Nuclear Fusion: Who'll Be First To Make It Work?
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- Опубликовано: 25 июн 2024
- Try out my quantum mechanics course (and many others on math and science) on Brilliant using the link brilliant.org/sabine. You can get started for free, and the first 200 will get 20% off the annual premium subscription.
Correction to what I say at 25:08 -- That should have been 100 million Kelvin, not 100! Sorry about that.
In this video we survey the biggest and most interesting nuclear fusion startups which want to make nuclear fusion commercially relevant. What are the different approaches, how far along are they, and what are the pros and cons. This video has been in the works for months and it's the longest video we've made so far, almost half an hour, so I hope you have a comfortable seat!
Many thanks to Jordi Busqué for helping with this video jordibusque.com/
👉 Transcript and References on Patreon ➜ / sabine
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00:00 Intro
01:35 Nuclear Fusion Pros and Cons
04:37 Approaches to Nuclear Fusion
07:34 Field Confinement, Tokamaks
12:57 Field Confinement, Stellarators
16:19 Field Confinement, Plasma Beams
21:15 Inertial Confinement
24:04 Hybrid Approaches
27:31 Summary
28:20 Learn Physics With Brilliant
#science #tech 
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What a star. Sabine manages to provide an excellent overview but in an interesting ,entertaining and actually humorous way. Speaks for 30 mins whilst maintaining one’s interest. Marvellous - love the videos. Thanks.
her humor hits different
Sabine is the only person who I trust when it comes to science news and opinion. From what I can tell, every topic she covers is very well researched. Can’t wait for more!
And nothing but words
Yes, and most importantly: Without any telephone skits.
Yes she does, now let's get a man to tell us about it while she goes off to makes dinner!
I almost spat out my Flammkuchen when you said it was named after one of EM's children 🤣...top notch!
Yes yes yes Easily the best joke!
Same
09:17 Tokamak Energy, a spherical tokamak ST80 HTS
11:05 Commonwealth Fusion Systems SPARC
12:49 ENN Fusion Technology
13:59 Type One Energy
15:03 Renaissance Fusion
16:13 Helical Fusion, nTtau, Princeton stellarators (psi)
16:28 tae Technologies (tri alpha energy)
19:13 Zap Energy
20:44 MIFTI
20:57 NovaFusion
21:48 first light
23:55 HB11 Energy
24:05 generalfusion
25:20 Helion Energy
Thank you!
@@mementomori29231 It is for posterity, when
these companies are long forgotten.
@@johanlindeberg7304 Do you not think that "Memento Mori" realizes that?
@@mike74h "Well, that escalated quickly"
@@johanlindeberg7304 😄
Sabine, this is one of your best videos yet, especially for those of us most interested in how physics principles translate into useful applications. Well-researched, balanced, un-hyped, and succinct.
Mike Conant,
Unhyped, why she is in the Fusion Hype on RUclips ? Balance ?
It's always 20 years away, when i was at college the same thing, what did the professors told you in your days, Fusion, soon ?
@@lucasRem-ku6eb Sabine has addressed the '20 years away' issue in previous vids. We always get dates wrong.
2001 didn't see lunar shuttles and manned expeditions to Jupiter.
1980 and 1999 didn't see manned lunar stations, but on the other hand, no one in 1960 envisaged a man on the Moon before 1970....
One day, one of those '20 years away' predictions will come true
I appreciate Sabine's brilliance, knowledge and extreme wit. But I think this video was a waste of time. A lot of this fusion startup stuff looks more akin to GoFundMe scams than serious stuff. They even have all the halmarks: soft focus videos, fancy animations, nothing real to show :) They are news and they have funding ONLY because of the brain dead politics around energy.
Fusion supplying a meaningful fraction of grid power? Not gonna happen. Not within our lifetimes. I cannot believe I have to say this.
The one who talks about it first and has the most hype.
For April’s Fool Day, you should release an episode of Gobbledygook without the Science.
Agreed. 😅
💯
Exactly.
