Speaker 1: M. Hey everyone, it's me Josh and for this week's
Speaker 1: S Y s K Selex, I've chosen Can nuclear fusion
Speaker 1: reactors save the world? Well, it turns out probably if
Speaker 1: we can just figure out how to build one properly. Well,
Speaker 1: sit back, buckle up, and prepare to be titillated with
Speaker 1: what I find to be the most arousing, amazing form
Speaker 1: of future energy around. Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of five Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles
Speaker 1: to Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry, there's Barrel laughs. Uh, and
Speaker 1: this is stuff you should know. She gave us the
Speaker 1: old quick start. Yeah, like I don't want to hear
Speaker 1: any more impression record. Yeah, she knows that shuts me up,
Speaker 1: or at least cuts off whatever station on 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, We'd think it
Speaker 1: was funny and everybody else would be like, you edit
Speaker 1: this out for a reason. Uh So, Chuck, how you
Speaker 1: doing great? Have you ever been to Azen Provence? France.
Speaker 1: No is that a place. Yeah, No, I haven't. It
Speaker 1: is 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 real word definition of the
Speaker 1: word um. Also site to one of the most futuristic
Speaker 1: engineering projects humanity has ever undertaken. Meat. Meat. It's a
Speaker 1: sound it makes. Oh, I thought you're mocking me. No,
Speaker 1: no for being thrilled by the thought of this thing. No,
Speaker 1: it is kind of funny that this thing is in
Speaker 1: a sleepy little town like a hamlet, maybe evencern in Switzerland.
Speaker 1: That's not in the city, is it. No, you can't
Speaker 1: build these things in cities. That's whether in sleepy towns
Speaker 1: exactly because no one knows they're being poisoned. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you can push the mare around pretty easy, exactly. This
Speaker 1: thing is called either I T e R, which is
Speaker 1: an acronym for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactors, which really
Speaker 1: gets to the point across. Did you know the word
Speaker 1: acronym is an acronym M. That's not true. Okay, I
Speaker 1: just want to see how long you would try and
Speaker 1: sort it out in your head. I would have kept
Speaker 1: going on what it means seconds. Maybe that would have
Speaker 1: been a great joke. I could have just kept it going.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna tell you I would have been I
Speaker 1: would have it was maybe fifteen seconds, because you would
Speaker 1: have gotten that much more. So I wouldn't have looked
Speaker 1: it up. I would have figured it out myself. Anyway.
Speaker 1: EID is this colossal engineering project. Somebody compared it to
Speaker 1: the 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 fussion 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 EIDER 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 no pollution
Speaker 1: of greenhouse emissions, and with plenty of energy to spare
Speaker 1: using 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 joint 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 KOI clearly there is no button because we would
Speaker 1: have pushed it a long time ago. Yeah. And when
Speaker 1: I say no, pollution and no greenhouse emissions before the
Speaker 1: pedantic among you right in, we know that just even
Speaker 1: shipping 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 Ider, 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 Eider. But if you want to
Speaker 1: know a lot about Eider, there is a really great
Speaker 1: article called A Star in a Bottle um, and it's
Speaker 1: by a person named Rathi Kacha Duran durian Uh. And
Speaker 1: it was written in the New Yorker not too long ago.
Speaker 1: And man, it is every detail you want to know
Speaker 1: about the Eider project written really well um and it's long,
Speaker 1: but it's totally worth the read. Yeah, it's all over
Speaker 1: the news lately. And for good reason. You said a
Speaker 1: lot of energy. I have a stat I'm gonna throw
Speaker 1: back to the old days here. Per kilogram, I'm a fuel.
Speaker 1: If we're talking fusion and fission, fusion produces four times
Speaker 1: more energy than fission. I saw seven. It's probably one
Speaker 1: of the things where it's like four to five to
Speaker 1: ten or something. Right, I've found four times and ten
Speaker 1: million times more than coal. Yeah, ten million times the
Speaker 1: energy as coal, and that's with equal fuel per kilogram
Speaker 1: 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: eighteen million times the amount of power that coal provides.
Speaker 1: You can say, well, there, buddy, you can also bring
Speaker 1: it backwards because you can supply an awful lot of
Speaker 1: power then with a lot less fuel. Yeah, we're like
Speaker 1: the advantage of nuclear fusion or mind boggling and and
Speaker 1: very few uh 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 aspect us. Um, 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 understanding of what the challenges are
Speaker 1: ahead of us thanks to the last fifty or so
Speaker 1: years of really really really smart physicists working on the
Speaker 1: problem of nuclear fusion. Uh, 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. It turns out, Yeah, the Sun creates.
