Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Will the ITER experiment make fusion feasible?

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Will the ITER experiment make fusion feasible? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:01
Speaker 1: Hey Tory here. Before we jump in, we just wanted
0:03
Speaker 1: to let you know that Daniel and I are participating
0:05
Speaker 1: in a live event this Thursday with Atlas Obscura. That's right.
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Speaker 1: Do you shout questions at the podcast? Do you have
0:12
Speaker 1: things you'd like to ask us live? Wellcome join us
0:15
Speaker 1: on Thursday October eight, twenty twenty. It's four thirty pm
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Speaker 1: Pacific times seven thirty pm US Eastern time. You can
0:23
Speaker 1: ask us questions, I'll answer them and Jorge will scribbled
0:26
Speaker 1: clever doodles. We talked about the big questions in the universe,
0:29
Speaker 1: and I'll be drawing cartoons live. So please join us.
0:32
Speaker 1: To buy tickets, just google Daniel and Jorge Atlas Obscura
0:36
Speaker 1: and you'll see the event. Come join us, see you there, Hey, Jorge,
0:49
Speaker 1: I need some feedback on the name of a new
0:52
Speaker 1: megaphysics project my specialty. What do you have so far?
0:55
Speaker 1: What do you think of destroyer of World? That's a
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Speaker 1: terrible idea? All right? How about um planet eater? I'm
1:04
Speaker 1: not sure I would go on a tour of that one.
1:06
Speaker 1: What if we just shortened it to like eater? How's
1:09
Speaker 1: that eater? That would be a name for a snack bar,
1:12
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure it would work for a physics experiment.
1:15
Speaker 1: I think it's good. We're going with it while you're kidding, right,
1:18
Speaker 1: Nobody would actually name their physics projects eater, would they? Hi?
1:39
Speaker 1: Am or Hey, I'm a cartoonist and the creator of
1:41
Speaker 1: PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and
1:45
Speaker 1: I'm a lover of silly physics acronyms, and I am
1:48
Speaker 1: a lover of eating. So we are in a good
1:51
Speaker 1: company today. Stars are aligning. You might even say they're
1:54
Speaker 1: fusing together. Dan, that's right, all the bananas are aligned.
1:58
Speaker 1: But welcome to a podcast Dan and Jorge Explain the Universe,
2:01
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio in which we seek
2:04
Speaker 1: to explain to you all the craziness in the universe,
2:07
Speaker 1: the way things work, the way things don't work, what
2:09
Speaker 1: we do understand, what we don't understand, Where you can
2:13
Speaker 1: take a banana, and where you should definitely never ever
2:16
Speaker 1: take a banana. That's right, practical advice like that. And
2:19
Speaker 1: also we talk about all the things that science is
2:21
Speaker 1: up to these days, all the things that they're trying
2:23
Speaker 1: to understand and know about and discover, but also all
2:27
Speaker 1: the things that you're trying to make that's right. Science
2:30
Speaker 1: is actively trying to make your life better. We are
2:34
Speaker 1: working hard at the big questions of the day, and
2:36
Speaker 1: not just where do you come from? What's the universe
2:39
Speaker 1: made out of? What will be the ultimate fate of
2:41
Speaker 1: the universe, but also how can you power your electric car?
2:45
Speaker 1: And can you charge your phone anywhere all the time?
2:48
Speaker 1: Most important, how can we power your Netflix addiction a
2:52
Speaker 1: little bit more efficiently and ecologically friendly? You mean your
2:57
Speaker 1: podcast addiction, right, because all these folks number one form
3:01
Speaker 1: of entertainment is listening to awesome science podcasts, that's right, Yeah,
3:05
Speaker 1: podcast and chills in you Netflix and Chill. I think
3:08
Speaker 1: a lot of people probably listen to this podcast when
3:11
Speaker 1: they're exercising. So you know, if you just hook up
3:14
Speaker 1: your treadmill to like a generator, it could be a
3:17
Speaker 1: zero net waste endeavor here. Yeah, but then what powers
3:22
Speaker 1: the people? Right? Then it's essentially a banana powered podcast. Yeah.
3:26
Speaker 1: Bananas are solar powered, right, So it all works out true.
3:31
Speaker 1: In the end, it all comes down to energy from
3:34
Speaker 1: the sun. Everything we do on Earth almost is eventually
3:38
Speaker 1: derived from the energy of the Sun. Yeah, the Sun
3:41
Speaker 1: powers the life on Earth and it's pretty warm and toasty,
3:44
Speaker 1: and so scientists have been looking at the Sun for
3:46
Speaker 1: a long time thinking, man, if we only had a
3:49
Speaker 1: little sun here on Earth, he could warm us up
3:51
Speaker 1: and give us all the energy that we need. So
3:54
Speaker 1: I can talk about creating little black holes and that
3:57
Speaker 1: freaks you up, but you can just talk about like
3:58
Speaker 1: making a little sun here on Earth. You realize, of course,
4:02
Speaker 1: that the Sun is a constantly exploding hydrogen bomb, right, yeah,
4:05
Speaker 1: but does the Sun create a runaway sucking chain reaction
4:10
Speaker 1: that grows and grows and grows. So hey, black holes
4:14
Speaker 1: have their uses to We just did a whole episode
4:16
Speaker 1: about black hole power and starships. They could take us
4:19
Speaker 1: through other star systems. So anyway, I just got to
4:23
Speaker 1: speak up from black holes here. Okay, you have a
4:25
Speaker 1: pet one in your backyard. No, I'm just you know,
4:27
Speaker 1: I'm a shill for the big black hole lobby. But
4:30
Speaker 1: you're right, the sun is amazing. The Sun is wonderful,
4:34
Speaker 1: and the Sun does power everything that we do. And
4:37
Speaker 1: as we look around for greener, cleaner sources of energy,
4:40
Speaker 1: it does seem tempting to think, well, the universe does
4:44
Speaker 1: it this way, why can't we do it that way also,
4:47
Speaker 1: and it's something that physicists have been working on for decades. Yeah,
4:51
Speaker 1: for a long time. They've been trying to make this
4:53
Speaker 1: idea of living sun on Earth possible. And so to
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Speaker 1: the end the program, we'll be talking about one such experiment.
5:00
Speaker 1: It's happening right now as we speak. There are sciences
5:03
Speaker 1: in this moment, in this world trying to treat a
5:05
Speaker 1: little sun or more like a sun donut, exactly like
5:09
Speaker 1: a plasma donut. I don't know what flavor that is,
5:12
Speaker 1: but I don't recommend taking a bite out of it.
5:14
Speaker 1: But yeah, exactly. One problem is that the Sun is
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Speaker 1: massive and exploding constantly, and the reason it doesn't tear
5:22
Speaker 1: itself apart is because it has so much gravity. And
5:25
Speaker 1: so we need to figure out other ways to sort
5:27
Speaker 1: of replicate the parts of the Sun that we want
5:29
Speaker 1: to keep without having the sort of like earth destroying
5:32
Speaker 1: aspects that are less interesting to us. Yeah, and so
5:35
Speaker 1: today we'll be asking the question, what is the eater
5:43
Speaker 1: experiment and will it create fusion here on Earth? Now? Daniel,
5:47
Speaker 1: so you were serious? This is actually called the eater experiment,
5:51
Speaker 1: that's right, I T e R. And it's pronounced by
5:55
Speaker 1: plasma physicists everywhere to be the eater experiment. Not iteter
5:59
Speaker 1: or eat or anything like that. People call it eater
6:03
Speaker 1: without any sort of sense of irony or understanding that absurd.
6:07
Speaker 1: That is what language pronounces the eye and the e,
6:12
Speaker 1: you know, the open e. Is it like a weird
6:15
Speaker 1: collaboration between French and US scientists. It's a huge international collaboration.
