November 4, 2014 • 43 mins
The world's energy consumption is ruining the planet but for decades physicists have been working on what could solve the world's energy and climate change woes for centuries to come - nuclear fusion. Learn about building stars on Earth in this episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles to Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry's barrel laughs,
and this is stuff you should know. She gave us
(00:21):
the all quick start. Yeah, like I don't want to
hear any more impression record. She knows that shuts me up,
or at least cuts off whatever conversation I'm chiding her.
It's great. I'm telling you. If we could release the
twenty seconds before each show as its own show, that
would be terrible. No one would care. No, we'd think
it was funny, and everybody else would be like, you
(00:43):
edit this out for a reason. Uh so, Chuck, how
you doing great? Have you ever been to Azen, Provence, France? No?
Is that a place? Yeah? No, I haven't. It is
a rustic little town in Provence, and it is strangely,
(01:04):
maybe even ironically in the non hipster use, but in
the actual Yeah, it's a word. Definition of the word
um also cite to one of the most futuristic engineering
projects humanity has ever undertaken. That's the sound that makes Oh,
I thought you're mocking me for being thrilled by the
(01:26):
thought of this thing. No, it is kind of funny
that this thing is in a sleepy little town. It's
like a hamlet, maybe evencern in Switzerland. That's not in
the city, is it. No, you can't build these things
in cities. That's whether in sleepy towns exactly because no
one knows they're being poisoned. Yeah, and you can push
the mare around pretty easy, exactly. This thing is called
eider I t e R, which is an acronym for
(01:47):
the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, which really gets to the
point across. Did you know the word acronym is an acronym. Hm,
that's not true. Okay, I just want to see how
long you would try and sort it out in your head.
I would have kept going on seconds. Maybe that would
have been a great joke. I could have just kept
it going. I'm not gonna tell you I would have
(02:09):
been I would have it was maybe fifteen seconds, because
we've gotten that much more so. Now I wouldn't have
looked it up. I would have figured it out myself anyway. Either.
Is this colossal engineering project. Somebody compared it to the
Pyramids at Giza. Yeah, that's that's exciting stuff. Sure. Um.
(02:32):
The thing is is it's a nuclear fusion reactor, and
it's the culmination of decades of attempts to create a
nuclear fusion reactor because we got fission down and we'll
talk about the difference in a minute, Um, but fusion
has been very elusive, and nowhere is it more apparent
(02:53):
than in the either project. Because this thing is going
to cost an approximately fifty billion dollars when it's completed,
fifty billion dollars. They started. They're hoping to turn on
the switch in two thousand twenty, but it's looking like
two thousand twenty three or two thousand twenty four, and
it won't be starting to produce anything until the two
(03:15):
thousand forties at the earliest. So what's the point. I'll
tell you the point. If we can figure out nuclear fusion, Chuck,
the world's literally the world's energy problems will be solved
for millennia. If we can just figure this out, we
will have a almost no radio activity nuclear option um,
(03:42):
almost limitless fuel supply, totally green clean, no pollution of
greenhouse emissions, and with plenty of energy to spare using
the already extant infrastructure we have to supply power, Like,
you don't have to completely rebuild everything. You can just
(04:03):
to the electrical cables outside. It'll be the exact same thing. Yeah,
you can just go to a nuclear fission reactor and
press the button that says fusion and it'll all of
a sudden joined atoms instead of split them exactly. That's
what the difference is. With fission, you're splitting atoms and
you're gaining energy from that. With fusion, you're smacking them
together and you're gaining even more energy because we're you're
(04:25):
exploiting a different fundamental force. Yeah, and that I was
being coy. Clearly, there is no button because we would
have pushed it a long time ago. And when I
say no pollution and no greenhouse emissions before the pedantic
among you right in we know that just even shipping
something from here to there causes pollution and greenhouse emissions,
(04:46):
but we're talking about the the output of the reactor
itself is very green. So if you want to know
all about either, well we're gonna talk about it here there,
because it's just you just can't talk about nuclear fusion
reactors and not mention either. But if you want to
know a lot of out Either. There is a really
great article called A Star in a Bottle Um and
it's by a person named Rathi Katcha Duran durian Uh
(05:08):
and it was written in the New Yorker not too
long ago. And man, it is every detail you want
to know about the Either project written really well. Um,
and it's long, but it's totally worth the read. Yeah,
it's all over the news lately. And for good reason.
You said a lot of energy. I have a stat
I'm gonna throw back to the old days here. Per
(05:29):
kilogram of fuel, if we're talking fusion and fission, fusion
produces four times more energy than fission. I saw seven.
It's probably one of the things where it's like four
to five to ten or something. I've found four times
and ten million times more than coal, ten million times
(05:50):
the energy that's coal. And that's with equal fuel per
kilogram of fuel. It's just I mean, it is the future. Yeah.
And you can say, well that's great because we want
eight team million times the amount of power that coal provides.
You can say, well, they're buddy. You can also bring
it backwards because you can supply an awful lot of power.
Then with a lot less fuel. We're like, the advantage
(06:14):
of nuclear fusion are mind boggling and and very few
uh downsides, which we'll get to, of course, but I mean,
like really genuinely, it's not just like some like here's
all the great stuff about it and just don't pay
attention to all these like really horrible aspects. Um Like,
there really aren't too many downsides. The downside is we
are at this moment incapable of successfully creating a commercially
(06:41):
viable nuclear fusion reactor. That's right, But we've got an
understanding of what the challenges are ahead of us thanks
to the last fifty or so years of really really
really smart physicists working on the problem of nuclear fusion. Uh.
And the great inspiration for nuclear fusion is the Sun.
(07:01):
The Sun and all stars like it are enormous, immense
nuclear fusion reactors. So if you are building a nuclear
fusion reactor here on Earth, you're essentially creating a star,
and that is a very difficult thing to do. It
turns out, yeah, the sun creates and we talked about
(07:22):
the Sun in our very famous episode on the Sun. Um,
the sun creates six twenty million metric tons. It fuses
six million metric tons of hydrogen at its core every second.
So every second at the Sun's core, it produces enough
power to light up New York City for a hundred
years New York City every second. And that's the Sun.
(07:45):
And all we want to do is do the same
thing on a much smaller scale. Create. I think the
guy knows this kid who built one in his garage
and he said he wanted to Chris saw this Ted talk.
He wanted to create a star in a box is
what he called it. Yeah, I've seen it, Like this
New Yorker called it a star in a bottle. Yeah.
This kid's name is Taylor Wilson, and uh, he's a
(08:07):
nuclear physicist and he's like sixteen and he created Yeah,
he he created a successful one. And the key, though,
is not to be able to create the fusion. That
the key is to be able to harness enough plasma,
which we'll get to at a high enough temperature and
density for there to be a net power gain. Right,
(08:27):
you can create fusion, but in order to get out
more than you're putting in is the only thing that matters.
Because what you want to do is create electricity exactly.
That's there's two huge challenges right now to nuclear fusion.
We pretty much understand it enough to start it going
and and get energy from it. The problem is is
material science isn't at a point where it can build
(08:50):
a containment vessel to really house a thermonuclear reactor. And
then the other big obstacle is, like you said, net
energy gain, Like if you're putting in as much or
more energy then you're getting out of your nuclear reactor.
Then you're wasting energy, and it's the opposite of what
you're supposed to be doing. Yeah, they're not just trying
(09:11):
to impress people with their science knowledge, no, but up
to the trying to create energy. Up to now, though, Chuck,
like every single thermonuclear reactor that's ever been built has
just been impressing people with knowledge. Like, they haven't gotten
any net energy out of a single thermonuclear fusion reactor.
You see, I have that they have their right now,
(09:33):
they're up to like tin uh presently they're at ten megawatts. Yeah,
and that's more than they put into a net gain
of tin megawatts currently. Everything I saw was when we
turned this thing on, it should have a net gain.
But I didn't see that they've actually done it. Yeah,
tin megawatts now, and Eider is going to produce five
(09:54):
hundred megawatts once it's fully operational. So the the next
challenge then is this, if we're already getting a net
energy gain out of it, then that means that the
net energy gain is it's not sustainable. Like you said,
you want to keep the thing going so you don't
have to keep starting from scratch to power it up.
(10:15):
You wanted to basically be self sustaining, so you just
have to add a little more fuel. That's the dream.
So let's talk about the history of of fusion reactors. Chuck. Yeah,
it kind of goes back to this guy named Lyman Spitzer.
He's a thirty six year old Princeton astrophysicist and this
was in the nineteen fifties and he was recruited to
(10:37):
work on the H bomb, and UH went out and
got a copy of of a of a paper that
was released from Germany, I think, right that Argentina. Argentina. Yeah,
they announced that they had get that wrong. They had
successfully built a fusion reactor, right. So he gets this paper, UH,
(10:58):
goes on a ski trip, starts thinking about how he
can do this takes a little break from his job
building the H bomb and figures out, you know, I
think it's possible if we can harness this plasma. I
guess we should just go ahead and find what plasma is.
