Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Welcome everyone to Forward Thinking, the audio podcast
Speaker 1: where we think about the future talk about what is
Speaker 1: to come. Today, we're going to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about fusion and what that is. I am Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vocaldon, and I'm Joe McCormick. And so fusion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're talking about nuclear reactions. And uh, you guys might
Speaker 1: be familiar with the fact that the world has lots
Speaker 1: of nuclear reactors already, So why aren't we talking about
Speaker 1: fusion as being in the future. Uh, And the reason
Speaker 1: for that is the nuclear reactors that are out there,
Speaker 1: I mean the majority of the ones that are actually
Speaker 1: generating power than well, because there are experimental all the
Speaker 1: ones that are hooked up to a grid. Yeah, are
Speaker 1: fission based, which is where you are essentially, you're you're
Speaker 1: making Adam split apart. In the case of nuclear fission,
Speaker 1: you're using a a type of uranium, and the uranium
Speaker 1: is is going through radioactive decay, which gives off a
Speaker 1: lot of heat. Uranium it's it's because it's heavy, right,
Speaker 1: it's a huge atom. Well, it's it's heavy it's heavy
Speaker 1: and and it does decay right like, especially when you're
Speaker 1: getting it. The specific type of uranium used in nuclear
Speaker 1: reactions is different than just like if you found unrefined uranium.
Speaker 1: It's this is refined uranium that that decays at a
Speaker 1: predictable rate and as it as it decays, it spontaneously
Speaker 1: causes other atoms in the uranium to decay, so it starts.
Speaker 1: Once the reaction starts, it kind of maintains itself for
Speaker 1: a certain amount of time. And what you're essentially doing
Speaker 1: is you are you're you're submerging these these radioactive uranium
Speaker 1: rods in water, which converts the water into steam that
Speaker 1: then turns steam turbines. It's not terribly efficient, but it
Speaker 1: does generate an awful lot of electricity. It's more efficient
Speaker 1: than say a coal generator that is burning coal to
Speaker 1: heat water into steam to turn Yeah, it's it's more
Speaker 1: more efficient than coal combustion. And uh, you know, you're
Speaker 1: generating an entirely different kind of waste instead of instead
Speaker 1: of greenhouse gas emissions, you're you've got this kind of
Speaker 1: nuclear material that's radioactive and harmful to humans, and we'll
Speaker 1: be radio radioactive for a very long time, as it
Speaker 1: turns out. But well, we'll talk about in another episode
Speaker 1: of this of this show, we'll talk about kind of
Speaker 1: a way of trying to use that nuclear to waste
Speaker 1: in a a in a smart way. Okay, So what
Speaker 1: happens in these reactions? We we say that we're splitting
Speaker 1: a heavy atom? Right, Yeah? Why does that create so
Speaker 1: much energy? I bet this has something to do with Einstein, doesn't? Yes?
Speaker 1: It does. Well, you know, for for one thing, you're
Speaker 1: talking about mass and mass converting into energy. You've heard
Speaker 1: of a little equation equals mc squared, right, and that
Speaker 1: that tells us that matter and energies are in some
Speaker 1: way equivalent. Right, Yes, one can produce another, right if
Speaker 1: you if you go back far enough. According to the
Speaker 1: Big Bang theory, there was a point where energy and
Speaker 1: mass were one thing, and then they kind of split apart.
Speaker 1: So they are intrinsically connected to one another. And so
Speaker 1: if you were to convert matter into energy, you get
Speaker 1: a lot of it because you take that mass and
Speaker 1: you multiply it by C squared. C squared that's the
Speaker 1: speed of light squared. So a little bit of mass
Speaker 1: times the speed of light, which is pretty big and
Speaker 1: you square that, then you get the equivalent amount of
Speaker 1: energy out. That's a lot of energy for just a
Speaker 1: tiny bit of mass. So even on the atomic level,
Speaker 1: you're talking about lots of energy when you have these
Speaker 1: these reactions. Now that's fission. Uh. Fusion is something different.
