Exploring Why This Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough Matters
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 มิ.ย. 2024
- Exploring why this nuclear fusion breakthrough matters. Use the code "Undecided" to get Curiosity Stream for less than $15 a year! curiositystream.com/Undecided. Before you blow your fuse and start leaving your nuclear fusion jokes in the comments, there's been a major fusion development we have to talk about and it's kind of a nuclear bombshell ... poor choice of words ... it's big news. It's all about high temperature semiconductors (ie. magnets).
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Special thanks to MIT (news.mit.edu/) and Commonwealth Fusion Systems (cfs.energy/) for some of the video and photos used, as well as Dr. Greenwald for his time and expertise.
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So what do you think of fusion? Do you think this recent milestone is a game changer? Use the code "Undecided" to get Curiosity Stream for less than $15 a year! curiositystream.com/Undecided.
If you liked this video, be sure to check out "Exploring the 1000 Mile Car Battery - Aluminum Air Hype?" th-cam.com/video/9OOq3f6mUxU/w-d-xo.html
Ultimately Nuclear energy is the way to go and if walk-away safe Thorium Molten Salt reactors is only an interim solution for the next 30 years when Fussion makes it to the market, so be it.
Your excellent unbiased, open minded to Nuclear energy, channel is worth a dozed David Borlace's "Just have a think" closed-mind-to-TMSRs Channel which is inevitably so frustrating to watch. - thank you🥝🥝🙏
Fusion will not work. We are not even sure it is the driving force inside a star. However, we are so sure that we can replicate it here on Earth. If even 1/10th of the resources spent on fusion had been spent on Thorium Molten Salt Reactors we might be mining the asteroid belt already AND actually be 30 years away from fusion.
@@mdebarshi
That was discovered in 1989 (Ponds and Fleischmann). Just a few years ago NASA published research on the exact same phenomenon and all but called it Cold Fusion.
I really don't see you why we're trying to create fusion reactors on earth when we have a huge fusion reactor right next door. Why not just find a way to collect more of the sun's energy from orbit? with the amount of money that's been spent on this pipe dream we could have created a way to collect more of the sun's energy by now
Breeding lithium into tritium is a huge hurdle that may turn out to be impossible at a rate that can compensate tritium losses. This isn't even being addressed by the current fusion research such as ITER. It was glossed over by the expert in this video
Joking aside, this game-changing breakthrough potentially brings nuclear fusion forward from 30 years away to as little as three decades away.
Wow 🤣
😂🤣🤣🤣🤣
from 30 years to a little less than half a century
@@fixerbear7912 its only 946,080,000 seconds no big deal
@@fixerbear7912 r/whoosh
I love how all of this magnificent science always leads to boiling water lol
water has some crazy good thermodynamic properties.
It's the most efficient way to make electricity from heat.
@@mgutkowski look up Helion energy’s fusion reactor design. Waterless and efficient (if it works)
From coal all the way to a miniature sun
Steam engines win
@@mgutkowski surely theres a better way
I helped in the manufacturing of the large stainless steel vacuum chambers that contain the high temperature superconductors for MIT 👍 - Welding Inspector here.
Very nice 👌
Hmmm.....I think she like you.
Too bad pipelines weren’t inspected.sigh
I love how as advanced nuclear energy is, it's basically just a steam engine with extra steps.
Everything is steam engines coal and gas plants all create steam pressure to spin turbines. Water is abundant
Yeah it is quite extraordinary that after all these decades, nobody has been able to come up with a better way of converting heat energy into electricity. If someone was to come up with a more efficient way of doing that large scale, that would be an incredible breakthrough.
It’s horribly inefficient too.
Some advanced reactors were made to use gas turbines which are not so new discovery. Molten salt reactors are so energy dense it doesn't really matter if they use steam turbines because they are much better at harvesting energy from the fuel.
Ironically, the nuclear part is what holds the highly advanced steam technology back in that case. The greater the difference between the hot and cold side of a heat engine, the greater the efficiency. Coal plants have all moved to supercritical steam (i.e. hotter steam) whereas nuclear reactors remain constrained by the cores to much lower and therefore less efficient steam temperatures.
Old enough to remember back when "fusion reactions" were mostly wildly complex formulas on a professor's blackboard. You can tell it's getting more real now that the story is shifting from large, expensive, multi-national experimental concept reactors to an actual startup developing a more practical design. The recent breakthrough was a big step in that direction, but it's going to take several more big steps like that to shed the "30 years away" label.
Well, fusion reactions were considered possible decades upon decades ago. The problem was getting tech/materials/etc. to where a first step into it properly to persue this stuff. Every scientist back in the day with funding could have easily created the reaction...but time always comes later...so it didnt happen...pretty simple and no world bending news that it is now and not 50 years ago...
We have nothing of interest to persue and money extracted out of other humans somewhere else, so that we can now finance our stuff. 😋
Same
The issue was harebrained over-excitable types selling it before it was ready even for solid research. It isn't at all late really compared to other power sources if it comes in the next 25-50 years, it'd still be faster than solar ha
If in fact, we had really widespread adoption of fusion energy within 30 years, that would be great. That assumes that we have practical reactor designs within 10 or 15 years. I am assuming these things take a few years to build at the very least. Not only that, but the infrastructure needs to be built up for extracting D2 from seawater in high quantity. In order to build out enough fusion power plants to supply most of our energy will require hundreds of billions just for the cost of the power plants. I think all these things should and will be done, but expectations that we will have a demonstrated working and efficient fusion reactor today and a transformation of our global energy grid tomorrow are just unrealistic. It will take at least 20 years to build out enough power plants for the US.
Meanwhile China, India, the Netherlands and Norway are building Thorium Reactors now
I've never been one of the cynics, mainly because I understand how important materials development is in a bigger project like this, and that we're making breakthroughs almost every month in one way or another. As this story shows, something created in the 1980s is now being used in a new way thanks to developments in application and manufacturing. It takes a million small discoveries to reach a major breakthrough.
I'm convinced we'll get there.
Right,but the main breakthrough is the ReBCO SC tape.Power scales to the third ppowernof the magnet field strength, so twice as powerful 16 times the power.
We had TRISO fuel 20 years ago we have it now, never melt, never fail, simply the coal and gas lobby which is also the renewable lobby has delayed TRISO until now, it is the same material SiCarbide it is extremely tough, we've had it forever. Plenty of steel is perfectly suited for molten salt reactors we've had them for decades, right now, there are pots of hot molten salt we are watching to see if it corrodes the steel alloys.
We will never have cheap energy. Too much money involved in ripping people off.
@@mikehunt1528 until more people figure out more money can be made by what energy does, than the raw energy.
@@mikehunt1528 true
I live in USA and in some other countries power is cheap to the point where it’s almost free but unfortunately some countries are greedy and charge more cause they can USA should be less greedy and focus on making everything cheaper and better overall
I’ve been following the R&D of nuclear fusion, both magnetic and laser containment, since the late 1970’s. This breakthrough in superconducting magnets may be what we’ve all been waiting for. Thank you
It only seems like a minor refinement...
One of many.
Now is the best time. Time to get done with Russia and the middle Eastern dictatorships
I am really curious how the HTS tape works under the high neutron flux they will be exposed to under actual working conditions! Based on the locations in the periodic table.... not so well. 30 years away and always will be. Take a look at Brillouin Energy.
@@kurtpena5462 It's smaller, cheaper, uses less energy to run and/or outputs more energy. Myabe it's still a ways off but that doesn't seem minor to me. And all of this could cause increased investment which brings even more advancements
@@servantes3291 If it's still a ways off, why are you man-spaining how much it will cost? BTW, I'm an electrical engineer. What is your area of expertise?