Since we keep saying it, Well, there's there's the normal
three energy states that were familiar with, water, solid and gas,
(11:22):
liquid solid and gas. Right, there's a fourth one. It's plasma.
And plasma is basically like an energetic gas where the
temperatures are so high that whatever atoms you put into it,
the electrons are stripped off and allowed to move around freely. Basically,
the surface of the Sun is plasma. That's that's what
plasma is. It's a gas. It's a roiling gas. It's
(11:44):
really hard to control and is really unpredicted, which is
when you want to see the Sun like that rippling,
weighty looking thing, that's plasma, right. And the reason the
Sun manages to stay together is because it is enormously
massive and has a ton of gravity at its core.
We don't have that advantage here on Earth. We don't,
so we try to make up for that by increasing
the temperature. That's right, And he was onto it way
(12:07):
back then in the nineteen fifties. If we can just
harness this, we can just get hot enough. And he
created a tabletop device called the uh stellar rator and
it was an a figure eight position. It was a
pipe and a figure eight uh, and this would keep
things from banging into walls theoretically. Yeah, and he was
onto something because well, we'll get to lock youed later.
(12:28):
But they're using a similar device now figure eight. Oh yeah. Yeah,
we didn't realize that it is, which is weird because
what they eventually found out was that a donut shape
was really the key, uh to get that net gain.
So the and the reason that they found out that
a donut shape worked was because in the I think
the late fifties, UM, the US had run up against
(12:52):
the wall. They're saying like, okay, we we've got this,
but we can't control of the plasma because think about it,
what you're trying to do is create a star inside something,
but it can't touch any of the vessel that it's
in or else it'll just completely erupt it. Right. Yeah.
They compared it to holding jelly and rubber bands. Right.
(13:13):
It was just like you can't they couldn't figure out
how to control the plasma. So when when the US
ran up against this wall, they said, hey, the rest
of the world, we're gonna declassify what Lyman Spitz Lyman
Spitzer has been doing, and like, we'll share if you
guys share. And it turns out that the Russians had
um already come up against this problem and licked it.
(13:36):
They figured out that if you put the thing in
a what's called the toroidal shape, a donut shape um
using electro magnets, you contame the plasma essentially, and the
the the donut shape itself was pretty ingenious, but the
real stroke of genius was by running electro magnets in
(13:56):
rings around the donut. So it's like you you have
a donut and you put a bunch of earrings around it, right,
and those are electromagnets. So you're creating an electro magnetic
force field which contains the plasma. But then you also
put a an electro magnetic force field in the middle
of the plasma. So not only does it heat it
up to the temperatures you want, it also stabilizes it further.
(14:19):
So the Russians have invented what they call the tacomac um,
which is this doughnut shape nuclear fusion reactor that basically
became the standard for the next fifty years or so. Yeah,
you basically could achieve a really dense, super hot plasma.
And we'll get into temperatures and stuff in a bit.
But since we can't create that kind of pressure that
(14:42):
they have in the Sun due to their gravity, their gravity,
the Sun's gravity, you know, the Sun and all those people. Yeah,
like you said, we had to make up for it
here on Earth with temperatures, right, because apparently if you
are in a in the middle of a nuclear reactor,
a nuclear fusion reactor, um, you're going to find that
the temperatures inside are about six times hotter than the
(15:06):
core of the Sun, not even the services and the
core of the Sun. And the reason why it has
to be so much hotter is because, like you said,
we can't we can't replicate that density. We can get
to those temperatures that we need, but we can't get
to the density, so we have to make up for it. Um.
So we'll talk about kind of the physics of what's
going on here and why you have to have high
temperatures and what we're making up for with density and everything, Right,
(15:29):
after this. So, Chuck, we're talking about nuclear fusion, and
there's it's actually surprisingly understandable at its most basic core. Yeah,
you're fusing atoms. Is not the hardest thing in the
world to wrap your head around. Yeah. So with fission,
we're splitting atoms. You're taking an atom and you're splitting
(15:52):
its nuclei apart. You're splitting the neutrons and the protons
apart from one another. And when you do that, one
of the four fundamental four is electromagnetic force pushes them
away and you get this burst of energy. With fusion,
you're taking nuclei from different atoms. You're taking protons and
um neutrons, and you're smashing them together. And when you
(16:15):
do that, you're unleashing what's called the strong force, which
appropriately enough is stronger than electromagnetic force, which is why
nuclear fusion yields more energy than nuclear fission. Yeah. Einstein
himself said, you know, each time you smash these things together,
you're gonna lose a little bit of mass, and that
little bit of mass is a ton of energy. As
(16:36):
it turns out, that's right, The famous equals mc square. Yeah,
and I don't think he realized in nineteen o five,
or maybe Einstein did. Einstein probably did. Yeah, Einstein probably did.
I would guess he did. So the problem is, even
though it is very easy to smash the protons together, um,
there is a tremendous amount of resistance to that smashing together.
They don't want to smash together, no, because it's just
(16:58):
like if you take a magnet to magnets and you
put the positive polls toward one another, they repel one another, right,
the same thing. That's that's the same principle on an
atomic level too. If you take protons, which are positively
charged particles, and try to put them together, they repel
one another. And the closer you get them together, the
(17:19):
stronger the the repellent force is the electromagnetic force, right,
But if you can get them close enough, the electromagnetic
force is overcome by that strong force, the strong nuclear force,
and they become bound together because the strong force is
that one of those four fundamental forces of the universe,
(17:39):
and that is the force that keeps atoms together, and
that is the that force is stronger than the force
that repels like charged particles. Yeah, and when you talk
about close, they need to be within one times ten
to the negative fifteen meters of one another. If you'll
indulge me, sure, you're gonna read a bunch of zeros.
(18:01):
It's point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero
zero zero zero zero zero zero one meters apart, right,
that's how close they have to be. That's right, Uh,
to get them to accept one another and to fuse. Um.
I think I have a theory that if they they
are not fusing because they think they're going to be
(18:22):
made into a bomb, and if we told them that
we're creating energy, they might be more willing to fuse together. Yeah,
because protons are peace necks. Everybody knows that. So when
when they do fuse together, right, when you do cross
that threshold and the strong force takes over and overcomes
the electromagnetic force. Um, Like we said, a tremendous amount
(18:43):
of energy is released, and it's released in part in
the form of neutrinos neutrons, right, which are right, neutral
particles which suddenly start carrying a tremendous amount of kinetic energy.
So let's say you have one atom, you've got another,
add them and they're both like, I'm not getting close
to you. We're not going to get okay, we got
(19:04):
together that force that that mass that's displaced is transferred
through the neutron that gets kicked off of the atom
right and is carried out. Now, a neutron doesn't have
any kind of positive or negative charts. It's neutral. It's
a neutron, which means that it can pass through the
very electromagnetic fields that are keeping this plasma where this
(19:28):
reaction is taking place together. Once that happens, Chuck, it
can go out to what's called a blanket wall and
a thermonuclear reactor warm it, and then that heat is
transferred into a water cooling system. The waters warmed up
turns steam, which generates a which I guess moves the turbine,
(19:49):
and then all of a sudden, the turbines producing electricity. Yeah,
it's funny how just it gets so complex. But all
you're still trying to do is create steam. It's like
a turbine. It's like cooking the eyes that's up to
a horse, right, you know, move it over there. So
there are a few types of fusion reactions. Um the
ultimate goal right now, what we can do on a
(20:12):
small scale is what's called a uh deuterium tritium reaction.
That's the one that we can currently achieve. That's one
atom of deuterium and one atom of tritium combining to
form a helium four atom and a neutron. The ultimate goal.
I mean, that's good and that will create a lot
of energy, but there are a few downsides. Tritium is radioactive.
(20:34):
For one, um, you have to mind it from lithium. Yeah,
and lithium is fairly rare um. The ultimate goal is
to to reach deuterium deuterium reactions, which is two deuterium
atoms combining to form that helium three in a neutron.
And you can get that from the sea water. It's abundant,
almost limitless um. And I couldn't find this, but I
(20:56):
think clean water can be a residual effect of that.
Am I wrong? I don't know if it's if well,
you're probably not injecting water, but to get the deuterium,
I mean, desalination plants are the key to the future
as far as supplying the world with fresh water. Yeah,
I thought I saw somewhere where it was an actual byproduct,
but yeah, but then I couldn't find it, so I'm
(21:18):
not sure if that's right or you know what, you
just chalk my memory. I feel like in a hydrogen
powered car, water is one of the by products. So
maybe so yeah, all right, don't quote me on that though.
