5:19
Speaker 6: akin to when the microchip first entered the market, right
5:24
Speaker 6: like in the nineteen sixties, we had no idea how
5:27
Speaker 6: that was going to transform society, the computational power that
5:30
Speaker 6: that would lead to, and it was an industry where
5:33
Speaker 6: we've seen literally trillions of times of increased cost performance
5:38
Speaker 6: over the last seventy years. Fusion has that potential, and
5:43
Speaker 6: so as we think about what humans can do long term,
5:45
Speaker 6: the sort of problems we can solve with access to
5:48
Speaker 6: energy on that scale, that's really the most exciting thing
5:50
Speaker 6: about it, and it's coming.
5:52
Speaker 1: I mean one example, that's just an example, free unlimited energy.
5:56
Speaker 1: I know, we don't know what we'll do with it.
5:58
Speaker 1: You couldn't have guessed iPhone or AI seventy years. You
6:01
Speaker 1: might have guessed AI actually, and you might have guessed iPhone.
6:04
Speaker 1: So guess what would we do in seventy years with
6:07
Speaker 1: free unlimited energy.
6:09
Speaker 6: I mean, it's you can go anywhere from the super
6:11
Speaker 6: practical today of like we would have unlimited clean water, right,
6:15
Speaker 6: you can separate salt from water for free. If energy
6:19
Speaker 6: is cheap, you can pull carbon out of the atmosphere
6:22
Speaker 6: for free almost, you know, so this is super practical
6:26
Speaker 6: like other you know, if you want to let the
6:28
Speaker 6: imagination wander, we can cut trip times to other planets,
6:32
Speaker 6: you know, from from years or many many months down
6:36
Speaker 6: to weeks, right, and so there are ways to expand
6:40
Speaker 6: you know, it's like you can let the imagination go
6:43
Speaker 6: on some of these things. But fundamentally, I think you're
6:46
Speaker 6: looking at a path out of energy poverty for the
6:52
Speaker 6: eight billion of us that don't have access today. You're
6:55
Speaker 6: looking at being able to solve some of these major problems,
6:58
Speaker 6: and then you're looking at like unlocking things that we
7:01
Speaker 6: just can't even imagine.
7:03
Speaker 1: Yeah today, Right, Okay, so that's the dream. Now let's
7:06
Speaker 1: spend a long time talking about why it's hard and
7:08
Speaker 1: what we have to figure out to get there, and
7:10
Speaker 1: maybe more concretely, like let's try and put a put
7:14
Speaker 1: a steak in the ground. When's it going to happen?
7:17
Speaker 1: And not when's that going to happen, but like let's
7:21
Speaker 1: start with when will there be uh fusion power on
7:26
Speaker 1: the grid. When will somebody's house get uh, you know,
7:30
Speaker 1: electricity from fusion?
7:32
Speaker 5: Do you mean making money selling it? Or just like
7:35
Speaker 5: what's electical proof.
7:36
Speaker 1: Technical proof sounds a little small, like I feel like
7:39
Speaker 1: a real power plant, that's for real, that's economic. Yeah,
7:42
Speaker 1: that's economic. So Melanie, you want to you want to
7:49
Speaker 1: just put a flag in the ground.
7:53
Speaker 3: Goodness.
7:55
Speaker 4: So if I were, no, actually I don't want to.
8:00
Speaker 4: It's I'll tell you a couple of reasons why. It's
8:02
Speaker 4: a really really hard question. Yeah, And of course it's
8:07
Speaker 4: the it's the question. Right when people talk about fusion,
8:10
Speaker 4: or you asking about fusion, the first thing they say, well,
8:12
Speaker 4: the two the two questions they want to know the
8:14
Speaker 4: answer to, when are we gonna have it?
8:16
Speaker 3: What's it gonna cost?
8:17
Speaker 1: Yeah?
8:17
Speaker 3: I get it. Those are really good questions.
8:20
Speaker 4: But first thing is it's still kind of an exploration
8:25
Speaker 4: and so it's very difficult to make predictions of exactly
8:29
Speaker 4: what's gonna happen and when they're going to happen.
8:31
Speaker 3: So that's difficult for the timescale thing.
8:34
Speaker 4: But also there are a lot of things feeding into it,
8:37
Speaker 4: a lot of moving pieces. It's not just a science
8:39
Speaker 4: and actually we're moving infusion from this like science phase,
8:43
Speaker 4: if you like, into an engineering phase. We need to
8:46
Speaker 4: be able to build fusion power plants.
8:48
Speaker 3: We've there have been demonstrations.
8:51
Speaker 4: You can say there was a famous breakthrough, if you like,
8:54
Speaker 4: in our field demonstration in twenty twenty two when the
8:57
Speaker 4: National Ignition Facility UH, which has a laser experiment, got
9:00
Speaker 4: more energy out of fusion reactions than it put in
9:04
Speaker 4: to make them happen UH. And that's big because fusion
9:06
Speaker 4: happens in stars. You need to have really extreme conditions,
9:10
Speaker 4: stellar conditions hundreds of millions of degrees like to make
9:12
Speaker 4: fusion happen. So we've had that sort of scientific breakthrough.
9:15
Speaker 4: But now if you move into what it takes to
9:17
Speaker 4: actually build a power plant and as Greg said, one
9:20
Speaker 4: that's economic that's going to last for decades within despite
9:27
Speaker 4: these extreme conditions, like that's a big thing. That's where
9:29
Speaker 4: most of the challenges lie. Now, then you've also got
9:32
Speaker 4: to be able to pay for it. Who's going to
9:36
Speaker 4: pay for it. There's a lot of investment going into
9:38
Speaker 4: fusion now and Fusion already has four customers Google, Microsoft, Areki,
9:45
Speaker 4: a supermarket chain in Japan, in any energy company, so
9:52
Speaker 4: there are people willing to pay for it. And regulation
9:55
Speaker 4: you have to be able to regulate it. But anyway,
9:56
Speaker 4: all of these moving pieces are coming in to the
10:00
Speaker 4: determination of when this is going to happen. So if
10:03
Speaker 4: you want to have some idea of time skills I
10:06
Speaker 4: mentioned the lab, the National Lab getting more energy out,
10:09
Speaker 4: then in private companies need to do that. There's a
10:12
Speaker 4: number of private companies working on fusion. Estimates are that
10:17
Speaker 4: this decade, the rest of this decade, so before twenty
10:19
Speaker 4: thirty they're going to be proving out the technology required
10:22
Speaker 4: to get to that energy break even point.