Thanks for the great news. My Dad was an engineer at the Plasma Physics Lab at Princeton University. They built several fusion reactors as I was growing up starting with the C Stellerator and ending up with a Tocamac. The Tocamac reached what was called break even back then in about 1979. The the lab was a joint venture with Princeton, DOE and Westinghouse as I remember. When Three Mile Island melted down the funding for the lab started drying up. The supper conducting materials and the ability to create better vacuum in the chamber were the big obstacles at that point. It is great to hear MIT is making progress on the magnets. Maybe with TH-cam’s like this we can have a better public understanding of the difference between fusion and fission. If the fusion work at the Plasma Physics lab had continued there would be fusion generators producing carbon free electricity right now! That was about 30 years ago. Keep up the good work! John Joyce
If...pigs had wings.
When I was a kid in the 90's teachers joked that fusion was always 50 years away, so we're making _some_ progress
In the 90's it was 50 years away.. Now it's been 30 years, and we are 20 years away according to most people... Hmm, maybe we actually got it right with the timing 😂? So, 2040 it is
@George Mann no we wouldnt, we would most likely have the, by 2025 or 2030
it is a progress, now it is always 30 years away... it might someday shrink to always 5 years away...
We were down to always 20 years away a few years ago so there have been some setbacks
Just wait a little longer, maybe in 2050 it will be only 10 years away.
Fusion is rather simple, the tough part is figuring out time travel so we can jump forward 30 years.
This should be the top comment!
@@Orange-zx8cd Well yes, but actually no
Well time travel is 100 years away so then we could go back 70 to see fusion...??? Wait what???
@@deepdragon2 if time travel even has a possibility of being a thing I think how long you can travel back and the energy required would be a limitation. Also the amount of times you can do it. Maybe going to one specific place place in time at a certain location would strain…something. Like fabric of reality or something like that. Tho times just a concept for now. It’s probably not going to be possible
Machine learning could cover a large part of it, which I think it'd be the case.
As a science fiction nerd who read Analog and Galaxy magazines as a teenager in the 1970s,many things were supposed to take place in 30 years,Cold fusion,Moon Colonies and a New ice age. At 65,i most likely don't have another 30 years to wait for these things.Controlled Fusion is like Lucy moving the football on Charlie Brown.
I worked as a contractor on TFTR Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor , twice in the 80's. DOE was great to work for and the project was great fun. Lots of very smart people working there (do to its contercycle funding) we called it the technological WPA)
Thank you so much Matt for asking me about my opinion on whether this fusion breakthrough will be a game changer. In my whole career in retail, nobody has ever asked me my opinion on nuclear fusion issues. I know the world will be a much better place, and nuclear fusion can now advance much faster with the disclosure of my opinion (since I am exquisitely qualified to comment on the subject matter as a retail worker and youtube video watcher).
My opinion is :
Looks good to me.
I feel like you took me on a journey, only to end up back home.
That confirms it . Your seal of approval means Go baby go !
I feel the same thanks for the giggle.
@Peter Evans I want my dyson sphere too!
@Peter Evans man, solar isn't happening on an industry and city level. its but a excuse for gas industry to remain relevant... don't Believe me, just look at the difference between Germany (pro-renewables) and France (pro-nuclear).
It kind of feels like the very beginning of the computer revolution. A sense of technologies falling into place and horizons opening up.
Renuables make fusion obsolete
Agreed!
@@tshilidzimadzhege4949 lol renuables is the footure
@@tshilidzimadzhege4949 bruh fusion fuels are "renued" by the freaking sun
@@tshilidzimadzhege4949 You mean the windfarms that have been killing birds by the millions, and solar that requires the sun to be out to generate power? "Renewables" is a buzzword, and wouldn't even exist without government intervention.
Fusion has limitless* resources, as Hydrogen is the most plentiful substance in the universe, behind stupidity of course. In fact, your precious "renewables" are a byproduct of fusion, it just doesn't require us to maintain the reaction (the sun, if you didn't understand).
Great info. Been following the development via Google news on my phone, but this video really puts things into a better perspective. Exactly the kind of story I was looking for. Keep it up!
I have been involved with fusion since the early 1960's at LLNL. MFTF, NOVA, Shiva, NIF, ITER, and believe fusion is our only option for the future. I have no idea about 30 years but it will come!
When I think of fusion, I think of the scope of the engineering and the supportive science. When we finally get this, it'll be one helluva party. Hope I'm around to witness.
th-cam.com/video/g0mwmqEfONI/w-d-xo.html
When they finally figure everything out. Everyone would of moved to mars, because earth became uninhabitable...
I'm probably much younger than you. Still, I just hope I see it happen in my lifetime.
@@robfer5370 Even in the worst Earth scenario, Earth will still be more habitable than Mars.
@Ray Wyman. I too hope I'm there to see it BUT for reasons entirely unnconnected with their work, unless they protect our freedoms, all will be lost. There is one great elephant in the room that these clever scientists at the top of their field will not address. The evidence is there in the video. They are complying with government directives that they wear masks, which their fellow scientists have proved that they don't control the spread of the disease and possibly harm the wearer. . They therefore are ignoring the government's own Vaers figures that show the deaths and other harmful effects of the jab. (if I use the correct term, my comment will be removed). The CDC are now advocating jabbing children. The facts are out there, but they choose to get on with their work without standing up to the unlawful control being used to change our society which eventually will destroy all they have achieved.. Am I right in likening them to building a sand castle on a beach while ignoring the incoming tide? Scientists, please wake up. We need your outspoken support. Please spend some time discussing this with your colleagues. You are used to dealing with facts and changing how you proceed in future. Seek out the facts . If you don't your valuable work on Nuclear Fusion will come to nothing.
I am very happy you are being honest about Q and the actual efficiency of the whole facility.
I hadn't heard/thought of that before!
From the first fusion devices up until 2000 fusion gains were doubling every two years - then we hit a wall
The SPARC magnets should put out a Q of 10, over ten times the point where we stopped. Being built in 2025 that means we are potentially increasing at the speed of Moore's Law again. One or two such jumps beyond SPARC would be the starting point of commercial potential technology
Maybe even one half step. For instance ITER's whole facility efficiency is about break even. The pilot power plant based on ITER would use about 50% more input energy and put out 1000% more power. There may be a similar jump from SPARC to ARC which they hope to build before ITER begins deuterium - tritium plasmas in 2035
Kind of tired about clicking on fusion thumbnails that offer nothing real
@@MichaelHayesagent The optimistic view is that a positive total power balance will be demonstrated in 5 - 10 years. Then another 5 - 10 years for a potentially commercially competitive pilot plant. That's the big if - it should be possible to build a plant putting out net electricity on a commercial scale but there will be engineering and economic hurdles due especially to the super energetic neutrons damaging the plants. There is a new neutron shielding tech being tested by Tokamak Energy next year. Basically I expect a commercial level of power output to be achieved by 2035 - 2040 but I wouldn't be as happy to bet on a commercially competitive fusion design to come out in that time
@@Canucklug ARC Reactor you say? Where have I heard that name before 😉
There was no runaway chain reaction at Fukushima. There were cooling problems leading to radioactive decay overheating. Similar to TMI.
The Soviets, on the other hand, gave us prompt criticality inside a coal bed. One big spark that lit the whole plant on fire.