Speaker 1: And we talked about the Sun in our very famous
Speaker 1: episode on the Sun. Um. The Sun creates six twenty
Speaker 1: million metric tons a few six and twenty million metric
Speaker 1: tons of hydrogen at its core every second. So every
Speaker 1: second at the Sun's core, it produces enough power to
Speaker 1: light up New York City for a hundred years New
Speaker 1: York City every second. And that's the Sun. And all
Speaker 1: we want to do is do the same thing on
Speaker 1: a much smaller scale. I think the guy there's this
Speaker 1: kid who built one in his garage and he said
Speaker 1: he wanted to Chris saw this Ted talk. He wanted
Speaker 1: to create a star in a box is what he
Speaker 1: called it. Yeah, I've seen it, like this New Yorker
Speaker 1: called it a star in a bottle. Yeah. This kid's
Speaker 1: name is Taylor Wilson and he's a nuclear physicist and
Speaker 1: he's like sixteen and he created Yeah, he he created
Speaker 1: a successful one. And the key, though, is not to
Speaker 1: be able to create the fusion. The key is to
Speaker 1: be able to harness enough plasma, which we'll get to
Speaker 1: at a high enough temperature and density for there to
Speaker 1: be a net power gain. Right, you can create fusion,
Speaker 1: but in order to get out more than you're putting
Speaker 1: in is the only thing that matters, because what you
Speaker 1: want to do is create electricity exactly. That's there's two
Speaker 1: huge challenges right now to nuclear fusion. We pretty much
Speaker 1: understand it enough to start it going and and get
Speaker 1: energy from it. The problem is is material science isn't
Speaker 1: at a point where it can build a containment vessel
Speaker 1: to really house a thermonuclear reactor. And then the other
Speaker 1: big obstacle is, like you said, net energy gain, Like
Speaker 1: if you're putting in as much or more energy then
Speaker 1: you're getting out of your nuclear reactor, then you're wasting energy,
Speaker 1: and it's the opposite of what you're supposed to be doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not just trying to impress people with their science knowledge, no,
Speaker 1: but up to 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 usion 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 tin megawatts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's more than they put into a net gain
Speaker 1: of tin mega watts currently. Everything I saw was when
Speaker 1: we turn 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 mega watts now and Eider is going to produce
Speaker 1: five hundred megawatts once it's fully operational. Right. So the
Speaker 1: next challenge then is this, if we're already getting a
Speaker 1: net energy gain out of it, then that means that
Speaker 1: the 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 to 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, name 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,
Speaker 1: UH goes on a ski trip, starts thinking about how
Speaker 1: he can do this, takes a little break from his
Speaker 1: job building the H bomb, and figures out, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's possible if we can harness this plasma.
Speaker 1: I guess we should just go ahead and find what
Speaker 1: plasma is. Since we keep saying it, Well, there's there's
Speaker 1: the normal three energy states that were familiar with, water,
Speaker 1: solid and gas, liquid solid and gas. Right, there's a
Speaker 1: fourth one. It's plasma. And plasma is basically like an
Speaker 1: energetic gas where the temperatures are so high that whatever
Speaker 1: atoms you put into it, the electrons are stripped off
Speaker 1: and allowed to move around freely. Basically, the surface of
Speaker 1: the Sun is plasma. That's that's what plasma is. It's
Speaker 1: a gas, it's a roiling gas that's really hard to
Speaker 1: control and is really unpredicted, which is when you want
Speaker 1: to see the Sun like that rippling, 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. Yeah, we don't
Speaker 1: have that advantage here on Earth. We don't, so we
Speaker 1: try to make up for that by increasing the temperature.
Speaker 1: That's right. And he was onto it way back then
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties. If we can just harness this,
Speaker 1: we can just get hot enough. And he created a
Speaker 1: tabletop device called the uh Stellarator and it was an
Speaker 1: a figure eight position. It was a pipe and a
Speaker 1: figure eight uh. And this would keep things from banging
Speaker 1: into walls theoretically. Yeah, and he was onto something because well,
Speaker 1: we'll get to lockeed later, but they're using some or
Speaker 1: device nowg eight. Oh yeah, I didn't realize that was
Speaker 1: a figure eight it is, which is weird because what
Speaker 1: they eventually found out was that a donut shape was
Speaker 1: really the key, uh to get that net gain. So
Speaker 1: the and the reason that they found out that a
Speaker 1: donut shape worked was because in the I think the
Speaker 1: late fifties, UM, the US had run up against the wall.
