Speaker 1: Get in tech with technology with textile from how stuffs
Speaker 1: that coming. Hey that everyone, and welcome to tech stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren Bolkum, And today we
Speaker 1: wanted to talk a bit about nuclear fusion fusion, which
Speaker 1: is great because originally I thought it was fusion cuisine
Speaker 1: and I went and ate a lot of California cuisine,
Speaker 1: and um, it was delicious, but it wasn't very tasty
Speaker 1: and not necessarily a technological. Yeah. Then I thought was
Speaker 1: fusion jazz, and so I listened to some of that
Speaker 1: more technological, not not really less delicious. Yeah, but no,
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 being towed
Speaker 1: as one of the technologies of the feature that is
Speaker 1: going to give us unlimited energy. And how far away
Speaker 1: is it twenty to thirty to fifty years and and
Speaker 1: every year it seems like we're years. Yeah. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: that's one of those things that scientists will often Riley
Speaker 1: kind of joke about that the technology is always twenty
Speaker 1: years away and uh, and you know it's because the
Speaker 1: challenges that we need to overcome are quite impressive. Doesn't
Speaker 1: doesn't mean we won't do it because human beings are amazing,
Speaker 1: you know, we innovate and reinvent. But um, but let's
Speaker 1: let's kind of first of all, talk about the difference
Speaker 1: between fusion and fission. Fission is the kind of a
Speaker 1: nuclear process that is used in our nuclear power plants today.
Speaker 1: So if you are familiar with the nuclear power plants
Speaker 1: things like you know there, of course they're the famous
Speaker 1: ones that have suffered catastrophic failures like Three Mile Island
Speaker 1: or Chernobyl. Uh. But these are the the reactors where
Speaker 1: they split up larger atoms into smaller atoms and as
Speaker 1: a result, a great deal of energy is given off
Speaker 1: really in the form of heat, which is then harnessed
Speaker 1: to convert water into steam, which turns steam turbines which
Speaker 1: are connected to electrical generators generating electricity. So really it's
Speaker 1: just a very very efficient way of heating up a
Speaker 1: lot of water really quickly and making it do work. Yes,
Speaker 1: a very efficient, very radioactive steam generator. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that's one of the big issues with the fission power
Speaker 1: plants obviously, is that it uses nuclear radioactive material, not
Speaker 1: just nuclear material radioactive material, and that it doesn't the
Speaker 1: radioactivity is still very much a factor once that reaction
Speaker 1: is finished four thousands and thousands of years, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: You generally speaking, only about three percent of the uranium
Speaker 1: in a uranium rod is used up in a fission
Speaker 1: reactor before the waste has to be disposed of because
Speaker 1: it will continue to heat up until it reaches a
Speaker 1: point that's too hot and the reactor itself can suffer
Speaker 1: a failure. Yeah, that's what you have down. 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 the radioactive material, the uranium in a
Speaker 1: molten salt and use that to control the heat in
Speaker 1: a in a way that would allow you to use
Speaker 1: that material for longer, so you'd be able to get
Speaker 1: more use out of the same radioactive material and reduce
Speaker 1: the life of the actual radioactive elements at the at
Speaker 1: the final output, I think it would only be radioactive.
Speaker 1: It would only be reactive for another years. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: still well beyond our lifetimes right now. But not something
Speaker 1: that you would say, all right, generations and generations and
Speaker 1: generations are going to have to be aware of that.