10:25
Speaker 3: Maybe by twenty thirty twenty.
10:27
Speaker 4: Thirty two we might see energy break even private companies.
10:30
Speaker 4: If you think about let's say, assume four years, if
10:33
Speaker 4: that's optimistic, maybe for building regulating, maybe you get electricity
10:38
Speaker 4: first electricity, let's say by twenty thirty six.
10:42
Speaker 3: Everything.
10:42
Speaker 4: In my experience of doing kind of hard things, everything
10:45
Speaker 4: takes longer than you think it will. But when you're
10:47
Speaker 4: looking back, it happens faster than it seems like it was.
10:51
Speaker 3: A child really fast.
10:52
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, really well, it seems really fast looking back.
10:56
Speaker 4: So I would say that for the public, when fusion happens,
10:59
Speaker 4: it's going to just come out of nowhere.
11:00
Speaker 3: Probably they probably won't realize.
11:03
Speaker 4: Meanwhile, there's been lots of work going on in the background,
11:05
Speaker 4: but now is the time when companies are getting involved.
11:11
Speaker 4: The people are positioning themselves. Governments are positioning themselves, companies
11:14
Speaker 4: are positioning themselves. Supply chains are positioning themselves because now
11:17
Speaker 4: is the time when those people who are going to
11:20
Speaker 4: actually benefit from fusion as and make their fortunes from fusion.
11:24
Speaker 4: Now is the time that they are jostling for position.
11:27
Speaker 1: The perfect setup for Luke make their fortune version Luke,
11:31
Speaker 1: you have an investment in fusion right into Gregg's company,
11:36
Speaker 1: we should say, why do you do it?
11:40
Speaker 2: It's partly a nod to the challenges which Melanie talks about.
11:43
Speaker 2: I think we've demonstrated that it's possible to do fusion.
11:45
Speaker 2: The question is now is it practical and then is
11:48
Speaker 2: it profitable at the end of it? And to get
11:51
Speaker 2: through those kind of three stages of scientific, engineering and
11:53
Speaker 2: commercial break even is going to require a lot more
11:56
Speaker 2: capital than has been required to date, I would argue
12:00
Speaker 2: in the fusion industry to get there, And that's a
12:02
Speaker 2: really big challenge for investors when you say, the path
12:05
Speaker 2: to de risking something gets more expensive as it gets
12:08
Speaker 2: closer than the finished life less and so the industry
12:12
Speaker 2: as it's been led to date in its current form
12:15
Speaker 2: I guess by government, by academia, etc. Has not been
12:18
Speaker 2: the best advert for investors looking into Fusion to say that, oh,
12:21
Speaker 2: this can be profitable and this can be a high
12:24
Speaker 2: returning pursuit within the time frame that clients have. So
12:28
Speaker 2: we're quite lucky and that our clients have got a
12:30
Speaker 2: long term time horizon of five to ten years. Ten
12:33
Speaker 2: years is probably about stretching it in the public markets,
12:36
Speaker 2: or even in the private market ten years.
12:38
Speaker 1: It sounds like it's stretching it for Fusion, which is
12:41
Speaker 1: the problem.
12:42
Speaker 2: We come back to you, right, So if you need
12:43
Speaker 2: to say that within ten years Fusion is going to
12:45
Speaker 2: be commercial and profitable and on the grid and when
12:48
Speaker 2: we've completed the development of it, that's a really really
12:52
Speaker 2: risky proposition to take with clients.
12:54
Speaker 1: You just need to find somebody to give you liquidity, right,
12:58
Speaker 1: that's the other option. If somebody comes in, there's one up.
13:00
Speaker 2: So if you're a really early stage investment, is usually
13:03
Speaker 2: the exit for them of realizing the gain on the
13:06
Speaker 2: risk which they've taken is to sell the company to
13:08
Speaker 2: someone else. Someone else comes in and says, Okay, we
13:11
Speaker 2: like the kind of risk we're taking from here, and
13:14
Speaker 2: so you might start to see people who funded what
13:17
Speaker 2: have been marguably science projects to date might say, okay,
13:20
Speaker 2: well we've derisked the technology to hear. But now there's
13:22
Speaker 2: a kind of investor that comes in and wants to
13:23
Speaker 2: take engineering risk, and they might find that really attractive
13:26
Speaker 2: as a starting point because they can say, oh, well,
13:28
Speaker 2: these people have de risked the science and now I'm
13:30
Speaker 2: just taking engineering just.
13:31
Speaker 1: To be like super clear one sentence, like why did
13:34
Speaker 1: you put money in?
13:35
Speaker 2: So we think there's a path to profitability that's far
13:38
Speaker 2: sooner than selling commercial electricity onto the grid.
13:41
Speaker 1: I think.
13:41
Speaker 2: I mean, gregill do a better job than I can
13:43
Speaker 2: telling this story, but there are many more things you
13:45
Speaker 2: can do with fusion besides just producing electricity. And it's
13:49
Speaker 2: that journey getting from where we are now to there
13:51
Speaker 2: that I think is more interesting for investors, particularly the moment.
13:55
Speaker 2: And I think we were talking beforehand and you sort
13:57
Speaker 2: of make the SpaceX comparison. We didn't start off with that. Well,
14:01
Speaker 2: we started off with an ambition to get the Mars
14:03
Speaker 2: in SpaceX, which we're investors in, But the path to
14:06
Speaker 2: getting there has been commercializing low Earth orbit. It hasn't
14:09
Speaker 2: been sending your rockets to Mars as soon as possible.
14:13
Speaker 2: It's been building that financial sustainability to the point where
14:16
Speaker 2: when you want to take a trip to Mars, the
14:19
Speaker 2: cost of that is trivialal on the comparison of what
14:21
Speaker 2: it was ten years ago. And so you're trying to
14:24
Speaker 2: make that the option on the investment rather than the
14:28
Speaker 2: core and thesis that everything all the risk rests on.
14:31
Speaker 2: And so there are smart ways to introduce your business
14:33
Speaker 2: principles and staging the strategy of a company in terms
14:36
Speaker 2: of what markets they go after, which might make it
14:40
Speaker 2: easier to go after the end goal. Now, that kind
14:42
Speaker 2: often if you present it to academia or other places,
14:45
Speaker 2: it sounds like selling out right, or some big bad
14:47
Speaker 2: investors come and says, oh, we need to make profits now,
14:50
Speaker 2: rather than.
