Why Nuclear Fusion is Closer Than You Think

[@UndecidedMF]

Do you think any of these fusion startups have a shot? Visit brilliant.org/undecided to sign up for free. And also, the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium membership. If you liked this video, check out: The Future of Solid State Wind Energy - No More Blades kzbin.info/www/bejne/pH_TY2Swicp2esU Corrections: More of a clarification, but First Light Fusion net gain plans are a ~150 MW pilot facility costing less that $1 billion in the 2030s.

[@thesilentone4024]

You should talk about the benefits of making citys change there energy fun joy pollution. Ok how well suck out the methane in the sewer pipes and not vent it like we do now and use that gas for energy. Now the poop put that in big domes with mixing rods to make methane for power but compost is byproduct. Now you can turn off or convert those pollution power plants into more clean but not green but much cleaner energy.

[@michaelmayhem350]

90-95% efficienct still means it uses more electricity than it produces which makes it useless.

[@nunyabiz1780]

obviously no. "scientist" first need to know how a star works but they're stuck in 20th century text book hell.

[@yourlogicalnightmare1014]

It's hard to imagine a bigger fraud. If this were in full operation tomorrow and producing quintillions of watts of free energy per second, everyone will still be charged an enormous price for energy. The government would never allow people to enjoy a lower energy bill when it needs hundreds of trillions of dollars to engage in the endless frauds and wars it has always engaged in

[@jackfanning7952]

no

[@HelionEnergy]

Thanks for including our team in this fusion overview, Matt! No matter the approach, it's clear that all of us are focused on one mission: creating clean, carbon-free energy from fusion.

[@Allenar4]

I hope you succeed, I admit the idea of achieving net energy without ignition was not even on my mind until this video. I wonder though, your 90-95% energy recovery, was this repeatable and at scale? That seems to be the wildest claim in the video to me.

[@Dcassimatis]

Why not build 600 now,...fire them off in succession,...600 would still be minuscule to ITR in size even compared to just about any other power plant?

[@sportbikeguy9875]

lets go Helion! I think your approach is the most practical, the best part is no part at all, the simplicity of your system vs others is what fascinates me.

[@NadeemAhmed-nv2br]

@@Allenar4 pretty sure it was reputable but definitely not at scale because they haven't built up the big 1 yet

[@NadeemAhmed-nv2br]

@@Dcassimatis because they're a small startup that doesn't really have that kind of money and unless they can prove themselves they're not going to get funds

[@saml7610]

Great video, but there's one small correction I'd like to make. You say deuterium and tritium are primarily sourced from seawater. It's more accurate to say seawater is the most abundant source, but currently, it is not used as a source very often. Instead, we harvest deuterium and tritium from fission reactors as it is generated in the core. This of course could change, but the technology behind extracting those isotopes from seawater is honestly deserving of its own video.

[@gavinkemp7920]

We do harvest deuterium from water but for tritium i believe you are right. I fact for tritium most propose to use lithium spliting.

[@finchisneat]

Thanks for the additional information! I've seen a few "debunking" videos about these Undecided videos. And while I wouldn't use the word debunk, it definitely shows it can appear to slant some info or just be flat out incorrect.

[@EclecticMystic]

@@finchisneat I mean, a year ago when he did a video on "The Line" as a credibly possible future city, I could see that this channel didn't run on a lot of technical expertise, just more Journalism level understanding of science. Anyone who doesn't see the numerous blatant design flaws of that project isn't here to be a critical thinker. They're just here to promote futurist ideas and gather all the clicks they can.

[@MrCupcakedemon]

@@gavinkemp7920 not just any lithium. Li-6. And Li-6 is pretty difficult to produce. Which is partly why the tritium breeder experiment with ITER has been scaled back as much as it has been. However in the future we shouldn't need tritium to produce fusion.

[@HydrogenFuelTechnologies]

Wrong again, Dr Edmund Storms as well as a handful of other lenr scientists can create tritium from lenr electrolysis.

[@br8krboy]

I am a retired nuclear engineer. Spent two years at TMI2 responsible for design and construction of remote handling equipment and temporary onsite storage facility for high activity waste from cleanup operations. While I certainly hope we can one day see commercialization of fussion, in the mean time I wish at least a few of you technology reporters would get it straight about worst case fission reactor accidents. Light water reactors (LWRs), which makeup all commercial and military reactors today (with the exception of a few CANDU heavy water reactors) CANNOT melt down due to a runaway criticality event such as what happened at the Chernobyl graphite moderated reactor. The worst case accident for a LWR is a loss of coolant accident (LOCA). When this happens, the fission process stops immediately due to the fact that the coolant also serves as the fission process moderator. Without the moderator the reactor cores are design such that the criticality constant instantly goes below one and hence the fission process can no longer be sustained. At that point the only heat being produced is heat given off by decaying radioactive fission products NOT fissioning of uranium atoms! This decay heat is as much as about 4% of full power output for a short time after event initiation and if the emergency feed water (EFW) supply is lost (which is what happened at both TMI and Fukushima) it is enough heat to exceed the 2200 degree F the safety related EFW system is designed to prevent. The significance of 2200 degrees F is that at that temperature, which is 2000 degrees F below the melting point of the uranium oxide fuel pellets, there is an exponential increase in metal water reaction between the zirconium oxide fuel rod cladding and the hot water, resulting in an exponential increase in the breakdown of the coolant into elemental oxygen and hydrogen. If the hydrogen cannot escape into the atmosphere and instead builds up inside of containment, something will eventually ignite it causing an explosion. This happened at both TMI and Fukushima. At TMI the large robust secondary containment withstood the explosive forces, as it was designed to due and there was no resultant release of radioactivity. The four reactors at Fukushima Daiichi were of the old GE torus and lightbulb design, which comparatively small secondary containments and non-hardened vents, meaning that it required much less generation of hydrogen to produce a combustible concentration of 4% in air and once it inevitably ignited, the non-hardened vent failed allowing radioactivity to be release to the environment and more hydrogen to leak into the fuel handling building where it again built up an ignited. This was a known weakness in the original GE plant design but unfortunately the Japanese never quite got around to fixing the problem by hardening the containment vent. Interestingly, Fukushima Daini, located only 13 kilometers from Daiichi, also was hit with the same tsunami and also loss its EFW system but only for a short time. In addition, it is of the newer GE design with a large robust secondary containment like TMI, so the consequences of a LOCA there would have been relatively minor from the standpoint of releases of radioactivity into the environment. A friend of mine was in charge of removing the damaged fuel from TMI and shipping it to a government lab in Idaho for analysis. The 12 ft long fuel rods were essentially sheared off at the midsection, with the lower half remaining intact and the upper half reduced to loose uranium oxide pellets and melted zirconium oxide cladding rubble in the bottom of the vessel. The lab analysis determined that the core never exceeded a temperature of about 3500 degrees F - enough to destroy the cladding, but well below the melting point of the fuel itself. SO PLEASE DON’T KEEP REPEATING THIS NONSENSE THAT THE FUEL AT TMI AND FUKUSHIMA MELTED. The decay heat released following a design basis worst case accident at a LWR is not enough to do that

[@LaurenceHuntKenora_Ontario]

Thank you Matt. I spent about 3 years studying 34 fusion energy projects around the world. As you point out, most all are variations of the tokamak, which has many inherent problems, which you allude to in the present video. The varying approaches of the three initiatives here are among those that caught my attention while doing my own research. However, the project I found to be most promising wasn't mentioned by you today. I'm referring to HB11 Energy in Australia. While funded so far on a shoestring, all the components of the model have been demonstrated in the lab in published, peer-reviewed scientific papers. Using Nobel Prize-winning (off the shelf) chirped pulse amplified laser technology, HB11 proposes to produce electrical current rather than heat. While this overlaps with Helion, it's fundamentally different. Why? (1) Ponderomotive fusion of hydrogen and boron 11 produces 3 helium nuclei (the positive charge) from instantaneous combination (fusion) of the reactants. The reaction is so rapid that heat is not a byproduct. The positively charged alpha particles can be used to generate an electrical current through closing a circuit with the electrons separated from the atoms in the reaction. (2) Neither the reactants nor the products are radioactive. Contrast this to all the reactions using deuterium and tritium, which emit neutron radiation in the fusion reaction and also interact with carbon in the atmosphere (and the human body). (3) While a magnetic field is required to contain and channel the products, there is no plasma (nor heat) to contain, channel or stabilize. To summarize, you put in simple hydrogen (no deuterium or tritium) and boron 11, and you get out an electrical current (electrons & helium nuclei). No heat is produced. There are no steam turbines or plasma containment required. There is no radioactivity going in or coming out. And, of course, there is no carbon. As an added note, HB11 Energy is almost never mentioned by anyone seeking to educate the public about fusion energy. I'd sure like to see you dig into the HB11 Energy story, particularly as you bring a particular brand of clarity to all of your stories!

[@PeterbFree]

Any links to this project?

