Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works and I love all things tech. And
Speaker 1: in our last episode, I described how nuclear fission reactors work.
Speaker 1: There are several different kinds of nuclear fission reactors, but
Speaker 1: they all depend upon the process of radioactive decay and fission.
Speaker 1: And that's when you have a heavy atom that splits
Speaker 1: into smaller atoms after some sort of process such as
Speaker 1: absorbing and incoming neutron, and as a result, it releases
Speaker 1: energy as a byproduct. That energy can then be used
Speaker 1: to heat up water into steam and drive a steam
Speaker 1: turbine to generate electricity. So listen to the last episode
Speaker 1: for a full rundown of that. But now we're gonna
Speaker 1: turn our focus to fusion. Now, with fusion, two or
Speaker 1: more lighter atoms are fused together to form a heavier atom,
Speaker 1: and they release a lot of energy in the process,
Speaker 1: more energy than you would get from a fission reaction.
Speaker 1: And rather than relying on heavy radioactive isotopes like uranium
Speaker 1: two thirty five or plutonium two nine, is fuel you
Speaker 1: would be using really light atoms that aren't themselves necessarily radioactive,
Speaker 1: But doing so isn't as easy as it sounds. Fusion
Speaker 1: is the process through which stars emit energy, like stars
Speaker 1: in the galaxy, not on Hollywood Boulevard. The Sun is
Speaker 1: basically an enormous fusion reactor, and the Sun is massive.
Speaker 1: How massive you might ask, Well, if you look at
Speaker 1: our solar system, and if you add up all the
Speaker 1: mass represented inside that solar system, the Sun would account
Speaker 1: for nine nine point eight six per cent of all
Speaker 1: of that mass. All of the planets, moons, asteroids, and
Speaker 1: other material would make up less than one per cent
Speaker 1: of the mass of the solar system. One million earths
Speaker 1: could fit inside the Sun. The Sun has a diameter
Speaker 1: of one million, six four kilometers or more than eight
Speaker 1: hundred sixty seven thousand miles, and most of the sun,
Speaker 1: like sevent of it, is made out of hydrogen. Most
Speaker 1: of the remaining mass is helium, and the process of
Speaker 1: fusion inside the Sun's core turns hydrogen into helium. It
Speaker 1: fuses hydrogen together and forms helium as a result at
Speaker 1: a temperature of millions of degrees. According to the song
Speaker 1: why does the sun shine which was made popular by
Speaker 1: They Might Be Giants. However, I should point out that
Speaker 1: song also has some inaccuracies, as we would no longer
Speaker 1: say the Sun is a mass of incandescent gas, which
Speaker 1: is why they Might be Giants. Eventually revised the song
Speaker 1: with an updated verse and called why does the Sun
Speaker 1: really shine and says the sun is a miasma of
Speaker 1: incandescent plasma. But let's move on to understand solar fusion,
Speaker 1: we need to know how stars form. And yes, then
Speaker 1: this actually ends up being really important because it illustrates
Speaker 1: the parameters necessary to make fusion work. So before you
Speaker 1: have a star, you've got clouds of dust and gas
Speaker 1: out in space, just floating around in the same general area.
Speaker 1: Then you get some sort of gravity disturbance, which could
Speaker 1: be caused by any number of things, such as a supernova.
Speaker 1: This ends up causing some of that gas and dust
Speaker 1: to clump together, and the particles are starting to move
Speaker 1: closer and closer in with each other. And as all
Speaker 1: this mass moves closer together, the force of gravity begins
Speaker 1: to pull them in more tightly. You know, gravity depends
Speaker 1: upon mass and distance, so as this mass gets concentrated,
Speaker 1: it starts to create a gravitational pull gas it's drawn
Speaker 1: inward into the core of this mass, and as the
Speaker 1: pressure increases from the gravity pulling things inward, the mass
Speaker 1: begins to heat up and the clump then begins to rotate.