Speaker 1: You don't have to start, you know, programming things that
Speaker 1: people you know, languages that don't exist yet wanting to
Speaker 1: be able to understand, Right, how do I how do
Speaker 1: I create a pictograph that shows exactly do not go
Speaker 1: in here? We messed it up really hard. Right in
Speaker 1: ten thousand years, English may not even be a thing anymore. So,
Speaker 1: um so yeah, I mean that's that's one of those
Speaker 1: possible solutions. But fusion is very different. Fission all about
Speaker 1: splitting atoms apart. Fusion is about being buddy buddy and
Speaker 1: bringing atoms together. And this is this is the kind
Speaker 1: of of process that we see happening in stars, including
Speaker 1: the sun, the sun being a star. Yes, yes, well
Speaker 1: I'm just making sure people know that. And despite what
Speaker 1: my one of my favorite Bands has said in a
Speaker 1: cover of a song, actually the Sun is not really
Speaker 1: a massive incandescent gas and gigantic nuclear fenness. But they
Speaker 1: did correct it in a later song and say it
Speaker 1: was a miasma of incandescent plasma. So they did go
Speaker 1: back and correct it. But they were actually quoting an
Speaker 1: old song from a science album for kids, which was
Speaker 1: to explain the process of fusion and how the Sun
Speaker 1: generates energy and light and uh. And the way it
Speaker 1: happens is it takes these hydrogen atoms, and because the
Speaker 1: Sun is so massive and dense, there's a huge amount
Speaker 1: of gravity there and it's creating an enormous amount of
Speaker 1: pressure and heat. So the heat is stripping those hydrogen
Speaker 1: atoms of their electrons, creating ions. That creates zions, and
Speaker 1: in a pure hydrogen atom is just a proton and
Speaker 1: an electron, so that electron goes away. Now you've just
Speaker 1: got a proton there, and so you have these protons
Speaker 1: now that are zipping around in incredible speaks um and
Speaker 1: being press together really tightly by the amazing force of gravity.
Speaker 1: And at the Sun's core where this is the strongest,
Speaker 1: these atoms are banging up against each other so fast
Speaker 1: and so close that one of the other fundamental forces
Speaker 1: in the universe overacts the electromagnetic force. Now, the four
Speaker 1: forces in the universe include gravity, which is the weakest
Speaker 1: but is the it is the most effective over huge distances.
Speaker 1: You have electromagnetic force, and then you have these strong
Speaker 1: and weak nuclear forces. Now, the strong force is what
Speaker 1: holds nucleic particles together. It's like the glue that keeps
Speaker 1: a nucleus together. Right, So, if you were able to
Speaker 1: get two protons close enough to each other, uh, the
Speaker 1: strong nuclear force would be strong enough to counteract the
Speaker 1: electromagnetic force. That's that's naturally driving them apart. Because protons
Speaker 1: both have a positive charge. And if you've ever taken
Speaker 1: two magnets and tried to stick the two positive ends together,
Speaker 1: it resists you. It doesn't want to do that thing.
Speaker 1: But when you get them to within one trillionth of
Speaker 1: a millimeter of each other, then that will that will
Speaker 1: go away 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 point, when you have fused to hydrogen protons together,
Speaker 1: you have created a different element. Hydrogen has now become
Speaker 1: helium at a temperature millions of degrees. So yeah, we
Speaker 1: can't see. We might both be that, they might be giants.
Speaker 1: I'll be seeing them in a week to come into Atlanta.