Speaker 1: Fusion is what happens in the sun. So you know, right, yes, yes, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's when instead of splitting atoms, you are fusing them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Celestial stars, by the way, not stars. Um first, well,
Speaker 1: it's do this and and and As much as I
Speaker 1: would love to go on about how the Sun is
Speaker 1: a massive incandescent gas, the gigant techniclear fairness, where hydrogen
Speaker 1: is built into helium and a temperature millions of degrees. Uh.
Speaker 1: Which is a song that they Might Be Giants made popular.
Speaker 1: It was actually a song that was on a science
Speaker 1: album for kids. I have the original track. It's amazing,
Speaker 1: but they Might Be Giants actually went back and corrected
Speaker 1: that because, of course science has later found that that's
Speaker 1: kind of an oversimplification of what the sun is cover
Speaker 1: going on and ignoring Joe. Uh. So, fusion is when
Speaker 1: you are fusing two atoms together. Generally speaking, you want
Speaker 1: to start with light atoms and fuse them. And the
Speaker 1: way you have to do this is, well, there are
Speaker 1: certain fundamental forces that are in the universe. Okay, You've
Speaker 1: got an electromagnetic force, that's one of them. And then
Speaker 1: there's the strong nuclear force. Now, strong nuclear force, that's
Speaker 1: the force that holds these sub atomic particles together. And
Speaker 1: it's really really strong. But it were works on incredibly
Speaker 1: short distances. Okay, so when it when it comes into effect,
Speaker 1: it's incredibly strong. Okay. But so in a fusion reaction,
Speaker 1: you're you're taking little hydrogen atoms, the smallest atoms that
Speaker 1: there are, single proton, and you're fusing them together to
Speaker 1: create helium atoms which have two protons. Right, if we have,
Speaker 1: say a hydrogen balloon, why doesn't this happen inside the balloon.
Speaker 1: Why don't the hydrogen atoms spontaneously fused together to create
Speaker 1: helium atoms? All? Right? That distance is a really big
Speaker 1: problem because when I'm saying really close distance, I'm talking
Speaker 1: really really close to one trillion of a millimeter, I think,
Speaker 1: is how close things have to be diffused. Now, those
Speaker 1: protons that are in a hydrogen atom, they have a
Speaker 1: positive charge, right, So positive charges don't like each other,
Speaker 1: like charges repel one another, right right, Like, So if
Speaker 1: you take two positive ends of a magnet and try
Speaker 1: to smooh them together, Yeah, you're gonna feel that push.
Speaker 1: It'll it'll feel like it's pushing against you. So what
Speaker 1: you have to do is you have to actually get
Speaker 1: those atoms close enough. Uh. You have to overcome the
Speaker 1: electromagnetic force, so that the strong nuclear force takes hold,
Speaker 1: which requires you to put a lot of energy into
Speaker 1: the system for this to work. Now, with the Sun,
Speaker 1: that energy ends up being gravity and heat. You've got
Speaker 1: this intense amount of heat in the Sun. It's stripping
Speaker 1: the protons of their electrons. It's becoming a plasma. A
Speaker 1: plasma is an ionized gas, and it's exactly what it
Speaker 1: sounds like. You've got ions. These are charged atoms because
Speaker 1: they have either gained or lost an electron. In this case,
Speaker 1: lost electrons um it's and those electrons roam freely throughout
Speaker 1: the plasma. So anyway you've got you have to create
Speaker 1: a plasma first, so you have to pour energy into it.
Speaker 1: Plasma it's like fire. It's incredibly hot. Saying that plasma
Speaker 1: is like fires like saying a fumble of water is
Speaker 1: like an ocean, yes, but not but it doesn't get
Speaker 1: the scale. Yeah, so very pressurized. Right, So you've got
Speaker 1: you've got this incredibly hot uh, these incredibly hot atoms
Speaker 1: that are getting closer and closer to each other. You're
Speaker 1: forcing them together and then if they get close enough,
Speaker 1: that strong nuclear force is going to be strong enough
Speaker 1: to bind them two together. Now here's the really interesting thing. Uh,
Speaker 1: the mass of that new nucleus in the case of
Speaker 1: hydrogen becoming helium, the mass of that new nucleus is
Speaker 1: actually less than the product of the two hydrogen nuclei.