Um at the very least, it's a great way to
create energy, right and and what what's you also can
get um tritium from helium, I believe so even now
(21:40):
with the the deuterium tritium reactions that we're working on,
there's there's already a there's a work around, you know,
like you can create a thermonuclear reactor that's a breeding
reactor to where the byproduct helium can be used to
harvest more of the fuel you're using tritium. Yeah, aren't
we running low on helium? We are? Which is like
(22:01):
remember when we were talking about in the dirigible the Zeppelin,
which one was how blimps work? Yeah, and then a
long time ago we did one on the Mars turbine.
Mars turbine. But yes, there's very clearly helium shortage and
the idea that we're just using it for party balloons
rather than this is scary. Yeah, And don't be confused.
(22:25):
We say things like deuterium and it sounds super complex.
All that is hydrogen with an extra neutron. Yeah, it's
an isotope. So there's three isotopes of hydrogen, and they're
all still the same element. They're all still hydrogen, but
they have different configurations as far as their neutrons go.
So protium is a hydrogen isotope with one proton and
(22:46):
no neutrons. Deuterium is a hydrogen isotope with one proton
and one neutron, and tritium is a hydrogenitri isotope with
one proton and two neutrons. And like you said, tritium
is radioactive, but the beauty of it is you need
very very very little of it to to fuel a
nuclear fusion reactor, and it becomes a stable helium, a
(23:09):
non radioactive helium in the reactor, so you don't have
this leftover radioactive fuel. I think they said there's an
it would be equivalent of the radiation we just see
every day, and I'm walking around on the street right Yes,
the background radiation. I believe I saw that too. The
thing is is the parts to the nuclear reactor themselves
(23:29):
will become irradiated over time. Apparently, though compared to the
kind of radio activity that's generated from nuclear fission um.
This stuff you could just disassemble and bury in the
desert for a hundred years, go back and dig back up,
and it will be totally inactivated. So it's it's the
stuff that is radioactive is extraordinarily manageable. Yeah, it is.
(23:54):
And UM, like I said, we don't want to make
it sound like this is perfect. There is. They do
predict the short to medium term radioactive waste problem and
they say that's due to activation of the structural materials,
the actual thermonuclear device itself. Yeah, and while you don't
need much tritium, even a few grams of tritium is problematic. Um.
(24:15):
But hopefully you know, there's no accident, although they say
accidents with these um as. If you just turn the
power off, it stops everything. It's not like a chain
reaction can occur like a fission reactor. There's no control.
There's not a meltdown. There's which Also, if you want
to know more about that, go listen to our how
nuclear Meltdowns work UM episode. That was pretty good. We
(24:39):
released it right after Fukushima. But it applies to all
fission um reactors. That's right. So the goal is ultimately
deuterium deuterium reactions whether it does, and the reason why
is again, it's abundant fuel. You can get it from
desalinating sea water. And then um, secondly, it's not radioactive
(24:59):
at any point, so it wouldn't make the the thermonuclear
reactor itself radioactive, that's right. The reason why we're not
doing that already is because we can't achieve the temperatures necessary,
that's right. Which leads us to the two big stumbling blocks. Um,
everyone knows this is a great idea. There's no one
out there saying, oh, I don't know about this fusion thing.
(25:19):
Creating a star in a box sounds kind of weird.
The problem is the barriers that we have here on
planet Earth. Um. Which is one temperature into pressure. Uh.
We have achieved the temperature which is the requirements is
a one hundred million kelvin and like you said, that's
about six times hotter than the Sun's core, which is
(25:41):
pretty intense. UM. And the other is pressure. Like we said,
we need to get them within I'm not gonna make
you read all those zeros again, but smashed them that
close in order to fuse, and since we don't have
that kind of mass and gravity that the sun does.
There are a few pretty genius way is that we're
working around that. Uh yeah, there's basically two as it stands,
(26:05):
and then the Lockheed Martin one, which a lot of
people are skeptical about what we should say. It's kind
of a variation on the on one theme. But there's
basically there's two ways that we've figured out to create
nuclear fusion reactors so far. One is using magnetic confinement
and the other is using inertial confinement. So magnetic confinement
(26:27):
uses that tacomac technology. Yeah, it's sort of like CERN.
You know, it's using magnets to to create pressure. I
guess in cerns case are using it to create speed,
but in this case is to create pressure. Right, So
what you're doing is is you have a UM, you
have this donut shaped chamber and that's your reaction chamber,
(26:47):
and then again rings around the donut that go on
around the inside and outside of the donut. I know,
I'm kind of imagining wonderful donuts going Homer Sims in area. UM.
They create electromagnetic fields. Now, remember this plasma is hydrogen
gas that's been heated up to a temperature so hot
that the electrons just float off and move around freely,
(27:09):
and because of this higher temperature, these particles have become
really really energized, so they're moving and bouncing all over
the place, and the pressure is building up. But because
electrons are negatively charged and because protons are positively charged,
if you use alternating electromagnetic fields, you can contain this plasma.
So that's this incredibly hot gas that's six times hotter
(27:32):
than the core of the Sun can be contained within
the electromagnetic fields. That's right. And Uh, we talked about
power and power out it need you need about seventy
megawatts of power to create this to start this fusion reaction,
but you're gonna yield about five hundred megawatts. That's the
Eider project, I believe. Yeah, that's the Ider and that's um.
(27:54):
That's only a three hundred to five hundred second reaction.
But like we said earlier, the eventual goal is that
it's sustaining itself, uh, which is just a beautiful concept.
So basically what they do is they have the the
the gas is injected into the chamber, the hydrogen gas,
and then there's the electromagnetic fields that are holding the
(28:15):
plasma place but then remember we said, the Russians figured
out that if you put an electromagnetic field in the
middle of the whole thing, it will stabilize that plasma,
but it also heats it up, so it serves this
double purpose. And then just to add a little extra temperature,
they shoot it with microwaves and some other stuff and
then heat it up. And then as the plasma goes
(28:36):
crazy and all the fusion energies released, the neutrons move
their way outside of the electromagnetic field into the blanket,
which they heat up, and the heat energy is transferred
to power that turbine to remove the horse down the
down the lane, and it's just creating steam. Yeah, and
there's I mean, that's like, that's what Ider is doing
right now. That's what they're trying to prove um. And
(28:57):
then also as iers spending billions and billions and billions
of dollars and running into tons of delays um. It's
an amazing project. Lockheed Martin basically just came out and said, oh,
by the way, this thing that you're trying to do,
that's gonna be a hundred feet tall and require staggering
amounts of energy and money. We're doing one that puts
(29:20):
out the same amount of energy as yours, but it's
a tenth of the size, which means it's almost out
of the gate commercially viable. Yeah. That is their skunk
Works UM division of Lockheed. And they announced this like
three days ago, uh here in mid October. And um,
they've gotten a lot of blowback from the scientific community
(29:41):
because they wouldn't release data. They don't have data. They
said it's a high beta device right now, and kind
of shut out the scientific community as far as questions go.
And um, every scientist that I saw interviewed for this said, yeah,
they're they're trying to get some attention, to get some
partners to join in. Well, yeah, plus makes you want
to run out and buy Lockheed Martin stock because if
(30:03):
one company you can figure out how to create a
thermonuclear fusion reactor here on Earth that's scalable. Yeah, that
that that that person would be very wealthy. Yeah. So
it's a dubious claim, but they are, you know, they're
working towards a good thing. I'm not like poopooing the
whole thing. But until they have hard data and like
some proof, then I think the scientific community has got
(30:25):
their arms folded right now. Yeah, and and I mean
they have at least some details. It's just not detailed
enough for a scientist's detailed enough for Aviation Week. Yeah,
they wrote an article on it. And basically what the
what the guy they interviewed was saying was that over
at either they have a low beta ratio, which is
the amount of electromagnetism that you need compared to the
(30:48):
amount of plasma you can put into the chamber. So
there's like five percent plasma electromagnetivity or electromagnetism just to
keep this plasma thing from just blowing up, because that
can happen. They might not melt down, but if everything
went wrong, the whole thing could blow up. Well, and
you know, you know what an atomic bomb is. It's
(31:09):
it's a fusion reaction, right, and this is a lot
of those all put together in one hundred foot um tower. Uh.
This guy was saying that the beta ratio for their
machine is like So, what he was saying is they
figured out a way and again it's not very detailed,
but they figured out a way to contain the plasma
(31:30):
but in a way that also allows it to expand
because if you think about it, the more plasma there is,
the more hydrogen atoms there are, the more hydrogen atoms,
more isotopes there are, the more nuclear fusion reactions are
events you can have, the more energy you can yield. Right,
So they're saying they figured out how to contain the plasma.
But again, like you said, the scientific community is really
(31:52):
skeptical because they think it's just the pr singe. Well,
I think they made the mistake by saying they invented
a magic oometer to make it all happen, and that's
the don't ask about it, right. I did see though,
that we're lockeed was using the figure eight in stelerator configuration. Uh,
And I think that's true. I tried. I found a
(32:13):
couple of more sources that were kind of vague about it,
and I think the details on it are just vague period.