Speaker 1: By the time you guys hear this, I've already seen
Speaker 1: it and the show was awesome, I guess. So anyway,
Speaker 1: the the protons have fused together to form helium. But
Speaker 1: here's the interesting thing. In that process. The mass of
Speaker 1: that helium atom is slightly less than the combined masses
Speaker 1: of the two hydrogen atoms that fuse together to make
Speaker 1: the helium. Why is that, Jonathan, Some of 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 light,
Speaker 1: but the speed of light sweared. So speed of light
Speaker 1: is a big, big, big big number. Then you square
Speaker 1: it and it's even bigger, and you multiply, yeah, and
Speaker 1: multiply that times whatever the mass is, you get your
Speaker 1: energy output. And so essentially, what this equation tells us
Speaker 1: is a tiny little bit of mass, once converted into energy,
Speaker 1: will be an enormous amount of energy the same thing,
Speaker 1: and also that that mass and energy never really go away,
Speaker 1: and they are simply converted. Exactly, we cannot create or
Speaker 1: destroy energy, but what we can do is convert energy
Speaker 1: to mass and mass to energy. At least in theory. Now,
Speaker 1: if we were to convert energy to mass, it would
Speaker 1: take an awful lot of energy to make just a
Speaker 1: little bit of mass. Which is why I always go
Speaker 1: crazy when I read the Harry Potter books and people
Speaker 1: conjure stuff out of thin air, because I think, do
Speaker 1: you you just destroyed like three solar systems in order
Speaker 1: to do that, clearly pulling them from a parallel dimension
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yes, so there's just a people
Speaker 1: in a parallel dimension, Like it's so cold, there's a
Speaker 1: there's a really huge room of requirement somewhere. That's okay,
Speaker 1: all right, now you're talking about language. So, yeah, a
Speaker 1: little bit of mass creates a lot of energy. So
Speaker 1: even though we're talking tiny atomic measurements here where we
Speaker 1: have the helium atom, which has got a lower mass
Speaker 1: than the two combined hydrogen atoms, that still puts off
Speaker 1: quite a bit of energy. And and the Sun is
Speaker 1: doing this all the time with tons of hydrogen converting
Speaker 1: into helium every day. All right, so massive amount of
Speaker 1: energy that's being that's being emitted. I mean if it
Speaker 1: weren't being emitted, then there would be no life on
Speaker 1: this planet. Right. And and we know it works, you know,
Speaker 1: so we can serve this. This is this is as
Speaker 1: far as we can tell real science. Yes, so we
Speaker 1: know it works, We know we can do it. In fact,
Speaker 1: we have done it. We've reproduced it here on Earth.
Speaker 1: We'll get into that in a little bit. But the
Speaker 1: question was if the Sun does this, if that's how
Speaker 1: the Sun does this, could we create energy here on
Speaker 1: Earth using a similar method. Knowing that on Earth the
Speaker 1: conditions are very different from the core of the Sun,
Speaker 1: we don't have that gravity or that heat that is
Speaker 1: allowing the Sun to overcome the right electronic Yeah, this
Speaker 1: and the and the gravity is the really important part
Speaker 1: because that gravity is what's allowing this nuclear fusion process
Speaker 1: to happen at a temperature that would actually be lower
Speaker 1: than we would need here on Earth. Because we don't
Speaker 1: have that gravity, we don't have the ability to compress
Speaker 1: the atoms as tightly together as we would if if
Speaker 1: we had the Sun's gravity. We have to we have
Speaker 1: to overcome that with even more heat. Yeah, the Sun
Speaker 1: only needs about fifteen million degrees kelvin. Only am easily
Speaker 1: fifteen million kelvin. Sorry sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah, my my bad.
Speaker 1: I always do that. I did it once and one
Speaker 1: of our great listeners corrected me. And that's the only reason,
Speaker 1: because our listeners are awesome and they let me know
Speaker 1: when I've done something silly like that, completely ridiculous, the
Speaker 1: only reason I know, So, thank you listeners. Um so, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Sun only needs about fifteen million kelvin. In order
Speaker 1: to do this here on Earth, it would be something
Speaker 1: like a hundred million. Yeah, so we're talking massive amounts
Speaker 1: of energy that we would need here on Earth to
Speaker 1: compensate for the fact that we don't have that gravity
Speaker 1: there to help us with this reaction. Um. Now, in
Speaker 1: the Sun, you're talking about the pure high yrogen 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
Speaker 1: Earth 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 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 that you can um.
Speaker 1: You can get it from lithium. Yeah, you you if
Speaker 1: you take lithium, the metal lithium, not the medication, the
Speaker 1: metal lithium, and you bombard it with neutrons, then one
Speaker 1: of the things you get out of that is tritium.
