Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. And it's Friday. That
Speaker 1: means it's time for a classic episode of tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: And this one originally published on April fIF two thousand thirteen.
Speaker 1: It's called tex Stuff Experiments with Fusion. So let's listen in.
Speaker 1: We're talking nuclear fusion and to uh kind of give
Speaker 1: you an idea of what nuclear fusion is, how we
Speaker 1: are trying to harness nuclear fusion as a source of
Speaker 1: energy production, really electricity production. Uh, and it's it's being
Speaker 1: tended as one of the technologies of the feature that
Speaker 1: is going to give us unlimited energy. And how far
Speaker 1: away is it? Twenty to thirty to fifty years And
Speaker 1: every year it seems like we're still at the lead
Speaker 1: to fifty years. Yeah, yeah, it's that's one of those
Speaker 1: things that scientists will often Riley kind of joke about
Speaker 1: that the technology is always twenty years away. And uh,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's because the challenges that we need
Speaker 1: to overcome are quite impressive. Doesn't doesn't mean we won't
Speaker 1: do it because human beings are amazing, you know, we innovate,
Speaker 1: we event but but let's let's kind of first of
Speaker 1: all talk about the difference between fusion and fission. Fission
Speaker 1: is the kind of a nuclear process that is used
Speaker 1: in our nuclear power plants today. So if you are
Speaker 1: familiar with the nuclear power plants things like you know there,
Speaker 1: of course they're the famous ones that have suffered catastrophic
Speaker 1: failures like Three Mile Island or Chernobyl. Uh. But these
Speaker 1: are the the reactors where they split up larger atoms
Speaker 1: into smaller atoms and as a result, a great deal
Speaker 1: of energy is given off really in the form of heat,
Speaker 1: which is then harnessed to convert water into steam, which
Speaker 1: turns steam turbines which are connected to electrical generators generating electricity.
Speaker 1: So really it's just a very very efficient way of
Speaker 1: heating up a lot of water really quickly and making
Speaker 1: it do work. Yes, a very efficient, very radioactive steam generator. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's one of the big issues with the fission
Speaker 1: power plants obviously, is that it uses nuclear radioactive material,
Speaker 1: not just nuclear material, radioactive material, and that it doesn't
Speaker 1: the radioactivity is still very much a factor once that
Speaker 1: reaction is finished four thousands and thousands of years, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Generally speaking, only about three percent of the uranium in
Speaker 1: a uranium rod is used up in a fission reactor
Speaker 1: before the waste has to be disposed of because it
Speaker 1: will continue to heat up until it reaches a point
Speaker 1: that's too hot and the reactor itself can suffer a failure.
Speaker 1: You have, that's what you have, the meltdown. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are some uh, some approaches that are suggesting that
Speaker 1: we take another pass at that nuclear waste and use
Speaker 1: that in a second round by immersing it in a
Speaker 1: molten salt the waist annihilating molten salt reactor, which I
Speaker 1: still I just can't I can't get over the the
Speaker 1: annihilator part of the waist annihilator. Uh. Yeah. So this
Speaker 1: this reactor would it's still a fission reactor, but it
Speaker 1: would immerse the radioactive material the uranium in a molten
Speaker 1: salt and use that to control the heat in a
Speaker 1: in a way that would allow you to use that
Speaker 1: material for longer, so you'd be able to get more
Speaker 1: use out of the same radioactive material and reduce the
Speaker 1: life of the actual radioactive elements at the at the
Speaker 1: final output, I think it would only be radioactive. It
Speaker 1: would only be reactive for another years. Yeah, so still
Speaker 1: well beyond our lifetimes right now. But not something that
Speaker 1: you would say, alright, generation and generations and generations are
Speaker 1: going to have to be aware of that. You don't
Speaker 1: have to start, you know, programming things that people, you know,
Speaker 1: languages that don't exist yet want to be able to understand.
Speaker 1: How do I how do I create a pictograph that
Speaker 1: shows exactly do not go in here? Wessed it up
Speaker 1: really hard? Right in ten thousand years, English may not
Speaker 1: even be a thing anymore. So, um so yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that's that's one of those possible solutions. But fusion
Speaker 1: is very different. Fission all about splitting atoms apart. Fusion
Speaker 1: is about being buddy buddy and bringing atoms together. This
Speaker 1: is this is the kind of of process that we
Speaker 1: see happening in stars, including the sun. Did the sun
Speaker 1: being a star? Yes, yes, Well I'm just making sure
Speaker 1: people know that. And despite what my one of my
Speaker 1: favorite bands has said in a cover of a song,
Speaker 1: actually the sun is not really a massive incandescent gas,
Speaker 1: the gigantic nuclear fulness. But they did correct it in
Speaker 1: a later song and say it was a miasma of
Speaker 1: incandesc and plasma. So they did go back and correct it,
Speaker 1: but they were actually quoting an old song from a
Speaker 1: science album for kids, which was to explain the process
Speaker 1: of fusion and how the Sun generates energy and light
Speaker 1: and uh. And the way it happens is it takes
Speaker 1: these hydrogen atoms, and because the Sun is so massive
Speaker 1: and dense, there's a huge amount of gravity there and
Speaker 1: it's creating an enormous amount of pressure and heat. So
Speaker 1: the heat is stripping those hydrogen atoms of their electrons,
Speaker 1: creating ions. Um that creates ions, and in a pure
Speaker 1: hydrogen atom is just a proton and an electron, so
Speaker 1: that electron goes away. Now you've just got a proton there.