Thanks for the update on this effort. Over 35 years ago I had the opportunity to join a SDSU field trip to visit the tokamak experiment at General Atomic in San Diego. I was thoroughly blown away, and hopeful for this technology to advance. I’m happy to hear that major strides are being made, and I await my Mr. Fusion powered Back to the Future DeLorean someday soon…
I tend to be of this mindset: As long as a scientific field sees regular improvement that corresponds with theoretical goals, then I am optimistic. If a field sees significant stagnation for long periods of time, then there is cause for concern.
Any scientific innovation will be "always 30 years ahead" until it one day finally exists and functions as intended. That's just the nature of working with unpaved paths and no known variables to adhere to. In reality, no one knows when we will see commercial fusion reaction - but we see regular exponential improvement and that is a damn good sign. And don't forget, that along the way, all this research will also trickle down into other fields that find use in the same research and proofs of concept - just see how much technology developed for Aviation and Space exploration has found their way into our daily lives through totally unrelated contexts. Innovation is never wasted, no matter the field.
Do you include improvements in their hype and marketing abilities? If so fusion is going places.
@@deth3021 Do you deny the results of their magnetic test? I won't claim that we now have a clear path to fusion, but they are demonstrating new technologies and new capabilities in not only simulation, but manufactured devices.
@@nonconsensualopinion which they have been doing for decades.
If they put a tenth the money and effort they put into fusion into fission, there would be no carbon emissions.
@@deth3021 we have fairly scarce reserves of nuclear fuel currently available. also, I am 2000% sure that far more money has been spent on nuclear fission compared to fusion.
@@boxr_4214 the sure thorium is one of the most scared materials on earth. Also I'm talking about research, not practical usage.
"there have been some electrifying breakthroughs" - Matt just can't help himself.
ED: "The sun has hydrogen and a gravity field - pretty simple. So let's retrofit our fusion reactors with artificial gravity containment."
SAMMY: "The government has not allowed artificial gravity tech to go mainstream for that very reason."
ED: "For what 'very reason' ?"
SAMMY: "The global fossil fuel energy ecosystem is the largest economic activity on the planet and they refuse to allow it to be 'disrupted."
.
.
@@Greg_Chase Take the tin foil hat off, idiot
Really enjoy your videos! You do a great ob of explaining subjects
Great program you create ...always intrigued to see progression of the fusion process...great leaps of progress by great minds...think outside the box...
To put this into perspective: the strongest permanent magnet ever made was 4.5 Tesla. Everything else until now required an insane amount of power, so this is great news.
Thanks, good to know
However, I would say that comparing the magnetic field (20 tesla) with that of ITER or an operational reactor would be also an interesting perspective 😀
I found "a maximum magnetic field of 11.8 tesla" on ITER's web page.
I can see a big breakthrough in NMR spectroscopy if those magnets become available.
@@snygg1993 I think the difference is the location. The 11.8 seem to be within or near the coils. In the middle of the donut, where the plasma is, it's only 5.3 Tesla.
This calls to mind a scifi story I read as a kid: a multi-generation colony ship arrived at their new home after traveling for more than a century only to discover it had already been settled utilizing a faster transit method.
Lmao this happens in the game Outriders. A despot left behind on an apocalypse Earth manages to develop a stronger engine and beats the hero's colony ship to the planet by decades, creating a fucked up warworld upon your arrival
@@MrDavidCollins they were just preparing a world the hero can really be a hero in i mean whats a hero without a foe to fight
It's not that simple though, ITER still has advantages:
1) Q factor is also related to Tokamak diameter, refitting it with high temp superconductor coils would beat CFS,
2) ITER are also going to try out Lithium Blankets around the chamber to make new tritium fuel to feed back into the process.
So the second ship didn't stop and pick up the old ship? Man, they are some real assholes!
how ironic, funny too LOL
You seem to become more confident and that makes your videos better. Good on you. Keep up the good work.
Several Problems, First the Net Q energy release was only compared to the energy needed for the massive laser or Q Plasma, it did not include the energy required to run the actual reactor (Q Total) which has massive electromagnets and all kind of conduction systems. Also all that was produced was heat, not actual energy, they are extrapolating the heat produced into the electricity it could produce, which is another entire energy requiring process. And also the Tritium is really rare and we do not have quantities at Scale and Scope and to manufacture Tritium requires enriched Lithium-6, not a fun substance to have around. The ITER Reactor experiment will use half of the Tritium on earth by itself. This is all Hopium Squared.
There was no out-of-control chain reaction at Fukushima, the reactor was completely shut down in time, there was not enough cooling for the short lived decay products due to collapse of surrounding infrastructure and bad placement of backup generators
It was a steam explosion and not a chain reaction as many in the media portrayed it.
And complete flooding of generators and backup batteries caused by bad/dangerous design. Coupled with a complete lack of safety procedures it was only a matter of time.
Chernobyl was also an easily avoidable accident. If all fusion effort and investment had gone into fission, we'd be at least 30 yrs ahead.
@@artsmith103 If reactors are built save, they wouldn´t be as cheap as they are (actually, even then they are expensive as hell).
I was skeptical of fusion before, but I am optimistic that these inventions can actually bring nuclear fusion a good step closer.
A meltdown is considered an out of control reaction. And two of Fukushima’s cores partially melted down.
A 20 tesla HTS magnet is a game-changer by itself - This would mean we can put high-resolution MRI machine in every large hospital, fusion or not.
A lack of citations and tech. publications around this 20T magnet is a bit disconcerting, though. Why the cloak-and-dagger? Where is the opportunity for someone else to replicate their experiments with a commercial REBCO tape to build a 20T magnet and conform their findings?
Their "High temperature superconductor" also seems to be a misnomer. Traditionally, Y1Ba2Cu3O7 (YBCO) superconductors are considered "high" temperature because you can use (relatively cheap) liquid nitrogen (LN) to get them superconducting. These are unfortunately not able to withstand the typical 6T - 12T magnetic flux density inside a typical MRI-bore; a liquid-helium cooled "low-temperature" superconductor is traditionally essential for this task (and also for the LHC at CERN and for other facilities).
If someone claims "20T HTS" - I would interpret this as "a superconductor that can be realized with liquid nitrogen, capable of producing 20T". This is not the case. The REBCO material here needs -254'C instead of -269'C (i.e.. 19K instead of 4K) . This is a big achievement, sure, but not quite "HTS".
There goes the LN-cooled-MRI out of the window :( .. for now.
@@AdityaMehendale Tokamak Energy built a 20T magnet from commercial ReBCO tape in 2019, it's just circular rather than the D shape needed for their reactor at the moment though.
@@AdityaMehendale The stolen technology is a major problem with the CCP.
@@ResortDog
Its not a problem for the CCP though and tgey never signed up to not steal things. We let them in and asked no basics from them lol it sounds like its our problem rather than theirs
I did some undergrad work in the late ‘80’s with plasmas and a tokamak. The one underlying wish of all the scientists involved was always htsc.. So I am excites that the engineers came up with a way to make the tape that made MIT’s magnet possible! Things should start moving forward much more quickly in the fusion as a power source space.
Love your videos, chock full of facts and illuminating, thanks! Could you do one on Liquid Fluoride Thorium reactors, (LFTR)I would like to hear your take on them?
I wonder if a smaller reactor like this would be good for running colonies on the moon or mars. They need both the heat and the electricity.
there's never going to be a better fusion reactor than the Sun. And it's already putting out all the energy we need to populate the solar system and explore neighboring stars. We need nothing else. Not in space, and not here on the ground. The Sun does everything any species could need to leave the solar system.
These technologies aren't about need, they are about consolidation and control. You can own the fuel, and the machines, and the debts of workers. You can't own sunshine. But it does provide free energy everywhere in all directions. All we need is a way to capture it and use it efficiently.