6:19
Speaker 1: So I don't know who's responsible for that. And it's
6:21
Speaker 1: likely that other countries pronounced the acronym differently, you know,
6:25
Speaker 1: in French they probably pronounced or something right. Yeah, I
6:29
Speaker 1: don't even know how the Japanese would do it. But
6:31
Speaker 1: here in America we call it the eater experiment. Again,
6:35
Speaker 1: just to verify, it's not trying to eat the entire earth.
6:37
Speaker 1: It's trying to do the opposite. It's trying to feed
6:40
Speaker 1: the whole earth. It's exactly. It's trying to fuel the
6:42
Speaker 1: Earth into an attempt at magnetic confinement fusion. But as usual,
6:47
Speaker 1: I was curious did people know about the eater experiment.
6:50
Speaker 1: We actually got a few emails from listeners asking us
6:52
Speaker 1: to talk about this, so I thought, hey, maybe our
6:54
Speaker 1: listeners know all about this, So I pulled them to
6:58
Speaker 1: figure out what they knew, And I asked them if
7:00
Speaker 1: they knew what the Eater experiment was all about. Do
7:03
Speaker 1: you think they wrote you because they were curious or concerned? Daniel,
7:07
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, physics are making something called the Eater experiment.
7:11
Speaker 1: Should we be worried? No. I think they wrote me
7:15
Speaker 1: because they were hopeful. You know, the Eater experiment really
7:18
Speaker 1: does represent something positive. If they make it work and
7:22
Speaker 1: we get fusion to work, we could have essentially almost
7:25
Speaker 1: limitless energy, which could really transform our economies and lift
7:29
Speaker 1: a lot of people out of poverty. So it's tantalizing,
7:32
Speaker 1: you know, it's really inspires hope, and so I think
7:34
Speaker 1: they were hoping that I would say, yes, it's around
7:36
Speaker 1: the corner and we're going to solve all of our problems.
7:38
Speaker 1: But you're like, no, I am in the black hole
7:41
Speaker 1: lobby pocket unfortunately, so I can't chill for fusion. Although
7:45
Speaker 1: you know, if you want to create a black hole
7:47
Speaker 1: to power your starship, you need a very good source
7:50
Speaker 1: of energy. And so it might be that we build
7:52
Speaker 1: a little star and run it as a fusion experiment
7:55
Speaker 1: in order to gather energy and then pump that via
7:57
Speaker 1: lasers into a black hole, so every you can be happy.
8:01
Speaker 1: You get your star I get my black hole. If
8:04
Speaker 1: I have a son, why would I need a black
8:06
Speaker 1: hole to power your starship? Man? You should listen to
8:10
Speaker 1: that episode. It's pretty awesome. All right, Well, think about
8:13
Speaker 1: it for a second. Is soone as you what the
8:15
Speaker 1: eater experiment was? Would you respond that you are hungry,
8:18
Speaker 1: thank you? Or what would you say? Here's what people
8:23
Speaker 1: had to say. Something to do intergalactic telescope, extraterrestrial radar.
8:29
Speaker 1: I believe it's a nuclear fusion experiment that needs to
8:32
Speaker 1: replicate the Sun's fusion power to create clean energy. I
8:35
Speaker 1: have not heard of that one, but I will be
8:37
Speaker 1: very interested to learn what it is. I think it's
8:40
Speaker 1: the French and French abbreviation kind of like certain in fact,
8:45
Speaker 1: but I believe it has to do with nuclear fusion,
8:51
Speaker 1: with with building a nuclear fusion reactor, something to do
8:55
Speaker 1: with acronyms interplanetary terrestrial exploration in research. Maybe that sounds good. Yeah,
9:02
Speaker 1: I'm surprised after that that nobody said yes. And I'll
9:05
Speaker 1: have a side of fries with that either piece. That's right?
9:08
Speaker 1: Some chips please? Yeah? So um and some people I've
9:12
Speaker 1: heard of it, and some people had no idea. Yeah.
9:14
Speaker 1: And for the record, the acronym I T e R
9:17
Speaker 1: stands for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor I T E R. Oh. No, yeah,
9:25
Speaker 1: I know. Thermonuclear sounds like war games right now. I
9:28
Speaker 1: was I was saying, they omitted the nuclear, so she
9:32
Speaker 1: really should be itner. No, No, thermonuclear is one word,
9:36
Speaker 1: so's t otherwise be eater, I guess. But they actually
9:40
Speaker 1: they didn't like that expression, so they renamed it just
9:44
Speaker 1: I T E R. Now it's an acronym officially that
9:47
Speaker 1: doesn't stand for anything. It's just either what was it originally?
9:50
Speaker 1: I International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor? Oh? I see, but how
9:56
Speaker 1: did they rename it? They just renamed it I T
9:58
Speaker 1: e R. So used to be the International Thermonuclear Experimental
10:02
Speaker 1: Reactor and acronym for that was I T e R.
10:05
Speaker 1: But now the name is just I T E R. Oh.
10:08
Speaker 1: I see. They made the acronym the name, yes, exactly,
10:11
Speaker 1: that they wouldn't have to print under T shirts like thermonuclear.
10:14
Speaker 1: Is that what you mean? Exactly? I think thermonuclear didn't
10:16
Speaker 1: pull very well in the surrounding communities when they were
10:19
Speaker 1: building this. Seriously, Okay, but it's still a thermo nuclear.
10:25
Speaker 1: It's just hidden in the name exactly the physics of
10:28
Speaker 1: it have been change is just a change and what
10:30
Speaker 1: we call it and how we refer to it. All right, well,
10:32
Speaker 1: let's jump into it. Daniel, explain to us what is
10:35
Speaker 1: the Eater experiment and is it going to eat us?
10:38
Speaker 1: The Eater experiment is going to eat hydrogen and create electricity,
10:43
Speaker 1: is the idea. But the big idea is that Eater
10:46
Speaker 1: is what we think will be the first working fusion reactor,
10:50
Speaker 1: something cable of taking in fuel and creating electricity, and
10:54
Speaker 1: it will operate on fusion, which again is different from vision.
10:58
Speaker 1: We have nuclear reactor now which operate on the principle
11:01
Speaker 1: of fission breaking up big heavy elements like uranium and
11:05
Speaker 1: plutonium to create energy. This operates under fusion, which is
11:10
Speaker 1: sticking together light elements to create energy, right, because fusion
11:14
Speaker 1: is putting things together and somehow that releases energy. Also,
11:18
Speaker 1: like I think we're used to breaking things apart and
11:21
Speaker 1: that releasing energy. But it's kind of weird to think
11:23
Speaker 1: that you can put things together and that will also
11:25
Speaker 1: give your energy. Yeah, And it's pretty weird because if
11:28
Speaker 1: you have really heavy elements, anything essentially above iron, then
11:32
Speaker 1: if you break it apart, you get energy out. And
11:35
Speaker 1: for those you can think of them like two little
11:37
Speaker 1: objects sort of held together by a coiled spring, and
11:41
Speaker 1: the bond there holds in energy. Right, The spring has energy,
11:45
Speaker 1: and if you somehow break it, then things fly out.
11:48
Speaker 1: You get energy out when you break those bonds. But
11:51
Speaker 1: anything lighter than iron, it works the opposite way. It's
11:55
Speaker 1: like the things are stuck together and to break them
11:58
Speaker 1: up you need to add energy, right, Like, for example,
12:01
Speaker 1: if you wanted the Earth to no longer be moving
12:04
Speaker 1: around the Sun, if you want to break the bond
12:06
Speaker 1: between the Earth and the Sun, you need to add energy.
12:08
Speaker 1: You need to give the Earth a push, so that
12:11
Speaker 1: bond has sort of negative energy. And so in the
12:14
Speaker 1: same way, if you went in the reverse, if you
12:16
Speaker 1: created that bond instead of breaking it, you'd be releasing energy.