Speaker 1: So that is one way to get the treatium. And
Speaker 1: it we found out that tritium and deuterium, if you
Speaker 1: try to fuse those two together, then you get helium
Speaker 1: and a neutron out of that reaction. And uh, it
Speaker 1: requires less energy than than other combinations. Do write these
Speaker 1: are the current forms of fusion that are possible on
Speaker 1: our planet. Are our deuterium tritium. Yeah, and we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about how, you know, generating a nuclear fusion
Speaker 1: reaction here on Earth, what kind of challenges we encounter,
Speaker 1: and and how we've worked around them in just a moment.
Speaker 1: But before we do, let's take a quick moment to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsored All right, let's get back to fusion.
Speaker 1: So we've got the deuterium in the sea water. We
Speaker 1: can bombard some lithium with some neutrons and get some
Speaker 1: tritium out of that. We're ready to introduce the deuterium
Speaker 1: to the tritium and uh and and make a date
Speaker 1: and have them fused together in a single unit of
Speaker 1: helium and shoot off an extra neutron and a lot
Speaker 1: of energy. What do we need to do? So we
Speaker 1: know that we're going to be using deuterium and tritium,
Speaker 1: because that's the the most efficient way that we've found
Speaker 1: so far to be able to It's the easiest for
Speaker 1: for us to use deuterium. Deuterium would actually be more efficient,
Speaker 1: but it's more difficult to get started. I see, I
Speaker 1: see so right, so we we might get more energy
Speaker 1: output with deuterium deuterium, but it would also require more
Speaker 1: energy to get the whole thing started, right, which is
Speaker 1: kind of the entire problem with fusion. Yeah, In fact,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's the biggest 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
Speaker 1: You're you're replicating what goes on in a star that's
Speaker 1: really a lot of temperature, a lot of pressure. So
Speaker 1: in order to do that without all that pressure here
Speaker 1: on Earth, we've got to pour and even more temperature.
Speaker 1: So that's the big challenge is how do you create
Speaker 1: a reaction that's going to generate more energy through the
Speaker 1: output than it required to start it. So if it
Speaker 1: requires more energy to go in, then you get out,
Speaker 1: you have an energy sync. You actually in the red
Speaker 1: and that's not really useful. I mean, it's it's pretty
Speaker 1: it's still pretty cool, yeah, but just doesn't commercially viable.
Speaker 1: I guess if you want to make helium. Uh, they're
Speaker 1: probably we are running out, I mean, but still that's
Speaker 1: a lot of energy you're pouring into making some balloons
Speaker 1: float or cooling the large Hadron collider, however you want
Speaker 1: to think about it, 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 yeah that just plug into the bolts
Speaker 1: and then it pulls. Yeah. This is still a steam generator. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is which is really interesting to me because you know,
Speaker 1: this is technically this is steam punk. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're essentially harnessing the power of them, yes, the stars themselves,
Speaker 1: to turn water into steam. Yeah, it's still it's still
Speaker 1: converting water to steam to turn steam well really efficiently,
Speaker 1: and a lot of water because you're talking about a
Speaker 1: lot of heat. So then that's the That's the other
Speaker 1: thing is that if if you could have used the
Speaker 1: same amount of energy you used to start the reaction
Speaker 1: to heat up some water and get a better effect
Speaker 1: than Obviously this makes no sense. I mean, that's the
Speaker 1: whole point is that we have to find a way
Speaker 1: to do a fusion reaction where we're getting more energy
Speaker 1: then we're putting into it. Otherwise, just take the reactor
Speaker 1: out and just direct your energy to water directly, take
Speaker 1: out the middleman. But m 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 uh inside the plasma, and then the magnetic
Speaker 1: field starts to press all of these nuclei together until
Speaker 1: you are able to fuse them and what you get
Speaker 1: our helium adams and free neutrons. The neutrons fly off
Speaker 1: and they hit what they call blankets, blankets of lithium. Ye, 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 new tron, you create tritium, which means that you
Speaker 1: can continually create part of the fuel source you need
Speaker 1: for this reactory 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: has been 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, Yes,
Speaker 1: it does. That one is still being built. It's it's
Speaker 1: projected to be finished and protected, projected to be online
Speaker 1: by although whether or not that is a true fact
Speaker 1: 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 a 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 decide to tacomac? Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: got tacomax here in Atlantic. Yeah, so it keeps throwing
Speaker 1: me out. Taco Mac is a is a restaurant chain
Speaker 1: in Atlanta that has obviously tacos. But this is tacomac.