Speaker 1: This heat starts to move stuff around, and there's rotation
Speaker 1: in the universe anyway, so you get some rotation of
Speaker 1: the mass of stuff, and this starts to flatten out
Speaker 1: into a disc. That process actually draws in more dust
Speaker 1: and gas that gets drawn inward and the mass continues
Speaker 1: to heat up. Now skip ahead about a million years.
Speaker 1: You've done a million years of this process where this
Speaker 1: disc has continuously been sucking up more dust and gas
Speaker 1: through gravitational pull and heating up over and over more
Speaker 1: and more, and the core of the disc has become
Speaker 1: a dense structure that we would call a proto star. Now,
Speaker 1: proto stars can turn into full blown stars, or they
Speaker 1: might not. It depends all on how much matter is around,
Speaker 1: how much mass can they accumulate. So if there's enough
Speaker 1: mass in the form of gas and dust, the protostar
Speaker 1: will pull it inward heat up even more, and once
Speaker 1: the temperature hits around seven million degrees kelvin which is
Speaker 1: equal to about twelve point six million fahrenheit or nearly
Speaker 1: seven million celsius. Fusion will begin. Hydrogen atoms will be
Speaker 1: stripped of their electrons because they have far too much energy,
Speaker 1: and the intense temperature and pressure will cause them to
Speaker 1: fuse together to form helium atoms, and that process releases energy.
Speaker 1: The nuclear fusion creates a strong outward pressure, so if
Speaker 1: there were no other boundaries on this system, the protostar
Speaker 1: would just expand to the point where it dissipates. However,
Speaker 1: there's still that incredible gravitational pull that counteracts the expansion
Speaker 1: from nuclear fusion, and the young star will still pull
Speaker 1: in more material. If the protostar collects a sufficient amount
Speaker 1: of mass, the temperature will remain hot enough to sustain fusion,
Speaker 1: and the protostar will release a jet of gas called
Speaker 1: a bipolar flow. That flow will push away gas and
Speaker 1: dust from the star. Some of that stuff could potentially
Speaker 1: clump together to form stuff like planets and moons, But
Speaker 1: if the protostar doesn't accumulate enough mass, the protostar will
Speaker 1: not become a fully fledged star. Instead will turn into
Speaker 1: what is called a brown dwarf. So we see that
Speaker 1: fusion occurs under intense temperatures and intense pressures. The same
Speaker 1: is true if we want to create fusion on Earth.
Speaker 1: So what is actually going on with a fusion reaction?
Speaker 1: I mean, I know that we take two atoms of
Speaker 1: hydrogen and we push them together real hard in a
Speaker 1: very high temperature, high pressure environment, and we get helium.
Speaker 1: But how does that release energy, especially after you need
Speaker 1: so much inergy to make it happen in the first place. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to give a very simplistic answer to this,
Speaker 1: but please know that in reality, the real answer, if
Speaker 1: you really boil it down, it's ridiculously complicated. So this
Speaker 1: is a very high level look at what is going on,
Speaker 1: But to go into more detail would require a very
Speaker 1: deep understanding nuclear physics. I frankly do not possess a
Speaker 1: deep understanding of nuclear physics. I have a cursory understanding,
Speaker 1: but I can sort of explain from a very very
Speaker 1: general level. So fusion involves binding those two lighter atoms
Speaker 1: to make a heavier atom. So let's say we've got
Speaker 1: atoms number one and atom number two, and we combine
Speaker 1: them together and we get atom number three. However, we
Speaker 1: see that atom number three's mass is not the same
Speaker 1: as if we added up the mass of atoms one
Speaker 1: and two together. Right, So if we said that the
Speaker 1: mass of atom one is one and the massive atom
Speaker 1: two is one, the massive atom three might actually end
Speaker 1: up being one point eight, but not too so how
Speaker 1: is that possible? After all, matter, just like energy, cannot
Speaker 1: be created or destroyed. Ah, but you can convert it.
Speaker 1: And this is where a real Einstein comes into play.