Concentrating it should be left to the R&D budgets of the massive corporations trying to capitalize on concentrated deployment.
MIT should be out working on the carbon density of global productive soils right now. Not profit metrics for theoretical energy companies of the future... yall know the planet is turning into a desert right?
The soil is our carbon battery and the sun is our fusion reactor. Nerds, put your enormous throbbing brain on the table and do your thing. We all gonna die if you don't...
Figure out some solutions that work in a mud hut in Africa, AND the suburbs. Real technology. For humanity... so we can keep living. Right?!?!?!
Lots of positives, but with the complexity, I wonder about the feasibility of service/repair/maintenance in those scenarios.
@@ZennExile You make good points and I agree overall that we need to work on solar panel efficiency.
@@ZennExile I propose putting humans in the Matrix and turning them into batteries. Combined with a form of fusion, the machines will have all the power they could ever need.
@@MrGriff305 Unfortunately the energy output of a human is inefficient for running any kind of machine. However, our brains more advanced than any computer will likely ever be at the same size and energy efficiency. Using us as a server network to perform computations and run the simulation of the Matrix would be more viable.
The quiet part nobody says out loud is that fusion isn't really clean. Fusion creates tons of gamma rays and high energy neutrons (actually much more than fission reactors). 80% of the fusion reaction's energy is in the form of high energy neutrons that need to be absorbed by something and converted into heat in order to use that energy and whatever materiel is being used to absorb the neutrons will slowly become radioactive over the years by means of neutron activation and will eventually have to be disposed of somehow.
Maybe it's easier for fusion than for fission, choosing some isotopes we can reprocess. Certainly has less nuclear weapons proliferation risk, and the radioactive half-lives can be shorter, and the radioactive concentrations lower. But still a bit dirty inside the recycling loop.
I've been fortunate enough to be very close to what I call "big science'" my entire career, the publicly funded fusion experimental machines MFTF for a few years, the SLAC upgrade from LINAC to rings, then the National Ignition Facility from design through commissioning, and into operations. Noteworthy physics and engineering breakthroughs aside, the big question for me is this: Will private investors maintain the motivation and 'have the stomach' to forge past the latest challenges, will project leadership be able to constantly 'sell it' to keep funding pouring in? If not, then the technology isn't quite ready for this next privately funded phase.
Will private investors maintain motivation...it would be so amazing to change the mainstream narrative about the future. The scarcity story about overpopulation and doomsday global warming, that we have imo very little control over, what if it flipped into a "wow, look at this frontier we can take part in" kind of story? Mainstream, regular people are considered too shallow and dumb. But honestly I'm a hairdresser, not especially smart or educated- and I'm like...i love this story and I want to invest in it. It has quality. Do you think with the powers of media that are currently terrifying everyone, telling us humans are certainly a cancer, and we will die in a fiery inferno- this weird heard it before religious pattern - what if that power of media became captivated with this story, inviting crowd source type money to the new energy sources. I know that's not enough money even en masse, but just dreaming of the post scarcity world we can make together, if the story patterning of guilt and shame for existing somehow shifted to telling stories like this one broadly and with gusto.
@@desireegreen653
I'm a truck driver, don't ever doubt your own brilliance just because of your occupation, some of the greatest intentions were of "simple" people, TV being one of those. "Necessity is the mother of invention" needs being met with ideas.
I happen to think that this solution is not going to be well embraced by big government and the current global warming crowd when they can't shame and extract money from the people for their agendas to fix this "problem" follow the money, that seems to be what drives everything. Remember it's not money that is the root of all evil, it's the love of money, when politicians love money more than the people, the people loose!
Many of these fusion companies will probably crash and burn but their knowledge spread out into other projects.
@@desireegreen653 Love your enthusiasm. There are so may challenges beyond what they covered here it is mindboggling. Brillouin Energy has relatively mundane engineering challenges to solve and get to market. Our biggest challenge is the reputation trap associated with cold fusion severally limiting our access to capital.
@@qfman2 that's cause cold fusion is nonsense, we don't have hot fusion that can be sustained for any usable amount of time and you are talking about a technology that is considered scientifically impossible.
You would have better luck trying to sell ocean front property in Kansas or maybe a perpetual motion machine
From what I have read, it isn't true that fusion reactors wouldn't have a nuclear waste problem. The reactors and blanket materials will become highly radioactive over time and then there is the waste from the fission nuclear reactors which are required to make the tritium component of the fuel. No free lunch and it's more than 30 years away seemingly.
Actually, Matt, the joke used to be that fusion was 50 years away, a 40% joke improvement!
so after 100 years we reduced it by 20... so after another 150 years we should hit our target!
@@manowartank8784 you're forgetting about exponential improvements
Interesting. When did the joke change? Was it 20 years ago?
Reminds me of how we've found 90% of the dangeous near-earth asteroids. We only need to worry about the other 20...
@@michaelnurse9089 Recently. This is actually the first time I've heard the 30 year version.
See Matt, your problem is that you implied you want Homer Simpson in charge of other kinds of nuclear plants.
We all know that sleepy dog was really in charge
"It's pronounced 'nuke-yu-lehr' "
He is...
Death Blossom
No it was the bobbing bird from that episode where Homer gets fat enough to work from home.
Mmmmmm nucleaaaarrr
Curious no mention of the five second sustained reaction from the fusion reactor in Oxfodshire England just recently.
I remember seeing a youtube video with this amazing breakthrough with high-temperature semiconductor COTS tape 7 years ago and a prof from MIT at the time was saying it would only be 5 years away. Now that same team is saying the next step is 4 years away, and that step isn't a working commercial unit? Sound like they'll need time to design and build the full commercial unit, and maybe that'll take the same 10 years the experimental one did? And that gets us to our "20 years away", which I think is the joke, not 30. I'm beginning to think these physics profs have learned how to dangle impossible goals in front of people for funding.
That is a cynical attitude that says more about your own morals than these scientists.
The point is you will still make discoveries among the way that could in turn improve things for mankind. Alot of important and useful discoveries where done by accident or unintended, we later found good use for them. As long as we ARE making progress of somekind thats good for humanity. The real issue would be if we did all that an nothing came out of it THEN you might have a point.
Sabine Hossenfelder has a really great video on TH-cam about the “marketing” use of Q and what really goes into it
Yep. This breakthrough does not really bring us much closer to an actual power plant producing power to the grid 24/7.
Was just about to post this too. Her video was excellent, cast a lot of doubt on the fusion road map.
Her video is mostly about ITER and JET, and about those, she is right. However,she explicitly ignores alternative, smaller approaches like MIT Sparc (and there are more commercial companies reseaching fusion).
Q plasma vs Q Total right?
To make sure more people see that video as well: th-cam.com/video/LJ4W1g-6JiY/w-d-xo.html
This video gives me hope that fusion is only 29 years away.
28.5 at most.
Kindda optimistic now are you?
I remember when it was a whole 20 away a decade ago.
This talk of fusion reactors misses some key issues:
1- How to continually extract helium out the plasma and keep optimal ratios of deuterium and tritium.
2- How to transfer excess of heat generated in a safe way to another fluid so to generate steam for turbines to move electrical generators.
3- Find a different way to generate electricity from plasma without using thermal cycles to produce work.
1.Yes, breeding tritium in practice is an unsolved and rarely mentioned problem.