Speaker 1: It's actually a Russian acronym for toroidal 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
Speaker 1: ton million part donut, enormous magnetic donut. Yeah. And the
Speaker 1: reason for the donut shape is they've found that that
Speaker 1: is the most effective way of of containing the plasma
Speaker 1: in this really tight field so that you can have
Speaker 1: these fusion reactions take place. So we've got magnetic confinement.
Speaker 1: There's 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 piece
Speaker 1: eyed I mean like little bitty thing. Yeah. And you're
Speaker 1: using these these lasers or ions to heat that pellet
Speaker 1: into a plasma almost instantaneously. I mean, you're just you're
Speaker 1: bombarding it with an enormous amount of energy. And essentially
Speaker 1: what's happening is that all right, if you've ever seen
Speaker 1: the match trick where the magician walks up to the
Speaker 1: the the dining table with all the beautiful glassware and
Speaker 1: everything that's perched perfectly on the tablecloth and then he
Speaker 1: grabs the table cloth, gives it a quick jerk, and
Speaker 1: everything stays there. Kman failed to do and exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the same same sort of idea here, and that
Speaker 1: you are heating it up so fast that because it's
Speaker 1: because this is a compressed pellet and the lasers are
Speaker 1: actually compressing it. Our ions are compressing it even further
Speaker 1: as it's being heated up. Before the electromagnetic force has
Speaker 1: the opportunity to push the atoms apart, the strong nuclear
Speaker 1: force fuses them together and so kind of implodes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you gotta do. I mean, it's happening super fast. Now,
Speaker 1: the the fraction and like one millionth of a second,
Speaker 1: I think, is how fast this happened. It's insane and
Speaker 1: and uh, it's there are other differences between the initial
Speaker 1: confinement and magnetic confinement. With magnetic confronment, the goal is
Speaker 1: to find a way to have ongoing fusion reactions so
Speaker 1: that you don't have to just generate electricity or generate
Speaker 1: heat and spurts. That you could actually have a maintained
Speaker 1: reaction that goes on for an extended amount of time
Speaker 1: to generate as much electricity as is needed, whereas inertial
Speaker 1: confinement you'd have to set up multiple, essentially multiple targets,
Speaker 1: right right, because the way that the way that one
Speaker 1: of them works at the National Ignition Facility of Lawrenceville
Speaker 1: Livermore Laboratory in the United States in California, I believe
Speaker 1: UM it uses a hundred ninety two laser beams to
Speaker 1: focus on a single point in a test chamber. UM
Speaker 1: and this single point is where that little piece sized
Speaker 1: bit of hydrogen hydrogen is sitting. And and so you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're working on ways to focus the lasers better
Speaker 1: and essentially have multiple pellets and and and also yeah,
Speaker 1: and and to have to have chambers, multiple chambers with
Speaker 1: multiple pellets that are going off in succession so that
Speaker 1: you create a continuous in quoting quotation marks in the
Speaker 1: air reaction. So it's it's a challenging thing. And if
Speaker 1: if they are able to crack it, it has the
Speaker 1: potential to create quite a bit of electricity, uh so
Speaker 1: much so that we could start to really take the
Speaker 1: load off of things like fossil fuel based power plants.