But I don't know why they would amend in the
donut shaped if the figure eight was uh, you know,
nifties technology that's sort of been disproven. Well, supposedly, their
whole jam was that the even in the doughnut in
the Tacomac, this donut shaped reactor plasma has a tendency
(32:34):
to just move around and make its way out like
it's not. It's still not fully contained, and they're using
something basically mirrors to catch the plasma that's getting out
and moving it to parts of the electromagnetic field that
are less dense. So there's a bunch of protons in
this part of the field that field is being strained,
(32:55):
but then maybe there's not that many protons over here,
so they use mirrors to direct the protons to the
low density area to keep it all the field. Yeah,
even the whole thing out, which makes sense. But again,
if you're not releasing data, don't expect the scientific community
to buy it. You got that right. So there's another
way to build a thermonuclear reactor that's currently being worked
(33:16):
on two and we'll talk about that right after this. So, buddy,
magnetic confinement is pretty neat, and we talked about that,
and that's uh understandable, and I love it. I want
to date it. But internal confinement I want to marry
(33:40):
because it has lasers. Um At the National Ignition Facility
at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, they are actually using laser beams.
They have a device called the n i F device
where they focus a hundred and nine two laser beams
on a single point in a ten meter diameter target
chamber called a realm that's got to be German. And
(34:03):
basically inside that target chamber they have a little, tiny
pea sized pellet of deterium tritium in a little plastic cylinder.
It's funny that it can be plastic somehow. Yeah, you
think it would introduce like impurities or something into it, yeah,
or it would need to be like iron or something.
I don't know. It just seems unstable. But uh, that
is one point eight million jewels of power from these lasers.
(34:24):
That's gonna heat the cylinder up, generate some X rays,
and then that radiation will convert that pellet into plasma
and compress it. So again they're creating plasma, but instead
of smashing it together with magnets, they're superheating it with lasers.
So that's your that's your your money's on that one.
You're like, I just think it's neat because I like lasers.
But that's your preference of the two. Yes, Well, actually
(34:47):
whichever one works is going to be my preference, okay. Uh,
And that one will yield fifty two times more energy
more energy out than energy put in. So that's that's
a good goal. So um, yeah, I guess basically the
whole point of magnetic confinement is that if you can
do without electromagnets, you're you're you have a more simple
(35:09):
and elegant internal confinement inertial. Yeah, that's what I mean,
inertial confinement. Basically, the whole thing just happened so fast.
You don't even need these magnets to confine plasma because
you're not creating the sustained ignition. Right. Yeah, I might
have said internal confinement before. By the way, it's inertial.
So what about cold fusion, buddy? That was all the
(35:31):
rage I remember back in the eighties. Yeah, because in
some researchers said that they successfully created nuclear fusion using um,
just room temperature stuff like palladium. They took palladium and
um and beer cans pretty much heavy water which had
(35:53):
a deuterium in it, and they put the whole thing
together and created nuclear fusion without the high temperatures, hence
the name cold Usian. And if you can get around
these high temperatures, then you work out the whole material
science problem, right, And if you work out the whole
material science problem. Then this is it's a desirable thing
(36:14):
to have cold fusion. The problem is is all a
lot of scientists tried to replicate these guys findings and
weren't able to So basically they were kicked to the curb.
So does that mean has cold fusion been abandoned or
are people still trying to get on that train. No.
In two thousand fives, some U c. L A. Researchers
basically said, um, we think we might have this thing down,
(36:36):
and they did. That's something called um pyroelectric crystal fusion.
Pyroelectric fusion. Yeah, we're basically it's the same result they
do what would be called cold fusion. Um. The problem
is that has a negative net energy yield. You have
to put in a lot more energy than you get
out of it. Well that's no good. Um. Eider seems
(36:59):
like they are making headway more than Lockheed despite their claim, Um,
they are being like we said, it's in Europe and
it's being financed by a bunch of different countries. Um,
the US is in, but they're kicking in. I think
the least amount only about seventeen million euros last year
of course we contributed dollars, but they're giving it to
(37:21):
us in euros. Um. I think the EU spends the most,
about eighty million. South Korea and China kicked in about
twenty and nineteen million respectively each. And I saw earlier
where Russia was involved, but then I didn't see what
they had contributed financially. Yeah, definitely. Are they still all right?
Well maybe they're just uh, we're writing a chip for
(37:42):
them for later they'll pay it's back. Uh, But it
is a very expensive prospect um, and you need you know,
countries getting together for something like this is not the
kind of thing that like the US can take on
on their own, I guess unless you're Lockheed Martin and
you don't have to prove your data. Right, So this
nuclear fusion, we'll see what happens. Yeah, you got anything else? Man? No,
(38:06):
I just say everybody should go read a Star in
a Bottle on the New Yorker. It's really really good. Yeah,
it's pretty neat. Um there. You can also go to instructibles.
If you want to build a nuclear fusion reactor in
your garage, you can do so. Um, you're not going
to create energy because like we said, you're gonna be
putting more than you get out. Um, but there are
(38:26):
instructions and that kid did it. His was a little
more advanced than the instructibles one obviously, but um yeah,
the sixteen year old kid. Yeah, he's amazing because his
was legit. He's done more than that too. His ted
talk was pretty impressive. Cool. He's like working on with
Homeman Security already for various projects that have nothing to
(38:47):
do with this. Yeah. Yeah. Uh. Well, if you want
to learn more about nuclear fusion, you can type those
words in the search bar how stuff works dot com.
And since I said that, it's time for a listener
mail and chew. Before we do listener mail, I wanta
um give a shout out to our Keyva team. Yeah,
for those of you who don't know, we did a
podcast many years back on micro lending UH and Kiva
(39:10):
k i v A dot org is a organization where
you can loan uh entrepreneurs and well used to be
just developing countries. Now you can do it here in
North America as well. UH twenty dollars at a time
that you can get paid back for. You can get
your money back if you're not happy, or you can
just keep reloaning that money and it helps them get
(39:31):
their small business going. And we started keep a team
many years ago and it is killing it. So you
got some stats for us. So basically, as of October nineteen, um,
we have loaned our team has loaned two point seven
million dollars two people in developing countries, nice and in
(39:54):
the U s here there um. And the big one
is we've exceeded one hundred thousand loans man by our team.
Our team only has eight thousand and seventy nine members.
So all eight thousand, seventy nine of you, guys, thank you,
way to go. Congratulations, yes, and thanks as always to
Glenn and Sonja are a de facto Kiva. Uh what
(40:14):
would you call them? Presidents? Presidents, presidents of the stuff
you should know, team, the captains of the stuff you
should know, team presidents. Okay, presidents president is yes, president
Uh yeah, they've been really like keeping it going for us. Yeah,
and when you know, sometimes we'll forget and GLENNI nudges, Hey, guys,
remember the Kiva team. We should mention it, right. So
(40:35):
the next the next goal we have is for three
million dollars in loans and we're on our way to it,
so come join us. We uh don't begrudge people who
are late to the party. Just go to kiva dot org,
slash teams slash stuff you should know and you can
sign up. That's right. So now it's time for listener
mill right. Indeed, sir, I'm gonna call this sky writing
(40:58):
follow up um from Australia. You, hey, guys, recently listened
to how skywriting works and it reminded me of something.
Although this may not be suitable for listener mail, which
I disagree actually because i'm reading it. I was maybe
eight or nine when a few friends and I were
out on the street playing uh and doing things that
nine year olds would do. It's so awkward to say that.
(41:19):
So you're not replacing something right there. No, Um, they
were just doing nine year old things, good clean fun.
We looked up and saw a plane starting the skywrite.
We're instantly intrigued. What was being written? They started with
an H and then oh. This went on for maybe
twenty minutes until finally the word Hooters was scre haled
across the sky. I'll be it backwards, so I guess
(41:42):
they have the Hooters restaurant. Chicken wing Chain in Australia.
I guess they're a rich kid. Yeah, really immature rich
kid yeah. Or that My brain couldn't comprehend how this
person managed to screw up writing a word backwards. The
best reason my childish brain come with as it's I
writing took place somewhere between us and a group of
people that it was initially intended for. That I just
(42:06):
thought it was written up and downwards rather than across
the sky. Um until now, I never understood or bother
to learn why it was like that. So thank you
for keeping the podcast great allowing me to figure that out.
That is from Marlin. Heh boy uh hapai chi happaraci
(42:26):
chi nice. Have you ever seen a word like that? Ha?
Poor rachi ha, poor rachi Marlin from Sydney, Australia. Man,
thanks a lot, Marlin. H and that's Marlin with an
a even oh yeah, Marland, Well thanks a lot, Marlin.
(42:47):
We're gonna say like that. Sure. If you have an
awesome last name and want to share it with us,
you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
you should know. You can send us an email to
stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com and as always,
joined us at our home on the Web, Stuff You
Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands
(43:12):
of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com.