2. Yes, while running superconductors in the same room.
3. Good luck with that!
Missing the v point you are converting to heat energy to do work. The amount of work from any heat engine is related to difference of temperature in the hot and cold wells, that's why power plants have cooling towers
On #3, if part of the process of fusion is stripping electrons away from deuterium/tritium to create helium shouldn't there be a time interval between stripping the electrons away to produce the ionizing plasma and the 'reconstitution' phase creating helium, wherein the temporarily freed electrons could be used to induce an alternating current directly into a motor/turbine? No need for steam?
@@pierrechildress8875 that probably only will be able to recoup partially the energy that was required to get the initial gas into a plasma. Not the energy necessary to heat and pressure the plasma into the the conditions necessary for nuclear fusion. Also most of the energy will be in the form of heat, and for helium ions charge neutralization there is the need to spend energy in separating from the plasma. And even with their charge in neutral most of the energy is still in the form of heat. And at this stage you will need to rely on thermal cycles, and that means that for fusion reactors the Q number needs to be very high as to overcome all the inefficiencies that will occur in the process of generating electricity.
Magnetic biomechanical fly- wheel core. Cold liquid electromagneified liquid gas to cool the walls of the reactor and feed the reaction. Acoustic magnogravitational outer mechanics to keep the reaction stable and compressed or kept in uniform
Excellent reporting! Exciting progress. It is nice to have a goal
When they fire that thing up everyone within 10 miles will lose all their wrenches due to that magnet. It'll take 30 years to find all those wrenches.
Not if we make our wrenches from gold.
just in time to see the first successful fusion reactor then
It's a contained magnetic field. Your wrenches are safe. 🤣
@@DaveBuildsThings Fine, if you can vouch for them. Then as of now, I'm ordering more wrenches.
3:16 "causing a nuclear meltdown or explosion". Worth pointing out that the explosion is not like a nuclear fission bomb, it's more like a conventional explosive, admittedly one that can easily scatter radioactive material all over the local area, or toss it into the atmosphere.
Causing an actual nuclear explosion takes very specific conditions like highly enriched uranium or plutonium and large amounts of implosive force.
In short, a dirty bomb instead of a nuclear one.
And there's plenty of catastrophic failure modes in a fusion reactor as well. Quenching of the superconductors, implosion of the vacuum vessel, failure in the power electronics that drive it... those will all result in a 'significant boom' kind of scenario. Although the chance of it releasing radioactive isotopes is a lot less - the hazards are much more local.
@@Stoney3K Not really. There is no "significant boom" in a fusion reactor accident.
Remember, a fision reaction is happening naturally in enriched fissile material of critical mass. The job of a nuclear reactor is to manage that reaction and keep it from turning uncontrollable. If significant parts fail, you loose control.
A fusion reaction, requiring extremely high temperatures and pressures, does not happen unless it is forced to happen.
And the whole setup of a fusion reactor is designed to force it.
If any significant part of it fails, that just means the fusion reaction will just fizzle out.
Remember fusion only happens if you heat a gas to the point of being a plasma, and then magnetically compress it into fusing.
If it drops below the temperatures needed for plasma, then it losses it's magnetic characteristics and expands, and if some part of the magnetic system fails, it expands as well, cutting out the fusion process.
While that's true, apparently in the Chernobyl incident it's been hypothesised that a small section of the reactor did actually have the neutron environment necessary to go prompt critical.
@@michaelt.5672 This is based on Uranium reactors though. Thorium reactors can't melt down, and its why they should be adopted instead. They also produce much less waste than uranium does.
good to see, 'alternative energy', namely wind-turbines has matured as an industry...but, there's still more that can be done. for example, making the wind turbine blades out of recyclable plastic that floats on water; either PETE or polypropylene, reinforced with glass yarn - fiberglass. centrifugal molding, hand-held extruders for repairing. on top of that all, i'd like to see pneumatic wind turbines, with onshore electricity generation - reducing costs further...
You can get nuk energy thru 3 processes, not 2. Fission, fusion and radioactive decay (the lowest energy of the 3, but still way ahead of chemical conversion like burning fuels, and the preferred choice for space based long term power supply
So fusion is only '5 years away' now, we're getting asymptotically closer 🙂
If they're projecting that this reactor will be built by 2025... If I know anything about research projects, it's that it won't be built by 2025. That's a _long_ time to last without losing funding. And whenever they do build it, the heat containment issues will take years to solve at best. So realistically this thing is ten years away. And that's _if it works._
Matt, I was a nuc in the Navy in the 70's and we talked a lot about fusion in school (which was over a year long). We all thought Fusion would be a reality by 2000 but seemed to fade from the discussion over time. It is very heartening to hear that such progress is finally being made and Fusion might actually be a reality. If it is, we will solve the worlds carbon problems and provide power for a world hungry for it. Love your videos!
Fusion funding is consistently cut in half, doubling the time needed. This breakthrough for this is piggybacking on a breakthrough from the 1980s? Imagine if we had the funding to put more brains on this 40 years ago. Would this breakthrough have happened in the '90s? or still take 40 years?
Imagine the Nuclear power if the Manhattan Project was given a continuously shrinking budget every time they had a breakthrough. Look at how long it took Iran, Pakistan, India, North Korea et al to figure it out with lower budgets.
That's because the companies want us to buy their gas ,oil etc
@@wack-a-n00b81 It's a salient point. We're still using the same power distribution system from the days of Edison and Tesla....mainly because the guys controlling the purse strings like Westinghouse wanted to keep billing customers for the system they had paid to build. Further innovation would mean ripping it all out and rebuilding, which would cost a fortune. And here we are today with basically the same highly inefficient systems.
@@FM-ll9vh what do you suppose the oil companies are doing? Organizing heists to steal the money from companies researching Fusion?
@@AllFlimmits Essentially, yes! Corporate lobbyists buying politicians. Getting money out of politics would be a massive step forward but it's really hard when all the policies are basically bought and sold by people with financial interests in the big game of coal and oil.
Will the new fusion reactor really be boiling water to make electricity as one commentator pointed out or will it be able to covert the reaction directly into electricity? Converting directly to electricity seems possible since plasma is involved and part of the plasma is made up of electrons freed from the nucleus of basically water atoms.
water.
I've been fascinated by fusion technology for many years, but let's be real:
we're still more likely to see Half-Life 3 before a fusion reactor on our power grids.
a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush - we can burry the waste and deal with it in 1000 years or so, when energy won't be a problem anymore.
Mmmm... bush.
HL3 8-0
Well, we got a new mainline entry to the Half-Life series already at least. That alone is enough for me to call it the 3rd Half-Life game. Is it Half-Life 3 to everyone? No, but to me it suffices. I'm not confident that Valve will go back to a numerical naming convention for that series anymore, or perhaps any. But I do hope they at least make another non-VR Half-Life game.
My laptop reaches 80-85 celsius when playing Deep Rock Galactic on max settings (i7 7700HQ, GTX 1060 6GB, 16GB RAM, SSD main OS + gaming + music production drive), I'd be incredibly concerned for its heat tolerance if I tried to play a high end VR game like Alyx on it, despite it being the bare minimum of compatible with that game. Only VR headset I have is a cheap Chinese smartphone one too haha. I've tried the original Vive once and I loved it. Hoping to one day get the Samsung Odyssey+ if it ever becomes $250-300 again. Or I'll wait for the next Odyssey.
I use fusion power now.
It works great to grow the plants in my yard and it’s free outside.
HTS-110 in New Zealand has been making HTS devices since before 2006. We have made 5T systems in great numbers.
Systems are being used in a wide variety of scientific and industrial applications.
Part of the reason HDD reached terabytes was from HTS devices used in the manufacture.