[@MikeOldani]

Your version needs a lot of boron. Very different from what they described. Link some research so we can learn more please.

[@stawmy]

You would still get fast neutrons i imagine, that's the problem with D-T reactions. I am working on D-D reactions, which although they have less energy than D-T they are easier to control and there are far less neutrons. You can make use of these neutrons to make any kind of fuel, slow them down and pass them through a hydrogen blanket, which creates more deuterium, or let them strike a lithium blanket and make helium-3. I would like to study the fusing of other elements as you stated, but right now we just need clean cheap electricity and that is where i spend most of my free time. Since you are left with pure helium, you can sell it, theres a worldwide shortage of the stuff (He4 that is) Helium-3 is worth gram for gram 20 times more than gold. The waste product from the reactor is actually worth more than the fuel!

[@gilbertfranklin1537]

I found where the US is working with the Australian group: "In 2019, Prof. Hora (now also an Emeritus Professor at the University of New South Wales) launched HB11 Energy Holdings Pty. Limited (HB11) and remains a director of the company. In 2020, a 12-month experimental program commenced at the University of Austin in Texas (US), accessing the Texas Petawatt Laser Facility."

[@medexamtoolscom]

Why not take a little ball of paraffin, perhaps use deuterium for the hydrogen in the molecule, give it an electric charge, accelerate it down a linear accelerator just as you would a proton, and then smash it into another little ball of paraffin going in the opposite direction? It shouldn't be very hard, just choose a ball about 2 micrometers in diameter and if you give it a charge to mass ratio of about .00001 that of a proton, it should be easy to give it just the right kinetic energy, and because it's small but not unmanageably so, it should be feasible to aim it straight into another one going in the opposite direction.

[@michiganengineer8621]

While all 3 look interesting, the one I'm hoping works best is the Helion design. It _looks_ like it would be the easiest to scale up or down and also looks like it would be the easiest to make "portable", as in an ocean going vessel or even a space ship.

[@davescott7680]

Yeh I have biggest hopes for Helion, but my bet is on General Fusion.

[@Steelrat1994]

And finally some viable designs going beyond the steam turbines. Those are so overdue.

[@davescott7680]

@@Steelrat1994 only 1 of them isn't. Steam turbine not a big issue, it's efficient way of converting heat energy to electrical energy. And is well understood and developed. Actually having a plan how to convert the energy is what's great here. Tokamaks for longest time have been Fusion/ignition... ... Something.... something.... Steam turbine!

[@schrodingerscat1863]

Their approach makes no sense, they say they don't need to achieve ignition meaning there is no fusion so no energy released and no energy gain. They are trying to blag funding for a perpetual motion machine as far as I can see. Their research into magnetic field energy recovery is interesting but it's not energy generation.

[@itsROMPERS...]

I've been waiting for DEC. It just seems so primitive that all these superb advanced technologies have the same primitive goal of just making hot water, which itself is just used to replace a donkey that turns something around in circles.

[@EELinneman]

In 1984 I interviewed at Livermore Labs based on my college work in the physics of laser-induced fusion. At the time, they said they were 3 years away. Happy to see that companies are still 3 years away.

[@zanderzephyrlistens]

It's five years because we really havent left 2020.

[@KingOf_B]

A speaker from Livermore Labs came to my university the other week to give a colloquium. It was a cool talk. They said that to be commercially viable they would need to fire their lasers 10 times a second. They currently can only do it once every 4-8 hours to let them cool.

[@cidshroom]

They've performed laser induced fusion, but it was never meant to be a sustaining reaction

[@VanDerPol]

A very nice overview: Just two comments: 1) Deuterium-Tritium Fusion does produce radioactive waste - its half-life is just way shorter than that of waste from fission. 2) ITER is a research project - the results gained there help to accelerate the fusion projects in the private sector. I think both ways are very important

[@thornelderfin]

Also walls of the reactor have to be periodically replaced (years) and are highly radioactive. But that's not a big problem.

[@Tarinankertoja]

yes, this is as always the claim in fusion vidoes, that fusion produce no nuclear waste.. well… as mentioned, it’s Deuterium Tritium fusion (as Dt+Dt requires much more input energy) which release a neutron and that neutron makes materials radioactive. Yes, its only for couple of hundreds years of storage, but still nuclear waste storage.. over one’s lifetime. If you check storagefasilities from the 1820’s, and societies around then and now, you’ll get the picture. Also, it’s still a rich man solution. to use where there is an infrastructure for it. Most of the big cities outside rich billion uses moped to transport gas as main energy delivery system.

[@remliqa]

@@thornelderfin What is the frequency of replacement for those wall? If the rate is just a few years, than they might create more radioactive waste than current fission plants.

[@Anopheles6]

⁠​⁠@@thornelderfin actually, the walls of the reactor at full output won’t last more than a couple days. The high number of neutrons and resulting irradiation change materials at an atomic level resulting in “spalling” of the walls of the reactor. All materials will literally fall apart. Helion has chosen not to use tritium, meaning they will produce several times more neutrons.

[@pierre5716]

Absolutely love the idea of presenting different way of mastering one technology, even more the interviews from startups in the real world. Made me realize how many ways there are of generating fusion. Love it !

[@ordinarybloke6962]

Having been impressed by the molten salt fission systems, I feel sure they are going to fill the energy need for many centuries. If the thorium systems come good, even longer. Problems appear to be mostly with getting the best alloys for the pipework and maintaining a good reducing chemical potential. Much closer than any of the fusion systems. Then there's the LPP fusion project with their focused plasma beam. Looks very interesting.

[@Cowboy_Steve]

The thrill of the chase really motivates these independent companies. You can just tell when people thrive on figuring out the science and then applying it. Exciting stuff for sure! This is a perfect example of how concentrating on one specific model (tokamak) can almost be counterproductive in the long run... as other concepts and discoveries surface that can be developed much faster and cheaper. Not saying that the tokamak style reactors won't eventually work - just that because of the time involved in developing the science, other fusion concepts might already be up and running by the time tokamak's are viable. Well done Matt and team! 🤠

[@jccusell]

"Was it a waste of money? Well not if you ask the people receiving the money." - Matt Ferrell -

[@andyr5579]

I just read that a fusion reactor just made a net gain. Seems like that’s HUGE by way of proving the possibilities.

[@joergkalisch7749]

Not really

[@andyr5579]

@@joergkalisch7749 ok well thanks for your input. That’s a great argument you make there.

[@jonwatson6918]

@@andyr5579 The point is that the net gain didn't exist. 302 MJ input and 3 MJ output isn't something to get excited about. And in addition that power output lasted about a nanosecond and then it's a week to reset the lasers. Not so much a breakthrough as a plea for more funding

[@joergkalisch7749]

@@andyr5579 Sorry, but the topic does not deserve more than those two words.

[@joergkalisch7749]

@@jonwatson6918 Thanks Jon. Precisely 👍

[@Auttieb]

Great video! I am always excited to see these novel methods for solving a problem and I wish them the best of luck! I am also a physicist and have to make a few notes, mainly on the introduction 1) Fission reactors are not inherently susceptible to meltdowns and explosions. The pressurized water reactors we currently use are, however designs such as molten salt reactors are literally incapable of exploding. Most Gen IV reactors share this property. 1a) Fission does not need to produce lots of nuclear waste, the problem is more political than physical. If breeder reactors are set up which use mixed oxide fuel (which is uranium and plutonium mostly) their fuel can be reprocessed again and again with relatively little waste. France, a country who is mostly nuclear powered, does this and produces much less waste than the US (who banned reprocessing in the 70s). 2) Fusion does actually create nuclear waste. Very dangerous nuclear waste actually. Fusion leads to the release of neutrons which "activate" other materials. The reactor vessels and components will absorb these neutrons and become radioactive. The atomic structure of them is altered and thus they degrade over time. There are proposed ways to insulate the reactors with lithium blankets which would also produce tritium, but to my knowledge none of these systems have been demonstrated yet. Every few years fusion reactors will have to be refitted to maintain structural integrity. The old components will be *very* radioactive and will need long term storage/disposal. Helium 3 fusion does not create te radiation hazard as Deuterium-Tritium fusion, however has a host of supply issues. 3) Tritium is not really a naturally occurring resource. It has a half life of 10 years which makes it hard to store and use. The only way we have to make tritium currently is from fission reactors and currently this is where most of the worlds supply comes from. There are proposed methods to make tritium from lithium and the excess neutrons released in fission but as it stands there has been no evidence we will be able to produce enough tritium this way. Helium-3 is the same way, however it is even harder to make, only being produced through radioactive decay, cosmic rays, and whatever was here at formation of the solar system. We might be able to get it from the lunar surface (see: Moon, its a good movie and the science is checking out) as He3 has been detected there rather recently by a Chinese rover. I think that with sufficient advances in science and engineering all of these issues can be overcome, however even optimistically to get the amount of energy we need to de carbonize, current technologies haven't been well enough proven for us to go all in on them as our savior.