Speaker 1: So that makes me wonder if that mass went somewhere
Speaker 1: it did? You've that that mass that is lost when
Speaker 1: these two atoms, these two nuclei fused together to make
Speaker 1: one nucleus, is converted into energy, which is energy in
Speaker 1: the form of heat. So again, if you create a
Speaker 1: fusion reaction, it creates a lot of heat, which can
Speaker 1: you know, depending on how you use it, can actually
Speaker 1: help create more reactions down the line, like in say
Speaker 1: the sun. Um. So the challenge here, you've got the
Speaker 1: the equals mc squared again, so you get a lot
Speaker 1: of energy for this tiny little sub atomic particle that
Speaker 1: you know, this nucleus that is slightly less mass than
Speaker 1: the product of the two nuclear that formed it. You
Speaker 1: get a lot of energy out of that, but but
Speaker 1: you have to pour a lot of energy into the
Speaker 1: system first to even get to that fusion reaction. And
Speaker 1: that's the problem that we have right now, is the
Speaker 1: idea of how do we do this in such an
Speaker 1: efficient way that the energy we get out makes sense
Speaker 1: compared to energy we pour in now, or it's significantly greater. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if we if we can do that, if we can
Speaker 1: figure that out, fusion has some amazing promises you're talking
Speaker 1: about as an energy sources, as a source of just
Speaker 1: great electricity like vission. Right exactly. If if we can
Speaker 1: get to the point where we have solved the problem
Speaker 1: of of getting more energy out of this process than
Speaker 1: we have to create to put into it, then because
Speaker 1: we're talking about things like hydrogen, you could end up
Speaker 1: with an energy surplus pretty quickly. Yeah. Well, don't they say,
Speaker 1: I mean the amount of energy you get out of
Speaker 1: a fusion burn is it's hundreds of millions of times
Speaker 1: more than the energy you get from an equivalent fossil
Speaker 1: fuel burn. Depending on how many reactions you're talking about.
Speaker 1: I think it's actually four million times if I think
Speaker 1: about it, like if you're talking about one single reaction,
Speaker 1: it's like four million times the amount of energy would
Speaker 1: get out of burning coal or oil. And I mean
Speaker 1: that's incredible, right, And I mean that's like the the
Speaker 1: you know, these tiny little reactions that do require a
Speaker 1: lot of energy to start them. No, no carbon emissions,
Speaker 1: right right, and uh, plentiful resources. Right. So how if
Speaker 1: you want to make a fusion reactor reactor here on Earth,
Speaker 1: what do you have to put into it? Well, at first,
Speaker 1: you've got to create a reactor that can withstand tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of heat. All right, we'll get there in a minute.
Speaker 1: But what is the fuel. It's it's two isotopes of hydrogen,
Speaker 1: and an isotope means that it's a it's an atom
Speaker 1: of that element with a different number of neutrons. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to get that to fuse them together. Yes,
Speaker 1: and you and the two you need are deuterium and tritium. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those are the ones that are currently being used. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Those are not hard to get at all. From what
Speaker 1: I read like, deuterium is just abundant in the ocean.
Speaker 1: You you scoop up some ocean water and a glass
Speaker 1: and there's deuterium in it, right, Yeah. I've often refused
Speaker 1: to go into the ocean because it was just deterium
Speaker 1: with it. Yeah yeah, but now yeah, that's and smell
Speaker 1: the deuterium in the air. The other I think is
Speaker 1: a created from from lithium, I believe, and so it's
Speaker 1: a little yeah yeah, so it's it's a little bit
Speaker 1: more expensive and to produce. Currently, the two different kinds
Speaker 1: of of fusion reactors that they use both have a
Speaker 1: deuterium and tritium reactions, and they're working on some that
Speaker 1: are a duty arium deuterium reactions, which would be a
Speaker 1: lot easier because since the tritium is made from lithium,
Speaker 1: it's kind of expensive, and then you could just use
Speaker 1: the seawater essentially. In any case, the fuel is totally abundant, right,
Speaker 1: much more so than for example, uranium, right fuels exactly,
Speaker 1: So then that there you have an energy surplus, which
Speaker 1: would be an amazing and kind of like unimaginable world
Speaker 1: compared to the one we live in right now. So
Speaker 1: I etricity is free, then we can do as much
Speaker 1: as we want, Well, maybe not free, because there are
Speaker 1: some challenges, right, right, right, So there's the challenge of
Speaker 1: building a reactor that's going to withstand the heat. If
Speaker 1: it's this, if it's this greater deal, why aren't we
Speaker 1: doing it yet? That's part of it is that it's
Speaker 1: expensive to build a reactor that can withstand the tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of heat that would be given off. And again,
Speaker 1: the reaction here, the fusion reaction, that heat that you're generating,
Speaker 1: you're doing it. You're doing the same thing with that
Speaker 1: heat that you would do with the fission reactor. You're
Speaker 1: using it to heat up water to turn steam turbines.