I was the Senior Production Engineer with HTS-110 for 10 years.
What is HHD?
Thank you for your service 🧲
@@trollking202 Kind of like KGT, but more powerful. Esp if you add an RRF-t Lifter.
@@trollking202 Sorry, a typo... Hard Disc Drive. (corrected)
@@leonardobrien hehhe
The stronger field is nice but i like the fact more that it will make reactors more efficient. the combination of a very hot field on the inside and the superconductors on the outside that have to be cold down alot makes the hole thing a lot harder to hit net zero
Great video Matt. The intro explaining why fusion is a marathon and not a sprint is well explained, but the CFS part goes into the over optimism that spawn the fusion joke: “fusion is always 30years away” except now it will always be five years away. ITER is a giant mastodon not because scientists wanted to build a huge, expansive machine but because they were cautious. The size of ITER is driven by two numbers: output plasma power (500MW) and neutron load on the wall (1MW/m^2). Why is ITER not smaller and running at 12T like SPARC? Wall destroyed by neutrons prematurely and coils crushed by the magnetic field pressure. The CFS approach is innovative and they will surely build a better machine than ALCATOR CMOD ever was. ITER took the boring and expensive but safer path to fusion because, as you said, we need to learn how to walk before we learn how to run. Ultimately, the Wright bothers could have never built a 747. It will take time for fusion to mature and for technology to catch up (e.g. ambient conditions superconductors). And even if we take 100 years, our technological society cannot live without fusion for too long.
Fusion power has been one of those Sci-fi tropes I was always fascinated with, can't say any other technological breakthrough makes me more excited than looking forward to deployment of fusion as a viable source of energy.
Matter-Antimatter reactors will be invented long before this fusion reactor is going to work!
We have a better chance at extracting materials from the surface of the sun than we have at making fusion power to work, lol
Fusion tech is far away. Are tech energy sector is crappy. Thorium is far better as a Fission element less radioactive material. Which is the problem governments like to use uranium because it makes plutonium which other governments will buy for nukes. Look it up! Plus thorium makes more energy per ton. Now it would cost a crazy amount to make a reactor with thorium because one of the US presidents decided to go with uranium he was from that state and I'm sure he was paid off. Yeah keep spending billions on fusion plus this man says they are only on for seconds 🙄 u know why tell them the plasma breaks their weak tomahawk. 20 tesla u say at 20ka shit. Can't u run a nuclear reactor to make gold for cheaper.) Uhg my brain hurts. However I thank you for your video seriously people like you make me strive to be better and find a solution. When I do I will share but never with any government. Cheers!
@@BSnicks Antimatter eah. Some people might call that either.)
@@Jbond7777 No, ether is not antimatter. Antimatter is as it says, anti everything we know of. A proton is negative and an electron is positive etc.
I have seen so many "breaktroughs" since I became interested in fusion that I do not get excited anymore. Just another piece of the puzzle.
The power of a reactor scales to the third power of the magnetic fields these magnets being the same side but provide 10X the power,I can see why you would not think it important, you must follow the science closely.
@@paulbedichek2679 It doesnt solve the problem of the blanket, or the problem of how to get tritium without needing immense amounts of lithium, and so on.
Its a piece of the puzzle. And its useful in other fields of science. Thats it. Doesnt mean nuclear fusion will be "ready" in time to prevent climate change, still way off that target.
So, yeah, its good progress, but nothing to get hyped about.
"Just another"? Why so dismissive? Every piece is just another until you get to the last one that joins them into a whole. The problem is that often the developer of the last piece gets the whole of the credit. In reality, every piece counts and contributes, and often not to just one type of problem.
It does remind me about the constant streams of news we had about quantum computers back in 2011/2012
Doesn’t mean it’s not a major stepping stone
A plasma science person here😉 CFS's magnet cannot stand repeated tests yet, so I'd be a bit more cautious. Many of us are also pivoting to stellarators, a different type of reactor that are drastically more efficient and simple to run than tokamaks. Even if we beat CFS to fusion they will still probably succeed. Many stellarator startups are planning to use their magnets if they end up working.
I was able to work on the Doublet III back in the day - quite a project at the time.
Last time I was this early, fusion was still 30 years away.
He already said it in his video and said to put the jokes and complaints aside and watch the video...
@@asterlofts1565 To be honest I commented this before watching the video
It was the same for the high temp superconductors. They are supposed to carry electricity without any loss!!
@@yorkyone2143 And becoming more so with every year that passes.
@@issafarhat5234
Ok, don't problem.
I wish more could be said about molten salt fission reactors. They don’t have of the safety detriments spoken of herein, don’t take large plots of land, don’t require access to water source, and are over hundred times more efficient than existing fusion reactors (light water). Experimental reactors like this were already made in the 60’s and 70’s. They don’t need a huge energy kickstart like fusion, and they don’t mess around with the meaning of Q factors like fusion always does (Q is never just energy in over electricity out, which is what it should be).
true, though i def feel we will probably discover the magnetic field issue with fusion reactors far before we figure out the Corrosive issue with MSFR's....but shit at this point who knows.
@@Reazintful the corrosion and tritium issues have been solved (Hastelloy-N and supercritical CO2 turbine generator). I guess my point is, if a fraction of the money spent on fusion had been spent of MSRs, the West would already have them in the field. As it is, China is the only one who has one.
Tony Hill (Former director of INL {Idaho National Laboratory} ) is currently on this exact mission; head to head battle with Bill Gates....Gates is pushing hard for thorium salt reactors.
@@randalljsilva Interesting!
@@randalljsilva I thought Hestelloy-N was not yet the answer? My current understanding of the issue is that neutrons bombarding the nickel. The nickel would then go through Alpha decay and those helium atoms would lodge in the grain structure. This would then make the material become very brittle over time leading to cracks and leaks in major structural components.
Has there been some experimentation with scalability? what if 100 tiny reactors could achieve higher efficiency? it looks like all the projects are hugenormous, with fusion we can start smaller...
I AM 56 YEARS OLD, and I have been watching all the fusion projects since before Iter was started. And I fervently wish to see it in my lifetime because I know what it means for our planet.
Four years and we will see how it goes.
Exactly, we should have done what France did and invest in Nuclear 30 years ago. Then we could all tell Poetin to stick his gas!
just think! if you live to 86, you could see nuclear fusion in your life time!
@@knotkool1 It will still be 30 years away!!!
No we won't, ITER won't reach net energy generation even if it gets to to Q10. Even if it exceeds Q10 it won't be able to make enough fuel. In fact, by the time it's done testing, there may not be enough fuel left to start up a fusion reactor. That's right ITER is slated to burn just about all the tritium left in the world by that time.
“The power of the sun in the palm of my hand” - -Doc Ock
"1.21 gigawatts" -Doc
"You're a daisy if you do" -Doc
The "smartphone" (exemplified by the 2007 iPhone) was the confluence of a powerful, energy efficient chip plus better battery plus better screen plus better network speed. Same may happen with fusion, you just need to be able to make all the parts to drop into place.
When railroading time comes you can railroad - but not before. R. Heinlein. The Door Into Summer.
Also, once that net power gain goal has been achieved, the focus can shift to scaling up and increasing efficiency, while automating production.
The first car wasn't built on Henry Ford's assembly line either.
Will it the size of a phone?