14:51
Speaker 1: All you did was reduce the cost of getting to
14:53
Speaker 1: the space by ten x on.
14:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly like it or not, we have to figure
14:57
Speaker 2: out a way that this is commercial in order for
15:00
Speaker 2: it to succeed.
15:01
Speaker 1: So, just to articulate the metaphor, right, in the case
15:05
Speaker 1: of SpaceX, the big dream is going to Mars. The
15:08
Speaker 1: practical reaction is just getting to orbit more cheaply. By analogy,
15:12
Speaker 1: the big dream. Here is cheap and abundant power beyond
15:15
Speaker 1: our dreams. And so what is the what is the
15:19
Speaker 1: getting to space for you, Greg?
15:21
Speaker 5: Fusion?
15:22
Speaker 6: It makes energy, which is what we're all interested in
15:24
Speaker 6: long term. But that energy is carried by particles called neutrons,
15:28
Speaker 6: at least from the easiest fusion reaction to do something
15:31
Speaker 6: called deuterium and tritium. And it turns out that the
15:33
Speaker 6: neutrons from fusion actually have tremendous value on their own,
15:37
Speaker 6: used for different purposes. So you can use neutrons to
15:39
Speaker 6: take pictures of things, you can use neutrons to literally
15:42
Speaker 6: do alchemy, to turn low value materials into high value materials.
15:46
Speaker 6: You can capture the heat from the neutrons. I'd argue
15:48
Speaker 6: that if we're looking one hundred years from now, the
15:50
Speaker 6: biggest value from fusion might be doing bulk scale transmutation
15:53
Speaker 6: of low value materials into high and not even electricity anymore.
15:57
Speaker 1: And just so for a specific example, I know you're
15:59
Speaker 1: working on a there's a big project you're working on
16:02
Speaker 1: right now to that end, like actually building a giant
16:05
Speaker 1: building to do fusion to do that right well.
16:07
Speaker 6: And we have yeah, and we have we have products
16:09
Speaker 6: in the market today. So as I said we started,
16:13
Speaker 6: we're kind of following a chip model. So in defense,
16:15
Speaker 6: we have customers who will pay U one hundred thousand
16:17
Speaker 6: dollars to kill a what hour for fusion output?
16:20
Speaker 1: What are they buying from? You're just extremely pick a picture.
16:24
Speaker 6: So we can use neutrons to radiograph modern jet engine blades,
16:28
Speaker 6: for example, so.
16:30
Speaker 1: Thet fancy X ray, yeah, X ray for a thing
16:32
Speaker 1: where X rays.
16:33
Speaker 6: Don't work exactly. Yeah, And just I could give a
16:36
Speaker 6: really specific example. So modern jet aircraft use very high
16:40
Speaker 6: temperature engines and they get high efficiency by running the
16:44
Speaker 6: engine above its melting point frightening. It's terrifying, right, like
16:49
Speaker 6: if it melts, it explodes, and potentially it takes down
16:51
Speaker 6: the plane, depending on what type of plane you're in.
16:54
Speaker 6: And the way they do that is they pull cold
16:56
Speaker 6: air from the front of the engine, they can press it,
16:58
Speaker 6: and they pump it through the each individual fan blade themselves.
17:02
Speaker 6: And so they have to cast these incredibly intricate channels
17:06
Speaker 6: to assure this cold air passes through the blade. And
17:08
Speaker 6: it's a tough process and frequently in this process a
17:11
Speaker 6: little defect is included in the manufacturing process and only
17:15
Speaker 6: a neutrons can see it, and if you don't see it,
17:18
Speaker 6: it doesn't fail in testing. It's kind of like a
17:21
Speaker 6: blood clot in your arteries, Like it's sitting there and
17:23
Speaker 6: then suddenly one day a pilot's going to have a
17:26
Speaker 6: bad day and it moves and it gives them a stroke. Right,
17:27
Speaker 6: it blocks that thing. The engine explodes. If you're in
17:30
Speaker 6: an F thirty five, you probably go down. If you're
17:33
Speaker 6: in an air bus, you know you have a bad day.
17:35
Speaker 6: So this fusion reaction produces the neutron. As I mentioned,
17:38
Speaker 6: we kind of collimate it into a beam. We push
17:40
Speaker 6: it through the object, and we put it neutrons instead
17:42
Speaker 6: of film behind it, and we take an X ray
17:44
Speaker 6: we take it a neutron.
17:46
Speaker 1: So this is what you're selling now, a product of fusion, right, yeah, great,
17:51
Speaker 1: So that's where we are today. Something's happening with fusion.
17:53
Speaker 1: People are giving money to do fusion.
17:55
Speaker 6: And to your other point, we've invested now in a
17:58
Speaker 6: half a billion dollar plant that'll make twenty million doses
18:01
Speaker 6: of medicine every year when complete over the next one
18:03
Speaker 6: to two years.
18:04
Speaker 5: We take.
18:06
Speaker 6: Uranium that was once intended for nuclear weapons, so highly
18:09
Speaker 6: enriched uranium that the government is down blended.
18:12
Speaker 5: It's worth about six dollars.
18:13
Speaker 6: A gram after it's been down blended, and we turn
18:16
Speaker 6: it into a substance called molybdenum ninety nine, which is
18:19
Speaker 6: used to look for heart disease.
18:20
Speaker 5: It's used to stage cancer.
18:22
Speaker 6: It's easing forty million tests every year around the world,
18:24
Speaker 6: and it's worth about one hundred million dollars a gram.
18:27
Speaker 1: One hundred million dollars a gram gives one pause presumably
18:31
Speaker 1: use an extremely small amount.
18:33
Speaker 6: Yeah, about zero point one micro grams yea. So you
18:37
Speaker 6: know it's it's actually pretty cheap for the patient at
18:40
Speaker 6: the end of the day. And that's why you can
18:42
Speaker 6: do so many millions of patients with this fairly cheap material.
18:46
Speaker 6: But it so, this is what I was talking about.
18:47
Speaker 6: We can use neutrons to turn low value things into
18:49
Speaker 6: high value things, albeit at small scale. Yeah, and that's
18:53
Speaker 6: actually like that's a commercial reality.