Speaker 1: It's not magic, yeah, yeah, the fusan the fusion doesn't
Speaker 1: just automatic create electricity and suddenly all the lights go
Speaker 1: bright in the entire city. It's actually turning steam turbine.
Speaker 1: But we are talking about like a hundred million kelvin
Speaker 1: something on that magnitude like actually like six times hotter
Speaker 1: than the Sun, I believe times. Then the core of
Speaker 1: the Sun, well, see the core of the Sun, and
Speaker 1: so the fusion reactions go on in the core of
Speaker 1: the Sun. And so but it's got its tremendous gravity
Speaker 1: to help it. Out here on Earth, we don't have
Speaker 1: that kind of gravity. So, right, the Sun's a pressure cooker,
Speaker 1: and our reactor would not be a pressure cook right,
Speaker 1: not in the same way at least, So you've got
Speaker 1: to find a way to contain this heat. And obviously,
Speaker 1: if you think about it like um, if this is
Speaker 1: something that's causing hydrogen atoms to fuse together and you
Speaker 1: put it against any material surface, it's going to melt it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's going to cause major damage that
Speaker 1: the reactor won't be able to sustain itself. So what
Speaker 1: do you do. You have to contain that plasma in
Speaker 1: some way, in a way that it doesn't have contact
Speaker 1: with the outer walls of the containment chamber. And there
Speaker 1: are two main methods that we've used to try and
Speaker 1: control plasma. Each way has multiple versions of it, but
Speaker 1: the two main ways we're using lasers or as I
Speaker 1: used to say on textuff lasers, that's that's inertial confinement,
Speaker 1: yes uh. And then there's h using magnetism. So you're
Speaker 1: trying to contain the plasma so that it's the reactions
Speaker 1: are happening exactly where you want them to. It's not
Speaker 1: going to. I mean, heat is not something that radiates
Speaker 1: out indefinitely, so it dissipates very quickly. Actually, so you
Speaker 1: can have a very intensely hot reaction happening and a
Speaker 1: very localized point and not melt the surface of the earth.
Speaker 1: You know. It's not not like we suddenly see the
Speaker 1: fusion reaction go out of control and goodbye, you know, Seattle.
Speaker 1: It's not not quite that that dramatic. But but but
Speaker 1: the magnetism was the one that I think has received
Speaker 1: the most attention recently. That's the method that was used
Speaker 1: at the joint European Taurus or Jet reactor. And then
Speaker 1: for us, that's the word. It means doughnut basically, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: it does, Actually it means bear claw. Now, Taurus is
Speaker 1: a it's a shape. It's a three dimensional shapes like
Speaker 1: what we would call it donut. Yeah. Yeah, Well, it
Speaker 1: turns out that the easiest way to get plasma to
Speaker 1: flow this this crazy hydrogen plasma to flow through this
Speaker 1: magnetic field is in a donut shape. And we're talking
Speaker 1: about a doughnut that's like a hundred feet tall, ways
Speaker 1: twenty three thousand tons um and is made of some
Speaker 1: million parts. So yeah, it's the Homer Simpson dream donut. Yes,
Speaker 1: yes so. Uh so JET the Joint European Taurus UH
Speaker 1: used this magnetic confinement method and UH and at its
Speaker 1: at its height, was able to produce reactions where they
Speaker 1: would get a little over half the amount of energy
Speaker 1: they needed to to start the reaction. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: their efficiency was somewhere around in the mid sixty percentile.
