When will Nuclear Fusion Power Plants become reality? | Dennis Whyte and Lex Fridman
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- čas přidán 22. 01. 2023
- Lex Fridman Podcast full episode: • Dennis Whyte: Nuclear ...
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GUEST BIO:
Dennis Whyte is a nuclear scientist at MIT and the director of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center.
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Full podcast episode: czcams.com/video/aJoRMFWn2Jk/video.html
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Guest bio: Dennis Whyte is a nuclear scientist at MIT and the director of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center.
This guy used to b a scientist, now he’s just a salesman
Lex once again you have shown why I watch your show. You were smart/confident enough to let the guest elaborate on a fascinating subject. Not interrupting an excellent guest is a rare talent!
He must have learned from Brendan Schaub
Who are ya?
He's gotten better, but he definitely still has those interviews where he still overdoes his bits. Robin Hanson, not too long ago, was one of the most brilliant guests he's had on, but the first half of it was just endless Lex elaborations.
They could have added some honesty to this instead of just hype though. The recent nuclear fusion “breakthrough” was absolutely bunk and deceitfully spun. There was no energy gain. They only get that if they ignore 99% of the energy the reaction cost, which they did. It was a theoretical net gain, if they’re able to make the process 99% more efficient, which has absolutely nothing to do with “scaling” the net energy LOSS..
Awesome interview. Thanks Lex.
Thank you very much for this exciting informative discussion of fusion energy, it’s development, and it’s near future of use.
We're still not 100% sure, but it sounds more real than I previously thought, I admit.
Im glad he's discussing the Triple Point for Thermal Fusion (Temp, Density, Time confined) which is the THE metric for successes across all startups and reactors.
the answer is 10 years
30
@@wesmolive 300
This better be #1 in upvotes
About tree fiddy
How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop 🤔🤔
how about a google earth VR mapping of the labs as well
From what I get by reading varios sources, its still "30 years away".. i just don't see it being a feasible energy source in 21st century
TLDR: This guy's fusion reactor is powered using 15 MIT Phd students as fuel!
Talk about limitless energy! And all it costs is an occasional piece of paper.
It is since George Gamow was asked to produce a fusion reactor that physicists say that fusion is always 20 years away.
Wait the clip image is identical to the interior or the spaceship in a scene of in the movie "Event Horizon"
We do have commercial Cold Fusion project that are a few years away from mass scalability- look up the Safire Sun project, welcome to the electro-plasma paradigm 🎉🎉
Cold Fusion is fake, sorry to tell you.
jop, and the Safire sun Project sseems sketchy to say the least, more interesting is first light fusion with their projectile approach, they have actually reached fusion allready, and it seems easily scalable
Fusion is great, but if we really cared rationally about climate change we'd have been installing better and safer fission options for the last 40 years.
The issue is fear. Many people associate nuclear power with nukes and nuclear accidents. fear is dangerous. Maybe more so than nuclear power
@@jamieandel364 “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” is the most underrated quote and I wish I could like your comment more than once.
So true. Hundreds of thousands die from fossil fuel issues but most people are too stupid to realize the difference.
Fission is not economically viable, that is why it is not being employed. The ROI is about 40 years.
You would need to heavily subsidize it to make it commercially viable.
The only people that care about climate change are idiots that believe headlines without doing research.
10 years away from being 10 years away
Anybody else notice the weird reverse echo at 12:30 ??
You don't need fusion when there is geothermal. New plasma drill bits making this a reality
I know nothing about nuclear fusion, but that is an inspiring message about teamwork
When hydrogen gets hot enough and compressed enough (with magnets or lasers) the atoms fuse into helium atoms. This is really hard to do but realises loads of energy, way more than burning the hydrogen. Its completely safe, generates no radiative waste, emits no CO2 and it's fuel is safe (water). It would transform society and stop global warming... if we can do it in time
Its so complex because everything is cutting edge stuff. Materials good for insulating the walls like Tungsten are REALLY bad hurting the plasma temp. Just a tiny tiny fraction of Tungsten, like 0.0001% contamination can make the plasma loose heat 10x faster. So you need PhD Material Scientists to make the walls and coming up with new solutions and Materials Engineers to implement it. Nukes to figure out how to contain and use the radiation and Nuclear and Materials Engineers to make the materials to stop the radiation leaking. You need PhD physicists to analyze the science going on and PhD CS+Physics to model it all in a computer.