[@HorzaPanda]

I studied nuclear physics so I flinched when I heard him explain Fukushima, thanks for the detailed comment. On 1a) I had a lecturer who suggested that high level nuclear waste could be reduced to as little as 3% of current amounts using breeder reactors On 2) I know that with normal reactors our biggest areas of concern are Tritium (12 year half life) and cobalt 60 (5 year half life). Activation products are deadly, but at least not super long lived. And yeah, on 3, talking to people in fusion, I've heard concern about the supply of tritium and the viability of making it with lithium blankets. I don't know enough about this field to say what will happen on that front though. But yeah, back to point 1), definitely some interesting Gen IV reactor designs out there.

[@briangoslin1973]

Thank you so much for being quick on the take. Often when i see the tired of 'nuclear vs x.y.z.' comparisons, the waste/safety portions of the discussion are dramatically reductive and miss represented of where/why these issues arise. There's always this tendency to unfairly compare the newest most shiny green or alternative technology against 60 year old light water systems as if that's the only conceivable means of using nuclear energy. Ironic considering the actual INVENTOR of the PWR himself (Alvin Weinberg) was already IN-ERA making suggestions about various other reactor concepts, like the MSR you mentioned, all of which were orders of magnitude safer AND more efficient with their fuels/waste products. This reality is always so casually tossed out. Nevermind the fact that U.S. has ALEADY created most of the waste... we just aren't getting any benefit from it.

[@amramjose]

Thanks for that clarification. it seems "molten salt" or Thorium reactors may be the best interim technology, while the fusion manufacturers sort this out?

[@marcwinkler]

Reprocessing is done to separate Plutonium it produces huge quantities of waste.

[@Davideoedivad]

Agree that the video is spoilt by the gratuitous misinformation about fission reactors implying that the fukushima reactor accident caused the tsunami flood when it was the other way round. The quest for fusion isn't driven by shortcomings of fussion

[@scottbarrett4746]

As a physics student in the early seventies: yup, fusion was 30 years away. I never understood why it took so much money and time to develop either fission or fusion reactors. Physicists eh! Since then, I've got post-grad degrees in mechanical engineering and worked my whole career as an engineer. Ah, now I understand! What does everyone reckon now? Ten years? My God, we need this!

[@scottbarrett4746]

@nightbot1788 - Ha, good question. What I think is that we can't really estimate a time until someone creates a proper pilot plant that produces continuous energy. Perhaps engineers working in some of these start-up companies are confident when that might be. Then the pilot plant has to be productionised and probably scaled up. It's just possible that the break through is imminent and subsequent work easy. In that case maybe 10 years or less. I think that's probably optimistic. Only those working on these technologies have a proper feel for it but most of them are biased and bound by commercial confidentiality! I'm cautiously optimistic but emphasise cautiously!

[@bobhenderson7077]

They used to say its 10 years away and always will be. Now it's 5 years away and always will be. You are right. It IS getting closer!

[@cuzz63]

when it gets to 1 year away we know it might happen in out lifetime.

[@nathangamble125]

I think it's about 8 years away at the moment. At this rate, the expected arrival of fusion power and the actual date should coincide in about 2060.

[@romaliop]

I remember when it was 50 years away and always would be.

[@JohanZahri]

What's for sure is the lapse has gotten longer🤣🤣🤣

[@chairmanmeow3474]

ALL IT LACKS IZ FINISHIN'... LOL

[@Perserra]

Engineers are always confident they can crack a problem, and they stay confident even decades into working on it. When it comes to commercial-grade fusion, I'll believe it when I see it.

[@JM-nt5fm]

The reality is commercial fission only happened because of war and then submarines. War is madness in it's pace and in reality the only reason submarines happened is because of the madness that was Rickover. So, I agree that something much compel the change and I don't see what that is yet.

[@Perserra]

@@JM-nt5fm Its not just a matter of impetus, plasma stability appears to be a truly hard problem to crack. Physicists and engineers have been at it for 90 years, 30 years with modern computers to aid the modeling, and they are still only making baby steps.

[@mattiasolsson2499]

@@Perserra Yup, fusion is one of those problems where. The better our tech, models and access to computing power become, the more we understand how god damn hard it is. People who say that with enough funding we could have cracked fusion decades ago. Misses that without modern computing capabilities that emerged just in the recent decade, we wouldn't even really have to ability to even simulate the problems that needed solving in the first place.

[@fortheloveofnoise]

@@Perserra It's been cracked, but the powers that be suppress the technology for monetary reasons. It will be "released" in due time though.

[@dingdong2103]

I'm fairly confident that when 2050 comes and we spent all this effort to reduce carbon emissions, there will be a realisation that it was all for nothing. Climate change is natural. Well, at least a few million people will get rich from the suffering of billions of others.

[@BEHEMOTH20]

I think what's most interesting about all of these small scale operations is how bad they make ITER look, ITER will be fascinating for sure but it is simply too big for a research and demonstration reactor as the size so severely restricts iteration and improvements, especially as new discoveries and understandings are made. As Helion showed, smaller scales allow much faster iteration and testing and allows a clear progression from prototypes and demonstrators to (hopefully) real energy positive reactors.

[@BuffMyRadius]

I still think ITER is useful because there's basically no way it won't work. Startups are trying some clever things to try and get to net gain but most are working on the bleeding edge.

[@yes-vy6bn]

yet another reason to abolish the government 🏴

[@markwheeler4417]

ITER's complex management is certainly a big part of the problem.

[@GK-qc5ry]

I think ITER can't incorporate the latest developments in magnets that is covered at the beginning of the video those D shaped magnets.

[@moldman5694]

@@yes-vy6bn put down the guillotine, son

[@MrStarTraveler]

Oh My God! I've been thinking about "Direct Energy Conversion" for so long! I'm not a scientist or anything. I was thinking how much better it would be for the energy to be converted directly into electricity without having to pass through a heat engine which by definition has low COP. Didn't think it was possible. I'm glad I was wrong.

[@Treviisolion]

I hope you do a followup video in a few years. It sounds like we’ll have a better idea of which if any of these projects will be viable in a few years once they’ve managed to build and test their prototypes. There is of course no guarantee that a working fusion reactor will be a commercially viable fusion reactor, but so long as the results of this research are shared if they turn out to be deadends (whether through scientific journals or sold to other fusion projects), then in the worst case it’ll help inform how to build ITER’s successor. Glad to see that at least on initial inspection they aren’t just scams.

[@daedalusdreamjournal5925]

well, they are 3 breakthroughs for any fusion reactor to achieve 1. scientific breakthrough : proving that more raw energy can be produced than used 2. engineering breakthrough : proving that more USABLE energy can be produced than used and at scale. 3. commercial breakthrough : proving that a lot of energy can be produced AT A REASONABLE price. None of these startup have even managed the scientific breakthrough. So I am incredibly skeptical that they can achieve the time scale that they declared.

[@kencarp57]

Yeah, THAT... 👆

[@donchristie420]

What the guy above me says☝️

[@justiceifeme]

You do realize that the scientific breakthrough you're talking about, was achieve since before the end of WW2. The nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki where literally fusion bombs, that's why they were so powerful. Also, the literally Sun and stars run on fusion energy being greater than the gravitational force of attraction pulling All there mass in on themselves. If this didn't happen, All stars would collapse in on themselves and Life as we know it may never have existed. In short, it's been long since proven scientifically that fusion can produce net energy. This also applies to the second breakthrough you mentioned, the engineering breakthrough. If we're talking usable energy and at scale, nuclear fusion bombs fit that criteria quick nicely; but if you're talking about converting it into useful electricity at scale, then we could always just blow up mini fusion nukes in a vessel filled with water, turn it into steam and run a turbine with it. But obviously that method wouldn't be sustainable for various reasons, not including safety, but it could be done. Realistically, we're still working on the engineering breakthrough part of fusion energy generation, but were getting closer and closer with every attempt made. Eventually we'll figure it out, then All that remains is the last breakthrough you mentioned, the commercial viability of fusion energy generation, which will be actualized in time.

[@totheknee]

No problem, just spend more money on basic research instead of wasting it on archaic fuel subsidies, handouts for the wealthiest people on the planet, or interest payments on irresponsible debt from borrow-and-spend conservatives.

[@gigabyte2248]

I was about to wade in with exactly this. There is genuinely some interesting science and engineering on display at these companies, and I can see some compelling routes to making engineering breakeven a bit easier, but the fact remains that, of the 3 major milestones, fusion research has hit *zero.* Fission already struggles to support itself financially, with huge upfront costs and high risk of project delays/overspend, and fusion is bound to be even worse. IMO, fusion will be the solution to the next energy crisis, not this one. In 50-100 years, some technology will come along that needs *serious* power (possibly even spaceflight). *Then* it'll be fusion's time.

[@maxfuchs3387]

“Money for Nothing” by Dire Straits. I had to listen to that part at 4:15 again, you really made that joke. That’s genius.