Speaker 1: Right right, They're they're talking about UM with with inertial confinement,
Speaker 1: a fifty two hundred times more energy um output than
Speaker 1: than you would have to put in, whereas the numbers
Speaker 1: that I've seen for it or anyway are more like
Speaker 1: seven times. So you know, either way, you're still getting
Speaker 1: a lot of energy out and and we're not there yet.
Speaker 1: No one has No one has created a fusion reactor
Speaker 1: here on Earth that has been efficient enough for it
Speaker 1: to be a meaningful way to create electricity, uh it,
Speaker 1: because you would be losing energy on the deal. So
Speaker 1: if these work out, it's going to be fantastic. There
Speaker 1: are there are a lot of challenges here. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can imagine, if we're talking about using these incredible
Speaker 1: amounts of heat, you have to be able to design
Speaker 1: a reactor that can withstand handle it. Yeah, and that's tough.
Speaker 1: It's not an easy thing to do. So that's a
Speaker 1: big challenge. And then well we've got other ones as well.
Speaker 1: And again scientists will say like it's about twenty years away.
Speaker 1: Hopefully they're right right now. I think one of the
Speaker 1: challenges is almost a societal challenge because people hear fusion
Speaker 1: and they think fission and radioactive and meltdown and not
Speaker 1: in my backyard and etcetera. Whereas fusion is potentially anyway
Speaker 1: loads safer than a fission reactor. You don't you're not
Speaker 1: talking about you know, your output is a neutron and helium.
Speaker 1: It's not a heavy radioactive material that's going to have
Speaker 1: a half life of several thousand years. It's stuff that
Speaker 1: is harmless once you have harnessed it. Uh So, really
Speaker 1: the question would be, you know, as long as the
Speaker 1: reactor is well made and solid, you don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about this heat escaping or the other kind of
Speaker 1: of a mechanical failure. Well, like like any other steam
Speaker 1: turbine generator, it's going to have an impact on the
Speaker 1: environment and that you know, you're going to be taking
Speaker 1: in water and and that's an impact, and it's going
Speaker 1: to be putting off steam, which is an impact. And
Speaker 1: there are a lot of there are a lot of
Speaker 1: designs I've seen where they have built in a system
Speaker 1: where they condense the steam back down into the water,
Speaker 1: so it becomes a closed loop. So at least then
Speaker 1: you are I mean, you still probably have a loss.
Speaker 1: I 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 and 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. But that brings us to an idea called
Speaker 1: cold fusion. And cold fusion is kind of what it
Speaker 1: sounds like. I mean, the idea is what it sounds like,
Speaker 1: and it's it's not actually cold. It's more room temperature.
Speaker 1: Room to a sure fusion, but that's less of a
Speaker 1: fun buzzword, so compared to a hundred million degree reaction,
Speaker 1: it's um but no. Cold fusion is the idea that
Speaker 1: you would be able to create these reactions, these fusion
Speaker 1: reactions at essentially room temperature and still get energy off
Speaker 1: of them, which if it were true, would be huge
Speaker 1: because that would mean that we wouldn't have to pour
Speaker 1: in so much energy to start the reaction. You just
Speaker 1: have to set up the right situation and harnessly uh
Speaker 1: the energy that comes off of it and make free
Speaker 1: energy for everybody. Proponents of it, I like to call
Speaker 1: it low energy nuclear reactions. Yeah, because cold fusion definitely
Speaker 1: has a stigma against it now and the reason for that. Alright, So,
Speaker 1: so there were a pair of scientists, Pons and Fleishman,
Speaker 1: who published a paper that was that that became really famous,
Speaker 1: and it was that this they were talking about a
Speaker 1: reaction that they observed that gave off more energy than
Speaker 1: it should have based upon what they did. What happened
Speaker 1: was they put an electrode of pollitium into a thermis
Speaker 1: of heavy water of tridium oxide um and charged it
Speaker 1: with an electrical current. And I supposedly the pollitium catalyzed
Speaker 1: fusion 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 and that they observed an excess
Speaker 1: of energy being given off by this. So they were
Speaker 1: like Eureka, we have found a way to create electricity