Speaker 1: They're saying, like, okay, we've got this, but we can't
Speaker 1: control the plasma because think about it, what you're trying
Speaker 1: to do is create a star inside something, but it
Speaker 1: can't touch any of the vessel that it's in or
Speaker 1: else it'll just completely erupt it. Right. Yeah. They compared
Speaker 1: it to holding jelly and rubber bands. Right, it was
Speaker 1: just like you can't. They couldn't figure out how to
Speaker 1: control the plasma. So when when the US ran up
Speaker 1: against this wall, they said, hey, the rest of the world,
Speaker 1: we're gonna declassify what Lyman Spitz Lyman Spitzer has been
Speaker 1: doing and like we'll share if you guys are And
Speaker 1: it turns out that the Russians had um already come
Speaker 1: up against this problem and licked it. They figured out
Speaker 1: that if you put the thing in a what's called
Speaker 1: the toroidal shape, a donut shape UM using electro magnets,
Speaker 1: you contame the plasma essentially, and the the the donut
Speaker 1: shape itself was pretty ingenious, but the real stroke of
Speaker 1: genius was by running electromagnets in rings around the doughnut.
Speaker 1: So it's like you you have a donut, and you
Speaker 1: put a bunch of earrings around it, right, and those
Speaker 1: are electromagnets, So you're creating an electro magnetic force field
Speaker 1: which contains the plasma. But then you also put an
Speaker 1: electro magnetic force field in the middle of the plasma.
Speaker 1: So not only does it heat it up to the
Speaker 1: temperatures you want, it also stabilizes it further. So the
Speaker 1: Russians had invented what they call the tacomac um, which
Speaker 1: is this donut shape nuclear fusion reactor that basically became
Speaker 1: 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, uh,
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. So, Chuck,
Speaker 1: we're talking about nuclear fusion, and there's it's actually surprisingly
Speaker 1: understandable at its most basic core. Yeah, you're fusing atoms.
Speaker 1: Is not the hardest thing in the world to wrap
Speaker 1: your head around. Yeah. So with fission, we're splitting atoms.
Speaker 1: You're taking an atom and you're splitting its nuclei apart.
Speaker 1: You're splitting the neutrons and the protons apart from one another.
Speaker 1: And when you do that, one of the four fundamental forces,
Speaker 1: electromagnetic force, pushes them away and you get this burst
Speaker 1: of energy. With fusion, you're taking nuclei from different atoms.
Speaker 1: You're taking protons and um neutrons, and you're smashing them together.
Speaker 1: And when you do that, you're unleashing what's called the
Speaker 1: strong force, which appropriately enough is stronger than electromagnetic force,
Speaker 1: which is why nuclear refusion yields more energy than nuclear fission. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Einstein himself said, you know, each time you smash these
Speaker 1: things together, you're gonna lose a little bit of mass,
Speaker 1: and that little bit of mass is a ton of energy.
Speaker 1: As 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. E Instein probably did. Yeah, Einstein
Speaker 1: probably did. I would guess he did. So. The problem is,
Speaker 1: even though it is very easy to smash some protons together, um,
Speaker 1: there's 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 poles toward one another, they repel one another, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: same thing, that's that's the same principle on an atomic
Speaker 1: level too. If you take protons, which are positively charged particles,
Speaker 1: and try to put them together, they repel one another.
Speaker 1: And the closer you get them together, the stronger the
Speaker 1: the repellent force is the electromagnetic force, right. But if
Speaker 1: you can get them close enough, the electromagnetic force is
Speaker 1: overcome by that strong force, the strong nuclear force, and
Speaker 1: they become bound together. Because the strong force is that
Speaker 1: one of those four fundamental forces of the universe, and
Speaker 1: that is the force that keeps atoms together, and that
Speaker 1: is the that force is stronger than the force that
Speaker 1: repels like charged particles. Yeah. And when you talk about close,
Speaker 1: they need to be within one times ten to the
Speaker 1: negative fifteen meters of one another. So that is, if
Speaker 1: you'll 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 to
Speaker 1: 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 that creating energy,
Speaker 1: they might be more willing to fuse together. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: protons are peace necks. Everybody knows that. So when when
Speaker 1: they do fuse together, right, when you do cross that
Speaker 1: threshold and the strong force takes over and overcomes the
Speaker 1: electromagnetic force. Um, Like we said, a tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: energy is released, and it's released in part in the
Speaker 1: form of neutrinos neutrons, right, which are right neutral particles
Speaker 1: which suddenly start carrying a tremendous amount of kinetic energy.
