Golden donuts and miniature suns: How close is nuclear fusion?

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Podmasters

News, Government, Politics, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Clean, safe power from nuclear fusion is the Holy Grail of energy research – but how close is it to reality? A breakthrough in December, when a fusion reaction produced more energy than went into the experiment, suggests it could be. Dr. Sharon Ann Holgate, author of Nuclear Fusion: The Race to Build a Mini-Sun on Earth, joins Andrew Harrison to unpack the science and ask whether this science fiction staple could become fact. “A Tokamak reactor? Imagine you’ve gone to the bakers, bought yourself a doughnut, and for reasons best known for yourself you’ve decided to have it gold plated.” “Some of us call the fusion reaction ‘inherently safe’ because it doesn’t have the ability to run away with itself in the way a fission reactor can.” Written and presented by Andrew Harrison. Producer Jet Gerbertson. Assistant producer Kasia Tomasiewicz. Lead producer Jacob Jarvis. Bunker music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. Group Editor Andrew Harrison. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production Instagram | Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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1:14.0	December for the first time an experiment into nuclear fusion got more power out of
1:19.0	the reaction that it put into it. It was only a tiny amount for a tiny amount of time. Lases at the National
1:24.6	Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California put 2.05 megawls of energy into a
1:31.9	pellet of frozen hydrogen. That's energy equivalent to
1:34.3	about 500 grams of TNT. What it released was three megadules, so that's an energy gain of
1:39.3	1.5. The reaction lasted less than a hundred trillionths of a second, but it demonstrated that, in principle, fusion reactors can work. That means we can replicate the fusion reactions that take place inside stars and a future of entirely clean energy drawn from hydrogen rather than fossil fuels,
1:54.5	leaving no nuclear waste or carbon emissions is possible.
1:57.8	All we need to do is sort out the stupendous technical requirements.
2:00.8	So how far away is that dream of limitless clean energy and my
	...

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