H
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles to Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry's barrel laughs,
and this is stuff you should know. She gave us
(00:21):
the all quick start. Yeah, like I don't want to
hear any more impression record. She knows that shuts me up,
or at least cuts off whatever conversation I'm chiding her.
It's great. I'm telling you. If we could release the
twenty seconds before each show as its own show, that
would be terrible. No one would care. No, we'd think
it was funny, and everybody else would be like, you
(00:43):
edit this out for a reason. Uh so, Chuck, how
you doing great? Have you ever been to Azen, Provence, France? No?
Is that a place? Yeah? No, I haven't. It is
a rustic little town in Provence, and it is strangely,
(01:04):
maybe even ironically in the non hipster use, but in
the actual Yeah, it's a word. Definition of the word
um also cite to one of the most futuristic engineering
projects humanity has ever undertaken. That's the sound that makes Oh,
I thought you're mocking me for being thrilled by the
(01:26):
thought of this thing. No, it is kind of funny
that this thing is in a sleepy little town. It's
like a hamlet, maybe evencern in Switzerland. That's not in
the city, is it. No, you can't build these things
in cities. That's whether in sleepy towns exactly because no
one knows they're being poisoned. Yeah, and you can push
the mare around pretty easy, exactly. This thing is called
eider I t e R, which is an acronym for
(01:47):
the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, which really gets to the
point across. Did you know the word acronym is an acronym. Hm,
that's not true. Okay, I just want to see how
long you would try and sort it out in your head.
I would have kept going on seconds. Maybe that would
have been a great joke. I could have just kept
it going. I'm not gonna tell you I would have
(02:09):
been I would have it was maybe fifteen seconds, because
we've gotten that much more so. Now I wouldn't have
looked it up. I would have figured it out myself anyway. Either.
Is this colossal engineering project. Somebody compared it to the
Pyramids at Giza. Yeah, that's that's exciting stuff. Sure. Um.
(02:32):
The thing is is it's a nuclear fusion reactor, and
it's the culmination of decades of attempts to create a
nuclear fusion reactor because we got fission down and we'll
talk about the difference in a minute, Um, but fusion
has been very elusive, and nowhere is it more apparent
(02:53):
than in the either project. Because this thing is going
to cost an approximately fifty billion dollars when it's completed,
fifty billion dollars. They started. They're hoping to turn on
the switch in two thousand twenty, but it's looking like
two thousand twenty three or two thousand twenty four, and
it won't be starting to produce anything until the two
(03:15):
thousand forties at the earliest. So what's the point. I'll
tell you the point. If we can figure out nuclear fusion, Chuck,
the world's literally the world's energy problems will be solved
for millennia. If we can just figure this out, we
will have a almost no radio activity nuclear option um,
(03:42):
almost limitless fuel supply, totally green clean, no pollution of
greenhouse emissions, and with plenty of energy to spare using
the already extant infrastructure we have to supply power, Like,
you don't have to completely rebuild everything. You can just
(04:03):
to the electrical cables outside. It'll be the exact same thing. Yeah,
you can just go to a nuclear fission reactor and
press the button that says fusion and it'll all of
a sudden joined atoms instead of split them exactly. That's
what the difference is. With fission, you're splitting atoms and
you're gaining energy from that. With fusion, you're smacking them
together and you're gaining even more energy because we're you're
(04:25):
exploiting a different fundamental force. Yeah, and that I was
being coy. Clearly, there is no button because we would
have pushed it a long time ago. And when I
say no pollution and no greenhouse emissions before the pedantic
among you right in we know that just even shipping
something from here to there causes pollution and greenhouse emissions,
(04:46):
but we're talking about the the output of the reactor
itself is very green. So if you want to know
all about either, well we're gonna talk about it here there,
because it's just you just can't talk about nuclear fusion
reactors and not mention either. But if you want to
know a lot of out Either. There is a really
great article called A Star in a Bottle Um and
it's by a person named Rathi Katcha Duran durian Uh
(05:08):
and it was written in the New Yorker not too
long ago. And man, it is every detail you want
to know about the Either project written really well. Um,
and it's long, but it's totally worth the read. Yeah,
it's all over the news lately. And for good reason.
You said a lot of energy. I have a stat
I'm gonna throw back to the old days here. Per
(05:29):
kilogram of fuel, if we're talking fusion and fission, fusion
produces four times more energy than fission. I saw seven.
It's probably one of the things where it's like four
to five to ten or something. I've found four times
and ten million times more than coal, ten million times
(05:50):
the energy that's coal. And that's with equal fuel per
kilogram of fuel. It's just I mean, it is the future. Yeah.
And you can say, well that's great because we want
eight team million times the amount of power that coal provides.
You can say, well, they're buddy. You can also bring
it backwards because you can supply an awful lot of power.
Then with a lot less fuel. We're like, the advantage
(06:14):
of nuclear fusion are mind boggling and and very few
uh downsides, which we'll get to, of course, but I mean,
like really genuinely, it's not just like some like here's
all the great stuff about it and just don't pay
attention to all these like really horrible aspects. Um Like,
there really aren't too many downsides. The downside is we
are at this moment incapable of successfully creating a commercially
(06:41):
viable nuclear fusion reactor. That's right, But we've got an
understanding of what the challenges are ahead of us thanks
to the last fifty or so years of really really
really smart physicists working on the problem of nuclear fusion. Uh.
And the great inspiration for nuclear fusion is the Sun.
(07:01):
The Sun and all stars like it are enormous, immense
nuclear fusion reactors. So if you are building a nuclear
fusion reactor here on Earth, you're essentially creating a star,
and that is a very difficult thing to do. It
turns out, yeah, the sun creates and we talked about
(07:22):
the Sun in our very famous episode on the Sun. Um,
the sun creates six twenty million metric tons. It fuses
six million metric tons of hydrogen at its core every second.
So every second at the Sun's core, it produces enough
power to light up New York City for a hundred
years New York City every second. And that's the Sun.
(07:45):
And all we want to do is do the same
thing on a much smaller scale. Create. I think the
guy knows this kid who built one in his garage
and he said he wanted to Chris saw this Ted talk.
He wanted to create a star in a box is
what he called it. Yeah, I've seen it, Like this
New Yorker called it a star in a bottle. Yeah.
This kid's name is Taylor Wilson, and uh, he's a
(08:07):
nuclear physicist and he's like sixteen and he created Yeah,
he he created a successful one. And the key, though,
is not to be able to create the fusion. That
the key is to be able to harness enough plasma,
which we'll get to at a high enough temperature and
density for there to be a net power gain. Right,
(08:27):
you can create fusion, but in order to get out
more than you're putting in is the only thing that matters.
Because what you want to do is create electricity exactly.
That's there's two huge challenges right now to nuclear fusion.
We pretty much understand it enough to start it going
and and get energy from it. The problem is is
material science isn't at a point where it can build
(08:50):
a containment vessel to really house a thermonuclear reactor. And
then the other big obstacle is, like you said, net
energy gain, Like if you're putting in as much or
more energy then you're getting out of your nuclear reactor.
Then you're wasting energy, and it's the opposite of what
you're supposed to be doing. Yeah, they're not just trying
(09:11):
to impress people with their science knowledge, no, but up
to the trying to create energy. Up to now, though, Chuck,
like every single thermonuclear reactor that's ever been built has
just been impressing people with knowledge. Like, they haven't gotten
any net energy out of a single thermonuclear fusion reactor.
You see, I have that they have their right now,
(09:33):
they're up to like tin uh presently they're at ten megawatts. Yeah,
and that's more than they put into a net gain
of tin megawatts currently. Everything I saw was when we
turned this thing on, it should have a net gain.
But I didn't see that they've actually done it. Yeah,
tin megawatts now, and Eider is going to produce five
(09:54):
hundred megawatts once it's fully operational. So the the next
challenge then is this, if we're already getting a net
energy gain out of it, then that means that the
net energy gain is it's not sustainable. Like you said,
you want to keep the thing going so you don't
have to keep starting from scratch to power it up.
(10:15):
You wanted to basically be self sustaining, so you just
have to add a little more fuel. That's the dream.
So let's talk about the history of of fusion reactors. Chuck. Yeah,
it kind of goes back to this guy named Lyman Spitzer.
He's a thirty six year old Princeton astrophysicist and this
was in the nineteen fifties and he was recruited to
(10:37):
work on the H bomb, and UH went out and
got a copy of of a of a paper that
was released from Germany, I think, right that Argentina. Argentina. Yeah,
they announced that they had get that wrong. They had
successfully built a fusion reactor, right. So he gets this paper, UH,
(10:58):
goes on a ski trip, starts thinking about how he
can do this takes a little break from his job
building the H bomb and figures out, you know, I
think it's possible if we can harness this plasma. I
guess we should just go ahead and find what plasma is.