18:54
Speaker 5: We know that that works. We've invested in the plant.
18:57
Speaker 6: This will be the way that the western hemisphere produces
19:00
Speaker 6: ISOs hopes for the next fifty years.
19:03
Speaker 5: Probably.
19:07
Speaker 1: We'll be back in just a minute. So we haven't
19:21
Speaker 1: said AI yet. We've gone an impressively long time without
19:24
Speaker 1: saying a I So I'm gonna say it. AI means
19:27
Speaker 1: the richest companies in the history of the world have
19:29
Speaker 1: an incredible demand for electric power, which seems good for fusion.
19:34
Speaker 1: What does the what does the demand mean? I mean,
19:37
Speaker 1: the most kind of dramatic one is Microsoft has this
19:41
Speaker 1: power purchase agreement with it's Helion, right, with a fusion company.
19:45
Speaker 1: Supposedly that's going to start delivering power in twenty twenty eight, which,
19:49
Speaker 1: like I can't even get my deck refinished by twenty
19:51
Speaker 1: twenty eight, right, what does well I don't know if
19:56
Speaker 1: you guys will answer this, but ay, is that going
19:58
Speaker 1: to happen? Let me just ask, is that going to happen?
20:01
Speaker 1: Is there going to be fusion power for Microsoft in
20:03
Speaker 1: twenty twenty eight?
20:05
Speaker 4: We don't really know a lot about what they're doing
20:07
Speaker 4: because they don't publish per papers in the same way that.
20:11
Speaker 3: Some other companies. Most other companies do.
20:13
Speaker 4: Some companies are very secretive because I mean, there's a
20:15
Speaker 4: lot of intellectual property here, and there is I guess
20:19
Speaker 4: complexity for the companies in how they publish their results
20:21
Speaker 4: for the scientific community and therefore have their credibility and
20:25
Speaker 4: how much they protect. But there's also Commonwealth Fusion Systems,
20:29
Speaker 4: which is a spin out from MIT, and they're much
20:31
Speaker 4: more public about their work. They're based on the tocomac concept,
20:35
Speaker 4: which has been researched historically since about the nineteen sixties,
20:39
Speaker 4: so it's the best understood of the fusion concepts. But
20:42
Speaker 4: it's really really hard to engineer a power plant. But
20:46
Speaker 4: they're also the best funded of all the fusion companies.
20:49
Speaker 4: They've raised about two to three billion dollars. They have
20:55
Speaker 4: a power purchase agreement with Google as well.
20:57
Speaker 3: I think I can't remember the exact dates of their
21:00
Speaker 3: probably twenty thirties.
21:01
Speaker 4: So they are I would say more likely than Helion,
21:06
Speaker 4: and they publish a lot so we can actually.
21:08
Speaker 3: Look at what they did.
21:09
Speaker 2: Imagine they're taking a portfolio approach to that as well. Right,
21:11
Speaker 2: they're not betting their business. Is Healion or is Commonwealth
21:14
Speaker 2: going to be able to produce electricity on next day?
21:17
Speaker 1: Sure? I mean as Microsoft's pain to restart three Mile Island, right.
21:22
Speaker 3: I mean they're exploring everything. Is it for them?
21:24
Speaker 4: A sister who works in Google actually, and she says
21:27
Speaker 4: that for them it's an existential risk. Well, they need energy,
21:30
Speaker 4: so they're exploring, they're exploring everything. They're investing very highly
21:35
Speaker 4: and renewables as well. But they know that it's going
21:39
Speaker 4: to grow. The demands are going to grow, and fusion
21:41
Speaker 4: gives them just a really important option for the future
21:46
Speaker 4: for energy. But they're also strategically investing in these companies
21:49
Speaker 4: as well, So there's an upside on the investment side
21:53
Speaker 4: as well if these companies succeed and they can really
21:55
Speaker 4: enable them.
21:56
Speaker 1: I suppose when me take a run at another falsifiable prediction,
22:02
Speaker 1: when will a data center be at least partly powered
22:08
Speaker 1: by should.
22:10
Speaker 4: That's an interesting question as well because it takes you
22:13
Speaker 4: into the behind the met conversation rather than the grid.
22:16
Speaker 1: Easier, right, should be before like, will anybody say a
22:19
Speaker 1: number twenty thirty light numbers?
22:23
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think I think fusion energy will have a
22:26
Speaker 6: role either on or behind the grid by twenty forty.
22:28
Speaker 6: By twenty forty, okay, And I think we've got, you know,
22:32
Speaker 6: our own path. So we we we've collected data on
22:36
Speaker 6: our cost of fusion, and we've looked at our last
22:38
Speaker 6: several product lines over the last ten years and projected
22:42
Speaker 6: it forward. And if you just follow a straight extrapolation
22:45
Speaker 6: of how the cost has been coming down, our technology
22:48
Speaker 6: should be there on twenty forty. So there you go
22:51
Speaker 6: before twenty I'll say even before, Okay, slightly before the line.
22:55
Speaker 1: And that's just sort of the More's law of fusion
22:57
Speaker 1: right as his extrapolation, to be clear, could go faster
23:01
Speaker 1: with the breakthrough right a lot.
23:04
Speaker 5: But that's why I think.
23:05
Speaker 4: There are also different considerations, aren't they, Because to your
23:09
Speaker 4: point before about you can sell things at different prices
23:12
Speaker 4: depending on the value, and so the value is going
23:14
Speaker 4: to be much higher to let's say a data center
23:17
Speaker 4: maybe maybe also remote minds or and there are also
23:21
Speaker 4: there are other countries in the world where the electricity
23:24
Speaker 4: price they could pay at higher price, like Japan, for example,
23:27
Speaker 4: because they don't have very many other alternatives. Japan are
23:30
Speaker 4: very strategically going after fusion as well, by the way,
23:33
Speaker 4: and so you could see if people want it enough,
23:36
Speaker 4: they will pay more for it, so then you don't
23:38
Speaker 4: have to compete in the electricity market.
23:41
Speaker 3: They could just so.
23:42
Speaker 1: I'm hearing something kind of lower than twenty forty. Are
23:45
Speaker 1: you taking the under here still think?
23:48
Speaker 3: No?
23:48
Speaker 4: I don't think I am, actually, because you've still got
23:50
Speaker 4: to You've still got to do the things to get there.