Speaker 1: And so you have these protons now that are zipping
Speaker 1: around an incredible um and being pressed together really tightly
Speaker 1: by the amazing force of gravity. And at the Sun's
Speaker 1: core where this is the strongest, these atoms are banging
Speaker 1: up against each other so fast and so close that
Speaker 1: one of the other fundamental forces in the universe overacts
Speaker 1: the electromagnetic force. Now, the four forces in the universe
Speaker 1: include gravity, which is the weakest, but is the it
Speaker 1: is the most effective over huge distances. You have electromagnetic force,
Speaker 1: and then you have the strong and weak nuclear forces. Now,
Speaker 1: the strong force is what holds nucleic particles together. It's
Speaker 1: like the glue that keeps a nucleus together, right, right,
Speaker 1: So if you were able to get two protons close
Speaker 1: enough to each other, uh, the strong nuclear force would
Speaker 1: be strong enough to counteract the electromagnetic force. That's it's
Speaker 1: naturally driving them apart. Because protons both have a positive charge.
Speaker 1: And if you've ever taken to magnets and tried to
Speaker 1: stick the two positive ends together, it resists to you.
Speaker 1: It doesn't want to do that thing. But when you
Speaker 1: get them to within one alliant of a millimeter of
Speaker 1: each other, yeah, then that will that will go away,
Speaker 1: or it will be overcome by the strong exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you have to get them really really close together. Now,
Speaker 1: at that pomp point, when you have fused to hydrogen
Speaker 1: protons together, you have created a different element. Hydrogen has
Speaker 1: now become helium at a temperature millions of degrees. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we can't see we might both be that, they might
Speaker 1: be giants. I'll be seeing them in a week to
Speaker 1: come into Atlanta. By the time you guys hear this,
Speaker 1: I've already seen it and the show was awesome, I guess.
Speaker 1: So anyway, the the protons have fused together to form helium.
Speaker 1: But here's the interesting thing. In that process. The mass
Speaker 1: of that helium atom is slightly less than the combined
Speaker 1: masses of the two hydrogen atoms that fused together to
Speaker 1: make the helium. Why is that, Jonathan, Some that mass
Speaker 1: gets converted into energy. Now, there's a little equation you
Speaker 1: may have heard of called E equals MC squared. I
Speaker 1: think I think some some guy named Einstein was talking
Speaker 1: about that. I don't know. Listen here Einstein. Yeah, Einstein
Speaker 1: came up with this idea where he came up with
Speaker 1: the theory and and turns out that it looks like
Speaker 1: it's true energy equals mass times this square or the
Speaker 1: speed of light squared, rather not the square speed of light,
Speaker 1: but the speed of light squared. So speed of light
Speaker 1: is a big, big, big, big number. Then you square
Speaker 1: it and it's even bigger, bigger, and you multiply financially bigger. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and multiply that times whatever the mass is. You get
Speaker 1: your energy output and so essentially, what this equation tells
Speaker 1: us is that a tiny little bit of mass, once
Speaker 1: converted into energy, will be an enormous amount of energy
Speaker 1: the same thing. And also the mass and energy never
Speaker 1: really go way, and they are simply converted. Exactly. We
Speaker 1: cannot create or destroy energy, but what we can do
Speaker 1: is convert energy to mass and mass to energy. At
Speaker 1: least in theory. Now, if we were to convert energy
Speaker 1: to mass, it would take an awful lot of energy
Speaker 1: to make just a little bit of mass. Which is
Speaker 1: why I always go crazy when I read the Harry
Speaker 1: Potter books and people conjure stuff out of thin air,
Speaker 1: because I think, do you you just destroyed like three
Speaker 1: solar systems in order to do that, clearly pulling them
Speaker 1: from a parallel dimension or something like that. Yes, so
Speaker 1: there's just a people in a parallel dimension' Like it's
Speaker 1: so cold, there's a there's a really huge room of
Speaker 1: requirement somewhere. That's all right, Now you're talking about language.