[@danielwoods7325]

So happy you posted this - I saw an interview years ago about Direct Energy Conversion in fusion systems and I could never find it again; I love the elegance of the Helion system. I wish all these startups the best of luck though - anyone who achieves viable fusion power will be doing a huge service for humanity.

[@DeathbornGamer]

Let’s just hope oil and gas don’t sabotage it

[@PatrickSamphire]

I worked tangentially in this field a long time ago, and I think these are really creative and clever ways of approaching the problems. I do very much hope they are successful and I'll be following their progress. We'll have to see whether they can really overcome those challenges, though.

[@UndecidedMF]

Thanks for sharing, Patrick.

[@miscbits6399]

There are an awful lot of slips twixt cup and lips Just think of all the "fantastic new battery" technology breaktrhoughs which fizzle out - just because it works in theory or in the lab doesn't mean it will scale to industrial size - there have already been 4 fusion technologies which failed the scaling test

[@Alexander_Kale]

@@UndecidedMF The one that is missing from this list is the stellarator Fusion design. Any particular reason for that?

[@otakukj]

Just announced a 120% net gain. Fascinating time to be alive!

[@kstricl]

This is truly a first past the post race. The first company to be able to begin supplying net gain fusion energy at scale is likely to win long term - as long as they manage things well. Mismanagement could set everything back dramatically. I like the Helion approach though, very 1701-D Warp Core like.

[@dsloop3907]

Ayy captain, she's giving you all she's got.

[@TAP7a]

Which is why it absolutely 100% *needs* to be public sector

[@TomFranklinX]

@@TAP7a The government has very little chance of competing with the private sector in efficiency.

[@henrikt.183]

Replacing all fossil fuels with fusion will take decades. Enough time for other companies to catch up and start building their own designs wherever the first company just hasn't come around to it yet. The first company will get rich of it but the second third and forth will probably stll be relevant.

[@christopherbelanger6612]

@@TAP7a No, it doesn't need to be public sector at all. Private will generate more ideas and concepts more efficiently. This is been proven time and time again, I don't know why people don't get it now. All you have to do is look at all the examples.

[@originalvillagevidiot]

It happened! 80 years since we discovered nuclear fission, today we have discovered net energy positive fusion. No longer will it be 30 years away, the time is now. Congratulations Lawrence Livermore Laboratories and all those involved in this tremendous achievement.

[@sibrenvanmanen8197]

There's some nuance! In te experiment they spent upwards of 150MJ to generate 1.5MJ of heat energy. Given the amount of energy of the light hitting the capsule was ~0.75 MJ. Other than that the form of energy is hard to harness

[@theloniousm4337]

Most of these projects sound like "batch" processes. Heating and compressing a single peppercorn sized quantity of Deuterium or tritium. Moving to "flow" processes that can continuously function by introducing new fuel at pressure is the next challenge.

[@steventhompson3750]

Yes, I will say it is still 30+ years away. This "breakthrough" is minor compared to what will be needed to bring this online nationwide or worldwide.

[@AveRay_]

@@steventhompson3750 yeah, we still have a ways to go. We have to stay grounded in reality- but still, it's an exciting proof of concept.

[@webx135]

@@theloniousm4337 That's how they're supposed to function. Basically they would keep throwing in fuel pellets and blowing them up. The heat mass of the coolant is what would smooth things out. It sounds weird, but it's actually easier to perform and sustain compared to magnetic confinement. Because magnetic confinement needs perfect conditions constantly and needs to maintain the heat the whole time. In inertial confinement, they just need to do it in bursts. Nothing to "maintain", just a blast all at once and absorbing and diverting the heat.

[@DangerClose13E]

Just heard the news that we have obtained net fusion return. What private company was this most associated with of the 3 you discussed here?

[@jakehankla2722]

Its great! Cant wait to hear the news today

[@fireofenergy]

It was the LLNL in California and their national ignition foundation (foundation?, Not sure) using lasers to compress the fuel into fusion. Now, everybody will try to do the laser thing. They achieved a 1.5x energy gain than that of the lasers (but not including all the extra energy needed to get the lasers going). This means that in the future, they will do better and might even get to the high enough "gain" (or EROI, energy returned on energy invested) to account for whatever inefficiency of the lasers, how much energy is required to power the lasers compared to how much the lasers provide.

[@jonwatson6918]

@@fireofenergy The lasers took 300 mj in and produced 2 5 mj out. And the gas turbine that generated that power is maybe 40% efficient. And the lasers produce power for maybe a nanosecond and then take a week to reset. There's just a few things to fix before for we get viable energy

[@Goatcha_M]

If he'd made this vid 1 month later...

[@radiantsquare007jrdeluxe9]

@@Goatcha_M to be fair to the creator, fusion based off of recent news is probably going to be here sooner rather than later

[@booneadkins]

I love the bonkers simplicity of the General Fusion approach. I'm glad they're still pursuing it!

[@justavian]

I've also been following the Wendelstein 7-X Stellerator. I'm anxious to hear more about their attempts to hit steady state operation.

[@drpoundsign]

Young Wendelstein. Alive....ALIVE!!

[@enriquemino9963]

isnt it sad a device invented in the US and the Germans maybe able to pull a fusion energy breakthrough(breakthrough as in fusion ignition or at least fusion gain of greater then 1). Where is our US device? or i forgot the National compact stellarator device was cancelled back in 2004 because of the imbecile Bush administration and its short sightness.

[@drpoundsign]

@@enriquemino9963 not surprising.

[@davidl.howser9707]

Matt, Fusion Energy as a practical resource is the Energy of the Future and always will be.

[@MichaelHarto]

From 30 years away to 29 years away! What a time to be alive

[@kx7500]

Still too late to be possible with the climate collapse

[@faroncobb6040]

I expect all these companies to spend a lot of time and a lot of money to produce some interesting science and a lot of excuses for why they still need more time and money to finally reach economic viability. I remember getting excited about General Fusion 15 years ago, but nothing much has happened since then except bigger fundraising rounds and bigger promises that they are getting closer.

[@shmielyehuda6788]

I am more optimistic. I see honest men of integrity, who are at the precipice. My horse is winning! My adrenaline is high.

[@herbertgemini]

Super shiny Animation check, Computer Simulation and AI Check, a lot of nice abbreviations check, super optimistic timeline check. A reactor powerful enough to power a lightbulb UNCHECK

[@thejohnroxbury]

Even though fusion rectors are considered safer, fission rectors are still the safest thing we have available to us now. We should be building fission reactors like crazy.

[@danielstory2761]

Fission reactors are not necessary “safe”; case in point, Chernobyl. Still less deaths per unit of electricity generated compared to fossil fuels. However, SMRs using molten salt and thorium are VERY safe, they literally cannot melt down and thorium cannot be used to create nuclear weapons. It is a no brainer to use them, the only reason they haven’t really been developed is the fossil fuel industry

[@caesarsalad1170]

@@danielstory2761 Thorium can definitely be used to produce nuclear weapons, it can still produce U-232, it's just not as efficient and not worth it. U.S. tested a U-233 22kt bomb in 1955. SMRs are cheaper and could be built on assembly lines, less land taken up, and perfect for smaller/mid size cities.

[@danielstory2761]

@@caesarsalad1170 u-232 even in very low concentrations will cause a nuclear device to fizzle due to high gamma emission. You may be referring to breeding u-233 from thorium-232, which is possible. Irradiating thorium to add a neutron turns it into protactinium 233 which transmutes into u-233 in a few weeks (27 day half life). It is however highly likely that the u-233 will be contaminated with u-232 (since the protactinium is vulnerable to accepting another neutron before it decays) , making it useless. It is much easier to centrifugally extract u-235 from refined uranium ore, or turn u-238 into Pu-239.

[@rogergeyer9851]

@@caesarsalad1170: Use your head, though. It's EASY to claim Thorium MIGHT work. If it showed real signs of being practical when costs and scale are considered, why so little progress in about 60 years?

[@HoodedLord]

@@rogergeyer9851 public misinformation campaigns and propaganda is the primary reason why so few fission reactors have been built, that and over regulation making too expensive to build. For context on the over regulation, if you wanted to build a hydroelectric dam you would have to build five more dams in order to be allowed the one you want to build originally. Also fission reactors have improved by leaps and bounds in the last 60 odd years, look at small modular reactors if you want some evidence of that. We just arent building them because of public perception of them, that andbthe massive numbervof "donations" oil and gas give our politicians.

[@lukasmakarios4998]

I like the one that's working on direct energy capture, rather than boiling water. Even if they're not the first, they have the potential to develop a whole new level of efficiency that others will want to copy. Boiling water for turbines may be already proven technology, but the efficiency of that is pathetically low. We need some kind of electromagnetic means to siphon out the energy directly, without spinning up tons of moving parts to waste what we should be using. As of now, I'd say "fusion is only ten years away," so we'll see if it "always will be." Good luck, guys!