The initial iphone was worse than other smartphones at the time. The only thing it had going for it was Apple marketing and a more user friendly interface. technology wise it was behind. It took many iterations of the iphone before it caught up in tech to the other phones on the market. If I remember correctly the 5 was the first one that was caught up. When they were up to the 4, they still didnt understand how to build antennas even, which resulted in Steve Jobs actually telling someone they were holding their phone wrong... since if you held the phone in specific ways(which were normal ways of holding a phone, just not the way steve jobs held a phone) it disrupted the antenna
Another aspect of what youre saying is that we had the technology to build an iphone in 1980 but it would have cost billions of dollars. So the only thing you can do is wait.
Thanks so informative- surely the Q ratio would rise expodenionslly once full ignition is achieved. The MIT magnet is exciting.
I think that they might have something there but I also think that they need to encapsulate it in a zero atmosphere device so when the device starts to produce power the chamber can be cooled within outside of the unit which can get power to function for the fusion reactor kinda like a superconductor that produced its own personal energy and uses some of its output energy to to maintain its super cold temperatures
Yes . Super coolant superconductors.
These guys should really team up with the guys at Hot Pockets to learn how they were able to achieve near-fusion temperatures inside of a buttery, flaky crust.
You won the Internet today! lol
Fantastic!
Lmao you're a fucking clown and I mean that in the best way.
I can confirm fusion achieved between the sauce-o-trinos and the cheesons
LOL
i remember watching a show called 21 up that followed a group of people through their lives every 7 years and one of them at 21 was working on a fusion reactor and was optimistic that they would figure it out within a few years (this was in the 80's). A few decades later he was a math teacher and said he would be surprised if it could be figured out any sooner than 100 years
it's a big part of why I don't begrudge fusion researchers always being 30 years away from a working prototype - we're the equivalent of renaissance-era scientists knowing the semiconductor transistors are possible, but not knowing exactly how to make them, and using all of our pre-industrial ingenuity to figure it out from scratch.
@@ecyor0 Renaissance-era scientists that understood electrical conductivity? As recently as the beginning of the 20th century, our most inspired electrical scientists, Tesla included, believed the earth and sky made good conductors...
in 42 years there will be no more oil, then maybe something will happen
@@moonlandingagain3228 Depleting oil resources is also always ca 30-50 years ahead. When I was 10 years old (25 years ago...) date of end of oil was set to 2030. And then oil and gas cracking appear. Later it could be reaching for resources in arctic areas. Depleting oil resources will be not push for new technologies. Agreement that we cannot use them on current level, for the sake of humanity and planet, is what is driving current change.
@@moonlandingagain3228 🤣
About 30 years ago, I saw a story on the TV news saying about infinity power where I saw something like this. They done a small version about a hydro electric motor that will not stop producing power and is unlimited power and they say they successful implemented. But then the story ended like all of them have been killed. The last time they say they building a very big safe and unlimited power or infinity power forever.
I think they have it ,I have studied the range of products and for this system to function on a scale like they need to create a power load of such magnitude they have the system right now it will be cooling and when they find out that a vacuum and liquid nitrogen will be more then enough to cool the hole system down from 15.million kelvin to about 20
"MIT and CFS are now aiming for the stars!" Maybe literally. Fusion, if we ever get it going, could be the most reliable source of energy we've ever developed, and could allow us to get back into space.
Utter nonsense. There is no terrestrial source of energy than fission.,
@Korsalath Scoundrels, ignore them. They are simply uninspired tools, incapable of any forward thinking.
th-cam.com/video/g0mwmqEfONI/w-d-xo.html
If fusion comes online it would totally destroy all those who invested trillions into solar and wind. There's more to it than just building a fusion reactor.
While, I think it would be nice to have nuclear fusion reactors that actually work I think we should strongly consider Thorium Molten Salt nuclear reactors as a viable temporary solution because they can be made relatively safe compared to the giant nuclear reactors there’s no worry about a runaway reactor core because there’s a plug that basically drains the reactor core into a safe into a safe container where the reaction can no longer take place. These can be made safe and small enough so that small communities can have their own reactors and protect the possibility of blackouts due to one or two reactors going off-line for whatever reason. The smaller Thorium Molten Salt nuclear reactors will be able to generally take up the slack. After watching the entire video on this new breakthrough in a smaller and equally powerful magnetic containment field I am more hopeful for nuclear fusion that I was earlier. I still think we need to still go forward with Thorium Molten Salt nuclear fission reactors.
Um the US government made an Integral Fast Reactor that is unable to reach melting point. So we should do more research on the IFR design than ordinary Molten Salt Reactors.
Yep.
Safety is not the big issue with nuclear reactors - COST is. It's an expensive way to boil water. Why would either thorium or fusion, be cheaper? Proven and relatively unsophisticated reactor designs simply cannot compete economically with other renewables, why would completely novel cutting edge designs?
@@kenoliver8913 *Small Modular Reactor* designs essentially eliminate the COST argument against nuclear. COST being an artificial constraint anyway, easily addressed if humanity were to unite around nuclear energy.
Was going to say the same
always liked fusion, what about thorium reactors, as power to support renewables. this MIT breakthrough is awesome! thanks for show(ing us). will subscribe soon.
They've been talking about Spark for 4 years now. The Yttrium Barium Copper Oxide was the key to achieving the 150Mdegree C temperatures in such a small reactor and the small design means greater likely hood of commercial sponsors. It made the ITER design obsolete before they even broke ground. We'll likely have a working SPARK reactor before ITER gets switched on.
As an apprentice engineer around 1971 I was shown a newspaper headline on a fantastic new line of research “Fusion Tokamak” and a major breakthrough that could supply free energy for all.
I’ve now retired 50 years later, STILL WAITING. I’d like to say I’ll believe it when I see it but now at 66 years old another 30 years away seems unlikely.
I remember being about 7 or 8 y.o. and people were talking about it. Now I'm 44, and I figure I'm gonna croak first. On the other hand, we're seeing some electric vehicles now, and even if they aren't cost-effective yet they're certainly very energy-efficient.
People said that about flying heaveir than air machines. It will happen. Just not as fast you would like.
15 years ago if someone told you about Tesla Inc would you have believed them?
It Can still happen just one lucky breakthrough.
The Tokamak reactor design should have been dropped ages ago.
I learned the word Tokamak from an encyclopedia my parents gave me as a lad around 1963. I thought I was up with the latest research. Still waiting.
One afternoon about 45 years ago, I came home from school and opened the issue of Science News that had arrived in the day's mail. It had an article about a "fusion breakthrough" that made it sound like they'd cracked the problem and that usable fusion was just a few years off.
Gene Roddenberry from star trek must of known about this even earlier in the early 60s .. as the Enterprise was powered by magnetic fusion in the form of a plasma reactor
It was just the second test Reactor that proved the fuel and reactor function. We lacked the high non magnetic metals or materials. At that time.
mike rayner videos - It was matter-antimatter reactors, not fusion reactors, powering the Starship Enterprise… with Dilithium Crystals in their cores regulating the reactions.
@@MagicHawkeye OMG! .. you are right .. i remember now you say .. please forgive me .. i could have sworn Plasma was involved .. haha .. good old Spok
Same thing here. Get back to me when its really here.
wonderful. success for humanity is round the corner. people working on these projects deserves millions salutes
Yes! This is a game changer. If it proves it’s mettle,then we might have our first fusion generating plants within a decade, the only restriction being anymore, the time needs to build one.
Did not expect any news this year, given ITER's continuous delays. That's pretty exciting. Can't wait to read up on the details.
It's even better that there are good news, since ITER has also finally stopped being so mismanaged at long last.
No one is counting on ITER.
@@paulbedichek2679 ITER has a bad rep. but I think it's essential to consider it is not only a facility for achieving fusion. It's an experiment where all kinds of fusion related technology will be explored.