Since we keep saying it, Well, there's there's the normal
three energy states that were familiar with, water, solid and gas,
(11:22):
liquid solid and gas. Right, there's a fourth one. It's plasma.
And plasma is basically like an energetic gas where the
temperatures are so high that whatever atoms you put into it,
the electrons are stripped off and allowed to move around freely. Basically,
the surface of the Sun is plasma. That's that's what
plasma is. It's a gas. It's a roiling gas. It's
(11:44):
really hard to control and is really unpredicted, which is
when you want to see the Sun like that rippling,
weighty looking thing, that's plasma, right. And the reason the
Sun manages to stay together is because it is enormously
massive and has a ton of gravity at its core.
We don't have that advantage here on Earth. We don't,
so we try to make up for that by increasing
the temperature. That's right, And he was onto it way
(12:07):
back then in the nineteen fifties. If we can just
harness this, we can just get hot enough. And he
created a tabletop device called the uh stellar rator and
it was an a figure eight position. It was a
pipe and a figure eight uh, and this would keep
things from banging into walls theoretically. Yeah, and he was
onto something because well, we'll get to lock youed later.
(12:28):
But they're using a similar device now figure eight. Oh yeah. Yeah,
we didn't realize that it is, which is weird because
what they eventually found out was that a donut shape
was really the key, uh to get that net gain.
So the and the reason that they found out that
a donut shape worked was because in the I think
the late fifties, UM, the US had run up against
(12:52):
the wall. They're saying like, okay, we we've got this,
but we can't control of the plasma because think about it,
what you're trying to do is create a star inside something,
but it can't touch any of the vessel that it's
in or else it'll just completely erupt it. Right. Yeah.
They compared it to holding jelly and rubber bands. Right.
(13:13):
It was just like you can't they couldn't figure out
how to control the plasma. So when when the US
ran up against this wall, they said, hey, the rest
of the world, we're gonna declassify what Lyman Spitz Lyman
Spitzer has been doing, and like, we'll share if you
guys share. And it turns out that the Russians had
um already come up against this problem and licked it.
(13:36):
They figured out that if you put the thing in
a what's called the toroidal shape, a donut shape um
using electro magnets, you contame the plasma essentially, and the
the the donut shape itself was pretty ingenious, but the
real stroke of genius was by running electro magnets in
(13:56):
rings around the donut. So it's like you you have
a donut and you put a bunch of earrings around it, right,
and those are electromagnets. So you're creating an electro magnetic
force field which contains the plasma. But then you also
put a an electro magnetic force field in the middle
of the plasma. So not only does it heat it
up to the temperatures you want, it also stabilizes it further.
(14:19):
So the Russians have invented what they call the tacomac um,
which is this doughnut shape nuclear fusion reactor that basically
became the standard for the next fifty years or so. Yeah,
you basically could achieve a really dense, super hot plasma.
And we'll get into temperatures and stuff in a bit.
But since we can't create that kind of pressure that
(14:42):
they have in the Sun due to their gravity, their gravity,
the Sun's gravity, you know, the Sun and all those people. Yeah,
like you said, we had to make up for it
here on Earth with temperatures, right, because apparently if you
are in a in the middle of a nuclear reactor,
a nuclear fusion reactor, um, you're going to find that
the temperatures inside are about six times hotter than the
(15:06):
core of the Sun, not even the services and the
core of the Sun. And the reason why it has
to be so much hotter is because, like you said,
we can't we can't replicate that density. We can get
to those temperatures that we need, but we can't get
to the density, so we have to make up for it. Um.
So we'll talk about kind of the physics of what's
going on here and why you have to have high
temperatures and what we're making up for with density and everything, Right,
(15:29):
after this. So, Chuck, we're talking about nuclear fusion, and
there's it's actually surprisingly understandable at its most basic core. Yeah,
you're fusing atoms. Is not the hardest thing in the
world to wrap your head around. Yeah. So with fission,
we're splitting atoms. You're taking an atom and you're splitting
(15:52):
its nuclei apart. You're splitting the neutrons and the protons
apart from one another. And when you do that, one
of the four fundamental four is electromagnetic force pushes them
away and you get this burst of energy. With fusion,
you're taking nuclei from different atoms. You're taking protons and
um neutrons, and you're smashing them together. And when you
(16:15):
do that, you're unleashing what's called the strong force, which
appropriately enough is stronger than electromagnetic force, which is why
nuclear fusion yields more energy than nuclear fission. Yeah. Einstein
himself said, you know, each time you smash these things together,
you're gonna lose a little bit of mass, and that
little bit of mass is a ton of energy. As
(16:36):
it turns out, that's right, The famous equals mc square. Yeah,
and I don't think he realized in nineteen o five,
or maybe Einstein did. Einstein probably did. Yeah, Einstein probably did.
I would guess he did. So the problem is, even
though it is very easy to smash the protons together, um,
there is a tremendous amount of resistance to that smashing together.
They don't want to smash together, no, because it's just
(16:58):
like if you take a magnet to magnets and you
put the positive polls toward one another, they repel one another, right,
the same thing. That's that's the same principle on an
atomic level too. If you take protons, which are positively
charged particles, and try to put them together, they repel
one another. And the closer you get them together, the
(17:19):
stronger the the repellent force is the electromagnetic force, right,
But if you can get them close enough, the electromagnetic
force is overcome by that strong force, the strong nuclear force,
and they become bound together because the strong force is
that one of those four fundamental forces of the universe,
(17:39):
and that is the force that keeps atoms together, and
that is the that force is stronger than the force
that repels like charged particles. Yeah, and when you talk
about close, they need to be within one times ten
to the negative fifteen meters of one another. If you'll
indulge me, sure, you're gonna read a bunch of zeros.
(18:01):
It's point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero
zero zero zero zero zero zero one meters apart, right,
that's how close they have to be. That's right, Uh,
to get them to accept one another and to fuse. Um.
I think I have a theory that if they they
are not fusing because they think they're going to be
(18:22):
made into a bomb, and if we told them that
we're creating energy, they might be more willing to fuse together. Yeah,
because protons are peace necks. Everybody knows that. So when
when they do fuse together, right, when you do cross
that threshold and the strong force takes over and overcomes
the electromagnetic force. Um, Like we said, a tremendous amount
(18:43):
of energy is released, and it's released in part in
the form of neutrinos neutrons, right, which are right, neutral
particles which suddenly start carrying a tremendous amount of kinetic energy.
So let's say you have one atom, you've got another,
add them and they're both like, I'm not getting close
to you. We're not going to get okay, we got
(19:04):
together that force that that mass that's displaced is transferred
through the neutron that gets kicked off of the atom
right and is carried out. Now, a neutron doesn't have
any kind of positive or negative charts. It's neutral. It's
a neutron, which means that it can pass through the
very electromagnetic fields that are keeping this plasma where this
(19:28):
reaction is taking place together. Once that happens, Chuck, it
can go out to what's called a blanket wall and
a thermonuclear reactor warm it, and then that heat is
transferred into a water cooling system. The waters warmed up
turns steam, which generates a which I guess moves the turbine,
(19:49):
and then all of a sudden, the turbines producing electricity. Yeah,
it's funny how just it gets so complex. But all
you're still trying to do is create steam. It's like
a turbine. It's like cooking the eyes that's up to
a horse, right, you know, move it over there. So
there are a few types of fusion reactions. Um the
ultimate goal right now, what we can do on a
(20:12):
small scale is what's called a uh deuterium tritium reaction.
That's the one that we can currently achieve. That's one
atom of deuterium and one atom of tritium combining to
form a helium four atom and a neutron. The ultimate goal.
I mean, that's good and that will create a lot
of energy, but there are a few downsides. Tritium is radioactive.
(20:34):
For one, um, you have to mind it from lithium. Yeah,
and lithium is fairly rare um. The ultimate goal is
to to reach deuterium deuterium reactions, which is two deuterium
atoms combining to form that helium three in a neutron.
And you can get that from the sea water. It's abundant,
almost limitless um. And I couldn't find this, but I
(20:56):
think clean water can be a residual effect of that.
Am I wrong? I don't know if it's if well,
you're probably not injecting water, but to get the deuterium,
I mean, desalination plants are the key to the future
as far as supplying the world with fresh water. Yeah,
I thought I saw somewhere where it was an actual byproduct,
but yeah, but then I couldn't find it, so I'm
(21:18):
not sure if that's right or you know what, you
just chalk my memory. I feel like in a hydrogen
powered car, water is one of the by products. So
maybe so yeah, all right, don't quote me on that though.