Speaker 1: So yeah, a little bit of mass creates a lot
Speaker 1: of energy. So even though we're talking tiny atomic measurements
Speaker 1: here where we have the helium atom, which has got
Speaker 1: a lower mass than the two combined hydrogen atoms that
Speaker 1: still puts off quite a bit of energy. And and
Speaker 1: the Sun is doing this all the time with tons
Speaker 1: of hydrogen converting to helium every day. All right, so
Speaker 1: massive amount of energy that's being that's being admitted, I mean,
Speaker 1: and if it weren't being emitted, then there would be
Speaker 1: a life on this planet. And we know it works,
Speaker 1: you know, so we conserve this. This is this is
Speaker 1: as far as we can tell real science. Yes, so
Speaker 1: we know it works, we know we can do it.
Speaker 1: In fact, we have done it. We've reproduced it here
Speaker 1: on Earth. We'll get into that in a little bit.
Speaker 1: But the question was if the Sun does this, if
Speaker 1: that's how the Sun does this, could we create energy
Speaker 1: here on Earth using a similar method, Knowing that on
Speaker 1: Earth the conditions are very different from the core of
Speaker 1: the Sun. We don't have that gravity or that heat
Speaker 1: that is allowing the Sun to overcome the right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this and this, and the gravity is the really important part,
Speaker 1: because that gravity is what's allowing that this nuclear fusion
Speaker 1: process to happen at a temperature that would actually be
Speaker 1: lower than it we would need here on Earth because
Speaker 1: we don't have that gravity. We don't have the ability
Speaker 1: to compress the atoms as tightly together as we would
Speaker 1: if if we had the Sun's gravity. We have to
Speaker 1: we have to overcome that with even more heat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Sun only needs about fifteen million degrees kelvin. Only
Speaker 1: am easily fifteen million kelvin. Sorry sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: my my bad. I always do that. I did it
Speaker 1: once and one of our great listeners corrected me. And
Speaker 1: that's the only reason, because our listeners are awesome and
Speaker 1: they let me know when I've done something silly like that,
Speaker 1: completely ridiculous, the only reason I know, So, thank you listeners.
Speaker 1: Um so, so, yeah, the Sun only needs about fifteen
Speaker 1: million kelvin. In order to do this here on Earth,
Speaker 1: it would be something like a hundred million. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we're talking massive amounts of energy that we would need
Speaker 1: here on Earth to compensate for the fact that we
Speaker 1: don't have that gravity there to help us with this reaction. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: in the Sun, you're talking about the pure hydrogen encountering
Speaker 1: other pure hydrogen. So one proton, one electron, the electrons
Speaker 1: get stripped away, the protons get fused together. But on Earth,
Speaker 1: we've discovered that there's a better combination to go with
Speaker 1: it requires less energy than it would if we were
Speaker 1: to use pure hydrogen. Right, It's it's relatively difficult to
Speaker 1: run into pure hydrogen here. Yeah, you would have to
Speaker 1: you would have to essentially split the hydrogen off of
Speaker 1: something else. There's lots of hydrogen on Earth. We have
Speaker 1: no shortage of it. Yeah, it's just connected to lots
Speaker 1: of other stuff. So. Um. The two types of the
Speaker 1: two isotopes of hydrogen and isotope by the way, means
Speaker 1: that you have more or fewer neutrons than whatever the
Speaker 1: the atom typically has. But it's or it's it's a
Speaker 1: different number of neutrons than the base version of that atom,
Speaker 1: but it's um same number of protons, same number of electrons.
Speaker 1: So an isotope is one isotope of hydrogen is a deuterium,
Speaker 1: which is also known as heavy hydrogen, and it has
Speaker 1: one proton and one neutron, So typically you would not
Speaker 1: have a neutron with hydrogen. Deuterium does have a neutron.
Speaker 1: And then you have tritium, which is called also called
Speaker 1: heavy heavy hydrogen, so it's extra heavy. He's not heavy,
Speaker 1: he's my tritium. Uh. And this is a proton that
Speaker 1: has two neutrons. Uh so the same still the same element,
Speaker 1: it's just a different isotope. Now deuterium, we've got a
Speaker 1: lot of that here on Earth. Yeah, it can be
Speaker 1: extracted from seawater. It's not radioactive or anything. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not dangerous um that but yeah, you can. You can
Speaker 1: find deuterium in in ocean water. Um. You cannot find
Speaker 1: tritium very easily, mostly because it's not completely stable. It
Speaker 1: does tend to decay and it's just it has a
Speaker 1: half life of about ten years. But you can. You
Speaker 1: can get it from lithium. Yeah, you you if you
Speaker 1: take lithium, the metal lithium, not the medication, the metal lithium,
Speaker 1: and you bombard it with neutrons, then one of the
Speaker 1: things you get out of that is tritium. So that
Speaker 1: is one way to get the treatium and it we
Speaker 1: found out that treaty um and deuterium, if you try
Speaker 1: to fuse those two together, then you get helium and
Speaker 1: a neutron out of that reaction, and uh, it requires
Speaker 1: less energy than than other combinations. Do write these are
Speaker 1: the current forms of fusion that are possible on our planet.