Speaker 1: His name was Einstein. Einstein's famous equation E equals mc
Speaker 1: squared tells us that if you were to convert mass
Speaker 1: into energy, the amount of energy you would get would
Speaker 1: be you take you take a mass, and you multiply
Speaker 1: that times the speed of light squared. And the speed
Speaker 1: of light is a really big number, like a huge number,
Speaker 1: and then you've just gone and squared it. You multiplied
Speaker 1: that huge number by itself. Then you take that even
Speaker 1: bigger number and multiply that by however much stuff you
Speaker 1: have the mass of the stuff, and that tells you
Speaker 1: how much energy would be produced. It is an enormous
Speaker 1: amount of energy represented in a very tiny amount of mass.
Speaker 1: So the missing mass from this fusion process isn't really missing,
Speaker 1: it's converted from mass to energy, and that is why
Speaker 1: fusion reactions are so powerful. The amount of mass lost
Speaker 1: in the fusion process is tiny, but even so that
Speaker 1: generates an enormous amount of energy. Now, like I said,
Speaker 1: there's an overly simple way of describing what is going on.
Speaker 1: We can get into quantum mechanics, we can get into
Speaker 1: nuclear physics, and I would be totally lost. And so
Speaker 1: there are a lot of details that I am glossing over,
Speaker 1: but at least gives a hint as to why fusion
Speaker 1: power is so tantalizing because it could potentially produce so
Speaker 1: much energy we could put to use in doing things
Speaker 1: like creating electricity. But there are other reasons why fusion
Speaker 1: is really attractive as well, and I'll go into those
Speaker 1: in just a moment, but first let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor. So here's the idea for
Speaker 1: a nuclear fusion reactor. You would start with some isotopes
Speaker 1: of hydrogen. Now I mentioned isotopes in the previous episode,
Speaker 1: but just to catch you up in case you haven't
Speaker 1: heard it, isotopes are whord we use to describe atoms
Speaker 1: of the same element, but those atoms have different number
Speaker 1: of neutrons from each other. The number of protons has
Speaker 1: to remain the same for these atoms, because otherwise you
Speaker 1: would have a totally different element. But neutrons have a
Speaker 1: neutral charge. They do not affect the chemical properties of
Speaker 1: the element, but they do change the atomic mass of
Speaker 1: the atoms. The two isotopes of hydrogen most frequently used
Speaker 1: for hydrogen fusion reactions are deuterium and tritium. Now first,
Speaker 1: before I talk about deuterium and tritium, let me talk
Speaker 1: about protium. That's hydrogen one. That's the most common isotope
Speaker 1: of hydrogen. It consists of a single proton and an electron,
Speaker 1: no neutrons, and protium makes up about nine of all
Speaker 1: the hydrogen and found on Earth. Most of that hydrogen,
Speaker 1: by the way, is locked in with other stuff, hydrocarbons
Speaker 1: in particular. Then you have deuterium. Deuterium has one proton
Speaker 1: and one neutron in the nucleus, and it has one
Speaker 1: electron orbiting the nucleus. So it's like protium, excepted has
Speaker 1: a neutron. So some of the hydrogen in the water
Speaker 1: on Earth is deuterium. Like one atom out of every
Speaker 1: six thousand, five hundred hydrogen atoms or so, then you
Speaker 1: have tritium that is hydrogen three. It has one proton,
Speaker 1: two neutrons, and one electron. Now, tritium can occur in
Speaker 1: very trace amounts on Earth in the atmosphere, but it
Speaker 1: is exceedingly rare. It's typically only found in the tiniest
Speaker 1: amounts in the atmosphere after hydrogen atoms have interacted with
Speaker 1: cosmic rays, so there's no easy way of getting hold
Speaker 1: of it. But we can tots make tritium ourselves. That
Speaker 1: does involve irradiating other stuff, so I don't recommend taking
Speaker 1: it on as a d I Y project. Also, tritium
Speaker 1: itself is radioactive. It has a half life of about
Speaker 1: ten years, so tritium, while while deuterium is not radioactive,
Speaker 1: tritium is. Fusion reactors would probably have to rely upon
Speaker 1: deuterium tritium reactions, which would create a helium four atom
Speaker 1: and a neutron. Now, if we could manage deuterium deuterium
Speaker 1: reactions just fusing to deuterium atoms together, that would be
Speaker 1: for the best because that would produce a helium three
Speaker 1: isotope plus a neutron, and the results would be preferable
Speaker 1: to the deuterium tritium. Because deuterium occurs naturally on Earth
Speaker 1: means we don't have to make it. We can actually
Speaker 1: harvest it from the oceans if we wanted to. Plus,
Speaker 1: deuterium isn't radioactive, tritium is, and the reaction would yield
Speaker 1: more energy than a deuterium tritium reaction. But on the
Speaker 1: downs side, the amount of energy we would need to
Speaker 1: initiate a deuterium deuterium reaction is so great that it
Speaker 1: is prohibitive right now and possibly always will be. We
Speaker 1: just don't have the capability of creating that. Helium four,
Speaker 1: by the way, UH consists of two protons and two neutrons.