Um at the very least, it's a great way to
create energy, right and and what what's you also can
get um tritium from helium, I believe so even now
(21:40):
with the the deuterium tritium reactions that we're working on,
there's there's already a there's a work around, you know,
like you can create a thermonuclear reactor that's a breeding
reactor to where the byproduct helium can be used to
harvest more of the fuel you're using tritium. Yeah, aren't
we running low on helium? We are? Which is like
(22:01):
remember when we were talking about in the dirigible the Zeppelin,
which one was how blimps work? Yeah, and then a
long time ago we did one on the Mars turbine.
Mars turbine. But yes, there's very clearly helium shortage and
the idea that we're just using it for party balloons
rather than this is scary. Yeah, And don't be confused.
(22:25):
We say things like deuterium and it sounds super complex.
All that is hydrogen with an extra neutron. Yeah, it's
an isotope. So there's three isotopes of hydrogen, and they're
all still the same element. They're all still hydrogen, but
they have different configurations as far as their neutrons go.
So protium is a hydrogen isotope with one proton and
(22:46):
no neutrons. Deuterium is a hydrogen isotope with one proton
and one neutron, and tritium is a hydrogenitri isotope with
one proton and two neutrons. And like you said, tritium
is radioactive, but the beauty of it is you need
very very very little of it to to fuel a
nuclear fusion reactor, and it becomes a stable helium, a
(23:09):
non radioactive helium in the reactor, so you don't have
this leftover radioactive fuel. I think they said there's an
it would be equivalent of the radiation we just see
every day, and I'm walking around on the street right Yes,
the background radiation. I believe I saw that too. The
thing is is the parts to the nuclear reactor themselves
(23:29):
will become irradiated over time. Apparently, though compared to the
kind of radio activity that's generated from nuclear fission um.
This stuff you could just disassemble and bury in the
desert for a hundred years, go back and dig back up,
and it will be totally inactivated. So it's it's the
stuff that is radioactive is extraordinarily manageable. Yeah, it is.
(23:54):
And UM, like I said, we don't want to make
it sound like this is perfect. There is. They do
predict the short to medium term radioactive waste problem and
they say that's due to activation of the structural materials,
the actual thermonuclear device itself. Yeah, and while you don't
need much tritium, even a few grams of tritium is problematic. Um.
(24:15):
But hopefully you know, there's no accident, although they say
accidents with these um as. If you just turn the
power off, it stops everything. It's not like a chain
reaction can occur like a fission reactor. There's no control.
There's not a meltdown. There's which Also, if you want
to know more about that, go listen to our how
nuclear Meltdowns work UM episode. That was pretty good. We
(24:39):
released it right after Fukushima. But it applies to all
fission um reactors. That's right. So the goal is ultimately
deuterium deuterium reactions whether it does, and the reason why
is again, it's abundant fuel. You can get it from
desalinating sea water. And then um, secondly, it's not radioactive
(24:59):
at any point, so it wouldn't make the the thermonuclear
reactor itself radioactive, that's right. The reason why we're not
doing that already is because we can't achieve the temperatures necessary,
that's right. Which leads us to the two big stumbling blocks. Um,
everyone knows this is a great idea. There's no one
out there saying, oh, I don't know about this fusion thing.
(25:19):
Creating a star in a box sounds kind of weird.
The problem is the barriers that we have here on
planet Earth. Um. Which is one temperature into pressure. Uh.
We have achieved the temperature which is the requirements is
a one hundred million kelvin and like you said, that's
about six times hotter than the Sun's core, which is
(25:41):
pretty intense. UM. And the other is pressure. Like we said,
we need to get them within I'm not gonna make
you read all those zeros again, but smashed them that
close in order to fuse, and since we don't have
that kind of mass and gravity that the sun does.
There are a few pretty genius way is that we're
working around that. Uh yeah, there's basically two as it stands,
(26:05):
and then the Lockheed Martin one, which a lot of
people are skeptical about what we should say. It's kind
of a variation on the on one theme. But there's
basically there's two ways that we've figured out to create
nuclear fusion reactors so far. One is using magnetic confinement
and the other is using inertial confinement. So magnetic confinement
(26:27):
uses that tacomac technology. Yeah, it's sort of like CERN.
You know, it's using magnets to to create pressure. I
guess in cerns case are using it to create speed,
but in this case is to create pressure. Right, So
what you're doing is is you have a UM, you
have this donut shaped chamber and that's your reaction chamber,
(26:47):
and then again rings around the donut that go on
around the inside and outside of the donut. I know,
I'm kind of imagining wonderful donuts going Homer Sims in area. UM.
They create electromagnetic fields. Now, remember this plasma is hydrogen
gas that's been heated up to a temperature so hot
that the electrons just float off and move around freely,
(27:09):
and because of this higher temperature, these particles have become
really really energized, so they're moving and bouncing all over
the place, and the pressure is building up. But because
electrons are negatively charged and because protons are positively charged,
if you use alternating electromagnetic fields, you can contain this plasma.
So that's this incredibly hot gas that's six times hotter
(27:32):
than the core of the Sun can be contained within
the electromagnetic fields. That's right. And Uh, we talked about
power and power out it need you need about seventy
megawatts of power to create this to start this fusion reaction,
but you're gonna yield about five hundred megawatts. That's the
Eider project, I believe. Yeah, that's the Ider and that's um.
(27:54):
That's only a three hundred to five hundred second reaction.
But like we said earlier, the eventual goal is that
it's sustaining itself, uh, which is just a beautiful concept.
So basically what they do is they have the the
the gas is injected into the chamber, the hydrogen gas,
and then there's the electromagnetic fields that are holding the
(28:15):
plasma place but then remember we said, the Russians figured
out that if you put an electromagnetic field in the
middle of the whole thing, it will stabilize that plasma,
but it also heats it up, so it serves this
double purpose. And then just to add a little extra temperature,
they shoot it with microwaves and some other stuff and
then heat it up. And then as the plasma goes
(28:36):
crazy and all the fusion energies released, the neutrons move
their way outside of the electromagnetic field into the blanket,
which they heat up, and the heat energy is transferred
to power that turbine to remove the horse down the
down the lane, and it's just creating steam. Yeah, and
there's I mean, that's like, that's what Ider is doing
right now. That's what they're trying to prove um. And
(28:57):
then also as iers spending billions and billions and billions
of dollars and running into tons of delays um. It's
an amazing project. Lockheed Martin basically just came out and said, oh,
by the way, this thing that you're trying to do,
that's gonna be a hundred feet tall and require staggering
amounts of energy and money. We're doing one that puts
(29:20):
out the same amount of energy as yours, but it's
a tenth of the size, which means it's almost out
of the gate commercially viable. Yeah. That is their skunk
Works UM division of Lockheed. And they announced this like
three days ago, uh here in mid October. And um,
they've gotten a lot of blowback from the scientific community
(29:41):
because they wouldn't release data. They don't have data. They
said it's a high beta device right now, and kind
of shut out the scientific community as far as questions go.
And um, every scientist that I saw interviewed for this said, yeah,
they're they're trying to get some attention, to get some
partners to join in. Well, yeah, plus makes you want
to run out and buy Lockheed Martin stock because if
(30:03):
one company you can figure out how to create a
thermonuclear fusion reactor here on Earth that's scalable. Yeah, that
that that that person would be very wealthy. Yeah. So
it's a dubious claim, but they are, you know, they're
working towards a good thing. I'm not like poopooing the
whole thing. But until they have hard data and like
some proof, then I think the scientific community has got
(30:25):
their arms folded right now. Yeah, and and I mean
they have at least some details. It's just not detailed
enough for a scientist's detailed enough for Aviation Week. Yeah,
they wrote an article on it. And basically what the
what the guy they interviewed was saying was that over
at either they have a low beta ratio, which is
the amount of electromagnetism that you need compared to the
(30:48):
amount of plasma you can put into the chamber. So
there's like five percent plasma electromagnetivity or electromagnetism just to
keep this plasma thing from just blowing up, because that
can happen. They might not melt down, but if everything
went wrong, the whole thing could blow up. Well, and
you know, you know what an atomic bomb is. It's
(31:09):
it's a fusion reaction, right, and this is a lot
of those all put together in one hundred foot um tower. Uh.
This guy was saying that the beta ratio for their
machine is like So, what he was saying is they
figured out a way and again it's not very detailed,
but they figured out a way to contain the plasma
(31:30):
but in a way that also allows it to expand
because if you think about it, the more plasma there is,
the more hydrogen atoms there are, the more hydrogen atoms,
more isotopes there are, the more nuclear fusion reactions are
events you can have, the more energy you can yield. Right,
So they're saying they figured out how to contain the plasma.
But again, like you said, the scientific community is really
(31:52):
skeptical because they think it's just the pr singe. Well,
I think they made the mistake by saying they invented
a magic oometer to make it all happen, and that's
the don't ask about it, right. I did see though,
that we're lockeed was using the figure eight in stelerator configuration. Uh,
And I think that's true. I tried. I found a
(32:13):
couple of more sources that were kind of vague about it,
and I think the details on it are just vague period.