Speaker 1: So let's say you have one atom, you've 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
Speaker 1: that force that that mass that's displaced is transferred through
Speaker 1: the neutron that gets kicked off of the atom, right
Speaker 1: and is carried out. Now, a neutron doesn't have any
Speaker 1: kind of positive or negative charts. It's neutral. It's a neutron,
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 a 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 is warmed up, turns steam,
Speaker 1: which generates a which I guess moves the turbine, and
Speaker 1: 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: turn a turbine. It's like cooking the I s s
Speaker 1: up to a horse, right, you know, move it over there.
Speaker 1: So there are a few types of fusion reactions. UM.
Speaker 1: The ultimate goal right now, what we can do on
Speaker 1: a 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. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: ultimate goal. I mean, that's good and that will create
Speaker 1: a lot of energy, but there are a few downsides.
Speaker 1: Tritium is radioactive. For one, UM, you have to mine
Speaker 1: it from lithium. Yeah, and lithium is fairly rare. UM.
Speaker 1: The ultimate goal is to to reach deuterium deuterium reactions,
Speaker 1: which is two deuterium atoms combining to form that helium
Speaker 1: three in a neutron. And you can get that from
Speaker 1: the sea water. It's abundant, almost limitless um. And I
Speaker 1: couldn't find this, but I think clean water can be
Speaker 1: a residual effect of this. Am I wrong. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's if well, you're probably not injecting water,
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. Yeah, I thought I saw somewhere
Speaker 1: where it was an actual byproduct, but yeah, but then
Speaker 1: I couldn't find it. So I'm not sure if that's
Speaker 1: right or you know what, you just chalk my memory.
Speaker 1: I feel like in a hydrogen powered car, water is
Speaker 1: one of the by products, so maybe so yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: don't quote me on that though. Um at the very least,
Speaker 1: it's a great way to create energy, right and and
Speaker 1: what what's You also can get um 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 work around, you know, like you can create a
Speaker 1: thermonuclear reactor that's a breeding reactor to where the byproduct
Speaker 1: helium can be used to harvest more of the fuel
Speaker 1: you're using tritium. Yeah, aren't we running low on helium?
Speaker 1: We are? Which is like remember when we were talking
Speaker 1: about the dirigibile the Zeppelin, which one was how blimps work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then a long time ago we did one on
Speaker 1: the Mars turbine Mars turbine reaction. But yes, there's very
Speaker 1: clearly helium shortage, and the idea that we're just using
Speaker 1: it for party balloons rather than this is scary. And
Speaker 1: don't be confused. We say things like deuterium and it
Speaker 1: sounds super complex. All that is a hydrogen with an
Speaker 1: extra neutron. Yeah, it's an isotope. So there's three isotopes
Speaker 1: of hydrogen and they're all still the same element. They're
Speaker 1: all still hydrogen, but they have different configurations as far
Speaker 1: as their neutrons go. So protium is a hydrogen isotope
Speaker 1: with one proton and no neutrons. Deuterium is a hydrogen
Speaker 1: isotope with one proton and one neutron, and tritium is
Speaker 1: a hydrogenitro isotope with one proton and two neutrons. And
Speaker 1: like you said, tritium is radioactive, but the beauty of
Speaker 1: it is you need very very very little of it
Speaker 1: to to fuel a nuclear fusion reactor and it becomes
Speaker 1: a stable helium, a non radioactive helium in the reactor,
Speaker 1: so you don't have this leftover radioactive fuel. And awesome,
Speaker 1: I think they said there's an it would be equivalent
Speaker 1: of the radiation we just see every day and I'm
Speaker 1: walking around on the street right, Yes, the background radio aation.