12:20
Speaker 1: So anything lighter than iron, if you fuse it, if
12:24
Speaker 1: you stick it together, you release energy, and if you
12:26
Speaker 1: tear it apart then that takes energy. Right. It's still
12:30
Speaker 1: kind of weird to think about, isn't it. Like you know,
12:32
Speaker 1: it wants to be together, but if you put them
12:35
Speaker 1: together it costs you like, it's hard to do that. Yeah, well,
12:38
Speaker 1: it's weird in lots of ways. But you know, imagine,
12:41
Speaker 1: for example, you had to planets and you want to
12:43
Speaker 1: get them in orbit around each other. If they're moving
12:45
Speaker 1: it really high speeds. Then to do that, you would
12:48
Speaker 1: have to remove some of their energy. You'd have to
12:50
Speaker 1: slow them down relative to each other so they could
12:52
Speaker 1: form a bond, and so has to essentially extract energy
12:56
Speaker 1: from that system. And so that's what we're doing here,
12:59
Speaker 1: is we're taking two hydrogen atoms and we're slowing them down.
13:02
Speaker 1: We're getting them close enough together, reducing their relative energy
13:06
Speaker 1: so that we can extract that energy and make them
13:09
Speaker 1: bond together. But it is pretty weird. I agree, it's
13:12
Speaker 1: counterintuitive to imagine sticking things together and having energy come out, right,
13:15
Speaker 1: And I think it all has to do is kind
13:17
Speaker 1: of like this balance between the different fundamental forces, right,
13:21
Speaker 1: Like the thing that makes it hard to put to
13:23
Speaker 1: hydrogen nuclei together is the allerg for a magnetic force, right,
13:28
Speaker 1: because they repel each other electromagnetically. But if you get
13:31
Speaker 1: in close enough, then another force takes over and then
13:33
Speaker 1: that's the one that releases energy. Right. Yeah, So there's
13:36
Speaker 1: two separate ideas there. One is why does hydrogen and
13:40
Speaker 1: light elements, why do they release energy when they fuse?
13:42
Speaker 1: Whereas heavy stuff, why does it release energy when it
13:45
Speaker 1: breaks up? And that's because of the strong force. And
13:48
Speaker 1: that's like how these quirks and the protons and neutrons
13:50
Speaker 1: fit together to make their bonds. And it's very very
13:53
Speaker 1: complicated and difficult to calculate. And then there's the second angle,
13:57
Speaker 1: which is what makes it hard to get too protons together. Essentially,
14:01
Speaker 1: two hydrogen atoms are basically just two protons and you're
14:05
Speaker 1: right there positively charged, and so they don't like to
14:07
Speaker 1: come together. So getting them together, get them near each
14:11
Speaker 1: other so that they can fuse, is difficult. It's sort
14:14
Speaker 1: of like trying to get a hole in one in
14:17
Speaker 1: mini golf. When the hole is the very top of
14:20
Speaker 1: a volcano. You've got to get it like ride up
14:22
Speaker 1: the topic. You don't get it in exactly the right spot.
14:24
Speaker 1: It just rules away because it likes to repel all
14:27
Speaker 1: the golf balls, right. And and that'sually what kind of
14:29
Speaker 1: like the distance that the forces act on, right, Like
14:32
Speaker 1: the electromagnetic force acts a pretty long distances, but the
14:35
Speaker 1: strong nuclear force only works if you're like really close
14:39
Speaker 1: to that hole at the top of the volcano. Yeah,
14:41
Speaker 1: the strong nuclear force is really really powerful, and so
14:44
Speaker 1: it's essentially always balanced in any distance greater than you know,
14:48
Speaker 1: pretty close to the proton, and so you don't really
14:51
Speaker 1: feel it unless you're really really close up. And you're right,
14:54
Speaker 1: the electromagnetic force is balanced. It sort of longer distances,
14:57
Speaker 1: and you can have protons that are positively charged, and
15:00
Speaker 1: it's field essentially goes infinite. You can feel another proton
15:04
Speaker 1: on the other side of the universe, although this strength
15:06
Speaker 1: is very small, but you're right. As two protons reach
15:10
Speaker 1: each other, it starts out that the electromagnetic force is dominant.
15:13
Speaker 1: But if you get close enough, the strong force takes over.
15:15
Speaker 1: But you've got to get them close enough and to
15:18
Speaker 1: positively charged protons don't like to get together. They really resisted.
15:22
Speaker 1: It's like a brother and sister hugging. Yeah, so if
15:26
Speaker 1: you put them together, they'll snap together and they'll release
15:29
Speaker 1: a bunch of energy, like they'll release photons or how
15:31
Speaker 1: does that energy come out? It's complicated. You get hygen together,
15:35
Speaker 1: you get helium, you get new tree nos, you get photons.
15:38
Speaker 1: There's actually a few steps in that process, and what
15:41
Speaker 1: happens inside the sun is a big mix of all
15:43
Speaker 1: these different things, and photons are created and then be
15:46
Speaker 1: absorbed and new trios are created, so it's a big gamush.
15:49
Speaker 1: But yeah, basically, you get hygiene together the fuses to
15:52
Speaker 1: make helium, and if you get it hot enough, that
15:55
Speaker 1: helium confused to make the next thing, and then that
15:58
Speaker 1: confused to make the next thing. And that's what's happening
16:01
Speaker 1: in the inside of stars. And as stars get older,
16:03
Speaker 1: they get these denser and denser cores. The hydrogen fuses
16:07
Speaker 1: and then the helium fuses, and eventually you get you know,
16:09
Speaker 1: carbon and nitrogen, oxygen all the way up to iron.
16:12
Speaker 1: And that's when they run out of fuel because the
16:15
Speaker 1: iron for it to fuse, costs energy, so it starts
16:18
Speaker 1: to cool the star and that's when the beginning of
16:21
Speaker 1: the end of the life of the star starts. But
16:23
Speaker 1: until then, it's a pretty efficient way to kind of
16:27
Speaker 1: create energy, right, Like a gramm of fuel here for
16:31
Speaker 1: a fusion reactor will give you a ton of energy,
16:34
Speaker 1: that's right, like tons and tons like a lot of energy.
16:37
Speaker 1: You're much more efficiently converting mass into energy than in
16:41
Speaker 1: almost anything else we know other than like antimatter matter collisions,
16:45
Speaker 1: but antimatter is pretty difficult to find. The real advantage
16:49
Speaker 1: of fusion is that the fuel is everywhere. Like hydrogen
16:53
Speaker 1: is very, very plentiful in the universe. We have a
16:55
Speaker 1: lot of it in water, for example, And you're right,
16:58
Speaker 1: it produces a huge amount of energy. So one gram
17:01
Speaker 1: of fuel produces as much energy is eighty thousand tons
17:06
Speaker 1: of oil, So it's a lot more efficient than fossil fuels.
17:10
Speaker 1: That's crazy. Like a gram of hydrogen is one like
17:13
Speaker 1: a cup, like like a tea spoon. What is it?
17:17
Speaker 1: I guess it depends a lot on the pressure in
17:19
Speaker 1: the temperature, right, but it's not a lot. You know,
17:21
Speaker 1: A gram is about how much a raisin ways, So
17:24
Speaker 1: a raisin's words of hydrogen is the same as eighty
17:27
Speaker 1: thousand tons of oil. That's like a whole container ship.
17:30
Speaker 1: And what makes it attractive toys that we were sort
17:33
Speaker 1: of surrounded by fuel that we could use for a
17:37
Speaker 1: fusion reactor, right, Like you can get hydrogen just from water,
17:40
Speaker 1: and we have a lot of water. Yeah, we have
17:42
Speaker 1: a lot of water, and hydrogen is the most plentiful
17:45
Speaker 1: thing in the universe. Some of like nineties percent of
17:48
Speaker 1: the universe is hydrogen. Not like we're going to go
17:51
Speaker 1: out there to gather it, but you know, you imagine
17:53
Speaker 1: if fusion is going to power your spaceships or whatever.
