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