Speaker 1: Helium three is an isotope that only has one neutron
Speaker 1: with those two protons. So where's the problem. We know
Speaker 1: what's happening with fusion, but why can't we make it
Speaker 1: a reliable reactor? Why can't we make a fusion reactor
Speaker 1: right now that produces more energy than it requires to operate? Now,
Speaker 1: first you have to create the conditions that allow fusion
Speaker 1: to happen in the first place. Fusing nuclei together means
Speaker 1: you have to overcome the repulsive force you encounter when
Speaker 1: you try to smush together two particles with the same charge,
Speaker 1: and by repulsive, I don't mean they're disgusting. I mean
Speaker 1: they repel each other. Like if you take two magnets
Speaker 1: and you try and put the north end of each
Speaker 1: magnet next to each other, you'll feel them resist that,
Speaker 1: they'll push against each other because like charge repels, like
Speaker 1: opposite charges attract, So a positively charged particle will attract
Speaker 1: a negatively charged one, but the same charge repels and
Speaker 1: to positively charged particles like protons, are going to resist
Speaker 1: getting smushed together. They repel one another. You have to
Speaker 1: overcome that tendency, so you have to heat up the
Speaker 1: hydrogen to millions of degrees kelvin. That amount of energy
Speaker 1: will strip the electrons away from the hydrogen atoms, turning
Speaker 1: the atoms into nuclei, which would make a protium just
Speaker 1: become a proton all by itself, but deuterium, you would
Speaker 1: have a proton and a neutron together, and hydrogen would
Speaker 1: change from gas form into plasma. Plasma is the most
Speaker 1: plentiful form of matter in the universe, because again that's
Speaker 1: what stars are made of, and we've already established how
Speaker 1: massive stars can be keep in mind, the Sun is
Speaker 1: not the biggest kind of star we've ever seen, so
Speaker 1: it's the most plentiful stuff. It's essentially an ionized gas,
Speaker 1: meaning that has free roaming part of electrons and nuclei
Speaker 1: inside of it. Now, to get hydrogen to those temperatures,
Speaker 1: to heat up hydrogen enough to turn it into a plasma,
Speaker 1: we use powerful technologies and typically we use stuff like
Speaker 1: lasers or microwaves and ion particles to heat up the
Speaker 1: material to a temperature high enough where we can actually
Speaker 1: turn it into plasma. Then we have to use some
Speaker 1: form of containment to push all of those nuclei together
Speaker 1: big time. We have to really squish them in so
Speaker 1: that they are within one time's tent to the negative
Speaker 1: fifteen meters to fuse together. They had to be so
Speaker 1: darn close to each other. And we don't have the
Speaker 1: benefit of having an intense gravitational force like the Sun
Speaker 1: has because of it's so massive. The gravity that the
Speaker 1: Sun exerts is so strong that it that that condition
Speaker 1: is natural in the core of the Sun. We can't
Speaker 1: replicate that on Earth. We don't have the control of gravity,
Speaker 1: so we have to use something else, and we typically
Speaker 1: use stuff like magnetic fields or lasers or ion beams
Speaker 1: in order to do that. I'll explain how in just
Speaker 1: a moment, but first let's take another quick break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. All right, let's talk about magnetic confinement.