17:56
Speaker 1: It's not that hard to find hydrogen, whereas things like
17:59
Speaker 1: uranium is much much rarer. You know, uranium is created
18:03
Speaker 1: when neutron stars collide and die. It's very rare process,
18:07
Speaker 1: which is why there isn't very much of it. But
18:09
Speaker 1: hydrogen is everywhere. It was the number one thing made
18:12
Speaker 1: during the Big Bang, and it's still number one. It's
18:14
Speaker 1: planning to be number one for billions of years into
18:16
Speaker 1: the future. So yeah, we're not going to run out
18:18
Speaker 1: of hydrogen, right And one of the best parts about
18:20
Speaker 1: a fusion reactor is that it's super green, right, Like,
18:24
Speaker 1: it doesn't create any toxic waste or radioactive waste or
18:28
Speaker 1: like carbon or carbon at all. Right, Like, it just
18:30
Speaker 1: makes helium and energy, And who doesn't want more helium.
18:35
Speaker 1: We could all have balloons, We can all talk with
18:37
Speaker 1: silly voices. We should do a whole podcast with just
18:39
Speaker 1: helium voices. No, you're right, it doesn't create radioactive waste
18:43
Speaker 1: the way that fission does you know fission, you have
18:45
Speaker 1: really heavy elements like uranium, they break up, you still
18:48
Speaker 1: have heavy elements that are radioactive, and those can take
18:51
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of years to break down even further.
18:54
Speaker 1: So you've got this stuff that's not useful for generating
18:57
Speaker 1: energy and sticks around basically poisoning your ironman four thousands
19:01
Speaker 1: and thousands of years. Fusion is different. It's not clean,
19:06
Speaker 1: but essentially already produces helium and energy. The other thing
19:09
Speaker 1: it does is it produces very high speed neutrons. Now
19:13
Speaker 1: you can try to capture the energy of those neutrons,
19:15
Speaker 1: which would be great, but you know those neutrons can
19:17
Speaker 1: cause radio activity in the material that surrounds it, So
19:21
Speaker 1: there is some radioactive waste from fusion. It's not completely zero,
19:25
Speaker 1: but it's almost negligible compared to fusion. All right, Well,
19:29
Speaker 1: it sounds amazing, and it would be awesome if we
19:32
Speaker 1: can make fusion work here on Earth and make our
19:34
Speaker 1: own little sun and powers and then get us all
19:37
Speaker 1: nice and toasty. But there are a lot of challenges.
19:40
Speaker 1: For example, how do how do you make it work?
19:43
Speaker 1: And how do you keep it from not exploding your
19:45
Speaker 1: entire plant? So let's get into that. But first, let's
19:48
Speaker 1: take a quick break, all right, Daniel, we're we're talking
20:03
Speaker 1: about a fusion and making fusion work here on Earth,
20:06
Speaker 1: and specifically about the Eater experiment. And it's in Europe, right,
20:10
Speaker 1: and they're they're trying to make fusion work right now,
20:12
Speaker 1: that's right. They're building it in France and they're working
20:15
Speaker 1: on it. And it's the culmination of decades and decades
20:18
Speaker 1: of research of trying to make fusion work here on Earth,
20:21
Speaker 1: which turns out to not be very easy. As we
20:24
Speaker 1: talked about before, you have to get these hydrogens close
20:27
Speaker 1: to each other, and how do you do that efficiently?
20:30
Speaker 1: And for a lot of hydrogens, you can't just like
20:32
Speaker 1: shoot two protons at each other. That's what we do
20:34
Speaker 1: basically at the LHC. That's not very efficient for generating energy, right, Yeah,
20:39
Speaker 1: So it's it's pretty hard to do. But we've been
20:41
Speaker 1: trying for decades and decades to make this work because
20:44
Speaker 1: I guess the payoff would be pretty cool. But I
20:47
Speaker 1: guess the hard part is getting these hydrogens to come
20:51
Speaker 1: together and get close en out that they snap together
20:53
Speaker 1: and release this energy. And so what are the different
20:56
Speaker 1: ways that we can do that? Do we throw them
20:58
Speaker 1: at each other or do you just kind of create
20:59
Speaker 1: a container and squeeze it enough so that it actually happens.
21:03
Speaker 1: So we need high enough numbers to make this efficient,
21:05
Speaker 1: which is why we can't just like use colliders. There's
21:08
Speaker 1: a whole other branch of fusion research where they use
21:11
Speaker 1: lasers and try to zap fuel. We won't talk about
21:14
Speaker 1: that today, but the basic idea of magnetic confinement fusion
21:18
Speaker 1: is to make a little star basically to create plasma,
21:21
Speaker 1: to take a bunch of hydrogen gas and make it really,
21:23
Speaker 1: really hot and dense. And the idea is that those
21:27
Speaker 1: are the conditions you need for these hydrogens to bang
21:29
Speaker 1: into each other to cause fusion. So basically you have
21:33
Speaker 1: to leave them nowhere else to go. You've got to
21:35
Speaker 1: crowd all the hydrogens together so there's no escape. They
21:38
Speaker 1: got to fuse with each other. And then, of course
21:40
Speaker 1: the trick is how do you build a really hot,
21:43
Speaker 1: dense plasma and how do you contain it because it
21:46
Speaker 1: would basically melt any device you made out of normal matth. Yeah,
21:50
Speaker 1: I think you're basically trying to do exactly what's happening
21:54
Speaker 1: in the sun right Like in the sun all that
21:57
Speaker 1: hydrogen is there, but it's trapped and it's being squeezed
21:59
Speaker 1: to get there by the sheer size of the Sun
22:02
Speaker 1: everything else kind of squeezing it together, and so it
22:05
Speaker 1: becomes it's kind of like hot, pressurized plasma that then
22:09
Speaker 1: triggers fusion. That's right, And so the Sun uses basically
22:13
Speaker 1: a gravitational bottle. Right. It says, I'm just gonna go
22:16
Speaker 1: really big so that I have my own gravity that
22:19
Speaker 1: sucks myself in. But we don't really have that option.
22:21
Speaker 1: We don't want to build another Sun. We got one already,
22:24
Speaker 1: and if we built a fusion reactor the size of
22:26
Speaker 1: the Sun, it would destroy us. So the challenge of
22:29
Speaker 1: building a mini one one that's practical for human purposes
22:32
Speaker 1: is finding another way to keep that plasma hot and
22:35
Speaker 1: dense and contained. And the big idea is to use magnets,
22:40
Speaker 1: because magnets can bend the direction of stuff without actually
22:43
Speaker 1: touching it. Right, You can have like magnetically levitating trains
22:47
Speaker 1: and all sorts of other magnetic confinement. So you try
22:50
Speaker 1: to build a magnetic bottle that doesn't actually have to
22:53
Speaker 1: touch the plasma itself, right, because I guess the plasma
22:57
Speaker 1: is charged right, Like everything in the plasma has a charge,
23:01
Speaker 1: and and so it's repelled by the magnets, and so
23:04
Speaker 1: you can contain and using magnets, but you couldn't contain
23:07
Speaker 1: other things with magnets. They had to be electric charge.
23:10
Speaker 1: That's right. A plasma is electrically charged gas, right. That's
23:13
Speaker 1: what it means that it's gotten hot enough that the
23:15
Speaker 1: electrons have so much energy that they just say bye
23:18
Speaker 1: bye to their protons and they're just flying around free.