23:52
Speaker 4: There are still some phenomenal challenges on the engineering of
23:55
Speaker 4: power plants, but money is going to be like, you
23:57
Speaker 4: need money to build the machines, do the experiments, etc.
24:00
Speaker 3: So money is key.
24:01
Speaker 4: So if you don't have the money, it's going to
24:03
Speaker 4: do longer than twenty forty. But even if you had
24:06
Speaker 4: infinite money, can you do it quicker?
24:08
Speaker 3: Probably can't do quicker.
24:09
Speaker 4: Than twenty thirty five even with infinite money, because there's
24:11
Speaker 4: a lot of research that.
24:13
Speaker 3: Needs to be done.
24:14
Speaker 6: I'd argue you infinite money is a terrible idea, you know.
24:17
Speaker 6: I think throwing money at problems actually makes the solutions
24:20
Speaker 6: really expensive.
24:21
Speaker 1: Why is it bad?
24:22
Speaker 6: Well, I mean fundamentally, if a technology is going to
24:26
Speaker 6: change the world, it needs to be it needs to
24:28
Speaker 6: create more value than it consumes, and otherwise it won't
24:32
Speaker 6: scale right, Like, it could be a fascinating experiment, but
24:34
Speaker 6: nobody is going to We're going to continue to make
24:37
Speaker 6: energy the old way if it's much more expensive to
24:39
Speaker 6: make energy with fusion. So investing infinite money and its
24:42
Speaker 6: development is going to give people the wrong incentives. I
24:44
Speaker 6: think it's really important for investors to also ensure that
24:48
Speaker 6: the companies, and the boards of these companies and the
24:50
Speaker 6: management teams of these companies are incentivized to find ways
24:53
Speaker 6: to make cost effectiveness like in their thinking from day one.
24:57
Speaker 6: And I do think there's a lot of focus on
25:00
Speaker 6: scientific milestones, you know, then to be followed by engineering milestones,
25:05
Speaker 6: and then to be followed by cost milestones. I'd argue
25:07
Speaker 6: that's upside down. They as you pursue the better scientific
25:12
Speaker 6: and engineering milestones, you have to be thinking about cost
25:15
Speaker 6: the whole time. You should be thinking about cost the
25:17
Speaker 6: whole time you should be practicing. I'm not saying people
25:18
Speaker 6: aren't doing that, but the focus, at least from a
25:22
Speaker 6: high level standpoint, is very If the hierarchy is very scientific,
25:26
Speaker 6: then engineering, then cost.
25:27
Speaker 4: I think if you're looking for examples, I was being
25:30
Speaker 4: slightly facetious.
25:31
Speaker 3: We'd love to have more money in fusion.
25:34
Speaker 4: But if you are looking for example, just look at
25:36
Speaker 4: the difference between the public sector and like the private
25:40
Speaker 4: sector now and also how things have changed over the
25:43
Speaker 4: last let's say ten years, because so that before before,
25:47
Speaker 4: you know, so ten years ago, before ten years ago,
25:50
Speaker 4: fusion maybe even a bit more fifteen Like fusion was
25:53
Speaker 4: all public lab it was all like government funded public research,
25:58
Speaker 4: and it wasn't infinite money, it wasn't anywhere near enough money,
26:01
Speaker 4: but it was it was all just like academic thinking
26:06
Speaker 4: driven and so.
26:08
Speaker 3: That they did a lot.
26:09
Speaker 4: They got to a point where they we understood a
26:13
Speaker 4: lot about the science.
26:14
Speaker 3: But it also got to a point.
26:15
Speaker 4: Where the machines they were building were really huge, like
26:18
Speaker 4: et which is a big billion dollar experiment being built
26:22
Speaker 4: in the south of France, and so people started saying, like,
26:25
Speaker 4: what's next, and how on earth can we commercialize something
26:27
Speaker 4: that is this big and this expensive. And so the
26:30
Speaker 4: interesting shift that has happened happened over the last ten
26:33
Speaker 4: years is you've got private companies have sprung up and
26:37
Speaker 4: they're approaching the problem with the more commercial mindset. The
26:39
Speaker 4: conversation is very commercial dominated, private sector dominated, as opposed
26:44
Speaker 4: to the academia, and even within governments, they're thinking about
26:47
Speaker 4: how the public sector can feed into the private sector
26:49
Speaker 4: and what's needed because there's now a recognition that it's
26:52
Speaker 4: going to be the private companies that are going to
26:54
Speaker 4: drive fusion forward and are going to put it on
26:56
Speaker 4: the grid as opposed to a government project. Mostly there
26:59
Speaker 4: are countries, So that's the shift that's really happened. And
27:04
Speaker 4: it's that, and it's that shift from a sort of
27:07
Speaker 4: like infinite money mindset to a commercial no, we need
27:10
Speaker 4: to do this with constrained budgets.
27:12
Speaker 3: And make it profitable.
27:14
Speaker 4: I think that's a really interesting shift.
27:16
Speaker 3: That we've seen.
27:17
Speaker 1: I mean, Luke, how does it look too as a
27:20
Speaker 1: person with infinite money.
27:25
Speaker 2: So there's two approaches that If you think that fusion
27:27
Speaker 2: is inevitable and at some point civilization is going to
27:30
Speaker 2: be powered by it, I think that's quite a consensual
27:32
Speaker 2: view within the industry. The question is when and how
27:36
Speaker 2: much to to your points, how much money and how
27:39
Speaker 2: much time? Yeah, exactly, And so an investiplace with that
27:41
Speaker 2: problem has kind of got two choices. If you have
27:44
Speaker 2: to deploy capital into fusion, you'd say, oh, I can
27:47
Speaker 2: take a Portfoilio approach. I can just invest in anything
27:49
Speaker 2: and everything, because I just want to capture the one
27:52
Speaker 2: thing that works and that's going to be so valuable
27:54
Speaker 2: that it doesn't matter about fusion etf exactly all the
27:58
Speaker 2: other failures. And you take that approach, or you could say, well,
28:01
Speaker 2: I'm just going to pick the winner, and am either
28:04
Speaker 2: knowledgeable enough or arrogant enough or however you want to
28:06
Speaker 2: describe that to say that, oh, we can just pick
28:08
Speaker 2: that one or two and that's the kind of risk
28:11
Speaker 2: you can take. All you could say, well, what are
28:13
Speaker 2: the enabling technologies and enabling businesses that need to happen
28:17
Speaker 2: to support that goal. So rather than investing in a reactor,
28:20
Speaker 2: which might end up pursuing a utility business model might
28:23
Speaker 2: be heavily regulated, why not try and find the company
28:26
Speaker 2: that's making the widgets that allow the reactor to do
28:28
Speaker 2: a particular thing. And often those companies end up being
28:32
Speaker 2: some of the most valuable ones in industries. It's not
28:34
Speaker 2: the one which ultimately is the face of it, it's
28:36
Speaker 2: the one that enables it. And quite a few of
28:38
Speaker 2: the companies that I've already cottoned onto this and are
28:41
Speaker 2: doing their own business lines around that of vertically integrating.