Speaker 1: That means we're using magnetic and electric fields to manipulate
Speaker 1: the plasma to squish it into a tiny mass, and
Speaker 1: it also heats it up in the process. The International
Speaker 1: Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or at least that's what was formerly
Speaker 1: known as also called it and France relies on that approach.
Speaker 1: Actually these days they say that i t e R
Speaker 1: no longer stands International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. Instead they say
Speaker 1: it is a reference to the Latin phrase for the way,
Speaker 1: probably because the word thermonuclear sounds super scary. But this reactor,
Speaker 1: which is a research project meant to explore the possibilities
Speaker 1: of using magnetic confinement to produce fusion reactions that will
Speaker 1: release more energy than it requires to initiate, has was
Speaker 1: called a tacomac. That's a specific kind of reactor has
Speaker 1: an arrangement of magnets that are sort of in the
Speaker 1: shape of a of a doughnut or or toroid. And
Speaker 1: this kind of reactor would first convert hydrogen gas into
Speaker 1: plasma using microwaves, electricity, and neutral particle beams, and then
Speaker 1: those superconducting magnets would create an extremely powerful magnetic field
Speaker 1: compressing the plasma, and because plasma has an electric charge,
Speaker 1: it's going to respond to these magnetic fields. The amount
Speaker 1: of power needed to start the fusion process, according to it,
Speaker 1: will be about fifty megawatts, but the fusion process would
Speaker 1: produce five hundred megawatts, meaning the thermal output power should
Speaker 1: be ten times greater than the heating input power, so
Speaker 1: you get a tenfold return on your power investment. That
Speaker 1: sounds pretty sweet, but itder itself will not produce electricity,
Speaker 1: at least not first anyway, it's meant to be a
Speaker 1: research facility for the design and testing of fusion technologies. Now,
Speaker 1: if it were a fusion power facility and it was
Speaker 1: beyond research and development, the thermal energy generated from the
Speaker 1: fusion reaction would be used again to heat water into
Speaker 1: steam and push steam turbines, just like a nuclear fission
Speaker 1: reactor or even a cold power plant does. But would
Speaker 1: be really really good at this because it would be
Speaker 1: producing so much energy you could heat up a lot
Speaker 1: more water. You could drive more steam turbines than other
Speaker 1: forms of steam turbine generators, and so you can generate
Speaker 1: quite a bit of electricity from the amount of energy
Speaker 1: you are producing through these reactions. In addition, because we're
Speaker 1: pretty sure we're limited to do tterium tritium reactions, I
Speaker 1: turn would also serve as a test facility to look
Speaker 1: at the feasibility of creating tritium breeder reactors. So a
Speaker 1: breeder reactor creates the materials you need for a different
Speaker 1: type of reaction. So the the reactor is in what
Speaker 1: is called a vacuum vessel, and that vacuum vessel will
Speaker 1: have lithium blankets lining the inside of it, and those
Speaker 1: blankets will actually absorb energy given off by this reactor
Speaker 1: during the fusion process, and as a result, when you
Speaker 1: bombard lithium with radioactive energy, essentially it produces tritium. So
Speaker 1: that way you can actually create part of the fuel
Speaker 1: you need for future reactions as a byproduct of this process,
Speaker 1: and then you keep on going. But that's magnetic confinement.
Speaker 1: There's actually another way we could use to keep plasma
Speaker 1: confined so that fusion reactions can occur and that is
Speaker 1: called inertial confinement. That one uses ion beams or laser
Speaker 1: beams to confine and squeeze the plasma. The National Ignition
Speaker 1: Facility at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in the United States uses
Speaker 1: that methodology, and the n i F reactor would use
Speaker 1: two different laser beams to focus on a single point.
