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