Speaker 1: Are our deuterium tritium. Hey guys, hope you're enjoying this
Speaker 1: classic episode of tech stuff. We're going to take a
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsors. All right, let's get
Speaker 1: back to fusion. So we've got the deuterium in the
Speaker 1: sea water. We can bombard some lithium with some neutrons
Speaker 1: and get some tritium out of that. We're ready to
Speaker 1: introduce the deuterium to the tritium and uh and and
Speaker 1: make a date and have them fused together in a
Speaker 1: single unit of helium and shoot off an extra neutron
Speaker 1: and a lot of energy. What do we need to do?
Speaker 1: So we know that we're going to be using deuterium
Speaker 1: and tritium because that's the the most efficient way that
Speaker 1: we've found so far to be able to do. It's
Speaker 1: the easiest for for us to use deuterium. Deuterium would
Speaker 1: actually be more efficient, but it's more difficult to get started.
Speaker 1: I see, I see so right, So we we might
Speaker 1: get more energy output with deuterium deuterium, but it would
Speaker 1: also require more energy to get the whole thing started, right,
Speaker 1: which is kind of the entire problem with fusion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's the bigges, all right, we'll just go
Speaker 1: ahead and say that one of the biggest challenges we
Speaker 1: face with fusion is the fact that in order to
Speaker 1: make a fusion reaction here on Earth, you have to
Speaker 1: pour in a great deal of energy so that you
Speaker 1: can create the the the the situation you need to hear,
Speaker 1: you're replicating what goes on in a star. That's really
Speaker 1: a lot of temperature, a lot of pressure. So in
Speaker 1: order to do that without all that pressure here on Earth,
Speaker 1: we've got to pour and even more temperature. So that's
Speaker 1: the big challenge is how do you create a reaction
Speaker 1: that's going to generate more energy through the output than
Speaker 1: it required to start it. So if it requires more
Speaker 1: energy to go in, then you get out. You have
Speaker 1: an energy sync. You actually you're in the red and
Speaker 1: that's not really useful. I mean, it's it's pretty it's
Speaker 1: still pretty cool, yeah, but just doesn't commercially viable. I
Speaker 1: guess if you want to make helium, uh, they're probably
Speaker 1: we are running out. I mean, but still that's a
Speaker 1: lot of energy you're pouring into making some balloons float
Speaker 1: or cooling the large Hadron collider. However you want to
Speaker 1: think about it, all right, but so so we do
Speaker 1: have we do. There's two main ways that we are
Speaker 1: experimenting with this on Earth, and one of those it's
Speaker 1: called magnetic confinement. Right, So magnetic confinement is what was
Speaker 1: used in the joint European Torus or jet fusion reactor.
Speaker 1: And this was sort of a test reactor. It wasn't
Speaker 1: meant to be, uh like an electrical generator, right right,
Speaker 1: It wasn't a power plant. It was more science is
Speaker 1: cool than anything else. But and this is a good
Speaker 1: point to say that, you know, ultimately the way we
Speaker 1: would generate electricity with these is not that we have
Speaker 1: some magical like power. Yeah. They just dug into the
Speaker 1: bolts and then it pulls. Yeah. This is still a
Speaker 1: steam generator. Yeah, which is which is really interesting to
Speaker 1: me because you know, this is technically this is steam punk.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, we're essentially harnessing the power of the
Speaker 1: stom the stars themselves to turn water into steam. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's still it's still converting water to steam to turn
Speaker 1: really efficiently and a lot of water because you're talking
Speaker 1: about a lot of heat. So then that's the That's
Speaker 1: the other thing is that if if you could have
Speaker 1: used the same amount of energy, you used to start
Speaker 1: the reaction to heat up some water and get a
Speaker 1: better effect than Obviously, this makes no sense. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the whole point is that we have to find
Speaker 1: a way to do a fusion reaction where we're getting
Speaker 1: more energy than we're putting into it. Otherwise, just take
Speaker 1: the reactor out and just direct your energy to water directly,
Speaker 1: take out the middleman. But magnetic confinement you mentioned it
Speaker 1: uses a really powerful magnetic field to hold the ionized
Speaker 1: gas in place. An Ionized gas is plasma. So plasma
Speaker 1: is a gas where you've got free roaming electrons. That
Speaker 1: is what the sun is. That's you know, all that
Speaker 1: heat has stripped away the electrons, you've poured energy in,
Speaker 1: You've pushed the electrons away. You've got these free flowing
Speaker 1: uh nuclei inside the plasma. And then the magnetic field
Speaker 1: starts to press all of these nuclei together until you
Speaker 1: are able to fuse them. And what you get ore
Speaker 1: helium atoms and free neutrons. The neutrons fly off and
Speaker 1: they hit what they call blankets, blankets of lithium. Yeah, blankets.