23:21
Speaker 1: And so you have a gas of positive and neglearly
23:23
Speaker 1: charged particles. That's the definition of a plasma. And that
23:26
Speaker 1: happens naturally when you heat it up exactly. And you're
23:29
Speaker 1: right that magnetic fields only act on charged particles, and
23:32
Speaker 1: they cause charge particles to bend in a circle. So
23:35
Speaker 1: then the next challenge is, well, how do you build
23:37
Speaker 1: a bottle that if you can't like push back on
23:39
Speaker 1: the particles, you can just sort of bend them to
23:41
Speaker 1: move in a circle that maintains this plasma in a
23:45
Speaker 1: constant state. And so that's how they came up with
23:47
Speaker 1: this geometry of basically a donut. You have all the
23:50
Speaker 1: particles basically going in a circle, whizzing in a circle,
23:54
Speaker 1: and you have magnetic fields that create sort of a
23:56
Speaker 1: tube around it. Then the magnetic fields force the particle,
24:00
Speaker 1: They bend the particles to move in the circle, and
24:03
Speaker 1: it's sort of a dynamo effect. The motion of those
24:06
Speaker 1: charged particles creates more magnetic field, which helps contain it.
24:10
Speaker 1: So it should be sort of building on itself, the
24:12
Speaker 1: same way that like the motion of hot iron inside
24:16
Speaker 1: the Earth helps the magnetic field, and the magnetic field
24:19
Speaker 1: helps move the iron sort of builds on itself. So
24:22
Speaker 1: I see, you couldn't just make like a bottle that
24:24
Speaker 1: looks like a bottle, or like a bottle that's like
24:26
Speaker 1: a sphere. That wouldn't quite work for fusion here on Earth.
24:30
Speaker 1: The tricky thing is getting these things stable. And so
24:32
Speaker 1: a bottle that just looks like a bottle wouldn't be
24:35
Speaker 1: stable because there'd be lots of points where the plasma
24:37
Speaker 1: could just approach the edge of it. You need to
24:39
Speaker 1: be totally symmetric, so the particles are always bent away
24:42
Speaker 1: from the edge of the bottle and into some configuration
24:45
Speaker 1: that helps strengthen the bottle. And so that's this idea.
24:48
Speaker 1: It's called a tocomac, and it's a plasma basically in
24:52
Speaker 1: a donut whizzing in a circle, where the plasma itself
24:55
Speaker 1: helped create the magnetic field that contains it. Wasn't that
24:58
Speaker 1: the name of a pokemon to I forget a really expensive,
25:02
Speaker 1: short lived pokemon. I guess the problem. It's kind of
25:05
Speaker 1: like if you make a son, how do you hold it? Right?
25:08
Speaker 1: Like how do you hold the sun? You can't touch it.
25:10
Speaker 1: You can't use oven mits. It will just melt everything.
25:13
Speaker 1: And it's good you know that you think about these
25:14
Speaker 1: things before you build your son. So I congratulate you
25:17
Speaker 1: on your forward thinking there. You know, sometimes you open
25:20
Speaker 1: the oven and you're like, wait a second, I need
25:21
Speaker 1: oven mits, right, this is that moment, right, plan to
25:24
Speaker 1: get your oven mits in advance, all right. So they're
25:27
Speaker 1: hard to sort of make and contain and keep going stable.
25:32
Speaker 1: And so you said, we've been doing it for decades,
25:34
Speaker 1: So what are some of the other attempts that we've made. Yeah,
25:37
Speaker 1: the hard thing is to keep these things stable because
25:39
Speaker 1: plasma is very hot and very crazy. These things don't
25:43
Speaker 1: just fly along nicely like a bunch of cars in
25:45
Speaker 1: a race, you know, all moving in parallel really high speeds.
25:48
Speaker 1: They tend to bounce off each other, and anytime you
25:50
Speaker 1: have a small instability, you can build into larger instabilities
25:54
Speaker 1: and the whole thing falls apart. So people have been
25:56
Speaker 1: working for years to figure out how exactly to make
25:59
Speaker 1: these things stable, Like do you have it be a
26:01
Speaker 1: perfect donut? Do you have it like a d shape?
26:04
Speaker 1: Do you have a twist? All sorts of crazy ideas
26:07
Speaker 1: for how to prevent these instabilities from being created and
26:10
Speaker 1: from growing, Like do you make it a cronut or
26:12
Speaker 1: a Danish? Do you glaze it? Who puts cheese in
26:16
Speaker 1: the middle of a reactor anyway? I mean it is
26:19
Speaker 1: sort of like a Danish, isn't it. There's like something
26:20
Speaker 1: in the middle. There's not a hole in the middle.
26:22
Speaker 1: There's something in the middle. There's a hole in the middle. Yeah,
26:24
Speaker 1: it's it's like a donut. It's like a bagel. There's
26:26
Speaker 1: nothing in the middle. I guess the magnetic bottle is
26:28
Speaker 1: a donut. But you actually have to put the magnet
26:31
Speaker 1: in the middle. You need the equipment which helps create
26:33
Speaker 1: and contain the magnetic fields in the middle. That's right,
26:36
Speaker 1: But you don't have plasma that you don't have magnetic
26:38
Speaker 1: fields there. The active elements are a donut. But people
26:41
Speaker 1: have been working on this for a long time, and
26:42
Speaker 1: there's a reactor at Princeton which was leading it for
26:45
Speaker 1: a long time. It's called the t F t R
26:48
Speaker 1: the teethter, and they measure the performance of these things
26:53
Speaker 1: using a ratio energy out to energy in because it
26:56
Speaker 1: takes energy to start the reactor. It's like you know,
26:59
Speaker 1: starting a fire. You've got to light it, you need
27:01
Speaker 1: to heat the plasma, you need to create the magnetic field,
27:05
Speaker 1: so it costs some energy and then you get fusion.
27:08
Speaker 1: That happens, and the way you measure the performance of
27:10
Speaker 1: your actor is are you getting more heat out than
27:13
Speaker 1: you put in? Because nobody wants to build a reactor
27:15
Speaker 1: that's a loss of energy. And so the ratio here
27:18
Speaker 1: they're called the Q factor is energy out over energy in.
27:22
Speaker 1: A number greater than zero means you're producing energy. Yeah,
27:25
Speaker 1: you have fusion. But a number less than one means
27:28
Speaker 1: it's still costing new energy. You're having to put more
27:31
Speaker 1: energy in. Then it's actually producing eating up your electricity building. Yeah, exactly,
27:35
Speaker 1: And so so far at Princeton, the best they achieve
27:38
Speaker 1: was a queue of four tenth which means they were
27:42
Speaker 1: able to make fusion happen and create a mini sun.
27:46
Speaker 1: But if they had turned off the energy they were
27:48
Speaker 1: pumping into it, it would have dissipated. Right, it costs
27:51
Speaker 1: the more energy to make it wasn't self sustaining. I
27:54
Speaker 1: guess it's kind of like the fusion itself, like getting
27:56
Speaker 1: too hydrogen atoms together takes energy to get them really
27:59
Speaker 1: close those but if you managed to get them together
28:01
Speaker 1: just right, they'll snap together and release energy. So it's
28:04
Speaker 1: kind of like that that ratio of like putting energy
28:07
Speaker 1: to make it happen and then hopefully it happens. You
28:10
Speaker 1: know that you get enough energy out of it exactly
28:12
Speaker 1: because that energy that comes out of those hydrogens can
28:15
Speaker 1: then help the other hydrogens fused. And that's a condition
28:18
Speaker 1: they call ignition, where it's creating enough energy to sustain itself.
28:22
Speaker 1: You don't need to anymore be lighting it from the outside.
28:26
Speaker 1: And so, you know, it was a huge accomplishment to
28:28
Speaker 1: get up to point four, and before that people hadn't
28:30
Speaker 1: really gotten fusion to work at all. So they created
28:33
Speaker 1: you know, sustained fusion reactions, just not self sustained. And
28:37
Speaker 1: did that one looked like a donut to or was
28:39
Speaker 1: it more like that one also look looked like a donut. Yeah,
28:42
Speaker 1: and then there was one in England, the jet reactor,
28:45
Speaker 1: which reached a queue of point six. Right, So they've
28:47
Speaker 1: been making progress, but they realized at some point that
28:50
Speaker 1: these things were limited by their size. Like, in order
28:53
Speaker 1: to get more fusion happening, you needed a bigger plasma.