Speaker 1: I believe I saw that too. The thing is is
Speaker 1: the parts to the nuclear reactor themselves will become irradiated
Speaker 1: over time. Apparently, though compared to the kind of radio
Speaker 1: activity that's generated from nuclear fission. Um this stuff you
Speaker 1: could just disassemble and bury in the desert for a
Speaker 1: hundred years, go back and dig back up, and it
Speaker 1: will be totally inactivated. So it's it's the stuff that
Speaker 1: is radioactive is extraordinarily manageable. Yeah, it is. And um,
Speaker 1: like I said, we don't want to make it sound
Speaker 1: like this is perfect. There is. They do predict the
Speaker 1: short to medium term radioactive waste problem and they say
Speaker 1: that's due to activation of the structural materials the actual
Speaker 1: thermonuclear device itself. Yeah, and while you don't need much tritium,
Speaker 1: even a few grams of tritium is problematic. Um. But
Speaker 1: hopefully you know, there's no accident, although they say accidents
Speaker 1: with these um as if you just turn the power off,
Speaker 1: it stops everything. It's not like a chain reaction can
Speaker 1: occur like a fission reactor. There's no 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 our how
Speaker 1: nuclear meltdowns work UM episode. That was pretty good. We
Speaker 1: really sit 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 where your pargether. It does. And the
Speaker 1: reason why is again, it's abundant fuel. You can get
Speaker 1: it from desalinating sea water and then um. Secondly, it's
Speaker 1: not radioactive at any point, so it wouldn't make the
Speaker 1: the thermonuclear reactor itself radioactive, that's right. The reason why
Speaker 1: we're not doing that already is because we can't achieve
Speaker 1: the temperatures necessary. That's right, Which leads us to the
Speaker 1: two big stumbling blocks. Um. Everyone knows this is a
Speaker 1: great idea. There's no one out there saying, oh, I
Speaker 1: don't know about this fusion thing. Creating a star in
Speaker 1: a box sounds kind of weird. The problem is the
Speaker 1: the barriers that we have here on planet Earth. Um,
Speaker 1: which is one temperature into pressure. Uh. We have achieved
Speaker 1: the temperature which is the requirements is one dred million
Speaker 1: kelvin and like you said, that's about six times hotter
Speaker 1: than the Sun's core, which is pretty intense um. And
Speaker 1: the other is pressure. Like we said, we need to
Speaker 1: get them within I'm not gonna make you read all
Speaker 1: those zeros again, but smash them that close in order
Speaker 1: to fuse. And since we don't have that kind of
Speaker 1: mass and gravity that the Sun does, there are a
Speaker 1: few pretty genius ways that we're working around that. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's basically two as it stands, and then the Lockheed
Speaker 1: Martin one, which will a lot of people are skeptical
Speaker 1: about what we should say. It's kind of a variation
Speaker 1: on the on one theme. But there's basically there's two
Speaker 1: ways that we've figured out to create nuclear fusion reactors
Speaker 1: so far. One is using magnetic confinement and the other
Speaker 1: is using inertial lineman. So magnetic confinement uses that tacomac technology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's sort of like CERN. You know, it's using magnets
Speaker 1: to to create pressure. I guess in cerns case are
Speaker 1: using it to create speed, right, but in this case
Speaker 1: is to create pressure. Right. So what you're doing is
Speaker 1: is you have a um, you have this donut shaped chamber,
Speaker 1: and that's your reaction chamber. And then again rings around
Speaker 1: the doughnut that go on around the inside and outside
Speaker 1: of the donut. I know, I'm kind of imagining wonderful
Speaker 1: donuts doing Homer sims in area. Um, they create electromagnetic fields. Now,
Speaker 1: remember this plasma is hydrogen gas that's been heated up
Speaker 1: to a temperature so hot that the electrons just float
Speaker 1: off and move around freely. And because of this higher temperature,
Speaker 1: these particles have become really really energized, so they're moving
Speaker 1: and bouncing all over the place and the pressure is
Speaker 1: building up. But because electrons are negatively charged and because
Speaker 1: protons are positively charged, if you use alternating electromagnetic fields,
Speaker 1: you can contain this plasma. So that's this incredibly hot
Speaker 1: gas that's six times hotter than the core of the
Speaker 1: Sun can be contained within the electromagnetic fields. That's right.