I mean, we could always visit some religious pundit channel for that, but I bet Sabine's Gobbledygook would still beat theirs, despite her lack of experience in,well, gobleddygookery.
@@margodphdimagine a flat earthers channels april fools video being proving the earth is a sphere and having perfect logic and showing correctly understood science 🤣🤣
Thank you Sabine for going over the different reactors, their operating principles, and the companies pursuing them. It was very informative.
everyone wants cold fusion until the gvment puts a gun on it
@@Syncrotron9001 Fake news 😆
@@kensho123456 James, Sabine is a Science Goddess. I know Nuclear Fusion, and her knowledge penetrates the frontier of the unknown. She is a blessing. Worship her, and gain Wisdom.
It is indeed interesting physics, but she fails to look at the broader picture.
At this point in time nuclear fusion is practically a scam: We face a climate catastrophe, a biodiversity crisis and a pollution crisis and there is *_no_* chance that fusion is coming soon enough to avert climate chaos.
Even if the optimistic predictions (made by vested interest seeking funding!) holds true abundant energy will most likely exacerbate biodiversity loss and result in more pollution.
What we need is simple, sturdy and cheap technology that can be deployed everywhere.
That means solar and wind which has a proven track record and energy storage solutions - which is currently more mature than fusion.
If we had thrown the same piles of cash after energy storages a decade ago we would have had a decent shot at keeping below 1.5°C.
At the moment we are heading towards a catastrophic 2-3° - while spending our cash on stuff that isn't helpful. Wtf?!?
Can't wait to finally see our civilisation ending! :***
I sure hope Helion can get their technology to work for real because ability to generate electricity directly from the fusion without using high-tech steam engine sounds really good.
My favorite is General Fusion. The rotating shell of molten lithium and lead absorbs radiation which protects the reactor and provides a way to extract the heat. Bombarding the lithium with neutrons produces tritium which is needed to fuel the reactor. A demonstration plant at 70% scale is scheduled to start operation at Oxford in the next couple of years.
My three takeaways from this video about fusion:
1. Wow. I too am now actually optimistic.
2. Sabine is an international treasue.
3. I need to do more with my life. Absolutely inspiring human ingenuity and effort. Incredible.
I'm a waste of space in comparison to the people working on these projects. I mean I'm a waste of space anyway, but still.
@@hoagie911 Human beings are not mere ends to external means but ends into and of themselves. Therefore you can't simply be a waste of space, at least if you're talking in a moral sense. It's probably true that you, like I, could be contributing *more* to society than we currently are, but that *can't* in principle mean that we are worthless. And more pragmatically speaking, if you want to contribute to society, it's highly likely there's an actually attainable way for you to do that in the medium or even short-term future.
Your ignorance or present lack of energy to pursue such a course of action is evidence of nothing more than what is already widely known about human psychology and modern society: people often fall into ruts of self-doubt, depression or learned helplessness. These things are inherently temporary, a few steps of getting/following help away from dissolving. One or a couple of meds, cognitive therapy, minor behavioral change, different dietary inputs, a bit more social contact or even the mere passage of time is likely all that's separating you from a different conception of yourself that allows you to be happy and do something (or many things!) that you personally consider worthwhile.
You are not alone, not worthless, not a waste of space. You are deserving of love and help. You can have a fulfilling life, no matter what your current biased cognitive patterns are currently telling you.
@@hoagie911 No one is a waste of space. Without everyday people like you and me, these people wouldn't have the resources to do the hard thinking stuff.
@R Hamlet Thanks for the sentiment but it's not true in my case
@@hoagie911 SO prove it. Convince me.
Thanks for reuploading with the corrections! Great overview on the subject. Exciting times lie ahead :)
can i get an overview over the corrections without rewatching the entire video?
@@soliton4 Fixed the equation for the gain at 2:40 (should have been the inverse), fumbled a fix together for the audio (you'll notice if you watch closely), changed the "" at 3:10, cut out the sentence about the moon, even though it was only a joke, because it was confusing Helium with Hydrogen. Rest is the same!