28:44
Speaker 2: So Commonwealth is a really good examples that's making its
28:47
Speaker 2: own superconducting magnets for its reactor, but is also then
28:50
Speaker 2: going to market to hopefully sell those to other companies
28:53
Speaker 2: or sell those to other industries.
28:54
Speaker 4: Yeah, can I depend say in your intro when you
28:58
Speaker 4: said no one's making money yet or when they're not,
29:01
Speaker 4: no one's going to make money out of the future.
29:02
Speaker 4: Companies are going to make money for a long time.
29:05
Speaker 4: To your point, I don't think that's true. Shine has
29:08
Speaker 4: been there it for for years. Like I'd say, like
29:11
Speaker 4: pioneering this approach. It's just really interesting to see that.
29:14
Speaker 4: Like a few years back, so Fusion x Invest, one
29:16
Speaker 4: of the companies that I founded, We've had a lot
29:19
Speaker 4: of these conversations and a few Like in the earlier stages,
29:22
Speaker 4: it was very much like the portfolio approach, who's gonna
29:25
Speaker 4: who's gonna win. I'm gonna have a stelearrated company and
29:27
Speaker 4: a talk about company, and I'm gonna have a laser company,
29:29
Speaker 4: and I'm gonna hit an outlier company.
29:32
Speaker 3: And i hit my bets.
29:33
Speaker 4: And people said, oh, it's a distraction if you if
29:36
Speaker 4: you're a fusion company and you're thinking about making revenues,
29:39
Speaker 4: it's a distraction. You should be focused on the prize
29:43
Speaker 4: that was a few years ago. In the in the
29:44
Speaker 4: space of a few years, the conversation is shifting to
29:47
Speaker 4: exactly what you're talking about. So where firstly, some of
29:51
Speaker 4: the private fusion companies are.
29:53
Speaker 3: Probably not being able to raise what they need to
29:55
Speaker 3: raise and are thinking like, well, we need to have.
29:58
Speaker 4: We need to get other revenues from somewhere, So how
30:01
Speaker 4: are they going to do that? So people have started
30:03
Speaker 4: selling their technology. Like when you're when you're trying to
30:06
Speaker 4: solve a really hard problem, you're going to develop technology
30:08
Speaker 4: along the way that is potentially valuable in other markets.
30:10
Speaker 3: So companies are starting to do that.
30:12
Speaker 1: What's an example of that.
30:15
Speaker 4: Magnets you mentioned high temperature superconductors and magnets that you
30:18
Speaker 4: can make from high temperature super and muture.
30:20
Speaker 1: Are the buyers outside of fusion.
30:22
Speaker 4: Particle accelerators, medical grids, a defense aviation there are a
30:28
Speaker 4: number There are also lots of laser technologies, software technology,
30:33
Speaker 4: is power power bank technologies. There are a number of
30:37
Speaker 4: different things that are being developed and are being sold.
30:39
Speaker 2: I mean these can revolutionize the markets that are going
30:41
Speaker 2: into as well. So what's the impact that fusion can have.
30:43
Speaker 2: It might be in like completely obscure sort of markets
30:46
Speaker 2: which you want to associate with fusion. So you know,
30:48
Speaker 2: if we can make high temperature superconducting, does that mean
30:51
Speaker 2: we can make MRI machines for a fraction of the
30:53
Speaker 2: cost or make many more of them? Are people going
30:55
Speaker 2: to have access to that kind of scanning, etcetera. Because
30:58
Speaker 2: of a reactor design company that's trying to figure out
31:02
Speaker 2: how does it contain a plasma better. So again there's
31:04
Speaker 2: all these different offshoots which might actually the significance of fusion.
31:09
Speaker 2: It's kind of like the Space Race, right, people say, oh,
31:11
Speaker 2: what does the Space Race do for us?
31:12
Speaker 1: And then you have this long list of non sticks.
31:16
Speaker 3: Always comes out and free strive food val.
31:19
Speaker 1: Valcro will take stick pins out of the microchip.
31:21
Speaker 2: To Greg's earlier point in terms of like NASA, you know,
31:23
Speaker 2: needing these kind of level of computers for the Apollo program,
31:26
Speaker 2: et cetera. So again, the hope is with fusion, if
31:28
Speaker 2: you can get enough of that going as well, is
31:30
Speaker 2: that a way to be able to fund the next leap?
31:32
Speaker 4: In terms of commercials what people are doing, and that's
31:34
Speaker 4: what we're seeing now. We've got increasingly private fusion companies
31:38
Speaker 4: come to fusion advisory services doing market studies, looking for
31:41
Speaker 4: the other markets where their technologies have applications. Those are
31:46
Speaker 4: where the opportunities are kind of happening today. And there
31:48
Speaker 4: those investors now who are looking for those opportunities as well,
31:52
Speaker 4: in the supply chain companies and in the fusion companies.
31:54
Speaker 3: Who are doing other things besides just fusion.
31:58
Speaker 1: I want to leave time for questions. So before we
32:00
Speaker 1: got to questions, I'd like to ask each of you
32:03
Speaker 1: to just give us one insight, one thought to walk
32:09
Speaker 1: out of the room with.
32:12
Speaker 6: Mine's easy. Fusion's already here. It's already improving your life,
32:15
Speaker 6: making it safer. Soon, it's going to make it healthier.
32:19
Speaker 6: And you know the future is but I think it's
32:21
Speaker 6: it's already here.
32:24
Speaker 4: Yeah, mine is that as we've similar to what we've
32:29
Speaker 4: been discussing, I think that in any big energy transition,
32:33
Speaker 4: the people who engaged early were the ones.