28:57
Speaker 1: You needed like more plasma and less surface you were
29:01
Speaker 1: edges for the energy to sort of leak out. You
29:03
Speaker 1: needed like a fatter donut. You needed a bigger donut.
29:06
Speaker 1: And let's face it, who doesn't need a bigger donut? Right?
29:10
Speaker 1: You never eat a donut. You're like, I wish this
29:11
Speaker 1: donut was smaller. Well, that's because you're a big eater,
29:16
Speaker 1: and I'm a physicist, so I want to build a
29:17
Speaker 1: big eater experiment. I guess what you're saying is that
29:20
Speaker 1: you need to scale it up, because then you get
29:22
Speaker 1: kind of like, you know, kind of like more donut
29:25
Speaker 1: per surface area. Is that kind of what it means?
29:28
Speaker 1: It's denser and you have more internal bits than surface bits,
29:32
Speaker 1: and so you get more fusion going on. And the
29:35
Speaker 1: goal here is to get a queue of ten to
29:37
Speaker 1: get something which we think would be like economically feasible
29:40
Speaker 1: where you can go to an energy company and say, hey,
29:42
Speaker 1: we have a design, spend two billion dollars building this.
29:46
Speaker 1: You want to promise that this thing is going to
29:47
Speaker 1: produce ten times as much energy as you're putting into it.
29:50
Speaker 1: So that's the goal. But why tend Why not one
29:54
Speaker 1: point one? Would one point one be like a net positive?
29:57
Speaker 1: It would be a net positive, But you know, to
30:00
Speaker 1: be economically feasible, you've got to produce more than that.
30:03
Speaker 1: You know, at one point one is pretty small. It
30:04
Speaker 1: costs a lot to build these things and to operate
30:07
Speaker 1: these things, and also just to be competitive. Right, there
30:09
Speaker 1: is a market if you build fusion energy, but it's
30:12
Speaker 1: super duper expensive. Nobody's going to buy it, and we're
30:15
Speaker 1: still going to be burning fossil fuels. And so you
30:18
Speaker 1: have to make fusion happen, and then you have to
30:20
Speaker 1: make it economically cheap so that it will actually be
30:23
Speaker 1: consumed and take over the energy grid. So the goal
30:27
Speaker 1: there is Q of ten. I guess you know, I'm
30:29
Speaker 1: wondering why a little percentage isn't good enough, because couldn't
30:32
Speaker 1: you like take the energy that it makes and use
30:35
Speaker 1: it to power itself and so then you would just
30:37
Speaker 1: have like almost like this perpetual motion machine that you
30:40
Speaker 1: just gotta feed in seawater. Yeah, but you know, more
30:43
Speaker 1: efficiency is definitely better. And remember there's overhead costs and
30:46
Speaker 1: running this thing and then building this thing and making
30:49
Speaker 1: it work, and so this is more of a like
30:52
Speaker 1: a social economic question than engineering question. But they've determined
30:56
Speaker 1: that a QUE ten is the target, and you know,
30:58
Speaker 1: I think they're hoping to achieve much much higher queues eventually,
31:02
Speaker 1: So this is like a research goal. I think they
31:04
Speaker 1: want to get QUE hundred or a thousand. This process
31:06
Speaker 1: really has enormous potentials. You're a limit, like what's the
31:09
Speaker 1: highest que you can get out of a fusion reactor?
31:11
Speaker 1: I don't think there is a limit. You know, you
31:13
Speaker 1: can get this thing to be self sustaining so that
31:16
Speaker 1: it essentially takes no more energy in I guess you
31:19
Speaker 1: optimize your magnetic fields. You know, maybe not infinite, but
31:22
Speaker 1: there's no real like upper limit the que you can get.
31:26
Speaker 1: All right, it sounds amazing, and so let's get into
31:29
Speaker 1: how we are going to make it work and whether
31:31
Speaker 1: or not eater is gonna eat up this problem. But
31:35
Speaker 1: first let's take another quick break all right, we're talking
31:50
Speaker 1: about making fusion on Earth, making a sun donut, a
31:54
Speaker 1: solar donut here on Earth that can maybe power all
31:58
Speaker 1: of our energy needs forever and very efficiently and super
32:02
Speaker 1: eco friendly without any or much radioactive waste. Now, Danny
32:07
Speaker 1: were saying, we've been trying for decades here and now
32:11
Speaker 1: the latest project is called Eater in Europe and trying
32:14
Speaker 1: to make this work. And so how's it going from them, Well,
32:17
Speaker 1: it's been going. That's about as good as you can say.
32:20
Speaker 1: That doesn't sound good. Hasn't been great. Now things have
32:22
Speaker 1: taken a much better turn recently, but it's been a
32:26
Speaker 1: tricky project. You know, I've been watching this feel from
32:28
Speaker 1: Afar and for a long time I thought this is
32:30
Speaker 1: sort of like they're super conducting super collider. They decided
32:34
Speaker 1: we're gonna go really big. We're gonna spend billions, but
32:36
Speaker 1: we're gonna make it awesome. And the project, you know,
32:39
Speaker 1: it needs sustained political support. And they started out in
32:43
Speaker 1: the nineties and the US was part of it, and
32:45
Speaker 1: then the US pulled out and we thought all the
32:47
Speaker 1: project was going to fall apart. Yeah, why do we
32:51
Speaker 1: pull out? Why do we pull out? Why do we
32:53
Speaker 1: ever cancel our support for a science project. It's some
32:56
Speaker 1: politics thing, you know, these billions versus those billions. Congress
33:00
Speaker 1: is fickle. Then they fickle pickled again. And the US
33:03
Speaker 1: was back in in two thousand three, and so now
33:06
Speaker 1: that you as is back in. So they've been working
33:08
Speaker 1: these things since the nineties. And one of the ideas
33:11
Speaker 1: here is not just let's build a reactor that works,
33:14
Speaker 1: but let's spread the knowledge of fusion reactors around the world.
33:18
Speaker 1: We don't just want to develop a very capable fusion
33:21
Speaker 1: economy in the US. We want to do it also
33:24
Speaker 1: in India and in China and in Russia, etcetera. And
33:27
Speaker 1: so it's very decentralized project. Like you guys build a
33:30
Speaker 1: vacuum chamber, you guys build these diagnostics. And that's a
33:33
Speaker 1: cool idea and a nice vision, but didn't really work
33:36
Speaker 1: very well for organizing a billions of dollars project that
33:40
Speaker 1: needs to be completed on schedule. Yeah, it seems like
33:43
Speaker 1: you want to make it work first before you tell
33:45
Speaker 1: other people how to make it work. Yeah. Well, I
33:47
Speaker 1: think part of selling it was you know, all these
33:50
Speaker 1: other countries please pitch in hundreds of millions of dollars
33:52
Speaker 1: and you'll get to participate in the economics of it,
33:55
Speaker 1: you'll get to be a leader and how to build
33:57
Speaker 1: this part of the device. I think that was part
33:59
Speaker 1: of the political selling points. But you know, they also
34:03
Speaker 1: paid the price because it's very hard to organize stuff
34:06
Speaker 1: that's so decentralized, with lots of different cultures participating, and
34:10
Speaker 1: so the cost started out estimated around four billion euros
34:14
Speaker 1: and now it's looking to be like more than twenty
34:16
Speaker 1: billion euros, which is pretty steep. I mean, it's hard
34:20
Speaker 1: to imagine a commercial operation spending twenty billion euros to
34:24
Speaker 1: build a reactor, but you know, the ideas they build
34:27
Speaker 1: this one, they figure out how to make it better
34:28
Speaker 1: and cheaper, etc. Yeah, I feel I feel like bill
34:31
Speaker 1: is not even that much. I mean, for like, you know,
34:34
Speaker 1: super cheap, free energy for the rest of humanity's history.