@@SabineHossenfelder I didn't catch any of these... now I feel stupid 😞
@@letMeSayThatInIrish universe will apologize
@@SabineHossenfelder At 25:08 you say "they need to reach about 100 Kelvin". I'm guessing you meant to say 100 million kelvin
I currently am doing D-D fusion in my small lab at a Q total of 10e-9 using IECF. It produces enough neutrons to do a number of good activation experiments of several elements. The one thing learned by actually doing fusion by any method is that net power production from fusion is a tough nut to crack. The common man is easily impressed by the press. Sabine is always a voice for reason and logic. This is something rare among people and even many scientists in the fusion biz. Sabine has, for the first time, pulled together the encyclopedia of current startup efforts with significant details around each effort and the fusion fuels used. Finally, I hold out little hope in any current fusion effort such as ITER , a multi-billion dollar debacle, or any of the startups with their ridiculous hyped grid ready fusion promised in the late 20' or the mid 30's. The key to commercial viability is a Q total >20 but with Q total >100 being far more viable with the ability to work 24-7-365 for a number of years as with the current fission, coal, gas and hydro plants. Oddly, this continuous expectation of energy from our wall outlets has persisted as a mindset for over a century now.
I am a working physicist (not fusion) and your comment is spot on. All the promises I've seen in science that won't come to fruition for more than 5 years are really just hype to get funding. I was surprised by Sabine's take on this video.
If Iter is a debacle or not is debatable.
When comparing the time and efficiency of the project with what could be achieved by handing over he billions of Euros to the industry and have it built using commercial project management and, most importantly, procurement methods, you are right, in that comparison it is a debacle (or a somewhat slightly mitigated disaster, because it seems there will be a result, not meeting time and cost targets, but at least delivering).
Yet, when looking at what Iter is, a research and industrial development seed program, it has achieved remarkable results. Which other research project has brought so many nations together and enabled technology leaps in its field in so many countries?
A commercial or at least industrial project would have procured the parts from the respective cheapest reliable bidder. Which means orders would have gone to the US, the UK, Germany, Japan, France, maybe South Korea and perhaps, for some specific parts, Russia. But who would have ordered Klystrons from India?
@@PresCalvinCoolidgene thing I learnt is that pretty much everyone in physics is wrong about fusion.
When I was doing my PhD back in 2010ish NIF was a joke and I remember laughing at their claims of scientific breakeven. No one could see past their ridiculous holhraum designs. No one thought it would work at all.
Then they spent ten years or so working just on target and laser approaches with simulations and after some testing turned an ancient groaning Cold War interaction chamber into an actual fusion reactor.
Literally everyone in fusion was wrong about NIF. They weren't wrong about it's economic viability. They were completely wrong about whether it would get to ignition at all. Once PIs figured out how to overcome the RT instabilities inside the capsule they had leaps and bounds within two months.
Physicists are wrong about everything almost all of the time. That's the risk of being one.
You have a PhD but don't understand the difference between "its" and "it's?"@@ralalbatross
I had to be rushed to the emergency department while I was watching this video because your joke about Elons favorite child ST80-HTS had me literally dying. Omg. Dr Hossenfelder, you’re often very funny, but that was solid gold! 🙌 Thank you so much for your detailed and in-depth science videos. I learn so much from you and love your sense of humor. (And I’ll be sending you the bill from my hospital visit as a token of appreciation. 😆)
I thought it was great too!
I also collapsed and lost the follow-up sentence. Had to rewind.
yeah the delivery on that line was brutal
Yep that was when I fell in love with her.
How you're holding up?
"I came out of doing this video being more optimistic about nuclear fusion than before. It seems likely to me that at least one of these approaches should work out in the end, though I haven't been able to make up my mind which one's the most promising." Given your usual scepticism towards all things, these two sentences actually fill me with great hope for the future.
I think all of them are heavily reliant on advancements in other technologies, materials, etc.
A giant leap in making room temperature superconductors a real thing is probably the most sorely needed.