Speaker 1: Lithium is in the blanket as well, yes, and that
Speaker 1: that means that because remember, if you bombard lithium with
Speaker 1: a neutron, you create tritium, which means that you can
Speaker 1: continually create part of the fuel source you need for
Speaker 1: this reactually while you're in the middle of the process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty pretty neat. Yeah, And it's also giving off
Speaker 1: a lot of energy in the form of heat, which
Speaker 1: is then heating up the water to turn into steam, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So that's magnetic confinement. Um, and we use different things
Speaker 1: to heat up the plasma, like we might use microwaves
Speaker 1: or lasers or electricity or I think that that accelerator
Speaker 1: driven neutral particle beams are our our integral in the
Speaker 1: international through nuclear experimental reactor or either which is the
Speaker 1: one in France. Yes, it comes from France. That one,
Speaker 1: Yes it does. That one is still being built and
Speaker 1: it's it's projected to be finished and protected, projected to
Speaker 1: be online by although whether or not that is a
Speaker 1: true fact or not is you know, remains to be seen. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So if it stays on target, then we'll be able
Speaker 1: to say by you know, if this is actually a
Speaker 1: viable means of generating electricity for us. By the way,
Speaker 1: the Chamber has a special name. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: how did how do we decided that this tacomac. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got Tacomax here in Atlantic. Yeah, so it keeps
Speaker 1: throwing me out. Taco Mac is a is a restaurant
Speaker 1: chain in Atlanta that has obviously tacos. But this is toomac.
Speaker 1: It's actually a Russian acronym for heroidal chamber with axial
Speaker 1: magnetic field, which basically means it's a donut. It's a
Speaker 1: magnetic it's a magnetic donut, magnetic donut. Yeah. And granted
Speaker 1: this is this is a you know, the Eider version
Speaker 1: is a is a hundred foot tall, twenty three thousand ton,
Speaker 1: million part donut, enormous magnetic donut. Yeah. And the reason
Speaker 1: for the donut shape is they've found that that is
Speaker 1: the most effective way of of containing the plasma in
Speaker 1: this really tight field so that you can have these
Speaker 1: fusion reactions take place. So we've got magnetic confinement. There's
Speaker 1: another method which has receives some some attention early on,
Speaker 1: and there's still some labs, like there's some in the
Speaker 1: United States that are still looking at this approach, and
Speaker 1: it may even turn out that this ends up generating
Speaker 1: more energy in the long run than the magnetic confinement.
Speaker 1: But we're still trying to figure that out. It's called
Speaker 1: inertial confinement, right, And this is using laser beams or
Speaker 1: ion beams to squeeze and heat that hydrogen plasma. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In this case, really they take a pellet a frozen hydrogen,
Speaker 1: so you have deuterium and tritium in an actual physical pellet.
Speaker 1: So you're talking super cold, yeah yeah, and and and
Speaker 1: peace sized, I mean like little bitty thing. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: you're using these these lasers or ions to heat that
Speaker 1: pellet into a plasma almost instantaneously. I mean you're just
Speaker 1: you're bombarding it with an enormous amount of energy. And
Speaker 1: essentially what's happening is that all right, if you've ever
Speaker 1: seen the magic trick where the magician walks up to
Speaker 1: the the the dining table with all the beautiful glassware
Speaker 1: and everything that's perched perfectly on the tablecloth, and then
Speaker 1: he grabs the table cloth because it a quick jerk
Speaker 1: and anything stays therein bankmen failed to do and Gus
Speaker 1: Fuster exactly. Yeah, it's the same same sort of idea here,
Speaker 1: and that you are heating it up so fast that
Speaker 1: because it's because this is a compressed pellet and the
Speaker 1: lasers are actually compressing it. Our ions are compressing it
Speaker 1: even further as it's being heated up. Before the electromagnetic
Speaker 1: force has the opportunity to push the atoms apart, the
Speaker 1: strong nuclear force fuses them together and so kind of implodes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you've gotta do. I mean, it's happening super fast now,
Speaker 1: the fraction and like one millionth of a second, I think,
Speaker 1: is how fast this happens. It's insane and and uh,
Speaker 1: it's there are other differences between the initial confinement and
Speaker 1: magnetic confinement. With magnetic convironment, the goal is to find
Speaker 1: a way to have ongoing fusion reactions so that you
Speaker 1: don't have to just generate electricity or generate heat and spurts.