[@joeboxter3635]

It's always - now - 29 years away. And with each decade, it will go down 1 year. So in about 300 years. This barring war, disasters, aliens, another energy break through.

[@edmiller4047]

Take a look at HB11 in Australia. Hydrogen-Boron fusion promises direct conversion to electricity since the products are charged helium nuclei at high energy.

[@JustinVK]

A month later, you called it. I will come back to this channel for all fusion updates 😊

[@nondescriptbystander]

This is the coolest thing I have seen in weeks. Thank you for helping me learn, Matt!

[@jansobus7074]

It's nice to see that Otto Octavius hasn't abandoned his fusion dreams 7:40

[@Showmetheevidence-]

These kinds of advances & proper scientific progress gives me massive hope for the future. If you look to politics it’s just disastrous all over the place… but if you look to science and these kinds of amazing things, it’s so much more interesting, positive and amazing!

[@kx7500]

Remember politics soon after influences science. If politics become more corrupt so does our science which is built on the society it is created by, becomes corrupt as well. See “scientific” racism, eugenics, nazi experiments, nukes, military advancements, etc.

[@masakela123]

I haven't been this excited about fusion in years. I had thought of a similar approach to fusion that utilized pulses instead of continuous ignition. To see that these companies were already doing that, amazed me and it really resonated with me. Frankly I feel that we should divert government and private funding toward these companies. One is bound to hit any day now. Thanks for this insightful video, I'm now super amped about fusion again after many year of " its 30yrs away".

[@brianrcVids]

Give us billions of dollars so we may make big promises that will never happen. Theranos said the same thing. It's a giant fraud. Keep our tax dollars out of it.

[@mth469]

Fill this man's glass up with a second helping of Koolaid !

[@helgefan8994]

There's a good reason to continue building ITER: It's probably our best shot to eventually get fusion working as a power source according to experts like Prof. Hartmut Zohm from the Max Planck Institute for Physics. Magnetic confinement via tokamaks (and stellarators) such as ITER are closest to practical power generation according to the actual numbers. The proposed timelines of other privately funded companies are often far too ambitious. Stronger magnets are certainly a promising way to decrease the size and cost of these experiments, but there are problems. For example the main problem with those very strong super-conducting magnets for the SPARC/ARC reactor planned by MIT are actually structural loads. I don't like that to get investors, they are also casting doubt over probably the most important fusion experiment (ITER).

[@teranova5566]

Yes you are right ITER is the best chance we have right now and still it is only experiment and the net energy gain of 500 MW is only thermal energy. There is no even chance that this experimental machine will produce net positive electricity. Apart from that there are 100 other problems. There is no hope that there will be working practical fusion reactor in this century. The problem is that in less than 50 years the known resources of oil and gas will run out.

[@helgefan8994]

@@teranova5566 Yeah I should have probably mentioned that ITER won't actually put power into the grid. It will be the first experiment with a self-heating plasma though, producing 10 times more energy than what is put into the plasma to heat it. That's still not enough for net energy gain of course, but the step after ITER for achieving net gain would really not be a big one. Such an actually-working DEMO reactor would only need to be slightly bigger (or have slightly stronger magnets) to crank up that energy amplification factor from 10 to 40, enough for a proper power plant. There has been much progress in recent years and decades, for example: - durable and heat-resistent materials for the inner walls of the vacuum vessel - working in the irradiated vacuum vessel via fully automated robots (done in JET) - ways to prevent sporadic "eruptions" in the plasma that can damage the vacuum vessel. From an engineering perspective, I really don't see any show-stopper problem neither for ITER nor DEMO, unless there's some highly unexpected behaviour in the self-heating plasma to be studied in ITER. I would estimate around 40 to 50 years from now we'll have the first working DEMO reactor. Maybe even earlier if considerable progress on superconducting magnets happens (so far I'm not convinced).

[@YellowRambler]

Will we still have enough electricity to start this thing up by the time it’s ready?

[@helgefan8994]

@@YellowRambler I don't know.

[@mondotv4216]

@@YellowRambler Wins award for silliest comment. There's no shortage of electricity - every year we produce more than we did in the previous year. Fusion just promises clean, safe consistent power... in about 25 years.

[@jonriordan649]

A cousin of mine is working on an orbitron fusion reactor. You may find this interesting. From their website: High-Level Concept: High speed ions are electrostatically confined in precessing elliptical orbits around a negatively charged cathode. The ion density is increased by the co-confinement of high temperature electrons trapped by an external weak magnetic field perpendicular to the electrostatic field in a “crossed field” configuration similar to a magnetron microwave device. Crossing elliptical paths of ions provide millions of chances of fusion-relevant collisions before the ion loses energy and is moved out of the interaction space as it falls into the cathode and is removed from the chamber. -I'll add the link to their website, if you are curious.

[@noo-sho8500]

It always surprised me how Tokamaks usally seemed to get all the spotlight, like this was the only way to achieve stable fusion power

[@olafnilsen1641]

Not enough in outer solar system

[@mpetersen6]

Achieving fusion isn't really that hard. People have built reactors in home work shops. Of course these fall far short of break even.

[@dsloop3907]

My Dilythium reactor is gonna be ready in ten years.

[@rnelson299]

Wow this video was perfectly timed!

[@rogergeyer9851]

Based Alaskan: Not if they're talking about Q(plasma) re the "breakeven" claim, vs. Q(total) which is what is needed for a VIABLE, commercially FEASIBLE solution for utility scale electricity production. And given how the numbers have been going, it's certainly Q(plasma) until someone credible demonstrates otherwise.

[@hamuArt]

Don't forget that ITER research made lots of other innovations. Some example: - drastic improvements in semiconductors (plasma science - RF waves - RF power delivery systems and controls) - linear inductor motor with inverters for precis controlled acceleration (example: Jet catapult on Aircraft carriers) - new composite materials - thermos size nuclear detection system - huge data processing (computer science and math) etc. etc.

[@SpottedHares]

One of the reason the Fusion has been 30 years away is because a lot of this assumes that their is just a single breakthrough to make it work. The reality is Fusion has not been a sprint but a marathon, we’ve made a lot of progress but the race is still far from over. A more realistic time line is if we keep current pace it will be more of the energy of the 22nd century, along with some other energy sources where they are most effective. Also unless we can completely break past the tritium deuterium cycle we will still need fission reactors for their precision neutrons.

[@richardreynolds6398]

That, and we've been funding oil companies and their wars and corruption instead of hope for the future.

[@humanistwriting5477]

I'll be honest and blunt. We have workable fusion. The issue, is that all the workable fusion technologies are bombs, literal bombs. At any time we could take those bombs bury them deep underground and set them off, pump water into the hole and collect the steam. The question is not when will we develop a tech that delivers fusion power, it's will these above ground technologies achieve thier goals before we get fed up with variable energy costs and energy insecurities and just start blowing up moles.

[@rnilsson8063]

Jon Manson, see above re: LPP Fusion. Small reactor (5MW, garage-sized) fed with Boron-hydride to make Helium via C-12. No neutrons at all. X-rays and a stream of electrons, i e current. Photons can also be captured in a kind of PV onion, making more electricity.

[@jovetj]

Far, far, far from over. 100 years +

[@humanistwriting5477]

@@jovetj hydrogen bombs. They are real. They are fusion. They evaporated an enite island. Care to change your estimates there?

[@ronmacnaughton5501]

Someone mentioned the expense of tritium. My understanding is that in the Genral fusion system, the neutrons produced from fusion turn lithium into tritium which can be then removed and used as fuel. I think it produces a tritium atom for every tritium needed for fusion. Hence a working reactor would need extra. And there would be radiation concerns so a plant could not be placed near a city. Matt when you mentioned 3 companies, I thought you would have included TAE which uses the higher ignition temperature fusion reaction involving boron which does not produce neutrons. Its linear accelerator design can produce higher energies, but I can't figure out how they remove energy for electricity generation. It must work because they supposedly have the biggest investment. Great video Matt.

[@GwynRosaire]

Don't forget that ITER's demand for superconductor materials has led to an increase in the size of the global supply. This directly reduced the cost of superconductor based equipment and development making these fusion startups possible.

[@y-aqt2820]

This video aged so well in such a short time !

[@paulpease8254]

Small correction Matt…tritium does not come from seawater. It comes from…fission reactors!

[@johnjakson444]

That is not a small correction, it is a massive one, because most of the fusion fans have no clue about where tritium comes from and that in a decade or two it will all be gone right about when they hope to turn on one of these machines.

[@choahjinhuay]

It can be found in sea water, but that likely occurs from fission in the earths crust. But your right, the highest concentrations come from fission reactors

[@paulpease8254]

@@choahjinhuay The minute amount of naturally occurring tritium is formed in the atmosphere due to cosmic rays. The total amount of naturally occurring tritium on the entire Earth is about 7 kg.