Oh and they all need to be on the same page while being allowed to innovate without overlapping on work or missing a step.
If I knew anything at all about nuclear fusion, this is the guy I would want teaching more about it.
Opinions on thorium salt reactors?
Thor is cool, that’s my opinion.
@@placebojesus5652 It is a god...good opinion.
Fingers crossed. 🤞
And then you also have how much larger the energy market is in terms of energy creation to compete with. You have to make it cheap enough to make it work in comparison.
Will we ignore it like we do fission?
01:38 There is already carbon free energy source in the market and its the direct opposite. The driver is pushing it down and not lifting it up. If you think Fusion Power plants won't meet the same fate as Nuclear, you don't understand the motivations of the green energy movement.
I like thorium. hope you talk to Kirk Sorenson, founder of FLIBE.
fusion is cool but thorium is more practical. and no tech advancement needed, we have had capacity to do this since the 50s.
I agree, but most people are not versed in the technical side of fusion and LFTR to understand that. For all the hype fusion gets every few years, i don’t think there’s a person now living that will pay an electrical bill powered by fusion. It’s extremely challenging to do.
We could get LFTRs up and running in a decade for a fraction of the investment in fusion. Crying shame that a technology developed by the Manhattan project vets has been sitting on the shelf for the last Four decades and is still being mostly ignored.
You two need to get versed on the concept of “neutron economy” before you start pushing LFTR propaganda
This guy sounds smart asf
To you of course
Fusion can't run away like nuclear.But if for some reason the fusion stops, how long until it can be restarted?
It's hard to imagine it depends on what reason it has been broken in order to shut down, ie lazers could be a month, magnets depends on stock within the country maybe a couple of days to a week, material to kick-start the fusion process a year it could take a week upto a year.
this question can only be answered in hindsight
Fusion can’t run away because it is an active process that consumes more energy than it produces.. Even the sun’s fusion isn’t self-sustaining. It happens because of an immense, powerful gravity well, squeezing and heating the lighter, easier elements into fusing. Take that active gravity pressure off, and the sun’s elements would quit fusing, just like that. Just because lighter elements are easiest and cost the least to fuse doesn’t change its nature though. Pure, or “cold fusion”m will always cost more energy than it produces. The closest they can come to producing energy that way will be achieving a minimal net energy loss. The only “net energy gain” application is combining it with fission, to cause a more complete type of dissolution into energy. It’s why h bombs always have an actual fission bomb too. Fusion enhances fission but doesn’t replace it, for producing energy.
If it stopped because a deranged employee took an axe to the machine, then it depends how long it takes security to tackle him. If security has the courage of Uvalde police, it may take a long time
Not sure of a time line but theoretically almost instantly it can be restarted. When up and operating the idea will be dozens to hundreds of fusion reactions per second rather than one continuous reaction.
if anything we're warming things up in the literal sense of it being warmer around cities, not by feeding trees with co2
I wonder if anyone working on fyusion is aware of how inexpensive wind, solar, and battery storage are becoming. Wind and solar are on track to drop below $0.02/kWh. Storage is likely to be lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells or an even less expensive chemistry.
We should see LFP batteries manufactured for less than $50/kWh. Soon. At 10,000 full cycle lifespan the cost of storing a kWh of wind/solar drops to about half a penny. ($50/kWh / 10,000 cycles = $0.005)
Fusion may never be able to compete economically. Not only is there the cost of fusion but also a need for storage to load match and backup generation when a plant goes offline.