Speaker 1: And uh, we talked about power and power out it
Speaker 1: need you need about seventy megawatts of power to create
Speaker 1: this to start this fusion reaction, but you're gonna yield
Speaker 1: about five hundred megawatts. That's the ID project, I believe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the ider and that's um, that's only a three
Speaker 1: hundred to five hundred second reaction. But like we said earlier,
Speaker 1: the eventual goal is that it's sustaining itself, uh, which
Speaker 1: is just a beautiful concept. So basically what they do
Speaker 1: is they have the the the gas is injected into
Speaker 1: the chamber, the hydrogen gas, and then there's the electromagnetic
Speaker 1: fields that are holding the plasma in place. But then
Speaker 1: remember we said, the Russians figured out that if you
Speaker 1: put an electromagnetic field in the middle of the whole thing,
Speaker 1: it will stabilize that asthma, but it also heats it up,
Speaker 1: so it serves this double purpose. And then just to
Speaker 1: add a little extra temperature, they shoot it with microwaves
Speaker 1: and some other stuff and then heat it up. And
Speaker 1: then as the plasma goes crazy and all the fusion
Speaker 1: energies released, the neutrons move their way outside of the
Speaker 1: electromagnetic field into the blanket, which they heat up, and
Speaker 1: the heat energy is transferred to power that turbine to
Speaker 1: remove the horse down the down the lane, and it's
Speaker 1: just creating steam. Yeah, and there's I mean, that's like,
Speaker 1: that's what Ider is doing right now. That's what they're
Speaker 1: trying to prove um and then also as ider is
Speaker 1: spending billions and billions and billions of dollars and running
Speaker 1: into tons of delays. Um, it's an amazing project. Lockheed
Speaker 1: Martin basically just came out and said, Oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: this thing that you're trying to do that's gonna be
Speaker 1: a hundred feet tall and require staggering amounts of energy
Speaker 1: and money. We're doing one that puts out the same
Speaker 1: amount of energy as yours, but it's a t to
Speaker 1: the size, which means it's almost out of the gate
Speaker 1: commercially viable. Yeah. That is their skunk Works UM division
Speaker 1: of Lockheed. And they announced this like three days ago
Speaker 1: here in mid October. And um, they've gotten a lot
Speaker 1: of blowback from the scientific community because they wouldn't release data.
Speaker 1: They don't have data. They said it's a high beta
Speaker 1: device right now, and kind of shut out the scientific
Speaker 1: community as far as questions go. And um, every scientist
Speaker 1: that I saw interviewed for this said, yeah, they're they're
Speaker 1: trying to get some attention, to get some partners to
Speaker 1: join in. Well. Yeah, Plus, it makes you want to
Speaker 1: run out and buy Lockheed Martin stock, because if one
Speaker 1: company can figure out how did create a thermonuclear fusion
Speaker 1: reactor here on Earth that's scalable, that fits in a truck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that that that person would be very wealthy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's a dubious claim, but they are, you know,
Speaker 1: they're working towards a good thing. I'm not like poopooing
Speaker 1: the whole thing. But until they have hard data and
Speaker 1: like some proof, then I think the scientific communities 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 electro magnetism that you need compared to
Speaker 1: the amount of plasma you can put into the chamber.
Speaker 1: So there's like five percent plasma electromagnetivity or electromagnetism just
Speaker 1: to keep this plasma thing from just blowing up, because
Speaker 1: that can happen. They might not melt down, but if
Speaker 1: everything went wrong, the whole thing could blow up. Well,
Speaker 1: and you know, you know what an atomic bomb is
Speaker 1: it's it's a fusion reaction, right, and this is a
Speaker 1: lot of those all put together in one hundred foot
Speaker 1: um tower. Uh. This guy was saying that the beta
Speaker 1: ratio for their machine is like, So, what he was
Speaker 1: saying is they figured out a way and again it's
Speaker 1: not very detailed, but they figured out a way to
Speaker 1: contain the plasma, but in a way that also allows
Speaker 1: it to expand because if you think about it, the
Speaker 1: 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 are events you can have, the more energy
Speaker 1: you can yield. Right. Yeah, so they're saying they figured
Speaker 1: out 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 synge. Well, I think they made the
Speaker 1: mistake by saying they invented a magicometer to make it
Speaker 1: all happen, and that's and don't ask about it. Yeah right.
Speaker 1: I did see though that we're lockeed was using the
Speaker 1: figure eight in stelerator configuration. Uh, and I think that's true.