[@EvitoCruor]

I cannot understand how people that are supposedly knowledgeable on the topic of nuclear power think that nuclear waste is an actual issue or that nuclear fusion won't create any, both are false and neither is an issue. That's not to say we couldn't solve a lot of issues with fusion, such as lifting billions out of poverty and save lots of ecological damage (the actual biggest evironmental issue today). Another is that fusion does not easily lead to nuclear proliferation.

[@scottcronin3879]

Tritium is a very rare element, often produced from fission reactions. There is something like 20kg available now, which shows the need of breeding tritium inside the fusion reactors with lithium.

[@DFPercush]

Yet more demand for Lithium, hooray lol

[@johnjakson444]

And the breeding isn't going to work either, each neutron released is tasked with producing a replacement tritium nuclie for fuel, there are 3 big might happens, so loop gain is a fraction of one when the total loop gain has to be higher than 1 to be self sustaining. See Dr Danial Jassby papers on the issues with tritium.

[@marcdefaoite]

Another great video Matt. Well written, edited, and structured. Whooever you have working that side of things for you deserves recognition, and/or an end of year bonus. Nice the way you interspersed it with the experts from industry talking. Funny you mentioned Sabine in the end. All the way through this video I was thinking, okay, that all sounds great, but what would Sabine say?

[@UndecidedMF]

👍 I'll pass this along to the team! And Sabine is awesome. 😀

[@JerryDLTN]

Steve Cowley said "For $20B, I could build you a working (fusion) reactor. It would be big, and maybe not very reliable"

[@jayrey5390]

Thank you for the high level look at what emerging technology is about as well as clever ways of manipulating existing supply chains for new purposes. Great video as always !

[@Greebstreebling]

It was 'emerging technology' in the 1970s You have to ask yourself 'is this ever going to happen'?

[@KiltedSatyr]

Here's hoping! These kinds of projects feel like the primative fusion technology we will have to master before we can have artificial stars powering our society. I'm cautiously optimistic

[@J1WE]

Check this video out kzbin.info/www/bejne/anitpXqmq6pkqbM looks very promising..

[@Lesminster]

Showing ocean tsunami while talking about Fukushima kinda suggests that it's atomic power plant's fault that tsunami took place ;)

[@adameusx]

I am intrigued by Helion's design. I specifically like how no heat exchanger or steam turbine would be necessary or that a fusion reaction wouldn't need sustained. That seems like the most efficient route to go.

[@artysanmobile]

I don’t see fusion ever making commercial power. The cost will be a major factor but by no means the key. I’m glad we have explored it so enthusiastically, no matter what. We all know the benefits, but I feel that proponents are conveniently skirting the technical issues.

[@nyalan8385]

No it will eventually happen, it's pretty much the most effective method of generating electricity, but it may take even up to a century or so to get it to the level say even fission is at

[@rossk4864]

It is enormously encouraging to me that there are a number of different technological approaches in the works with passionate teams and monetary support behind each. This greatly increases the possibility of success, which in my view is crucial to the survival of our ecosystem.

[@texasslingleadsomtingwong8751]

It sure seems like this topic has become very, very active this last year and growing momentum each week.

[@dylansawyer3446]

Hi, I would just like to say a few things about this video. I think there are many interesting ideas presented my personal favorite is the idea of using the reactors coolant as a means of shielding the reactor components but there is one thing that this video neglects to mention that I feel needs to be noted when it comes to the progression of fusion-based power. There are more issues with the concept but this is what I am most familiar with. Fusion reactors have existed for many decades and have been applied in everything from scientific research to their use as neutron initiators in modern nuclear devices. For the most part fusion reactors are used for one main purpose. That purpose is to produce a lot of neutrons. While nuclear reactors produce vast amounts of neutrons they lack the ability of modulation that a fusion-based neutron generator possesses. The most commonly used design for a tritium deuterium fusion-based neutron generator is the linear ion accelerator model. In this model, an ion gun is used to shoot tritium ions at a target of lithium-deuteride a form of lithium hydride where the specific isotope of hydrogen is deuterium. When the tritium slams into the lithium-deuteride at extremely high speeds inducing a fusion reaction and produces lots and lots of neutrons. One of the most common applications for such a device is in the field of radiochemistry and chemical engineering, specifically, this technology is applied in studies of neutron transmutation of materials. It is also frequently used in neutron imagery. Neutron transmutation is largely the topic of my research, specifically my research centers around the study of what happens when materials are exposed to high amounts of neutron radiation. Neutrons are probably the most well-known nucleon. Neutrons are slightly heavier than protons and for the purposes of this next part, you will need to imagine a neutron as a proton with an electron slapped on the outside. This is not really how neutrons work but it's the easiest way to explain this process. A neutron can shed its electron and become a proton, free neutrons will do this after about 15 min however a nuclear neutron is typically stable however sometimes a nuclear neutron will become a proton and throw away its electron to maintain a sustainable nuclear charge (beta - emission). In addition to this atoms can "capture" neutrons and become heavier this process is known as neutron capture. When an atom captures a neutron the atom can become a new isotope of that atom, that atom can then have one of its neutrons turn into a proton, transmuting the atom into an entirely new element with distinct chemical properties. These processes are both known as neutron transmutation, where the capture of a neutron by an atom results in a change to the atom either isotopic or elemental. Modern polymers, alloys, and electronics can all become damaged by this process so any shielding in a fusion reactor will need to be replaced regularly. The damages that strong neutron radiation can do to modern materials can not be underestimated and must be considered when talking about the challenges behind constructing a fusion reactor.

[@The.Heart.Unceasing]

this is a valid concern, but that does not for the helion reactor, witch use the aneutronic D-He3 reaction (it still needs to be shielded because of the few stray D-D reactions that will happen, but it is a much lesser problem than for a D-T reactor), and it seems than the other two are planning to use the neutrons to generate their tritium, hence the lithium based liquid metal coolants, witch would be much easier to filter and recycle than a solid neutron shield.

[@MrGottaQuestion]

Stating that fission reactors go "out of control" because of an "unstable chain-reaction" with example of Fukushima is absolutely false. The control rods "scrammed" the reaction, stopping it entirely. The meltdown occurred when the batteries circulating water were depleted and the diesel generators didn't kick in. A contributing factor for Chernobyl was that the tips of the control rods actually increased the reaction before the rod could be fully inserted to stop the reaction - moral of the story is don't let the Soviet Union build your reactors, never build a graphite moderated one of that type, never build a reactor under pressure without a containment dome, never run purposefully dangerous tests with safety systems turned off, never let Russia do the disaster response. And from Fukushima, we can learn: don't build 60 year old designs in a tsunami risk zone without elevating backup diesel on stilts. Regardless, nuclear is incredibly safe and only several hundred at most died in the worst-case Chernobyl and only 2 people got a 1% greater chance of getting cancer in the Fukushima case. If you are going to talk all "science-like", make sure to get the actual science right! The fission reaction in Fukushima stopped immediately (as designed) but the decay heat lead to meltdown. Modern reactors (molten salt) would never suffer this fate (intrinsic to their design of passive safety) and even pressurized light water reactors currently being built have many safety systems so this never will happen again. And as for Chernobyl, it is of a reactor design NEVER built outside of the soviet union, precisely because it is so dangerous.

[@MrGottaQuestion]

As far as nuclear waste, it's the anti-nuclear activists who stopped development of advanced reactors that would close the loop and use up the nuclear waste. Nuke waste is 99.5% unused fuel. Check out Copenhagen Atomics here on youtube to see a company building a waste-burning molten salt nuclear reactor.

[@azzy-551]

don't get your science from matt, he does barely any research. you're right about the waste reactors, very underdeveloped solution.

[@MrGottaQuestion]

@@azzy-551 yeah obvious not much science proofing - mostly all hype

[@darrianaldridge1057]

We need the update video !

[@mike42441]

Matt, thanks for doing this video. It is great to see several teams working on fusion from different angles. I like that machine learning is helping to speed things up. I like MIT's approach, too. It'll be interesting to see when we will actually get more energy out than we put in on a sustained timeline in a commercial use setting. Other challenging projects include quantum computing, general AI, and room temperature superconducting, as well as others. But it seems fusion is leading the race of these up & coming technologies.. does anyone else agree?

[@mvlad7402]

Great report. Helion approach looks really revolutionary

[@ethanjensen7967]

This is really good to see. I think fusion is very much worth the research money.

[@DaveRoberts308]

IMO, the new fission reactor designs (e.g., based on thorium, SMRs, pebble bed) will basically eliminate the need for these fusion designs. The physics is simpler and is known. Some of the new fission designs are “Homer Simpson safe” (all are safer than Fukushima) and have much more complete burning of the fuel, leaving only a fraction of the nuclear waste of previous designs. The main thing holding these designs back at this point are regulatory issues, which fusion designs will also face. Wind and solar are not reliable. We need more nuclear, now. Modern fission designs are the answer.