Speaker 1: That you could actually have a maintained reaction that goes
Speaker 1: on for an extended amount of time to generate as
Speaker 1: much electricity as is needed, whereas inertial confinement you'd have
Speaker 1: to set up multiple essentially multiple targets right right, because
Speaker 1: the way that the way that one of them works
Speaker 1: At the National Ignition Facility of Lawrenceville, Livermore, laboratory in
Speaker 1: the United States in California, I believe UM it uses
Speaker 1: a hundred ninety two laser beams to focus on a
Speaker 1: single point in a test chamber UM and this single
Speaker 1: point is where that little piece sized bit of hy
Speaker 1: hydrogen is sitting. And and so you know, they're they're
Speaker 1: working on ways to focus the lasers better and essentially
Speaker 1: have multiple pellets and and also yeah, and and to
Speaker 1: have to have chambers, multiple chambers with multiple pellets that
Speaker 1: are going off in succession so that you create a
Speaker 1: continuous and quoting quotation marks in the air reaction. So
Speaker 1: it's it's a challenging thing. And if if they are
Speaker 1: able to crack it, it has the potential to create
Speaker 1: quite a bit of electricity, uh so much so that
Speaker 1: we could start to really take the load off of
Speaker 1: things like fossil fuel based power plants. Right right Their
Speaker 1: talk about UM with with inertial confinement a fifty two
Speaker 1: hundred times more energy UM output than than you would
Speaker 1: have to put in, whereas the numbers that I've seen
Speaker 1: for it or anyway are more like seven times. So
Speaker 1: you know, either way, you're still getting a lot of
Speaker 1: energy out and we're not there yet no one has
Speaker 1: No one has created a fusion reactor here on Earth
Speaker 1: that has been efficient enough for it to be a
Speaker 1: meaningful way to create electricity. Uh, because you would be
Speaker 1: losing energy on the deal. So if these work out,
Speaker 1: it's going to be fantastic. There are there are a
Speaker 1: lot of challenges here. I mean, you can imagine, if
Speaker 1: we're talking about using these incredible amounts of heat, you
Speaker 1: have to be able to design a reactor that can
Speaker 1: withstand handle it. Yeah, and that's tough. It's not an
Speaker 1: easy thing to do. So that's a big challenge. And
Speaker 1: then well we've got other ones as well. And again
Speaker 1: scientists will say like it's about twenty years away. Hopefully
Speaker 1: they're right right now. I think one of the challenges
Speaker 1: is almost a societal challenge because people here fusion and
Speaker 1: they think fission and they think radioactive and meltdown and
Speaker 1: not in my backyard and etcetera. Whereas fusion is potentially
Speaker 1: anyway loads safer than a fission reactor, you don't you're
Speaker 1: not talking about you know, your output is a neutron
Speaker 1: and helium. It's not a heavy radioactive material that's going
Speaker 1: to have a half life of several thousand years. It's
Speaker 1: stuff that is harmless once you have harnessed it. Uh So,
Speaker 1: really the question would be, you know, as long as
Speaker 1: the reactor is well made and solid, you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about this heat escaping or the other kind
Speaker 1: of of a mechanical failure. Well, like like any other
Speaker 1: steam turbine generator, it's going to have an impact on
Speaker 1: the environment and that you know, you're going to be
Speaker 1: taking in water and and that's an impact, and it's
Speaker 1: going to be putting off steam, which is an impact.
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of there are a lot
Speaker 1: of designs I've seen where they have built in a
Speaker 1: system where they condense the steam back down into the water,
Speaker 1: so it becomes a closed loop. So least then you
Speaker 1: are I mean, you still probably have a loss. I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's hard to create a perfectly closed loop.