Speaker 1: And it's inside a chamber. You've got this big chamber
Speaker 1: called the whole rom h O H L R A
Speaker 1: U M is the spelling for that, and the chambers
Speaker 1: specifically designed for radiant energy. That chambers ten ms in diameter.
Speaker 1: It's pretty big. So what happens at the one focal
Speaker 1: point where all those lasers are aimed at. Well. At
Speaker 1: that point will set a tiny pellet of duteri um
Speaker 1: tritium and it's encased in a plastic cylinder. The one
Speaker 1: laser beams will pour one point eight million jewels of
Speaker 1: power into this cylinder. This creates an enormous amount of heat.
Speaker 1: It also emits X rays as a result, and this
Speaker 1: will help convert that pellet into a plasma. The lasers
Speaker 1: compress this plasma and fusion occurs. The fusion reaction will
Speaker 1: be over in less than in an instant like one
Speaker 1: millionth of a second, but that reaction should produce about
Speaker 1: fifty to one hundred times more energy than what was
Speaker 1: needed to initiate the reaction in the first place, so
Speaker 1: the return on energy would be incredible, much more than
Speaker 1: the magnetic confinement which was ten times right. So a
Speaker 1: series of experiments eventually got the plasma to produce more
Speaker 1: energy than it required to initiate, but the project never
Speaker 1: reached full ignition. They never got to the point where
Speaker 1: they fully ignited the fuel, where you had full fusion.
Speaker 1: Are research is ongoing at the facility, but the early
Speaker 1: optimistic hopes that full ignition would be reached by late
Speaker 1: obviously proved to be too ambitious. Now, one day it
Speaker 1: may prove to be an effective process to use as
Speaker 1: a way to generate the energy necessary to drive electrical generators,
Speaker 1: but a lot more work has to be done to
Speaker 1: achieve goals and create a sustainable approach. A sustainable approach,
Speaker 1: by the way, if you think about that setup where
Speaker 1: you have a hund lasers focused on one little point,
Speaker 1: how do you make that something that you can continuously
Speaker 1: do so that you can keep generating energy and create
Speaker 1: electricity while you would have multiple pellets inside the chamber,
Speaker 1: and the lasers would focus on one after another and
Speaker 1: initiate fusion for each of those in order to generate
Speaker 1: the energy did to create electricity, So we got a
Speaker 1: long way to go. And like Eider, the n i
Speaker 1: F was not intended to be a power plant itself.
Speaker 1: It was a research and testing ground still is a
Speaker 1: research and testing grounds for technology for various uh applications,
Speaker 1: not just nuclear power but also nuclear weapons. Research goes
Speaker 1: on there. Uh Now it might that research might one
Speaker 1: day make fusion reactors practical. A fusion reactor like the
Speaker 1: one in i F research could lead to would generate
Speaker 1: electricity the same way the Eider based reactor would. In
Speaker 1: other words, it would be used to generate energy that
Speaker 1: would heat up water to turn into steam. So it
Speaker 1: all comes back down to steam turbines. Seems like almost
Speaker 1: all the major ways we generate electricity, with the exception
Speaker 1: of something like direct solar power, has some variation of this.
Speaker 1: While we haven't cracked the nut on fusion reactors, it
Speaker 1: does remain a tantalizing goal. Deuterium is more plentiful than
Speaker 1: stuff like your name two thirty five and it's not radioactive.