Speaker 1: I tried. I found a couple of more sources that
Speaker 1: were kind of vague about it, and I think the
Speaker 1: details on it are just vague period. But I don't
Speaker 1: know why they would abandon the donut shaped if the
Speaker 1: figure eight was uh, you know, nine fifties technology that's
Speaker 1: have been disproven. Well, supposedly, their whole jam was that
Speaker 1: the even in the doughnut in the Tacomac, this donut
Speaker 1: shaped reactor, plasma has a tendency to just move around
Speaker 1: and make its way out Like it's not it's still
Speaker 1: not fully contained, and they're using something basically mirrors to
Speaker 1: catch the plasma that's getting out and moving it to
Speaker 1: parts of the electromagnetic field that are less dense. So
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of protons in this part of the field,
Speaker 1: that field is being strained, but then maybe there's not
Speaker 1: that many protons over here, so they use mirrors to
Speaker 1: direct the protons to the low density area of 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 nine two laser beams on
Speaker 1: a single point in a ten meter diameter target chamber
Speaker 1: called a whole 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 deuterium tritium in a little plastic cylinder.
Speaker 1: It's funny that it can be plastic somehow. Yeah, you'd
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: They're just gonna heat the cylinder up, generate some X
Speaker 1: rays and then that radiation will convert that pellet into
Speaker 1: plasma and compress it. So again they're creating plasma, but
Speaker 1: instead of smashing it together with magnets, they're superheating it
Speaker 1: with lasers. So that's your that's your your money's on
Speaker 1: that one. You're like, I just think it's neat because
Speaker 1: I like lasers. 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 electro magnets, you're you're you have a more
Speaker 1: simple and elegant I mean the internal confinement or inertial inertial. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I mean, inertial confinement. Basically, the whole thing
Speaker 1: just happened so fast. You don't even need these magnets
Speaker 1: to confine plasm because you're not creating the sustained ignition, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I might have said internal confinement before. By the way,
Speaker 1: it's inertial. Yea. So what about cold fusion, buddy? That
Speaker 1: was all the rage I remember back in the eighties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because in some researchers said that they successfully created nuclear
Speaker 1: fusion using um just room temperature stuff like palladium. They
Speaker 1: took palladium and um banaeals and beer cans pretty much
Speaker 1: heavy water which had a deuterium in it, and they
Speaker 1: put the whole thing together and created nuclear fusion without
Speaker 1: the high temperatures, hence the name cold fusion. And if
Speaker 1: you can get around these high temperatures, then you work
Speaker 1: out the whole material science problem, right. And if you
Speaker 1: work out the whole material science problem, then this is
Speaker 1: it's a desirable thing to have cold fusion. The problem
Speaker 1: is is a lot of scientists tried to replicate these
Speaker 1: guys findings and weren't able to so basically they were
Speaker 1: kicked to the curb. So does that mean has cold
Speaker 1: fusion been abandoned or are people still trying to get
Speaker 1: on that train. No. In two thousand and five, some
Speaker 1: U c l A. Researchers basically said, um, we think
Speaker 1: we might have this thing down, and they did. That's
Speaker 1: something called um pyro electric crystal fusion. Pyroelectric fusion's a crystal, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're basically it's the same result they do what would
Speaker 1: be called cold fusion. UM The problem is that has
Speaker 1: a negative net energy yield. You have to put in
Speaker 1: a lot more energy than you get out of it. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: that's no good um either. Seems like they are making
Speaker 1: headway more than Lockheed despite their claim. Um, they are
Speaker 1: being like we said, it's in Europe and it's being
Speaker 1: financed by a bunch of different countries. Um. The U
Speaker 1: s is in, but they're kicking in. I think the
Speaker 1: least amount only about seventeen million euros last year. Of
Speaker 1: course we contributed dollars, but they're giving it to us
Speaker 1: 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. Ye are they still all right? Well,
Speaker 1: maybe they're just uh, we're writing a chip for them
Speaker 1: for later. They'll just pay us 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 Lockeed 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 uh nuclear fusion reactor
Speaker 1: in your garage, you can do so. Um, you're not
Speaker 1: going to create energy because, like we said, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be putting more than you get out. Um, but there
Speaker 1: are instructions and that kid did it. His was a
Speaker 1: little more advanced than the instructibles one obviously, but um yeah,
Speaker 1: sixteen year old kid. Yeah, he's amazing because his was legit.