Speaker 1: But if you could, then you could just essentially use
Speaker 1: the same water over and over and over again, because
Speaker 1: you know, the steam is just going to condense in
Speaker 1: the water and then the water will go back into
Speaker 1: steam once you heat it up. Yeah, and so and again,
Speaker 1: you know, even if you do have even if you
Speaker 1: do have a loss, you're not going to be having
Speaker 1: Blanky the three eyed fish in the river outside, right,
Speaker 1: So so yeah, there's you know, and and who knows,
Speaker 1: maybe that'll really generate enough helium for us. I mostly
Speaker 1: joke about that because I seriously doubt there's any useful
Speaker 1: way to harness and a huge amount of helium from
Speaker 1: these reactions. Guys, I hope you're not fused too closely
Speaker 1: with this topic because we need to take another quick break,
Speaker 1: but we'll be right back. Cold fusion is kind of
Speaker 1: what it sounds like. I mean, the idea is what
Speaker 1: it sounds like, and it's it's not actually cold. It's
Speaker 1: more room temperature room to infusion, but that's less of
Speaker 1: a fun buzzword, so compared to a hundred million degree reaction,
Speaker 1: it's comed um, but no. Cold fusion is the idea
Speaker 1: that view would be able to create these reactions, these
Speaker 1: fusion reactions at essentially room temperature and still get energy
Speaker 1: off of them, which, if it were true, would be
Speaker 1: huge because that would mean that we wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: pour in so much energy to start the reaction. You
Speaker 1: just have to set up the right situation and harnestly
Speaker 1: the energy that comes off of it and make free
Speaker 1: energy for everybody, right, proponents of it. I like to
Speaker 1: call it low energy nuclear reactions. Yeah, because cold fusion
Speaker 1: definitely has a stigma against it now. And that's the
Speaker 1: reason for that, all right. So, so there were a
Speaker 1: pair of scientists, Pons and Fleishman, who published a paper
Speaker 1: that was that that became really famous, and it was
Speaker 1: that this they were talking about a reaction that that
Speaker 1: they observed that gave off more energy than it should
Speaker 1: have based upon what they did. Right. What happened was
Speaker 1: they put an electrode of pollitium into a thermis of
Speaker 1: heavy water of tridium oxide um and charged it with
Speaker 1: an electrical current, and I supposedly the pollitium catalyzed fusion
Speaker 1: by allowing the du tritium atoms to snuggle up. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, they were able to create a fusion
Speaker 1: reaction at a at a very low temperature comparatively speaking,
Speaker 1: and the temperature and that they observed an excess of
Speaker 1: energy being given off by this. So they were like, eureka,
Speaker 1: we have found a way to create electricity or really
Speaker 1: to create energy through this reaction. And then a few
Speaker 1: labs tried to replicate their results, and early results seemed
Speaker 1: to replicate it at least in a couple of instances,
Speaker 1: but upon further study, it seemed like most of those
Speaker 1: successes were due to either mechanical error like someone someone
Speaker 1: miss read spread that something, or it was a poorly
Speaker 1: calibrated sensor, or yeah, exactly like like there was there
Speaker 1: always seemed to be something wrong with the experiment that
Speaker 1: put whatever, the results were within the margin of error,
Speaker 1: and if it's within the margin of error, you cannot
Speaker 1: really be sure that you've got an actual positive result.
Speaker 1: So Ponds and Flashman continued to talk about their studies
Speaker 1: and continue to be proponents of this idea, but it
Speaker 1: increasingly became sort of kind of a pathological science, is
Speaker 1: what other scientists were calling it, you know, which essentially
Speaker 1: means joke and science talk. Now they were saying that
Speaker 1: there was no real proof of it working, that the
Speaker 1: results were not replicable, which is something that's important in
Speaker 1: science as it turns out, and that there doesn't doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be any support based upon our understanding of
Speaker 1: the universe that cold fusion could actually be a thing.
Speaker 1: And this wasn't the only time that it's been attempted.
Speaker 1: Back in two th five, E. C. L A researchers
Speaker 1: were working without Hyer electric crystals um to to create
Speaker 1: electric fields in in water. Normal normal, old stuff. And
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine, the U. S. Navy's UH Space
Speaker 1: in Naval Warfare Systems Department was trying some stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just it doesn't seem to have ever panned out.
Speaker 1: Now there are conspiracy theorists who suggests that perhaps big
Speaker 1: energy companies are suppressing information about cold fusion and have
Speaker 1: compromised the scientific community as such. Uh and therefore cold
Speaker 1: fusion could be a thing, but we don't know about
Speaker 1: it because people are actively working against us from learning
Speaker 1: about it. I would not go so far as to
Speaker 1: say that. I will say that there is enough of
Speaker 1: a stigma against cold fusion and low energy nuclear reactions
Speaker 1: within the literature world that most magazines won't scientific publishing right,
Speaker 1: so they just they dismiss it out of hand. Now
Speaker 1: that I think people can make a legitimate argument that
Speaker 1: is probably shortsighted, that that they should, they should at
Speaker 1: least consider them so that other scientists have the opportunity
Speaker 1: to observe the to to learn about the results, try
Speaker 1: and replicate it, and then that's how we can at
Speaker 1: least at least make a consideration about it before, rather
Speaker 1: than dismissing it out of hand as Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I think dismissing it out of hand ends up just
Speaker 1: creating more fuel for the conspiracy theorists. Now, personally, I
Speaker 1: don't think there's anything to it. Counter counter culture. What's
Speaker 1: the I was I was lectured about the terminology conspiracy theorists.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry that the conspiracy theorists hate the term conspiracy theorist.