You do realise how inefficient solar and wind power are, regardless of cost, it will never be enough to power a whole civilisation.
@@darkoz1692 What I realize is that you are either poorly informed.
Search out The Solutions Project and you will find how each country can (and will) become 100% self-reliant for energy using only renewable energy sources with wind and solar dominating in almost every country.
I remember a futurist saying this was round the corner 18 years ago
And said cold fusion would be with us second quarter of 2005
🤣🤣
You gorrra lafff
He was wrong
@@rickymort135 nice Asperger’s you got there bruh
Iter will use 17 of the world's stock of 23kg of tritium. I wish this was discussed in this chat on how this problem will be solved for tokamak fusion.
Supposedly the tritium will be bred with lithium blankets, injection or some similar techniques. But, it is not shown experimentally if it is viable, yet.
@@MrNoneofthem with Blanket Jackson
The answer is T + 30 years
T = present time
*Thorium* is everything fusion wanted to be. Advanced nuclear will achieve 100X more capability and efficiency. See Kirk Sorensen videos 💡
@@robertweekes5783 China understands this, but apparently, the US does not.
The pride of the University of Saskatchewan
I haven’t watched this. I’m guess he says 20 years.
fusion doesn't imply infinite energy though. Eventually all of our hydrogen and deuterium will be fused into heavier elements
In 20 years, just as always.
How real is a concern that the focus is being put on getting new and more electric generation capacities and nearly nothing being done to protect the electrical grid from magnetic solar flares which will be increasing in five years?
Lol 1di0t 😂😂😂😂
I have a hunch there’s a simpler way to access the energy all around us.
prediction: not gonna happen in my lifetime.
and I am 40.
We'll still have to use solar and wind. LMFAO 🤣
Why's our energy produced the way it is now?
Good interview overall. I was a bit disappointed that Dr. Whyte didn't provide straight answers about the commercial viability of nuclear fusion. He claims it is four years away but considering all the many huge hurdles that must be cleared to accomplish this the four year estimate sounds ridiculous. There is no indication that any fusion reactor will ever be able to generate more electricity than it consumes and that is using deuterium and tritium as fuel which has the lowest fusing temperature and the highest energy output. Tritium is extremely rare and expensive so it probably cannot be used for commercial applications. Straight deuterium as fuel is plentiful and cheap but requires much higher temperatures and generates less energy. Dr. Whyte knows all this. Why doesn't he just spit it out rather than blowing smoke up our butts?
I like smoke up my butt
@@rickymort135 I don't. it makes me walk funny.
Financial interests. That is why the only source of reliable information is from unbiased sources.
Same. We don't even know how to harness the output energy from the kind of fission reaction just demonstrated enough to apply ANY of it to another fuel pellet, let alone 10 per second in rapid succession. 4 years, ha!
If he told the truth, his money grift would be over.
Let’s recap:
1. 1 trillion dollars.
2. 70 years
We already have a giant fusion reactor in the sky. It's more logical to invest in grid scale storage research: flow cell batteries, chemistries made of abundant elements, iron-salt, etc. Or, solve it by radical policy. Instrument a national power cut between 3am and 4am every night, increasing by 1 minute every month, and let the market figure it out.
That's laughable. Solar has been a cottage industry and will likely stay that way. It's been a fun way for people to make money, I admit, but it's a joke.
@@luke2642 And yet, the only REAL reason that it has such appeal is because of subsidies and the agreement of companies to let it feed into the grid and give back rebates. But that has basically ended, ending its appeal. It cannot and does not provide baseload and battery technology will probably not change that fact any time soon, ESPECIALLY given the fact of, you know, WINTER, which is a thing. I'm not saying it's not useful, but it's not the silver bullet many articles claim, and they claim this, because they are trying to sell you something.