32:36
Speaker 3: Who did the best out of it, you could say.
32:40
Speaker 4: And so I would encourage people to not be too
32:44
Speaker 4: dismissive about oh it's science fiction, Oh it's always thirty
32:48
Speaker 4: years away. Just stay informed because to Greg's point, it's coming.
32:53
Speaker 4: The people in the industry know it's coming. And if
32:57
Speaker 4: you want to be like with the wave instead of
33:00
Speaker 4: being overtaken by it, then it might pay to just
33:04
Speaker 4: be informed early.
33:06
Speaker 1: Okay, you've had time to think about this last word.
33:09
Speaker 2: I just think the innovation has to be better and
33:11
Speaker 2: cheaper to be adopted at scale, and I think a
33:14
Speaker 2: lot of the debate infusion is often about how do
33:16
Speaker 2: we make things better and not necessarily about how we
33:19
Speaker 2: make things cheaper. And if you look at the sort
33:22
Speaker 2: of pioneering companies that have come through, even the past
33:24
Speaker 2: or of ten twenty years, they all had really cool technology,
33:27
Speaker 2: a lot of smart people, but they also had a
33:29
Speaker 2: business innovation which was intertwined with the tech innovation to
33:32
Speaker 2: the point where they were almost one and the same.
33:34
Speaker 2: If you can find businesses which which have that, that
33:38
Speaker 2: can inform probabilities of success.
33:44
Speaker 5: Still to come on the show. Audience questions.
33:48
Speaker 1: The questions were truly interesting, and I'm not just saying that.
33:59
Speaker 1: Thank you guys, and thank you all. This has been great.
34:02
Speaker 1: We have some time for questions. There's a mic. Just
34:04
Speaker 1: go ahead up and make a line at the mic
34:07
Speaker 1: so that we can hear you.
34:11
Speaker 7: Very small, mine, fussy, Thanks great panel, the sun and
34:19
Speaker 7: window genuinely free, but solar and wind power not because
34:23
Speaker 7: there is opex and capex and systems costs. You're and
34:28
Speaker 7: I accept, by the way, very interesting point about all
34:30
Speaker 7: the steps along the way from all of you. But
34:34
Speaker 7: would fusion be really very cheap if not free, or
34:39
Speaker 7: you know, is that based on the sort of current
34:42
Speaker 7: view of what the capex of the sort of kit
34:44
Speaker 7: would be and so on.
34:45
Speaker 5: Thanks.
34:47
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean my view is it will never be free,
34:49
Speaker 6: but it will become cheaper and cheaper over time, and
34:52
Speaker 6: as it does, actually I expect the TAM to grow,
34:54
Speaker 6: so I look at it very that in TAM total
34:56
Speaker 6: addressable market for the product. So just like semiconductors have
35:00
Speaker 6: come down, Like I can't imagine in nineteen sixty if
35:03
Speaker 6: you're a computer chip designer and someone told you compute
35:06
Speaker 6: was going to be one one trillionth of what it
35:08
Speaker 6: costs to you're probably like, that's free, but it actually has.
35:11
Speaker 6: It's actually the biggest markets on Earth today, a trillion
35:14
Speaker 6: dollar market, even though that cost has come down that much.
35:16
Speaker 6: So no, I don't think it will be free. I
35:18
Speaker 6: think it's just going to continue to come down as
35:20
Speaker 6: we practice more and more, if that makes sense.
35:22
Speaker 2: Can I just add one thing to that. I think
35:24
Speaker 2: most of the energy technologies we've built built today, if
35:27
Speaker 2: not all of them, Once they're built and in the ground,
35:29
Speaker 2: they have a fixed capacity. So you can't get much
35:32
Speaker 2: more out of your existing solar panel, your existing winter
35:34
Speaker 2: bind or even you know your existing combustion engine with
35:37
Speaker 2: a fusion reactor, there's going to be an awful lot
35:39
Speaker 2: of software definition to it in terms of how it operates,
35:43
Speaker 2: and so it will be unlike many other energy technologies
35:45
Speaker 2: where the aftermarket for these could be really really valuable.
35:49
Speaker 2: So you have if you have a fleet of fusion
35:50
Speaker 2: reactors operating in this future.
35:52
Speaker 1: And download the new firmware.
35:54
Speaker 2: Exactly just like the you know, the over the software update.
35:57
Speaker 2: But we'll make a real genuine impact of these businesses,
35:59
Speaker 2: which are where the profitability margins of a utility companies
36:02
Speaker 2: usually raise a thin So even if you can tweak
36:05
Speaker 2: the output an extra five ten percent pure profit, that's
36:09
Speaker 2: enormous for a company that owns a fusion reactor in
36:12
Speaker 2: the future, and so I think that's one thing which
36:14
Speaker 2: you'll be really nice to have in the future. There's
36:16
Speaker 2: lots of things to get there beforehand. But to your
36:18
Speaker 2: point around how does it keep on getting better after installation,
36:22
Speaker 2: there's lots of paths where it could continue to get cheap,
36:24
Speaker 2: but even without changing the hardware that's involved. And so
36:27
Speaker 2: that's something that gives me a bit of optimism around
36:30
Speaker 2: why this could still be relevant even though at the moment,
36:32
Speaker 2: it looks much more expensive than solo wind et cetera.
36:35
Speaker 1: Thank you.
36:36
Speaker 8: I'm interested in parallel pathing what we need to get
36:39
Speaker 8: to quantum computing. Infusion and lithium supply chains are a
36:44
Speaker 8: challenge today. Do you see even with the higher energy
36:47
Speaker 8: density profile, lithium supply chains needing to move forward for
36:52
Speaker 8: us to really support these technologies.
36:55
Speaker 6: Yes, the on the lithium supply, the energy density is everything,
37:00
Speaker 6: and so when you look at ten million to one,
37:04
Speaker 6: it won't even be a drop in the bucket compared
37:06
Speaker 6: to the amount of lithium we use in batteries to
37:08
Speaker 6: fuel the entire economy. And I think as you look
37:10
Speaker 6: at fusion continuing to progress, perpor Meloanies point earlier, like
37:14
Speaker 6: the innovation pipeline is insanely deep. Like my view, as
37:17
Speaker 6: we're at the beginning of the Moor's Law curve, you know,
37:20
Speaker 6: starting in nineteen sixty and new technology, it's not like
37:23
Speaker 6: one we're going to commercialize like a tokamac and then
37:25
Speaker 6: there will be no other innovation in fusion, like it's
37:27
Speaker 6: going to accelerate, Like the amount of money going into it,
37:29
Speaker 6: the amount of scientific capability going into quantum computing, AI like,
37:33
Speaker 6: all these things are going to accelerate the development of fusion.