Speaker 1: or really to create energy through this reaction. And then
Speaker 1: a few labs tried to replicate their results, and early
Speaker 1: results seemed to replicate it, at least in a couple
Speaker 1: of instances, but upon further study, it seemed like most
Speaker 1: of those successes were due to either mechanical error like
Speaker 1: someone someone misread something, or it was a poorly calibrated
Speaker 1: or yeah, exactly like like there was there always seemed
Speaker 1: to be something wrong with the experiment that put whatever
Speaker 1: the results were within the margin of error, and if
Speaker 1: it's within the margin of error, you cannot really be
Speaker 1: sure that you've got an actual positive result. So Ponds
Speaker 1: and Flashman continued to talk about their studies and continue
Speaker 1: to be proponents of this idea, but it increasingly became
Speaker 1: sort of kind of a pathological science is what other
Speaker 1: scientists were calling it, you know, which essentially means joke
Speaker 1: in science talk. Now they were saying that there was
Speaker 1: no real proof of it working, that the results were
Speaker 1: not replicable, which is something that's important in science, as
Speaker 1: it turns out, and that there doesn't doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: be any support based upon our understanding of the universe,
Speaker 1: that cold fusion could actually be a thing, And this
Speaker 1: wasn't the only time that it's been attempted. Back in
Speaker 1: two thousand five, U c l A. Researchers were working
Speaker 1: without hyro electric crystals um to to create electric fields
Speaker 1: in in water, normal normal, old stuff. And in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine the U. S. Navy's UH Space in Naval
Speaker 1: Warfare Systems Department was was trying some stuff. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: just it doesn't seem to have ever panned out. Now
Speaker 1: there are conspiracy theorists who suggests that perhaps big energy
Speaker 1: companies are suppressing information about cold fusion and have compromised
Speaker 1: the scientific community as such. Uh and therefore cold fusion
Speaker 1: could be a thing, but we don't know about it
Speaker 1: because people are actively working against us from learning about it.
Speaker 1: I would not go so far as to say that.
Speaker 1: I will say that there is enough of a stigma
Speaker 1: against cold fusion and low energy nuclear reactions within the
Speaker 1: literature world that most magazines won't scientific consider 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: that is probably shortsighted, that that they should they should
Speaker 1: at least consider them so that other scientists have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to observe the to to learn about the results,
Speaker 1: try and replicate it, and then that's how we can
Speaker 1: at least let's at least make a consideration about it
Speaker 1: before rather than dismissing it out of hand as Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think dismissing it out of hand ends
Speaker 1: up just creating more fuel for the conspiracy theorists. Now, personally,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's anything to it counter counter culture.
Speaker 1: What's the I was I was lectured about the terminology
Speaker 1: conspiracy theorists. I'm sorry that the conspiracy theorist hate the
Speaker 1: term conspiracy theorist. I'm really sorry about that. Um So anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have Ben and Madden here on he bring
Speaker 1: them on. I will bends my arch nemesis. Everyone knows that,
Speaker 1: so 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
Speaker 1: using very very very little actual arch nemesis theory. He's
Speaker 1: about as lazy a hero as I am lazy as supervillain.
Speaker 1: So really nothing happens, really is that? Is that how
Speaker 1: it works out? He's he's the hero, You're the villain.
Speaker 1: I mean you're you're That's that's the problem, right, I
Speaker 1: mean I have to be the villain by default by
Speaker 1: Star Trek rules. We got off on a tangent. So anyway, anyway,
Speaker 1: the science does not seem to hold up cold fusion.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't seem to be. There doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: be any support there. Now, maybe that there actually is
Speaker 1: a way of doing it. Maybe there is, and it's
Speaker 1: just that whatever results were found were due to something
Speaker 1: else and it just hasn't been discovered in the other examples.