@@amrenmiller6053 You're laughing at the cheapest form of electricity generation? It's grown ~1000% in 10 years.... while costs have fallen. In the UK without subsidy, panels cost less than £1/W and electricity costs £0.34 / kWh. With 1400 hours of sunshine a year, the payback period is 3 years. The real problem is that we use ~1TWh per day, which is massive grid storage, the technology just doesn't exist yet.
Fusion is always 30 yrs away
Fusion power is 10 years away................Just like it was 40 years ago. Hope for the best on this but don't hold your breath.
This horseless buggy thing will never catch on.
Does not matter. The price of energy will never come down. That's the bottom line
still more than a century away...
Let me guess. 30 years.
best of luck obviously but this conversation avoids discussing the engineering specification with good reason and personally I have never read of any fusion project that is near the goal of commercial fusion power - not a joke it seems out of reach.
Likely never, because the recent breakthrough was false hype. Why else would they lie to spark new interest and funding? There was no net gain in energy. The experiment cost 100 times the energy produced. It took 300 mega joules to power the laser session used for it. They re-calculated that down to a theoretical 2.05 mega joules, largely based on how inefficient the type of laser they used was estimated to be. They consumed 300 mega joules to produce 3. The answer to when, is never. Fusion is a process that consumes energy, squeezing out excess energy in that reaction. Fusion alone, is never self-sustaining. Even the sun is powered by an active gravity well, constantly squeezing together and heating lighter elements, producing energy as a result of that active pressure. Take that pressure off and the sun’s elements would quit fusing, cold stop. It requires a lot of power, and there is no such thing as going critical the same way, because fusion is not self-sustaining. The opposite happens when you break down matter, since matter is already highly concentrated energy by nature. Start breaking down unstable elements and they can start others breaking down, because the matter-energy relationship goes that way. Matter is concentrated energy. Unconcentrating it, or fissing it, releases it in the direction of pure energy.
The NIF was always doomed for failure, because it wasn't really even meant for building a real power plant. It was designed to test nuclear bombs without actually exploding them. It was and is an expensive parlor trick, nothing else.
>when will be commercial fusion
>doesn't answer the question
2050
I hope nuclear fusion is viable but I suspect it's a boondoggle money pit. I wish he would have asked about the financial incentives for keeping fusion front and center for funding. Great interview nevertheless.
He is more like a salesman than a scientist. Video Summary: Nuclear fusion power is still a long way off. So give us the money.
He 3 would be more accessible a decade from now.
All we need is money. Money money money
Green blood signed Bernie Madoff
Don’t worry the icecaps already melted back in 2001/08/12/16/18/20/22, we don’t need to worry about climate change, we are already underwater 🫠
In 10 years his pension kicks in.
When Nikola Telsa said he was working on free energy for all. J P Morgan was horrified and pulled the plug. Excuse the pun. Commercial will be held back by the big money. Just thinking aloud.
they got active running reactor on Moon … why we can’t have it ?
Who are 'they' ?
and why the hell would whoever 'they' are, want to put a fusion reactor on the moon?
@@alangarland8571 cos it might go bang
@@alangarland8571 I was asking first !
czcams.com/video/wMaE3dsO3hg/video.html
there ya go tak a look yourself.
Taken w infra filter 18 inch telescope
@@alangarland8571 Id say humans like us but from different corners … according to John Lear …
This guy rambles incessantly. He's the kind of guy that if you ask him the time of day, he'll tell you how to build a clock.
The price of ultra high intelligence 🙂
@@cabanford Not even. He's ok at the subject, but with a terrible delivery. He's like a college professor that can't teach and when all of his students perform poorly on tests, blame them.
@@weirdshibainu sounds like you know him personally? 😬🤷🏻
@@cabanford no...I don't know you personally either and wouldn't want to.
Sadly we have nuclear technology in fission and just choose not to use it. No carbon, cheap energy that we can build today without waiting for fusion.