37:36
Speaker 6: So there are fuel cycles that come beyond you know,
37:39
Speaker 6: deteriment tritium that will not even need lithium. Right, You'll
37:42
Speaker 6: you'll be going to even more abundant materials that are
37:44
Speaker 6: even more accessible. Fundamentally, fusion fuels are the most abundant
37:47
Speaker 6: materials in the whole universe. Light isotopes are the way
37:51
Speaker 6: the entire universe makes energy. Like everything we have today,
37:55
Speaker 6: solar fission, you know, wind, it all is ultimately a
37:58
Speaker 6: form a diluted, highly diluted form of fusion energy. And
38:02
Speaker 6: so when we can go right to the source, so life,
38:04
Speaker 6: all of it, all of it. So when you go
38:05
Speaker 6: right to the source, like fundamentally, I would argue that
38:08
Speaker 6: the fuel is completely unlimited.
38:09
Speaker 5: So that's that's not a thing I worry about.
38:11
Speaker 1: Let's do this two more for people who are in
38:13
Speaker 1: my all.
38:14
Speaker 9: Right, sorry I got to bend over first. Thanks so
38:17
Speaker 9: much for your presentation. I've really enjoyed it. My name
38:20
Speaker 9: is Robin Carter. I just want to ask what role
38:23
Speaker 9: do you think publicly funded research for academia still has
38:26
Speaker 9: to play in the development of commercial fusion or The
38:31
Speaker 9: way I originally wrote this question was please speak charitably
38:34
Speaker 9: about research and academics. They're actually quite nice.
38:38
Speaker 4: I think there's still a lot of talk at the
38:41
Speaker 4: moment about public private partnerships. It's not that the private
38:45
Speaker 4: I mean the media is particularly five ten years ago.
38:47
Speaker 4: They love to portray it as us and them and
38:50
Speaker 4: a race. And there are these pesky startups coming in
38:53
Speaker 4: and all these upstarts who are going to like turn
38:56
Speaker 4: fusion upside down because the public labs have been doing
38:58
Speaker 4: it for ages, and the private companies are going to
39:00
Speaker 4: take the price, you know, all of that, which I
39:03
Speaker 4: don't fundamentally, I don't think it's true.
39:04
Speaker 3: Like it's the it's the.
39:07
Speaker 4: Goal of the national labs, the publicly funded labs to
39:10
Speaker 4: develop the technology and like give it and not give it,
39:14
Speaker 4: but you know, funnel it into the private sector so
39:15
Speaker 4: that it can actually be made commercial. And so I
39:18
Speaker 4: think this is the time where these public private partnerships
39:21
Speaker 4: now are becoming more and more important. So there are
39:25
Speaker 4: some critical challenges on the way to building power plants.
39:28
Speaker 4: Things like we've mentioned tritium breeding, So there's what the
39:33
Speaker 4: fuel tritium comes from, lithium. So you're going to have
39:35
Speaker 4: to use neutrons to interact with lithium to make tritium.
39:40
Speaker 4: This generally is going to happen around the outside of
39:42
Speaker 4: the fusion device and that's where the heat exchanges will
39:46
Speaker 4: be and things like that. There's materials is a big challenge,
39:49
Speaker 4: like having developing materials that can actually survive long enough
39:53
Speaker 4: and make an economic power plant. So there's a number
39:56
Speaker 4: of number of challenges there's And these are when I
39:59
Speaker 4: say challenges, these are the kind of things that are
40:02
Speaker 4: let's say benefit knowledge that is beneficial for the entire
40:07
Speaker 4: fusion community. So it's not really within the realms of
40:12
Speaker 4: investment for the individual companies, shall we say, it's not
40:16
Speaker 4: on the critical path of the individual companies. So that's
40:18
Speaker 4: what that's where the academics can really come into play,
40:22
Speaker 4: helping to up the knowledge level in areas that are
40:26
Speaker 4: not on the critical path for the individual companies but
40:28
Speaker 4: will help everybody.
40:30
Speaker 1: Can we have one minute? Last one?
40:32
Speaker 3: Go China. We just haven't talked about it.
40:34
Speaker 1: Yet, China, China, one minute? Who wants it refect?
40:38
Speaker 4: They're okay, they're putting a lot of investment in even
40:41
Speaker 4: like even last year. They're really they've they've just gone
40:45
Speaker 4: all in and in the last two years, i'd say,
40:47
Speaker 4: really upping the investment funding research in academic labs as
40:51
Speaker 4: well as private fusion companies.
40:53
Speaker 3: They're making a big play. Do you want to add things?
40:55
Speaker 6: I would just say, throwing money at the problems not
40:57
Speaker 6: the answer, and I would reiterate, and I would just say, look,
41:00
Speaker 6: I put my faith in American innovation and creativity above
41:03
Speaker 6: just throwing a lot of money at national labs. I
41:05
Speaker 6: think it comes back to incentive incentives, and people in
41:09
Speaker 6: this country are properly incentivized to innovate a This is
41:13
Speaker 6: not a scale up of an industry that's existed for
41:15
Speaker 6: fifty sixty years, which.
41:16
Speaker 5: China can copy and come in and do very, very easily.
41:18
Speaker 6: So it's not that I don't think we shouldn't try,
41:20
Speaker 6: like we need to put the same level of effort in,
41:22
Speaker 6: but I think if we do, we win.
41:23
Speaker 1: We started with capitalism, We're ending with capitalism.
41:27
Speaker 5: I do.
41:39
Speaker 1: That was the Great Fusion debate How far Away Are
41:42
Speaker 1: We Really? Recorded Live at South By Southwest twenty twenty six.
41:48
Speaker 1: Today's show was produced by Gabriel Hunter Chang. It was
41:52
Speaker 1: edited by Lydia jen Kott and engineered by Sarah Bluer.
41:56
Speaker 1: You can email us at problem at Pushkin dot fm.
41:59
Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein and we'll be back next week with
42:02
Speaker 1: another episode of What's Your Problem.