Speaker 1: Tritium is radioactive, but we'd create that from energy given
Speaker 1: off during fusion reactions, and so we could have breeder
Speaker 1: reactors produced the fuel supply needed for various power plants,
Speaker 1: and the stuff we'd used to generate the tritium is lithium,
Speaker 1: and we are lousy with lithium. Is that is not
Speaker 1: hard to get hold of at all. The amount of
Speaker 1: fuel we would need for fusion reactions in general is
Speaker 1: a fraction of what we would need for a fission
Speaker 1: based nuclear power plants. So that's the other nice thing
Speaker 1: about is that you don't need as much stuff to
Speaker 1: generate the energy you want to generate, right, You don't
Speaker 1: have to go mining for uranium two thirty eight and
Speaker 1: then enriching that so that you have enough uranium two
Speaker 1: thirty five to have a sustainable nuclear reaction, and the
Speaker 1: amount of radiation produced by such reactors would be less
Speaker 1: than the natural background radiation we typically encounter in our
Speaker 1: day to day lives, and that's a nice change from
Speaker 1: fission based nuclear reactors. There's also no combust bustion with
Speaker 1: a nuclear fusion plant. There's also no combust in with
Speaker 1: a fission nuclear power plant, at least not if everything
Speaker 1: is working properly, so you aren't burning stuff and you
Speaker 1: don't cause any pollution that way, And unlike fission reactors,
Speaker 1: fusion reactors would not produce high level nuclear wastes. You
Speaker 1: would still have low level nuclear waste, and that's still
Speaker 1: something you have to be concerned about, but that in
Speaker 1: general is much easier to deal with than the high
Speaker 1: level stuff. That's the again, one of the big reasons
Speaker 1: why fission reactors get so much pushback is this high
Speaker 1: level radioactive waste. But we'll have to wait a while
Speaker 1: to see if this all pans out. Itter is scheduled
Speaker 1: to start doing plasma experiments in twenty five, so we're
Speaker 1: still a few years off before we see if that
Speaker 1: experiment bears fruit. N i F has been on and
Speaker 1: off again with their fusion projects, largely due to funding issues,
Speaker 1: and it's hard to convince government agencies to fund exploratory
Speaker 1: research when you cannot be absolutely certain that it's going
Speaker 1: to work. It's tough to say, yes, this investment is
Speaker 1: a risk. It might pay off in ways we can't
Speaker 1: even imagine, because we would be able to generate so
Speaker 1: much energy that we would easily meet our energy needs
Speaker 1: for the foreseeable future. But if it doesn't work, then
Speaker 1: we've spent all that money for you know, some lasers
Speaker 1: that that turn some deuterium tritium pellets into plasma, but
Speaker 1: not enough of it to make it make a difference.
Speaker 1: It's not a great way to try and get money, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: because government agents tend to want results because eventually the
Speaker 1: government agents have to report to the people who vote
Speaker 1: for them. And if if you're a voter who's very
Speaker 1: concerned with where your money is going, you might not
Speaker 1: want to hear about a risky scientific proposition that may
Speaker 1: not pay off in the long run. I'm always for
Speaker 1: exploratory science, but it's easy for me to say, right,
Speaker 1: I get that I'm from a very privileged position when
Speaker 1: it comes to that. Now, in my next episode, I'm
Speaker 1: going to tackle a very controversial topic, and that would
Speaker 1: be the concept of cold fusion. Cold fusion is a
Speaker 1: process that, if it works, means that you would have
Speaker 1: adams like deuterium fusing together at room temperature. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: need to have these elaborate setups to create such enormous
Speaker 1: amounts of pressure and heat in order for this to happen,
Speaker 1: and if in fact it does work, it would dramatically
Speaker 1: transform our world. We wouldn't need facilities like itter or
Speaker 1: in i F because we would be able to do this,
Speaker 1: you know, in a lab and a nice, nice lab
Speaker 1: with maybe some radioactive shielding because occasionally it would produce
Speaker 1: gamma rays. But I'll talk about that more in the
Speaker 1: next episode. So continue down this nuclear pathway with me
Speaker 1: as we talk about cold fusion. In the next episode
Speaker 1: and then the episode after that, we'll take a closer
Speaker 1: look at what actually happened at sites like Three Mile Island,
Speaker 1: Chernobyl and the Fukushima reactors. So join us for those.
Speaker 1: And if you have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: maybe it's technology, maybe it's a person in tech, maybe
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