Speaker 1: I'm really sorry about that. Um So anyway, Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have Ben and Madden here, Hunter, bring them on.
Speaker 1: I will bends my arch nemesis. Everyone knows that, so
Speaker 1: uh And if you didn't know that, now you do.
Speaker 1: I called him my arch nemesis the very first day
Speaker 1: I met him, six years ago. So and it has
Speaker 1: held true. We, by the way, share trains to train
Speaker 1: rights together and chat all the way and talk about music.
Speaker 1: Very very little actual arch nemesis story. He's about as
Speaker 1: lazy a hero as I am, lazy as supervillain. So
Speaker 1: really nothing happens, really is that how it works out?
Speaker 1: He's he's the hero, you're the villain. I mean, you're
Speaker 1: you're You've got that that's that's the problem, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: I have to be the villain by default by Star
Speaker 1: Trek rules. We got off on a tangent. So anyway,
Speaker 1: so anyway, the science does not seem to hold up
Speaker 1: cold fusion. It just doesn't seem to be There doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be any support there. Now, maybe there actually
Speaker 1: is a way of doing it. Maybe there is, and
Speaker 1: it's just that whatever results were found were due to
Speaker 1: something else and it just hasn't been discovered in the
Speaker 1: other examples. And maybe it'll turn out that that is
Speaker 1: the answer, which would be amazing, and I think everyone
Speaker 1: really wants that world to exist, absolutely, it would. It
Speaker 1: would mean that our energy problems, we would we would
Speaker 1: be in an energy surplus to the point where when
Speaker 1: you have energy surplus, so many things become possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's one of those things that you know that
Speaker 1: you kind of start seeing in something like Star Trek,
Speaker 1: where it's it's just this perfect utopian universe where a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't have to work anymore because we
Speaker 1: have we have free energy, so we have free transportation,
Speaker 1: so we have free food. So yeah, and so obviously
Speaker 1: this would be a pretty great world and I think
Speaker 1: it's pretty cynical, maybe not completely unrealistic to say that
Speaker 1: corporations would suppress such a world for their own gain,
Speaker 1: because I actually think they would have more to gain
Speaker 1: in the utopia version of the world than in the
Speaker 1: current one. But I don't know. I'm not a I'm
Speaker 1: not a CEO of a major corporation, so maybe I
Speaker 1: would think in a different way if I were. I
Speaker 1: can I can see how how changing the status quo
Speaker 1: could be a scary thing. Yeah, and I'm too lazy
Speaker 1: to try again, super villain lazy, so um yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: it'll I'm interested to see how the the fusion reactors
Speaker 1: like it turn turn out over the next couple of
Speaker 1: decades um. If anyone does make advances in the cold
Speaker 1: fusion field, that would be phenomenal. And you know, while
Speaker 1: I am a skeptic, and I fully admit that I'm
Speaker 1: a skeptic, I'm also a person who if you show
Speaker 1: me evidence that really supports the claim and it's replicable,
Speaker 1: then I'm going to say, like, Okay, you're right. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's how science works. That's all right. I am
Speaker 1: willing to say, like, Okay, my my skepticism was was
Speaker 1: not well founded because here we have proofd right, but
Speaker 1: until then, yeah, until then, I'm a skeptic. One of
Speaker 1: my one of my favorite stories about that, there's a
Speaker 1: Scottish physicist named Douglas Morrison who would attend these cold
Speaker 1: fusion conferences every year and and and listen and from
Speaker 1: what I understand, really genuinely listen to these people who
Speaker 1: had these brilliant ideas about about how these things might
Speaker 1: work and how they were supposedly working in their own labs.
Speaker 1: And he would stand up and say, can you please
Speaker 1: make me a cup of tea? And they would go, well,
Speaker 1: I can't produce that much heat yet, and he would go,
Speaker 1: oh yeah. That's the other thing is that if cold fusion,
Speaker 1: if these reactions are actually happening, if if there really
Speaker 1: is something to it, the problem would be can it
Speaker 1: be scaled up to something that's useful? And if it
Speaker 1: can't be scaled up, then it may be that all right, well,
Speaker 1: we've learned something interesting that we didn't know before, which
Speaker 1: is always valuable. But if it's not practical to use
Speaker 1: this in any way of generating electricity, it doesn't actually
Speaker 1: meet the problem that we're trying to solve, So that's
Speaker 1: something else to keep in mind, although personally I'm always
Speaker 1: like knowledge for knowledge sake. Alright, guys, that wraps up
Speaker 1: another classic episode of tech Stuff. Hope you enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: If you have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: let me know. You can send me a message on
Speaker 1: Facebook or on Twitter. I'm Text Stuff h s w
Speaker 1: at both, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
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