34:38
Speaker 1: Sounds like a bargain. All right, well, I'm glad you're
34:40
Speaker 1: so open to investments. I'd like to pitch to you
34:42
Speaker 1: that my Fusion Energy company. Would you like to invest
34:46
Speaker 1: facing Nigeria organized by a prince, Yes, please just click
34:51
Speaker 1: on this link. No, but then there was a guy
34:53
Speaker 1: who took over in two thousand fifteen, and he's sort
34:55
Speaker 1: of centralized power a little bit and decision making. And
34:59
Speaker 1: since two thousand fifteen, it's really been on track. It's
35:02
Speaker 1: been very well organized. They got good spreadsheets, etcetera. And
35:06
Speaker 1: people now think in the community that it's going pretty well.
35:08
Speaker 1: They're making steady progress. And they actually just recently the
35:12
Speaker 1: last few weeks shipped some of the cryostat, this thing
35:15
Speaker 1: that is going to hold the plasma. They shifted from
35:17
Speaker 1: Korea to France to start assembly. So it's coming together.
35:21
Speaker 1: It's coming together. We're starting to see real progress. And
35:24
Speaker 1: you know, this thing is going to be enormous, Like
35:26
Speaker 1: how big was the one at Princeton? Was it like
35:28
Speaker 1: desktop size? No, it was definitely not a desktop size.
35:31
Speaker 1: It was like a really large room. You know, the
35:33
Speaker 1: plasma on the scale of like a meter high. This
35:36
Speaker 1: thing is going to be like twelve The donuts gonna
35:38
Speaker 1: be twelve meters high, twelve meters high. It's going to
35:41
Speaker 1: be enormous. But that's what they think. They need to
35:43
Speaker 1: get a queue of ten to get ten times as
35:46
Speaker 1: much energy out as in. So it's a big task, right,
35:49
Speaker 1: and nobody ever built these things before. Remember when you
35:52
Speaker 1: do physics research at this scale. You're not like going
35:55
Speaker 1: to Best Buy and purchasing a fusion reactor and there's
35:58
Speaker 1: a customer support when it doesn't work. Right, Nobody's ever
36:01
Speaker 1: done this before, and so every decision, every piece of technology,
36:04
Speaker 1: every redoubt, everything has to be designed and thought about,
36:08
Speaker 1: usually by physics grad students, and so you know, I'm
36:11
Speaker 1: impressed when it works at all. It feels sort of
36:13
Speaker 1: like they try to jump to orders of magnitude in
36:16
Speaker 1: with this one, right, Like I feel like me, do
36:18
Speaker 1: you think maybe they try to bite off too much?
36:20
Speaker 1: Like they went from point four q two point six?
36:24
Speaker 1: You know, I would think the next logical step is
36:26
Speaker 1: like two cute or something, but no, they went for ten. Yeah,
36:30
Speaker 1: you know it's strategic, right. If they get que of
36:32
Speaker 1: ten to work, then boom, fusion is a thing. Fusion
36:35
Speaker 1: is now commercially viable. It's a whole new era for humanity.
36:39
Speaker 1: So I think they decided to just you know, go
36:42
Speaker 1: for the home run, and it's a strategic choice. If
36:44
Speaker 1: it doesn't work, then you know that the whole branch
36:47
Speaker 1: of research is probably dead. But you know, there are
36:50
Speaker 1: other ways people are exploring fusion, so they're definitely swinging
36:54
Speaker 1: for the fences, and that's a question of strategy, not science.
36:57
Speaker 1: And I understand, and I'm rooting for them. I really
36:59
Speaker 1: hope make it work. I'm sick of all our crazy, dirty,
37:02
Speaker 1: expensive energy. You'd be wonderful if they made fusion work.
37:05
Speaker 1: And you know, this thing, it's on track, and they're
37:08
Speaker 1: expecting to finish the vessel that holds the plasma in
37:12
Speaker 1: about and to turn the thing on in to make
37:17
Speaker 1: first plasma. Well, it's pretty soon. That's pretty soon. Yeah,
37:20
Speaker 1: that's you know, around the corner. And then they're going
37:22
Speaker 1: to tweak in and play with it and gradually ramp
37:24
Speaker 1: it up over the next few years. And they're hoping
37:27
Speaker 1: to get you actual power generated by this thing around. Now.
37:32
Speaker 1: That's assuming that it works. Is there anything still uncertain
37:36
Speaker 1: about the theory of it or do we know pretty
37:39
Speaker 1: well that it's going to work. It's just a matter
37:41
Speaker 1: of like timing the bolts. Well, the theorists are pretty confident.
37:44
Speaker 1: They think it's a pretty straight scale up and that
37:47
Speaker 1: if you build this thing and you do it correctly,
37:50
Speaker 1: it should really work. I mean, we've seen fusion happen.
37:53
Speaker 1: We know how to do it. They've just dealt with
37:55
Speaker 1: a lot of the issues of plasma instability. They think
37:58
Speaker 1: they know how to do that, how to manage the
37:59
Speaker 1: magnetic fields to suppress those instabilities, So they're pretty confident.
38:03
Speaker 1: On the other hand, you know, there's a lot of
38:05
Speaker 1: things that crop up for the first time in reality
38:07
Speaker 1: that you didn't expect when you're doing them on paper.
38:10
Speaker 1: They've done complicated simulations, etcetera. So they're pretty confident. But
38:14
Speaker 1: even if that's all correct, even if their theory is correct,
38:17
Speaker 1: and you build a thing and you turn it on
38:19
Speaker 1: and it generates power, there are still some problems they
38:22
Speaker 1: haven't even actually started to think about, Like what, well,
38:25
Speaker 1: you know this thing is going to generate energy, but
38:27
Speaker 1: they haven't figured out how to capture that energy, Like
38:30
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do about energy? Yeah, what what
38:33
Speaker 1: do you mean that there's no plan for, you know,
38:36
Speaker 1: actually taking the energy out. But because if you don't
38:38
Speaker 1: think the energy out, it's it's just gonna explode, isn't it?
38:41
Speaker 1: Or heat up? The energy A lot of is produced
38:43
Speaker 1: in the form of neutrons. So these neutrons are created
38:45
Speaker 1: and they fly out with a lot of energy, and
38:48
Speaker 1: neutrons again aren't captured by the plasma because they're not
38:51
Speaker 1: charged as to the idea is figure out a way
38:53
Speaker 1: to capture these neutrons outside of the plasma and turn
38:56
Speaker 1: them into heat, and then turn that heat into steam
38:59
Speaker 1: and turn that steam to electricity. But nobody's really figured
39:02
Speaker 1: out how to make that part work. And you know,
39:05
Speaker 1: neutrons are not great for you, Like, if you stand
39:08
Speaker 1: near a high energy source of neutrons, you'll basically get
39:11
Speaker 1: cancer very quickly. And neutrons will also make stuff radioactive.
39:15
Speaker 1: So if you just turn this thing on empower it
39:17
Speaker 1: without doing anything about the neutrons, it'll turn the entire
39:20
Speaker 1: reactor and then building it's in radioactive pretty quickly, and
39:24
Speaker 1: not like good radioactive, but like activate it make it
39:28
Speaker 1: radioactive potentially for a long time. So what's the plan?
39:31
Speaker 1: I mean, didn't they figure that out before they turn
39:33
Speaker 1: it on? Well, I think it's a two step plan.
39:35
Speaker 1: They're like, let's figure out how to make the energy
39:37
Speaker 1: and then we'll figure out how to capture it. But
39:39
Speaker 1: it's it's a bit of the Oven Midst sort of situation.