[@grom7826]

I knew I would get a straight answer by going to your channel. Todays, (12/13/22), announcement was nothing but a bunch of Yada Yada Yada. Thank You

[@Justom001]

The US government is making a big announcement regarding fusion energy! The announcement will be December 13. Stay tuned!

[@WanderingExistence]

Can't wait

[@itzshft]

@@WanderingExistence It was announced

[@MrWildbill]

Frankly I don't hold much hope for these three featured here but I think efforts like these are very important even if they are unlikely to ever end up producing commercial energy. I look at these as more like Edison's failed attempts on the light bulb and frankly for the same reason, to learn the ways that don't work to eliminate them from the possibilities list. The other reason I support these efforts is that you just never know when and where another Edison will pop up and defeat conventional thinking.

[@MrWildbill]

@Nightbot1 -- A man can wear many hats, consider how few people in the entire history of mankind has had the positive effect of electric lighting had on civilization. No one is putting Edison up for sainthood but he was one hell of an innovator as measured by results.

[@eleventy-seven]

@@MrWildbill He was not a inventor but rather took others ideas and exploited them much like Bill Gates did with DOS and Windows.

[@MrWildbill]

@@eleventy-seven -- Actually you are wrong, Edison was an inventor and a prolific one at that with over 1,000 patents, he did not "steal" the light bulb or the phonograph, or the many improvements to the telegraph, he was above all an innovator. Bill Gates I will give you was less of an innovator as he was at the right place at the right time with the right idea, anyone who teamed with IBM on the PC was going to have a hit. Bill Gates and IBM did the shocking thing of inviting the 3rd party market to the party and the rest is history. Look how fast IBM lost their dominant role when they tried to control everything with the micro-channel PS/2.

[@Greebstreebling]

I worked at Harwell in the 1970's and a friend of mine worked at Culham Lab. Nuclear fusion was 'Just around the corner'. I'm amazed they've continued to get funding for all this time. It's still 'Just around the corner'....Given the global climate, environment and energy crisis, we need solutions now....

[@a2cryss]

Even before seeing the 2nd one, I was thinking Helion's version is like a magnetic version of an internal combustion engine with a compression and power stroke. I wonder if it could be adapted as a form of fusion thruster.

[@JoshWalker1]

Yeah when describing Helion to laypeople I’ve compared it with a diesel for quite a while. Intake, compression, expansion, exhaust; autoignition via compression; energy capture via a controlled restrainment of expansion. I think it (Helion) remains the more thoroughly diesel-analogous set of operations, this video’s script notwithstanding.

[@ericroovers]

Love Mike’s completely void VC answer to Matt’s question how ML is used: “One of the ways that we can leverage machine learning is by throwing it at that data set to really understand what we’ve got”. You can see from his face immediately after finishing the sentence that he KNOWS he just peddled some BS.

[@lmelior]

I thought that too. Either he just doesn't know what they use it for, or (more likely IMO) they don't actually use it for anything meaningful if at all. Possibly just be another buzzword in the soup to get investors interested.

[@Shannock9]

The real questions are what questions are they asking (i.e. training the AI to answer) and from what collected ("big") data? Perhaps these are commercial secrets?

[@AzureTheAvian]

Most privately run startups are just BS to take as much money as possible and then run into the darkness with it.

[@IhsanMujdeci]

@@Shannock9 With this type of data you can run simulations and predict within some margin what would happen when x parameter is changed. AI is good at predicting the future, recognising patterns and other things. We use it at our company to detect objects in construction sites. The more real life runs they do they can feed it into the model to reward to discourage the AI so it is more accurate to real life. Google's deepmind was used to predict what's the most optimal shape to hold plasma in a typical tokamak chamber. But as always more data is necessary as we understand little about this domain space.

[@tsbrownie]

I have built and supplied to the world a free fusion generator with a duty cycle of about 50%. You can collect the energy as heat or electricity from most rooftops using low cost converters. You figure out the rest. God.

[@nathanbanks2354]

ITER will work. JET got pretty close, so I'm fairly confident about ITER because making physically larger TOKAMAKs increases the energy output more than the energy input. CFS looks promising--the power of the magnets is one of the variables we can tweak. I'm skeptical about all the other systems. I'm glad people are pursuing other techniques because there is a chance one of them will work, but I don't see a clear path forward like we have with JET, ITER and DEMO.

[@finddeniro]

Thanks ..I been patiently a waiting..Stay Tuned.. Entirely different Ignitions..

[@gsit80]

the work done for SPARC at Commonwealth Fusion Systems is outstanding! 20 Tesla in a coil a quarted the dimension of the ones in ITER. That is really promising for the future of fusion.

[@TheNuclearBolton]

Is it using charged super cooled barium copper oxide as source of electromagnetism?

[@phpn99]

ITER is just a tech demo. Hugely expensive and cumbersome to build. The precursor to yet another multi-decade experiment, DEMO. Needless to say, none of these things will produce any cost-effective energy in even our children's lifetime. Meanwhile we could spend all that money on sustainable tech.

[@gsit80]

@@phpn99 and do what with sustainable tech? That won't be enough for industry of a Country.

[@MG-ye1hu]

After following fusion for many years I grew rather sceptical that this is something we can expect in the next 50 years. The new developments are interesting but at closer look just a trade off of issues rather than a short track. Don't get me wrong. I still think this is a path worth further persueing. But if you really dig into the subject you start to realize how much at the beginning we still are. Still many miles away from even getting close to any real net energy gains (i.e. not theoretical ones as so often is referred to). And, on top of this, to then make it a system that also works from an economic perspective. I have no doubt that this will be possible at some point, but not in the near future. So sorry, fusion is farther away than you think.

[@captspeedy1899]

No it's 30 years away

[@cidshroom]

What Matt fails to mention is that after ITER is DEMO. One thing has been known for awhile, larger vessels have better success. ITER is huge, but DEMO will be even larger, and likely the first fusion power plant to exist. Loosely scheduled for 2051, depending on how ITER performs

[@milo8425]

Man looks like 30 years from now fusion is gonna solve all our problems.

[@NotreDanish]

I think helion could really work if they combined multiple units of those reactors and offset their time increments, so for instance if they all pulse every 10 seconds (still much faster than now obv), then if they had 100 of them they could collectively be pulsing every 0.1 of a second, if offset by that amount which I think would be possible with programming. And that would probably be enough for most scenarios and could be combined with renewables. That’s just one idea of it though

[@aisac21]

Had the same thought 👍

[@bradley3549]

I agree, if the biggest barrier is cycle time, just build 600+ of them to reach the 1 second cycle time. It sounds like no matter what, the output will require smoothing and inversion, but with the large scale battery bank projects, that sounds like a solved problem too.

[@cadenrolland5250]

Today it is a fact. This video aged well. 👍

[@Dreadwolf3155]

While I have been hopeful for fusion since college days, I'll believe it when i see it.

[@philipburgin3109]

Not bad! Your prediction was 4 week off lol 😆✌️. 🎯

[@RobbieHilton97]

Who's here after the news just dropped?

[@Withnail1969]

There was no news. No net energy was produced.

[@Pine_Barrens_NJ]

Thx for posting, quality work, well presented.

[@jessemoss5017]

Any word on if/ how often the lithium coolant would need to be replaced? We're already doing quite a bit of environmental damage mining enough lithium to make batteries for EVs and portable electronics.

[@nicoidskov3757]

Now only 29 years away? :D

[@onilord1830]

29 years 364 days

[@Vulcano7965]

DEMO is planned for producing net energy output at 2040osh so 20 years.

[@Vulcano7965]

@@elmarmoelzer2229 Yeah, very unlikely.

[@Mark-xm5eo]

Fascinating piece of work thank you it seems that they're moving along very logical lines of advancement towards fusion. I like the fact that like in

[@Mark-xm5eo]

Sorry I got interrupted I like the fact that you're moving along multiple Avenues of completing a successful power structure like Elon Musk with SpaceX definitely the fastest way to get to your goal. I am all for clean energy that works. I'm all about a clean environment. However I study history and science for fun never before as mankind faced a possible Extinction from a global warming perspective and I personally don't believe we're in danger of that now nor will be in the future. However history shows multiple ice ages that did threaten the existence of mankind and wiped out hundreds of mammals and other important species. For that reason and for a clean environment I'm all behind your experiments to improve the future. I'm thinking Fusion could be a powerful weapon against the next ice age. You really need massive energy in the cold don't you LOL thank you

[@matthawkins4579]

All of these startups are interesting but I do think there is a disconnect over what the general public sees as a reactor. I think the common idea is that the reaction happens and is sustained, like fission (and yes, that would be the Holy Grail) but these are promising workarounds.

[@alistairshanks5099]

It is great to see this level of research and engineering being done over multiple platforms. Not putting all your eggs in one basket is the best approach to this problem I feel. I do have concerns about what the Kwh price might be if Fusion is cracked and developed as that scale of precision engineering and science will not come cheap. that is why we must keep pushing ahead with renewable energy that is cheaper to produce.