Speaker 1: So that's not great. I mean, obviously you're you're losing energy.
Speaker 1: It's very promising, it's pretty cool, but yeah, yeah, you couldn't.
Speaker 1: That wouldn't be a power generator. That would be a
Speaker 1: power sink because you would always be putting more power
Speaker 1: into starting the reaction than you were getting out of
Speaker 1: the reaction. But there are other facilities that are similar
Speaker 1: to the JET one that are in various stages of
Speaker 1: construction right now that may give off way more energy
Speaker 1: than it was required to start, like the International Thermonuclear
Speaker 1: Experimental Reactor or EITER, which is in France, but its
Speaker 1: supposed to generate ten times more power that requires to
Speaker 1: to start the fusion process. So if it's you know,
Speaker 1: even even then it's just the beginning, right, ten times
Speaker 1: what you put into it is. It sounds great, but uh,
Speaker 1: but we only hopefully go up from there. Sure, fusion
Speaker 1: is one of those funny things that for years and
Speaker 1: years people have been saying it's right around the corner,
Speaker 1: and it's never We've never gone around that corner. Yet
Speaker 1: it's always it's always twenty to fifty years away. It's
Speaker 1: why all super fancy technology. Yeah, it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where, like like the singularity, it's always twenty to
Speaker 1: fifty years away. But we have made real progress. We have,
Speaker 1: we have we're a lot closer than we used to be,
Speaker 1: and we do need to take just a quick moment
Speaker 1: to talk about cold fusion. Which is cold fusion well,
Speaker 1: we don't even have to say the quote. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's an accepted term for something that is unproven scientific.
Speaker 1: Imagine people who people who advocate it don't like that
Speaker 1: term anymore, do they? That they try to like hide
Speaker 1: it under different terminology. Pons and Fleischmann, the paraphysicists who
Speaker 1: became famous for experiments that they thought proved or at
Speaker 1: least indicated that cold fusion is a thing. And by
Speaker 1: the way, cold fusion is this idea that you can
Speaker 1: create fusion reactions among certain light atomic elements at close
Speaker 1: to room temperature, so so so that energy barrier that
Speaker 1: you need to make the reaction start goes away. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, and if this were true, it would be
Speaker 1: a miracle. It would just I mean, we would have
Speaker 1: limitless energy right now. It would be Doc Browne's mr
Speaker 1: fusion on the back of it. Would Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: we would. Everyone could have a fusion reactor at home
Speaker 1: that would provide more than enough power to run absolutely everything,
Speaker 1: all the time, every day, and there would never be
Speaker 1: there wouldn't even be a need for an electric grid anymore.
Speaker 1: You can see why people would want it. Yeah, The
Speaker 1: problem is that the science just doesn't seem to work out.
Speaker 1: But Ponds and Fleishman did some, uh some studies that
Speaker 1: initially seemed very promising. A few labs even reported that
Speaker 1: they had replicated the results, but upon further examination, it
Speaker 1: seemed like all the results were brought into question. There
Speaker 1: were questions about measurement techniques, about the equipment that was
Speaker 1: actually being used to take measurements, about the fact that
Speaker 1: some of the results were falling within the margin of error,
Speaker 1: which means that you can't really be sure that you're
Speaker 1: looking at a result. Um. The whole thing that they
Speaker 1: were saying was that they were getting more energy out
Speaker 1: of a reaction than they expected. Like it was it
Speaker 1: was beyond what the what science would tell you would
Speaker 1: happen based upon what was going on. But it hasn't
Speaker 1: borne any fruit, despite the fact that both Ponds and
Speaker 1: Fleischmann for many years continued to uh to to really
Speaker 1: work in this They they originally called it infusion. That's
Speaker 1: not a joke, that really is true. Uh, they call
Speaker 1: it infusion. It was t that not like the letter
Speaker 1: in an infusion, which is weird. Which is weird because
Speaker 1: if you know anything about if you if you know
Speaker 1: anything about in rays, in rays were something that, uh
Speaker 1: that some scientists believed were a thing until they tried
Speaker 1: to look into it and realized there was nothing there
Speaker 1: like in rays where these things that existed until you
Speaker 1: looked for them, and then they didn't. So it seems
Speaker 1: to me, it seems funny to me that you would
Speaker 1: call it in fusion within rays being such a big
Speaker 1: scandal in the scientific community. But anyway, uh, cold fusion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just didn't seem to have any merit to it.
