What Is Fusion? | Exploring The Intricacies Of An Immensely Powerful Form Of Energy
Finding Genius Podcast
Richard Jacobs
4.4 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 10 April 2023
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Joining us today is Andrea "Annie" Lynn Kritcher, a nuclear engineer and physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Annie has been working in fusion for over 18 years, which eventually led to her developing Hybrid-E – a capsule that enables inertial confinement fusion.
Much of Annie's postdoctoral research explored how to use X-rays to measure the properties of plasma, and how nuclei interact with it. In 2022, she was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society for her contributions to the creation of the first laboratory burning and igniting fusion plasma – a high honor for a member of her field…
In this episode, you will discover:
- What fusion is.
- How researchers are creating extremely hot conditions in laboratories to create fusion.
- How magnetic fields can be used to squeeze plasma down.
- What "inertial confinement" is.
Want to learn more about Annie and her work with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory? Click here now!
Episode also available on Apple Podcasts: http://apple.co/30PvU9C
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | some fusion energy approaches do use cylindrical schemes such as pulse power schemes. |
| 0:06.3 | Here we can get the most efficient implosion coupling of our implosion energy to the hot plasma |
| 0:12.6 | using a spherical configuration because it essentially squeezes the plasma from all directions. |
| 0:17.7 | So the inward implosion we were doing mechanical work on the fuel and that's what causes it to be |
| 0:25.0 | compressed and heated to such extreme conditions. And when you're pushing on all sides equally |
| 0:30.0 | such as the sphere it's a more efficient piston. Forget frequently asked questions. |
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| 0:50.5 | geniuses. Richard Jacobs has made his life's mission to find them for you. He hunts down and |
| 0:56.2 | interviews geniuses in every field. Sleep science, cancer, stem cells, ketogenic diets, and more. |
| 1:01.7 | Here come the geniuses. This is the Finding Genius Podcast. |
| 1:06.0 | The Richard Jacobs. |
| 1:10.8 | Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Finding Genius Podcast. Now part of the Finding Genius |
| 1:15.2 | Foundation. I have Andrea Lynn Kretcher. She's a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National |
| 1:19.8 | Laboratory. We had to talk about what's called the hybrid E capsule that enables inertial confinement |
| 1:24.8 | fusion. I'd have a little butt about it. She's going to be describing it. So welcome, Andy. |
| 1:29.2 | Thank you for coming. Yeah, thanks for having me. |
| 1:32.0 | You have to tell me a bit about your background and then how did you get to start working on fusion |
| 1:36.0 | projects? So I've been working on plasma physics, either experiments or designed for about 18 |
| 1:42.4 | years now. So that's trying to understand the processes that are current plasmas. I became |
| 1:47.4 | interested in the National Ignition Facility back in 2005 and I was bowed out. Livermore for |
| 1:53.1 | a summer internship and decided to go fusion routes during my thesis project started out |
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