As far as I know, ITER's big contribution may be in things like shielding materials capable of withstanding the high ammount of neutron radiation, knowledge about high energy plasmas and confinement, etc. Which probably will help advance other fusion designs.
Who cares about ITER that is European approach Americans are building the SPARC reactor much cheaper faster and smaller.Also like Canadas General Fusion. you smack spining ball of lead with a bunch of hammers.
@@paulbedichek2679 You do realise the US is one of the countries building ITER, right?
Scientific research is about cooperation, not competition. Peace!
@@b.6603 Yes,I support ITER and have followed it for decades,but they won't produce much, not a working reactor,SPARC will beat ITER by decades,General Fusion is also a viable fusion pathway, lots of ventures, besides ITER.
I think it doesn't matter if "fusion is always 30 years away". Fusion *is* the ideal energy source, the proof that it is only an engineering challenge, not a physics challenge, is literally in the stars, and so we simply have to keep trying to solve the engineering challenge. And we are. So bring on the jokes, and bring on the fusion power plants. They will change the world like nothing has ever done before.
That's what I always keep thinking about. I mean we literally did achieve fusion many times already, so we can kinda say we did " It " already. Only problem is making it more efficient, but a few years ago I thought fusion was impossible unless it is in a star, and yet here we are, not trying to create it ; but just make it more efficient
One issue is that a star is a truly awful fusion plant, it takes 5 billion years to burn a small fraction of its fuel, and it is huge. The problem we have is that we need a much much better power plant than this, which isn't automatically possible, though it is looking like it is
@@daveansell1970 I'm not an expert but how is it awful that it takes 5 billion years? The energy released by the sun in 1 fraction of a second is still way enough to sustain Earth (if we could harness it of course)
Energy transport over long distance could be a key too. After all we already have an 100% efficient fusion plant in the middle of the solar system. I wonder how much would have been achieved on the subject with the same fundings.
its dirty just as bad as fusion from all the radioactive waste products.
I like this concept of a channel that combines science with dad jokes :) Fascinating video.
Your puns were fission quality, instead of making we want to dispose of the hazardous material after a runaway reaction, they just generated more and more cleaner puns. Marvelous!
Played some game years ago that was about managing a nuclear fission reactor, and it turned out to be fairly realistic. Dunno why, but it made something click in my brain, and I realized I actually really enjoy learning and teaching people about them. Nuclear fission/fusion reactors are just weirdly badass. If it weren't for Chernobyl, I think we'd have quite a few more people cheering it on.
which game it was?
What about Fukushima?
Fukushima if you examine it was actually a success story. An old design survived the 4th most powerful earthquake on record and the resulting tsunami with only causing one direct death and far less environmental damage than standard coal plant operation, let alone when one of those goes tits up.
@@cubosquare6724 No idea now, sadly. I haven't been able to find something like it either; makes me wonder if it was a flash game or something that got purged.
@@BigManDaichi NOOOO I have to find this game
Great update Matt. As for fusion, I have a bottle of wine set aside for the day fusion energy is harnessed for commercial use. Thankfully, it gets better with age and hope to drink it in my lifetime.
South Korea is building one that they are going to tap the thermal energy to make electricity.
That wine will become vinegar before you get to drink it but I like the idea.
I hope you don’t mind drinking vinegar…
I'm sorry man but wine doesn't age in the bottle.
@@patrick1532 distillates don't age in the bottle, brews do
Love hearing this. I can't check on the progress of ITER because it makes me feel desolate.
OMG Dr. Martin Greenwald, is that a Howard Roberts Jazz Guitar (circa 1976 vintage) that you have in the corner of the room your video recording from?
for those interested: there is a correlation on how hot the plasma needs to be vs how strong the magnetic field is. Plus there is also an interesting proposal on using liquid surfaces for plasma-facing components. And I agree - must suck for iter folks to work on something that is going to be hopelessly outdated by the time they are done
Correct. ITER is a joke and frankly should be disbanded entirely. It’s the completely wrong direction for fusion now that we have REBCO superconductors.
There's a ton of research going on with ITER that goes beyond just a "proof of concept" for a net energy production fusion reactor. We just don't know how these materials change over long time periods (greater than fractions of a second) of operation.
"In 30 years, we can expect functioning 30-year jokes."
Hey Matt, what are your thoughts on LPP's Aneutronic Fusion plans?
Imagine someone in the past had/will have an essential component / piece of information for the completion of fusion reactor, but he/she had died by being killed or got into a fatal accident.
Fusion reactors are a complex engineering endeavor but I have no doubt that we'll eventually have them. We are still at a stage that theoretical knowledge into fusion, materials science, and engineering breakthroughs are still needed that will have to come together for a functional reactor. These stronger magnets are another step towards the goal. I just hope that my 67 y/o body and mind will survive long enough to see fusion reactors come online. Then onward towards fusion powered space vehicles for exploring the solar system and nearby star systems.
I was in grad school in the 1970's, when fusion power was 30 - 50 years away. I guess the Tokamak was beginning to emerge as the most likely answer about then.
There was also the Stellarator, and the mirror machine; can't recall whether inertial confinement (implosion of D-T pellets, driven by lots of high-power laser beams) was coming into play at that time or a bit later.
Well, here we are 50 years later, and the Tokamak design still looks like the winner; the others having largely faded away.
At least there are starting to be prospects for success in less than 3 decades.
I'm encouraged by this news; I'm not popping any corks just yet, but this actually could finally turn the corner on this.
There are just so many hurdles still to clear, that it's way too early to go bonkers.
Fred
There is also a Stellarator test reactor: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X
Matt, what's your opinion on what General Fusion in Burnaby, British Columbia has been doing with their updated use of Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) technology whick uses a swirling cylinder of liquid metal to safely compress and heat the required plasma to the right conditions.
It would be interesting to see the outcome of combining MIT's superconducting magnets with General Fusion's MTF technology.
So, basically copper duck tape fixed the whole nuclear fusion problem. Duck tape can fix anything.
No one doubts how great nuclear fusion reactors would be - if we could get them to work. But given the need for clean power now , it would seem that putting money into thorium reactors may be a better solution for the time being.
Maybe the greater current needed is the impetus that will push fusion to the fore. 🤔
It seems we are still well over a decade away from a Q sufficient for meaningful generation. And once we reach that milestone, we still must replace all that entrenched fossil fuel generation, so slap another decade or two on top of that. Regrettably, Earth just can't wait that long. Dare I say it, fission is the best stop-gap we have until then.
@@parkerea Earth will just fine for the next 100 or so years
Thorium reactors are a pipe dream. Don't pay any attention to Utube videos that brag about all the good parts. Some of them exaggerate, some of them are just plain wrong. Thorium has a downside, which is why *no major organization in nuclear energy has invested in it.* I'm no physicist, so if you want to know more, you'll have to research it.
@@daedster1 Ok, I should have been more specific. Earth itself will be just fine, but significant portions of the human population living on Earth won't be due to global warming. I have friends living in Florida and Louisiana who will be under water. I have grandkids who will have to live with weather extend and the massive worldwide economic consequences.
Dude with a pacemaker standing next to the HTS magnet: 'what's this hole in my chest?'
I have a pacemaker. Also, I'm an electrician. My doctor frowns on that. 😂
waiting for a magnet strong enough to pull the blood from your body with the iron in your hemoglobin. Now thats true power
My elder son works at General Atomics' D3D facility, so I have a bit of a second-row seat on fusion. Amid the hype, genuine progress toward making fusion practicable is finally being made. The real breakthroughs may indeed come from some of the smaller, more nimble players.