Speaker 1: And maybe it'll turn out that that is the answer,
Speaker 1: which would be amazing, and I think everyone really wants
Speaker 1: that world to exist. It would it would mean that
Speaker 1: our energy problems, we would we would be in an
Speaker 1: energy surplus to the point where when you have energy surplus,
Speaker 1: so many things become possible. Yeah, it's it's one of
Speaker 1: those things that you know that you kind of start
Speaker 1: seeing in something like Star Trek, where it's it's just
Speaker 1: this perfect utopian universe where a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: have to work anymore because we have we have free energy,
Speaker 1: so we have free transportation, so we have free food.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and so obviously this would be a pretty
Speaker 1: great world. And I think it's pretty cynical, maybe not
Speaker 1: completely unrealistic to say that corporations would suppress such a
Speaker 1: world for their own gain, because I actually think they
Speaker 1: would have more to gain in the utopia version of
Speaker 1: the world than in the current one. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm not a I'm not a CEO of a major corporation,
Speaker 1: so maybe I would think in a different way if
Speaker 1: I were. I can I can see how how changing
Speaker 1: the status quo could be a scary thing. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'm too lazy to try again, super villain lazy. So
Speaker 1: um yeah, anyway, it'll I'm interested to see how the
Speaker 1: the fusion reactors like it turn turn out over the
Speaker 1: next couple of decades um. If anyone does make advances
Speaker 1: in the cold fusion field, that would be phenomenal. And
Speaker 1: you know, I am a skeptic, and I fully admit
Speaker 1: that I'm a skeptic. I'm also a person who if
Speaker 1: you show me evidence that really supports the claim and
Speaker 1: it's replicable then I'm going to say, like, okay, you're right.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's how science works. That's all right.
Speaker 1: I am willing to say like, Okay, my my skepticism
Speaker 1: was was not well founded because here we have proof, right,
Speaker 1: but until then, yeah, until then, I'm a skeptic. One
Speaker 1: of my one of my favorite stories about that, there's
Speaker 1: a Scottish physicist named Douglas Morrison who would attend these
Speaker 1: cold fusion conferences every year and and and listen and
Speaker 1: from what I understand, really genuinely listen to these people
Speaker 1: who had these brilliant ideas about about how these things
Speaker 1: might work and how they were supposedly working in their
Speaker 1: own labs. And he would stand up and say can
Speaker 1: you please make me a cup of tea? And they
Speaker 1: would go, well, I can't produce that much heat yet,
Speaker 1: and he would go, oh yeah, yeah. That's the other
Speaker 1: thing is that if cold fusion, if these reactions are
Speaker 1: actually happening, if if there really is something too it,
Speaker 1: the problem would be can it be scaled up to
Speaker 1: something that's useful? And if it can't be scaled up,
Speaker 1: then it may be that all right, well, we've learned
Speaker 1: something interesting that we didn't know before, which is always valuable.
Speaker 1: But if it's not practical to use this in any
Speaker 1: way of generating electricity, it doesn't actually meet the problem
Speaker 1: that we're trying to solve. So that's something else to
Speaker 1: keep in mind, although personally I'm always like knowledge for
Speaker 1: knowledge sake, bring it on. So anyway, that kind of
Speaker 1: wraps up this full discussion about fusion. If you guys
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future articles, If you want to
Speaker 1: berate me for the use of the term conspiracy theorist,
Speaker 1: you can write me. That's fine. My well are out
Speaker 1: addresses tech stuff at Discovery dot com. You can also
Speaker 1: find us on Facebook and Twitter are handled. There is
Speaker 1: text stuff h s W. Please let us know if
Speaker 1: you have anything you want us to talk about. We
Speaker 1: are loving the submissions for keeping track of them and
Speaker 1: it's really helping us out when we plan out our
Speaker 1: episodes coming and Lauren and I will talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics because it hastof works dot Com