[@ghoulbuster1]

Yeah keep investing in crappy solar panels and wind turbines!

[@alistairshanks5099]

@@ghoulbuster1 There will be many countries that cannot afford these reactors or have the skill set to operate them if they are ever developed. If you don't want them burning fossil fuels then your "crappy" renewables are their only option in most cases. Coupled with simple Co2 ambient temperature power storage, you have simple cost-effective electricity generation. One form of generation will not suit every application.

[@ghoulbuster1]

@@alistairshanks5099 If they are so stupid to generate energy, do they even deserve it in the first place?

[@rick49]

What a great presentation! Exciting news, too.

[@Scott_C]

The DEC tech seems like the most promising part of what Helion is producing. I always thought the Heat > Steam > Turbine method seemed like a waste and an old school way of generating power. Glad someone is thinking outside that box. Also viewing their generators as an iterative product instead of a science laboratory is an amazing way of doing Fusion. If this actually takes off every municipality will want to have one of these in their area. Starting the production line going now is a smart way of working.

[@the11382]

We need more efficient ways tbh, maybe skip a few steps in energy convertion.

[@alwayscensored6871]

Supercritical CO2 instead of steam shrinks the turbine size alot. GE has been working on those.

[@the11382]

@@alwayscensored6871 CO2 doesn't have the same heat capacity as water, and holding C02 as supercritical is a challenge. It still goes heat -> C02 -> Turbine -> Electricity. I really wonder if we can do heat -> electricity or radiation -> electricity more directly and efficiently.

[@mpetersen6]

People have been thinking outside the box for twenty years or more. Robert Bussard was trying for p+B-11 twenty years ago.

[@Scott_C]

@@the11382 The problem is the concept of heating liquid to collect energy. At this stage we should be straight harnessing the electron energy being produced by the reaction. Not converting the energy into heat then the heat back into energy by turning a turbine. Something like electron collection cells similar to Solar panels in their functionality.

[@JimRoberts86]

Thanks for the video Matt. It would be good to see a follow up about some of the underdogs in Fusion, such as LPPFusion in the USA - lead by Doctor Eric Lerner.

[@YellowRambler]

I wish he would move a little faster on that fusion device. He seems to be ignored by Investors, they can’t figure out how to make extra money selling hydrogen and boron, it might be lot easier for investors to put themselves in the middle of a helium-3 supply chain those.

[@paulsutton5896]

Oh dear. I get fed up of writing this. Nuclear energy was essentially solved by Alvin Weinberger. He was not only the inventor of the Pressurized Water Reactor, which went on to become the way that 90% of the world's nuclear power plants work, he discovered a far better fission reactor: the molten salt reactor. But through a laughable failure of political control, largely in the USA, the funding for this superior, and most elegant method was neglected. The British company: MOLTEX has on interesting variant, currently under construction in New Brunswick, Canada. This uses up trans-uranics (mostly plutonium) which most governments who have wit will pay you to take it away. But no. We still want to find another route to the stars - reinvent the nuclear wheel, and rely on intrinsically unreliable "renewables".

[@jimsackmanbusinesscoaching1344]

I think it is imperative that these videos include what the various groups mean by "net energy gain by date xxxx". I don't think that they mean what most people commonly understand this to mean. Mostly because the net energy gain is restricted to things like only covering only a portion of the power needed to run whatever mechanism. This normally does not include the rest of the energy to run the power plant either. By not being clear on what is being defined here, expectations are set way above reality.

[@johnjakson444]

Indeed while huge claims have been made by the Livermore labs achiving near fusion unity for their laser approach, they ignored the entire energy that went into the 192 laser bank, by 5 orders of magnitude and that they only get 1 flash per day when they needs 1000s of plashes per second.

[@hifijohn]

I read somewhere it needs to produce 10 times the energy because most of the energy output goes back into the system to run all the support systems.

[@richardswaby6339]

Good point. I never considered this. Does net energy gain mean 1% more than input or 10% or 100% or what?

[@jimsackmanbusinesscoaching1344]

@@elmarmoelzer2229 So, Helion power plants will generate energy including the rest of the plant within a couple of years?

[@jimsackmanbusinesscoaching1344]

@@elmarmoelzer2229 Okay just a little bit of googling says that they are hoping to be the first fusion generator to produce electricity in a couple of years. That is not building a power plant that actually generates energy. Most of the time people count only the part of the cycle that generates energy and they aren't positive net energy on that yet. The cycle also needs to cover the downtime and the rest of the power generation requirements and the microwave in the lunch room.

[@AnthonyChinaski]

You’re off by 30 years; it’s here

[@felipeborelli]

Very good Matt! Thanks for creating this video.

[@michaelpfister1283]

These are very interesting. I am very excited about the ones that use steam turbines for the power generation especially, since they could be retro-fitted into existing power infrastructure. Something to keep our eye on for sure.

[@midnight8341]

But those especially suffer from the same problem as those conventional power plants: massive losses from converting heat energy into kinetic energy into electricity. And from what I've seen, humanity as a species can't allow any inefficiencies in our power generation in the future if we don't want all of this to go south.

[@bbbf09]

@@midnight8341 yeah.. I dont think you appreciate just how many million times more energetic nuclear is vs chemical energy generation. You could waste 99% of what comes out of this and it would still be massively effective . If they ever make it happen. A very very big IF.

[@christopherbelanger6612]

​@@midnight8341 The energy loses from heat to kinetic to electricity is mostly fine. Yes it seems big, but you can get a lot done that way because you can generate heat so easily. Heat is generally so easy to produce that the loses are acceptable. That would be especially true with a fusion. Like the person above said, you can waste an enormous amount of that heat and it would still be effective.

[@midnight8341]

@@bbbf09 deuterium tritium fusion produces about 12.3 million times the energy as burning coal does. I know exactly how nice nuclear fusion would be, since my physics courses in school contained everything from relativity and quantum mechanics to nuclear physics. Our education here in very thorough. But you also know what's a practically endless resource? Water. We have rivers and lakes and ground water and the rain, even the entire ocean if we desalinate what we need. And you know what's in desperate shortage all around the world because humanity as a whole decided to waste truly insane amounts of it? Freshwater. Frankly, I do not care about how many more times energy something releases, if the input material isn't hilariously easy to come by and available in _practically_ limitless amounts, we humans really have no business in wasting any of it. And tritium is pretty rare, it has to be produced from lithium (a process that we have never done on scale let alone economically), which we need in horrendous amounts for a decarbonized future anyway. Also, De-Tr fusion is neutronic, so the reactor will be radioactive. Doing De-De fusion is the better alternative to produce He3 and then run De-He3 fusion, which is aneutronic and can be harvested electromagnetically without 50% losses in energy conversion. Humanity thought we could waste a lot of things in our history. And we were wrong every time. We are too many to allow wastefullness and whoever thinks the next technological gadget will somehow fix that problem is kidding themselves.

[@midnight8341]

@@christopherbelanger6612 you need about 3kWh worth of coal to produce 1kWh of electricity in exactly that same process of heat->kinetic->electric. Wasting ⅔ of your energy production capabilities through inefficiency is not what I'd call "mostly fine" but completely unacceptable. And for everything else you wrote, as per my above comment: humanity has always found a way to waste more than we have, which is exactly the the reason why you're hoping on fusion so much. This technology will not change that, because yes, we can simply produce more, but once we produce more it becomes so cheap that it doesn't make sense not to waste it, since efficiency is no longer a priority. And exactly that brought us climate change and ecological collaps. Fusion will not change human behaviour. It's just another band-aid on our symptoms to help us go along longer in the wrong way. We don't need _more_ we need _better._ I'm not advocating against fusion energy. I'd be thrilled if it existed already. But to go on with the same old, wasteful principles just because we always did it that way is not the answer. If we want to do this right, we need to do so from the start. If they can get 95% of that fusion energy out via magnetic field line extraction, then that's more than double the outcome! Even if it's a bit more costly, there is simply no logical reason not to do it, if your goal is a continued long-term existence of humanity and not hypercapitalistic short-term profit on the back of everyone else.

[@rodsanger]

Thank you, Matt. I love science fiction set in the distant future! Seriously, though. Even if any, or all of these devices performed spectacularly and well beyond expectations, it would literally take another 30 years just to commercialize to the point of having any meaningful impact. Meantime, earth's runaway fossil-fuel-fever has turned the planet into global hunger games. Why not check out the latest in Thorium action? Quickest to commercialization within five years is Radiant Energy's HALEU testing of Thorium replacement canisters. That's it! First step for tapping into limitless Thorium energy. And the bonus here is that as LFTRs finally come online a decade later, they can actually be dedicated to powering Fusion research hobbies! Win-win!! If Thorium research got just 1/10th the grant money as Fusion, just imagine the progress in taming climate change . . .

[@gsnyder2007]

Great video. I think they have a shot because the need is so great and the upside is there for their investors. Also, advancements over the past several decades in electronics, computer modeling make this dream more feasible than in the past.