39:41
Speaker 1: You want to make sure you know how to handle
39:43
Speaker 1: this thing before you build it. So they have a
39:45
Speaker 1: sketch of an idea. It's actually really clever if you
39:48
Speaker 1: surround this thing in blankets of lithium, then neutrons when
39:53
Speaker 1: they hit lithium, they capture the energy, the heat up
39:57
Speaker 1: and you can you know, extract that energy through heat
40:00
Speaker 1: turning into electricity. Plus it turns the lithium blankets into
40:04
Speaker 1: exactly the kind of hydrogen you need to run as
40:07
Speaker 1: fuel for your reactor. So you need to turn lithium
40:10
Speaker 1: into basically deuterium or tritium, various isotopes of hydraight what
40:14
Speaker 1: So it's a nice little solution. Sorry, let me get
40:16
Speaker 1: maybe a picture here. So we have this donut and
40:20
Speaker 1: it's really hot, and it's containing a magnetic bottle and
40:25
Speaker 1: it's giving off huge, huge amounts of neutrons. But don't
40:29
Speaker 1: these neutrons and hit the walls of the container that
40:32
Speaker 1: it's holding and then destroy it or heat it up.
40:35
Speaker 1: Are you saying put the blankets of lithium before that
40:39
Speaker 1: or within that. Well, they haven't made a whole lot
40:41
Speaker 1: of progress on this. A lot of these ideas are
40:43
Speaker 1: still sort of in early stages, and the Element of
40:46
Speaker 1: the Eater program that was supposed to focus on exactly
40:49
Speaker 1: those questions hasn't received a whole lot of funding. They're
40:53
Speaker 1: really focusing just on generating the fusion and generating the energy,
40:56
Speaker 1: and so the folks I spoke to definitely acknowledge that
40:59
Speaker 1: they needs to be worked on more. But you're right,
41:02
Speaker 1: you can't put the lithium blankets directly inside or they
41:04
Speaker 1: get melted by the plasma, and so they'll be parts
41:07
Speaker 1: of the reactor which will be irradiated by the neutrons
41:10
Speaker 1: and they will need to be you know, eventually replaced.
41:13
Speaker 1: So that's what I was talking about, is saying there
41:15
Speaker 1: is some waste generated by a fusion reactor. Essentially the
41:18
Speaker 1: reactor itself becomes irradiated and needs to be rebuilt and replaced.
41:23
Speaker 1: But if you put these lithium blankets around the reactor,
41:26
Speaker 1: it should capture that energy from the neutrons and create
41:30
Speaker 1: more fuel you need to fuel the reactor. So it's
41:33
Speaker 1: a nice little cycle if you can make it work.
41:35
Speaker 1: But you know, this hasn't really be improved in practice
41:38
Speaker 1: at the level we would need to actually get energy
41:41
Speaker 1: electricity out of eather. How do the neutrons create you said,
41:46
Speaker 1: it takes lithium, and the lithium catches it and then
41:48
Speaker 1: the lithium transforms into these heavy hydrogens. Yeah, so lithium
41:53
Speaker 1: is not a very heavy element, and if you smash
41:55
Speaker 1: neutrons into it, then it cracks open and you can
41:58
Speaker 1: get hydrogens, and you can get deuteriums, you can get tritiums,
42:03
Speaker 1: and so it basically turns into the fuel you need
42:05
Speaker 1: to funnel back into the reactor. But then then then
42:08
Speaker 1: don't you need more lithium? What if you're run out
42:10
Speaker 1: of lithium? Yeah, essentially you need more lithium. But again,
42:14
Speaker 1: lithium is not that rare. It's atomic number three. But
42:17
Speaker 1: you know, these are the parts of this whole research
42:20
Speaker 1: program that are not as fleshed out as the rest
42:22
Speaker 1: of it. They're like, first, let's get Q of ten.
42:25
Speaker 1: Let's produce a huge hot, you know, nasty burning doughnut,
42:28
Speaker 1: and then we'll figure out how to use that donut
42:31
Speaker 1: to run your eyes. Let's make a huge what did
42:33
Speaker 1: you call it, huge, nasty burning donut, and then we'll
42:37
Speaker 1: figure out who knows that was the alternative name for
42:40
Speaker 1: this program. They went with eater Instead, they went the
42:45
Speaker 1: other way. They're like, I couldn't make this more appealing.
42:49
Speaker 1: Let's call it the thermonuclear donut, all right? Well, hopefully
42:54
Speaker 1: they'll figure it out. I mean, it seems like they're
42:56
Speaker 1: they're confidant that it can be figured out and they
42:59
Speaker 1: just have to kind of put funding into it. Yeah,
43:01
Speaker 1: they really do hope that it works, and the whole
43:04
Speaker 1: field is sort of like place their bet on this.
43:07
Speaker 1: There are other ways people are working on fusion. There
43:10
Speaker 1: are other devices like a stellarator, which doesn't have a
43:13
Speaker 1: current of plasma so doesn't create its own magnetic field.
43:16
Speaker 1: You create the magnetic field from the outside, and it
43:19
Speaker 1: used to be that was essentially impossible to do because
43:21
Speaker 1: it was so complicated. But now with computer aided design,
43:24
Speaker 1: you can actually build the kind of crazy magnetic fields
43:27
Speaker 1: we need. So that's another area that's a that's a
43:29
Speaker 1: different project called the Drinker Experiment. And then there is
43:34
Speaker 1: the National Ignition Facility here in the US, which is
43:36
Speaker 1: using lasers to zapp pellets of hydrogen and deterium to
43:40
Speaker 1: try to make fusion. But this one is sort of
43:42
Speaker 1: the biggest bet, and I really hope that it works
43:45
Speaker 1: and that it creates energy and that it changes something
43:48
Speaker 1: about the nature of science. You know. I do particle physics,
43:52
Speaker 1: and we hope to learn about the nature of the universe,
43:54
Speaker 1: but there aren't really immediate practical applications. Here's one place
43:58
Speaker 1: where physics really can make a difference, I think in
44:01
Speaker 1: the whole history of humanity. You know, you can change
44:04
Speaker 1: our relationship with our environment. Interesting, you're rooting for it
44:07
Speaker 1: because you feel like people will see signs differently if
44:11
Speaker 1: we get it to work, Like science can be useful
44:13
Speaker 1: and a practical out for your Netflix and podcast. Yeah,
44:17
Speaker 1: that's the one benefit. But also I just think there
44:19
Speaker 1: are a lot of folks out there that could really
44:21
Speaker 1: benefit from cheap energy. You know, if you have cheap energy,
44:24
Speaker 1: then a lot of other problems are solved, like fresh water.
44:28
Speaker 1: All you need to get fresh water is saltwater plus energy.
44:31
Speaker 1: So if energy is free or cheap, then all of
44:33
Speaker 1: a sudden, fresh water is not hard to get. And
44:36
Speaker 1: there a lot of problems that are like that where
44:37
Speaker 1: the solutions are easy if energy is cheap, you know,
44:42
Speaker 1: climate change for example, and so a lot of problems
44:45
Speaker 1: could we could look at them very differently if energy
44:47
Speaker 1: becomes very cheap. And also, yes, it'd be nice to
44:50
Speaker 1: have a feather in the cap of physics. Better life
44:52
Speaker 1: through physics, even if physicists don't have a life. We're
44:56
Speaker 1: giving up ours for everybody else's all right. Well, we'll
44:59
Speaker 1: keep an an eye out on this project, and hopefully
45:02
Speaker 1: we'll hear good news in in a few years from
45:04
Speaker 1: it that they can make it work. Hopefully it will
45:07
Speaker 1: make standy progress, and we will hear that they will
45:10
Speaker 1: have produced energy. So good luck Eaters, and we hope
45:15
Speaker 1: that you make it work. Good luck with that hot, burning,
45:17
Speaker 1: nasty donut. Maybe that should be the name of the
45:20
Speaker 1: snack bar at the Eater Experiment. Just don't eat it
45:25
Speaker 1: because there's new trials all over the place here. All right, Well,
45:28
Speaker 1: we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for listening, See you
45:31
Speaker 1: next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and
45:41
Speaker 1: Jorge explained. The Universe is a production of I Heart Radio.
45:45
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45:48
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45:51
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