But I don't know why they would amend in the
donut shaped if the figure eight was uh, you know,
nifties technology that's sort of been disproven. Well, supposedly, their
whole jam was that the even in the doughnut in
the Tacomac, this donut shaped reactor plasma has a tendency
(32:34):
to just move around and make its way out like
it's not. It's still not fully contained, and they're using
something basically mirrors to catch the plasma that's getting out
and moving it to parts of the electromagnetic field that
are less dense. So there's a bunch of protons in
this part of the field that field is being strained,
(32:55):
but then maybe there's not that many protons over here,
so they use mirrors to direct the protons to the
low density area to keep it all the field. Yeah,
even the whole thing out, which makes sense. But again,
if you're not releasing data, don't expect the scientific community
to buy it. You got that right. So there's another
way to build a thermonuclear reactor that's currently being worked
(33:16):
on two and we'll talk about that right after this. So, buddy,
magnetic confinement is pretty neat, and we talked about that,
and that's uh understandable, and I love it. I want
to date it. But internal confinement I want to marry
(33:40):
because it has lasers. Um At the National Ignition Facility
at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, they are actually using laser beams.
They have a device called the n i F device
where they focus a hundred and nine two laser beams
on a single point in a ten meter diameter target
chamber called a realm that's got to be German. And
(34:03):
basically inside that target chamber they have a little, tiny
pea sized pellet of deterium tritium in a little plastic cylinder.
It's funny that it can be plastic somehow. Yeah, you
think it would introduce like impurities or something into it, yeah,
or it would need to be like iron or something.
I don't know. It just seems unstable. But uh, that
is one point eight million jewels of power from these lasers.
(34:24):
That's gonna heat the cylinder up, generate some X rays,
and then that radiation will convert that pellet into plasma
and compress it. So again they're creating plasma, but instead
of smashing it together with magnets, they're superheating it with lasers.
So that's your that's your your money's on that one.
You're like, I just think it's neat because I like lasers.
But that's your preference of the two. Yes, Well, actually
(34:47):
whichever one works is going to be my preference, okay. Uh,
And that one will yield fifty two times more energy
more energy out than energy put in. So that's that's
a good goal. So um, yeah, I guess basically the
whole point of magnetic confinement is that if you can
do without electromagnets, you're you're you have a more simple
(35:09):
and elegant internal confinement inertial. Yeah, that's what I mean,
inertial confinement. Basically, the whole thing just happened so fast.
You don't even need these magnets to confine plasma because
you're not creating the sustained ignition. Right. Yeah, I might
have said internal confinement before. By the way, it's inertial.
So what about cold fusion, buddy? That was all the
(35:31):
rage I remember back in the eighties. Yeah, because in
some researchers said that they successfully created nuclear fusion using um,
just room temperature stuff like palladium. They took palladium and
um and beer cans pretty much heavy water which had
(35:53):
a deuterium in it, and they put the whole thing
together and created nuclear fusion without the high temperatures, hence
the name cold Usian. And if you can get around
these high temperatures, then you work out the whole material
science problem, right, And if you work out the whole
material science problem. Then this is it's a desirable thing
(36:14):
to have cold fusion. The problem is is all a
lot of scientists tried to replicate these guys findings and
weren't able to So basically they were kicked to the curb.
So does that mean has cold fusion been abandoned or
are people still trying to get on that train. No.
In two thousand fives, some U c. L A. Researchers
basically said, um, we think we might have this thing down,
(36:36):
and they did. That's something called um pyroelectric crystal fusion.
Pyroelectric fusion. Yeah, we're basically it's the same result they
do what would be called cold fusion. Um. The problem
is that has a negative net energy yield. You have
to put in a lot more energy than you get
out of it. Well that's no good. Um. Eider seems
(36:59):
like they are making headway more than Lockheed despite their claim, Um,
they are being like we said, it's in Europe and
it's being financed by a bunch of different countries. Um,
the US is in, but they're kicking in. I think
the least amount only about seventeen million euros last year
of course we contributed dollars, but they're giving it to
(37:21):
us in euros. Um. I think the EU spends the most,
about eighty million. South Korea and China kicked in about
twenty and nineteen million respectively each. And I saw earlier
where Russia was involved, but then I didn't see what
they had contributed financially. Yeah, definitely. Are they still all right?
Well maybe they're just uh, we're writing a chip for
(37:42):
them for later they'll pay it's back. Uh, But it
is a very expensive prospect um, and you need you know,
countries getting together for something like this is not the
kind of thing that like the US can take on
on their own, I guess unless you're Lockheed Martin and
you don't have to prove your data. Right, So this
nuclear fusion, we'll see what happens. Yeah, you got anything else? Man? No,
(38:06):
I just say everybody should go read a Star in
a Bottle on the New Yorker. It's really really good. Yeah,
it's pretty neat. Um there. You can also go to instructibles.
If you want to build a nuclear fusion reactor in
your garage, you can do so. Um, you're not going
to create energy because like we said, you're gonna be
putting more than you get out. Um, but there are
(38:26):
instructions and that kid did it. His was a little
more advanced than the instructibles one obviously, but um yeah,
the sixteen year old kid. Yeah, he's amazing because his
was legit. He's done more than that too. His ted
talk was pretty impressive. Cool. He's like working on with
Homeman Security already for various projects that have nothing to
(38:47):
do with this. Yeah. Yeah. Uh. Well, if you want
to learn more about nuclear fusion, you can type those
words in the search bar how stuff works dot com.
And since I said that, it's time for a listener
mail and chew. Before we do listener mail, I wanta
um give a shout out to our Keyva team. Yeah,
for those of you who don't know, we did a
podcast many years back on micro lending UH and Kiva
(39:10):
k i v A dot org is a organization where
you can loan uh entrepreneurs and well used to be
just developing countries. Now you can do it here in
North America as well. UH twenty dollars at a time
that you can get paid back for. You can get
your money back if you're not happy, or you can
just keep reloaning that money and it helps them get
(39:31):
their small business going. And we started keep a team
many years ago and it is killing it. So you
got some stats for us. So basically, as of October nineteen, um,
we have loaned our team has loaned two point seven
million dollars two people in developing countries, nice and in
(39:54):
the U s here there um. And the big one
is we've exceeded one hundred thousand loans man by our team.
Our team only has eight thousand and seventy nine members.
So all eight thousand, seventy nine of you, guys, thank you,
way to go. Congratulations, yes, and thanks as always to
Glenn and Sonja are a de facto Kiva. Uh what
(40:14):
would you call them? Presidents? Presidents, presidents of the stuff
you should know, team, the captains of the stuff you
should know, team presidents. Okay, presidents president is yes, president
Uh yeah, they've been really like keeping it going for us. Yeah,
and when you know, sometimes we'll forget and GLENNI nudges, Hey, guys,
remember the Kiva team. We should mention it, right. So
(40:35):
the next the next goal we have is for three
million dollars in loans and we're on our way to it,
so come join us. We uh don't begrudge people who
are late to the party. Just go to kiva dot org,
slash teams slash stuff you should know and you can
sign up. That's right. So now it's time for listener
mill right. Indeed, sir, I'm gonna call this sky writing
(40:58):
follow up um from Australia. You, hey, guys, recently listened
to how skywriting works and it reminded me of something.
Although this may not be suitable for listener mail, which
I disagree actually because i'm reading it. I was maybe
eight or nine when a few friends and I were
out on the street playing uh and doing things that
nine year olds would do. It's so awkward to say that.
(41:19):
So you're not replacing something right there. No, Um, they
were just doing nine year old things, good clean fun.
We looked up and saw a plane starting the skywrite.
We're instantly intrigued. What was being written? They started with
an H and then oh. This went on for maybe
twenty minutes until finally the word Hooters was scre haled
across the sky. I'll be it backwards, so I guess
(41:42):
they have the Hooters restaurant. Chicken wing Chain in Australia.
I guess they're a rich kid. Yeah, really immature rich
kid yeah. Or that My brain couldn't comprehend how this
person managed to screw up writing a word backwards. The
best reason my childish brain come with as it's I
writing took place somewhere between us and a group of
people that it was initially intended for. That I just
(42:06):
thought it was written up and downwards rather than across
the sky. Um until now, I never understood or bother
to learn why it was like that. So thank you
for keeping the podcast great allowing me to figure that out.
That is from Marlin. Heh boy uh hapai chi happaraci
(42:26):
chi nice. Have you ever seen a word like that? Ha?
Poor rachi ha, poor rachi Marlin from Sydney, Australia. Man,
thanks a lot, Marlin. H and that's Marlin with an
a even oh yeah, Marland, Well thanks a lot, Marlin.
(42:47):
We're gonna say like that. Sure. If you have an
awesome last name and want to share it with us,
you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
you should know. You can send us an email to
stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com and as always,
joined us at our home on the Web, Stuff You
Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands
(43:12):
of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com.
H
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