Thank you, Dr. Hossenfelder, for this brilliant review of fusion and fusion startup companies. Without question the most informative and interesting half hour I've spent this year, and for some time before that. Just. Excellent.
But as usual she has it all wrong so I would say a waste of half an hour.
@@Mizzkan could you link to your video with the corrections?
@@GainReality well, really we need a white man of non Jewish origin to explain it while she goes off to prepare the bagels and the rest of dinner!
@@government_costumes-ui5lx I think she did a fabulous job. Clean clear and easy to understand. And perhaps she makes a great meal. And maybe her specialty is Italian. Amazing how we are all individuals with unique abilities and personalities.
@@GainReality k
Thank you for a really interesting and useful video! I love how you just explain things without attempting to make everything "fun" like many of the older science channels on RUclips. You do have a sense of humor but it doesn't get in the way of explaining the science. That approach is very much appreciated.
It should be a law, which says that it's publicly prohibited to talk about fusion power, until it has been officially proved to to viable
Great sight gag with the duct tape and the WD40 at 1:46: if something's moving and you don't want it to, duct tape; if it's not moving and you want it to, WD40. Together they can fix anything.
Others would tingle around making money as "investment consultants" showing around those results on flip charts to investment bankers. So thanks Sabine for the hard work putting all these together into a video and give it away for free.
What an amazing overview, extremely well documented and precise! I personally believe that tokamaks and stellarators are in a more advanced status than the other approaches pursued by those private companies, but I am looking forward to seeing the progress also in those other directions. The more, the better at this point, and maybe the best approach to fusion energy is still to be found.
6:00 I've never came across such a compelling explanation of inertia before-well done! 👍
Brilliant overview and summary, Sabine!
I find it amusing that two of the approaches involve respectively gunpowder and steam pistons. Steampunk fusion 😂
I do hope one of them discovers cavorite.
The piston design involves 200 pistons with a total combined weight equal to two Eiffel Towers. They're building a 70% size test reactor which should be operational in 2027. There's 7 similar level test reactors being built by companies over the next 5 years. Fusion will soon have everyone waiting on the edge of their seat or people will be making up new ways to tell the joke that it's 30 years away and always will be
Fun times in the fusion neighborhood!
@@Canucklug Holy cr*p! 😮 A combined weight 2x the Eiffel Tower? 🤯 That's just insane. Still, it seems kinda crazy to me with either of these approaches that just blasting something with a whole lot of macroscopic kinetic energy is enough to get the kind of temperatures and pressures needed to trigger fusion. I can somewhat more understand the BFG, as it's using a dense mass impacting a tiny target, but the piston thing sounds like it's just compressing a gas directly. (But I don't know that as I haven't read much about it.)
Thanks for the super-interesting note!👍
I think I missed the one where they used flux capacitors coupled to overthrusters.
Yes steam, too many working parts, and no Fred Dibner, the gun idea sounds a little chaotic and wouldn't the barrel need some sort of maintenance after so many shots!?!
LOVE the graphic for "the engineering part".
Absolutely the truth.
That is the best and most comprehensive video I've seen about Nuclear Fusion. I've learned more about the various approaches to fusion in this one video, than I have in dozens of others. What a shame Tokamak Energy doesn't call their device "Peter". 😎 Thanks Sabine.
Sabine you're the absolute empress of deadpan humor :)) Love all these amazing ideas - so cool!
You can call it Nova Fusion if you want to. Trademarks like that are product/industry specific. As long as you aren't planning to market the output electric charge as a hair volumizer, you are probably fine. 😜
It'll be a real kick in the pants if coupling hair volumizing with fusion was the missing link to feasible fusion power all along.
Ummm… “no va” mean “won’t go” in Spanish, so perhaps, not the best name for a fusion power plant…
@@donlindell1994 Only if you put a space. If you write it as "nova" then Spanish speakers will have no problem with it. "Nova" means the same thing in Spanish as it does in English.
@@donlindell1994 What do you mean "not a good name"? It would be perfectly descriptive, I assume.