Speaker 1: He's done more than that too. His TED talk was
Speaker 1: pretty impressive. Cool. He's like working on with Homeman Security
Speaker 1: already for various projects that have nothing to do with this. Yeah. Yeah. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about nuclear fusion, you
Speaker 1: can type those words in the search bar how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. And since I said that, it's time
Speaker 1: for a listener mail, and Chuck, before we do listener mail,
Speaker 1: I want to um give a shout out to our
Speaker 1: Kiva team. Yeah, for those of you you don't know,
Speaker 1: we did a podcast many years back on micro lending.
Speaker 1: UH in Kiva k I v a dot org is
Speaker 1: a organization where you can loan UH entrepreneurs and well
Speaker 1: used to be just developing countries. Now you can do
Speaker 1: it here in North America as well, UH twenty dollars
Speaker 1: at a time that you can get paid back for.
Speaker 1: You can get your money back if you're not happy,
Speaker 1: or you can just keep reloaning that money and it
Speaker 1: helps them get their small business going. And we started
Speaker 1: Kiva team many years ago and it is killing it.
Speaker 1: So you got some stats for us. So basically, as
Speaker 1: of October nineteen, UM, we have loaned Our team has
Speaker 1: loaned two point seven million dollars two people in developing
Speaker 1: countries nice and in the US here there um. And
Speaker 1: the big one is we've exceeded one hundred thousand loans
Speaker 1: man by our team. Our team only has eight thousand,
Speaker 1: seventy nine members, So all eight thousand seventy nine of
Speaker 1: you guys, thank you. Way to go. Congratulations, Yes and
Speaker 1: thanks as always to Glenn and Sonja are de facto Kiva. UH.
Speaker 1: What would you call them presidents presidents, Presidents of the
Speaker 1: stuff you should know, Team captains of the stuff you
Speaker 1: should know Team no presidents, Okay, presidents. President is Glens
Speaker 1: like yes president, Uh. Yeah, they've been really like keeping
Speaker 1: it going for us. Yeah, and when you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: we'll forget and Glennill nudges. Hey, guys, remember the Kiva team.
Speaker 1: We should mention it, right, So the next the next
Speaker 1: goal we have is for three million dollars in loans
Speaker 1: and we're on our way to it. So come join us.
Speaker 1: We uh, don't begrudge people who are late to the party.
Speaker 1: Just go to kiva dot org, slash teams slash stuff
Speaker 1: you should know and you can sign up. That's right.
Speaker 1: So now it's time for listener mail, right indeed, sir,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this sky writing follow up um from Australia. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: recently listened to how skywritting works and it reminded me
Speaker 1: of something. Although this may not be suitable for listener mail,
Speaker 1: which I disagree actually because i'm reading it. I was
Speaker 1: maybe eight or nine when a few friends and I
Speaker 1: were out on the street playing uh and doing things
Speaker 1: at nine year old do it's so awkward to say that,
Speaker 1: So you're not replacing something right there, No one, Um,
Speaker 1: they 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 an oh. This went on for
Speaker 1: maybe twenty minutes until finally the word Hooters was scrawled
Speaker 1: across the sky. I'll be a backwards so I guess
Speaker 1: they had the Hooters restaurant chicken wing chain in Australia.
Speaker 1: I guess they're a rich kid. Yeah, really immature rich kid. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Or that. My brain couldn't comprehend how this person managed
Speaker 1: to screw up writing a word backwards. The best reason
Speaker 1: my childish brain could come with was a skywriting took
Speaker 1: place somewhere between us and a group of people that
Speaker 1: it was initially intended for, and that I just thought
Speaker 1: it was written up and downwards rather than across the sky.
Speaker 1: Um until now, I've never understood or bother to learn
Speaker 1: why it was like that. So thank you for keeping
Speaker 1: the podcast great allowing me to figure that out. That
Speaker 1: is from Marlin. Hello boy, uh hap happaraci chi nice.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen a word like that. Hapoor Rachi
Speaker 1: ha poor Rachi. Marlin from Sydney, Australia. Man, thanks a lot, Marlin.
Speaker 1: H And that's Marlin with an a even oh yeah, Marlan. Well,
Speaker 1: thanks a lot, Marlin, and we're gonna say like that. Sure.
Speaker 1: If you have an awesome last name and want to
Speaker 1: share it with us, you can tweet to us at
Speaker 1: s y s K podcast. You can join us on
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You can
Speaker 1: send us an email to stuff Podcast at how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com and as always, joined us at our
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