Speaker 1: And there have been a lot of people who looked
Speaker 1: into it since then. There are plenty of people out
Speaker 1: there on the Internet who really hope that it turns
Speaker 1: out that cold fusion really does have something to it
Speaker 1: and it makes sense, right, Like that would solve everyone's
Speaker 1: problems for energy. Yeah, Sadly, from my own personal perspective,
Speaker 1: I think you might as well wish for fairies and
Speaker 1: clap your hands based upon the scientific evidence that we
Speaker 1: have in front of us. Now, that's not to say
Speaker 1: that someone won't find some way of making it work
Speaker 1: in the future. Maybe they will, but based upon what
Speaker 1: we know right now, it seems unlikely, like, well, incredibly unlikely.
Speaker 1: But this doesn't mean now Here's one of the main
Speaker 1: reasons I think we needed to bring this up is that, um,
Speaker 1: people hear about the fail years of cold fusion, and
Speaker 1: they that makes them think, oh, fusion, it's a fusion.
Speaker 1: Hot fusion has serious potential, right Yeah, No, hot fusion
Speaker 1: is definitely one of those things that could work if
Speaker 1: we get the system efficient enough. Like if I turn,
Speaker 1: if the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor does in fact work out,
Speaker 1: then that will show that fusion is a viable means
Speaker 1: of generating energy. And that, and we know it's legitimate,
Speaker 1: the son's there, but but whether or not we can
Speaker 1: harness it in a way that makes sense is still
Speaker 1: the question. Uh. It does look promising, but even even
Speaker 1: the optimists are still saying it's, you know, thirty forty
Speaker 1: years away, So, uh, what is it here? Lockheed skunk
Speaker 1: Work says that they can make fusion work in the
Speaker 1: next few years. Well yeah, but then it'll only work
Speaker 1: in area fifty one anyway, So it's a really interesting
Speaker 1: con sept. I really hope it does work out. It
Speaker 1: would be a huge benefit and the idea of you know,
Speaker 1: think about it, if you're if you're using this this
Speaker 1: method to create energy, then you suddenly that the whole
Speaker 1: question about how do we create clean energy is answered
Speaker 1: and we don't have to you know, things like wind
Speaker 1: turbines and solar farms, which are you know, problematic right now,
Speaker 1: inefficient Relatively they're relatively inefficient. You have to find very
Speaker 1: specific places to be able to harness that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, there's a question of whether or
Speaker 1: not the amount we could harvest would meet our demand.
Speaker 1: This would answer all those questions. Me we would easily
Speaker 1: meet our demand. For at least the foreseeable future. You know,
Speaker 1: never say never. Eventually we could get to a point
Speaker 1: where even fusion might seem like, well, we need the
Speaker 1: next big thing. But at that point we'd probably be
Speaker 1: off planet Earth and yeah, we just be harnessing the
Speaker 1: stars themselves, which we are going to talk about at
Speaker 1: some point, yeah we will, but not today. Today, we're
Speaker 1: going to wrap this up. So guys, if you have
Speaker 1: enjoyed this, if you have of suggestions for future topics,
Speaker 1: if you want to chime in on the discussion about fusion,
Speaker 1: and if you want to say that I'm a denier
Speaker 1: because I don't think cold fusion is gonna work, you
Speaker 1: can let us know. We have our website at f
Speaker 1: w thinking dot com. You can read our blogs, you
Speaker 1: can watch the videos, you can listen to the podcasts,
Speaker 1: and of course there are the links to all of
Speaker 1: our presences on various social networks, so you can find
Speaker 1: us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus. We look forward
Speaker 1: to hearing from you, and we will taught to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. For more on this topic and the
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