How about Universal human rights for everybody on the planet the right to housing ,food , Medical, Education ,universe basic income and the right to travel Anywhere on the planet
Absolutely good fucking luck with that one. Unrealistic outlook on life. I mean you’d have to change China and Russia first then the Persians. The right to travel anywhere on the planet already exists too… we have airlines?
Not to mention you’re stating this message at a podcast host and a professor of engineering. How the hell are they going to do anything about your demands? Why don’t you do or change something.
Interesting but didn't answer the question + self promotion
Never. Duh
Bitcoin miners will do it themselves and not be afraid of shit
Sorry i dont see fusion as practical in the 21th Century. We need to look at other sources of energy to fill the gap. Come on guys, we dont even have a good battery, dont be fool by this overly optimistic assessment.
This guy looks and sounds like Jeff bazos and Bill Gates at the same time. It's uncanny.
a lot of talking with very little information
I think this dude needs to study Bible history. Isaac Newton studied the metaphysical with the physical knowing there is a connection between the two.
Let's all pray for fusion! Humanahumanahumanah!! All hail the fusion god. Grant us thy plasma! Amen
Get to the point plz
Quintessential hand waving
This guy clearly doesn't have a clue. He talks flubber. Lots of words, no substance. Commercial fusion is not going to happen.
@@DelgaDude Axiomatically, over decades, the billions spent on the fusion research industrial complex and the lack of progress thereof has only served to demonstrate that fusion research is nothing more than a government subsidised Ponzi scheme for vested interests who ride the fission research gravy train.
The practical fusion dream is as unrealistic as the multiple increase in battery density dream and the ubiquitous grid scale green hydrogen dream.
All nonsense as the physics, the science and the periodic table simply do not lend themselves to resolving these insoluble enigmas of our time.
@@DelgaDude "commercial fusion is perfectly doable it's the engineering part that provides a huge challenge"...indeed, hence, I stated that 'PRACTICAL' fusion is unrealistic. Self serving vested interests attempting to replicate the sun on earth in order to generate useful energy is a heavily subsidised con. Unfortunately, the wide-eyed and credulous cohort amongst us all fall for this type of impractical, unrealistic science with alacrity.
@@DelgaDude Replicating the sun on earth in order to create grid-scale energy is thus far an unfalsifiable hypothesis created and promoted by those who are too eager to believe in anything and perpetuated by vested interests. Grow up and start thinking with a degree of critical thought and objective rationale my benighted chatmate.
@@DelgaDude My expertise is in energy, energy investment and energy transition hence I know that research in fusion, utilitarian battery density and grid-scale green hydrogen is heavily subsidised and politicised nonsense that creates subsidised jobs for the boys, not useful energy solutions.
@@DelgaDude Here is a great video explaining some of the challenges czcams.com/video/JurplDfPi3U/video.html
1000’s of stupid PHD’s
100’s of lasers
Using the most rare element on earth. Tritium.
Blah blah blah.
IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN.
They use Tritium because Deutrium-Tritium fusion is the easiest kind to achieve. You can use other elements but it will be tens and hundreds of times more difficult.
27 minutes of self promotion and motivational speech, what a waste of time. He could have talked about breeding unicorns, how generic engineering matured, we might have challenges, but we may be there if we really want to with a small team of motivated people; and would probably have as much substance as this one.
He kind of avoided the issue with what his thought is on the size of a fusion reactor! We have fusion reactors all over the universe in stars! The inputted power required to supply the electric magnets to just abstain this reaction is so immense that where is or how far off is the commercial viability of this, but the size! Mother nature does not lend itself to much hope if we take into account the smallest fusion reactor she's ever produced!
That is why confinement is achieved via magnets, which are 10 to the power of 38 stronger than gravity. But, even that is not enough, so the plasma must be much hotter than the core of the sun.
But of course, he avoided the issue, and all other issues, because we simply do not know. We did not manage to tame that beast of a plasma, and yet the tone of the speech was almost as if everything is ready and it is only a scaling issue.