You had me laughing so hard with the Elon Musk kids name joke xD
I was looking for this comment lmao
I'm new to the channel and I'm amazed of how well explained is the information. Thank you so much, Sabine! I love your style!
Thank you for this lovely summary 🙌
I was familiar with some of the concepts, but WOW, so many more than the two previous main contenders
Thanks for the great video! I'd previously only known about a few of these companies. I love how you pointed out the upsides of each approach as well as factors that make that approach more of a challenge.
You always make the seemingly impossible to understand digestible to people like myself. Thank you for all your videos, they must take a considerable amount of time and effort. I'm really glad I found your channel, you're wonderful.
I am deeply fascinated by this type of research. Thank you for the deep dive into the different approaches of these various companies to solve the same problem.
It's one of the best channels on RUclips. I am always captivated with each video, and I end up watching till the very end.
I'm hopeful Helion's approach with direct electrical conversion works. If they're able to avoid a steam generation cycle entirely that will be is own breakthrough!
Check out the channel Improbable Matter, he's an actual fusion researcher (he even comments on Sabine's video)!
If you don't want to watch, Helion is very unlikely to work out.
Bussard polywell reactor design was supposedly going to do the same thing. The fusion cycle they were going for was an aneutronic fusion reaction with lithium and boron which makes two beta particles. The beta particles get shot out of the reactor core through a few coils to catch induced electrical energy, but then slam into a copper collector. The collector becomes extremely positively charged which pulls electrons from ground.
We can finally stop boiling fucking water!
@@Ryanrivera95 There is nothing wrong with boiling water, but it would be far better to heat up something like molten salt and use a high temp system,. These direct to electrical systems are in the realm of startrek engineering,
@@kayakMike1000 Interesting that Bussard should come up, wonder if Dr Lerner will get any mention too.
Thanks Sabine for the work to assemble all the informations about all these startups, and presenting clearly which technique they intend to use. Great job !
What an interesting presentation. I thoroughly enjoy the format and approach that Sabine takes for some of the most important issues of our time.
Nuclear fusion was 10 yrs away when I was doing my A-levels 25+ yrs ago. So, I think I'll remain a little sceptical of the early 2030s for a viable product until it happens.
Oh yay! Watched the previous upload and gonna watch this one too. Can't ever have too much Sabine in your life right? 😝
You know at first I watched a few random videos back in the day of yours that were interesting then you starts producing regular ones and they weren’t great. But I stuck with it and you have really hit your stride. Your content is both informative and interesting enough for an adhd brain to hold. I want to say keep it up and I appreciate how far you’ve come.
Working at a boring job where I dont learn I really like your stuff now
Great presentation as always. From what you said, I still believe commercially viable Nuclear Fusion remains 30+ years away!
This is an excellent video, I haven't seen any other video yet that have actually done a detailed overview of most of the fusion designs that companies are pursuing.
I don't know, between fuel scarcity, durability and general net-gain issues (all of them being frankly understatements on my part), I still remain rather skeptical that we will see a comerically viable fusion reactor any time soon.
If ever...
We barely invest in it. Billions seems like a lot until you realize musk alone spent 40x that on twitter. We have no choice but to pursue fusion unless we going to burn all our hydrocarbons instead of using them to produce goods, or use fission which is dangerous and generates horrific waste.
Look in to the helion energy company !
Their designs and fuel choice is far superior
@@canadajim Well, there's a narrow perspective.
@@Alex_Mitchell not nearly narrow enough! even with magical free energy fusion people will continue using coal and oil. still gotta make unreuseable plastics. not every corner store on earth is gonna have a connection to a local pixie dust power plant. we're going to release every gram of economically viable carbon into the atmosphere, all oil, coal, plants, etc, or go extinct before we finish it up. the alternative idea is that humans will wise up and stop trading long term survival for short term profit, or, in a word, impossible.
You left out the big problem with inertial confinement: repetition rate. To actually get net energy out, rep rates of 100-1000 Hz or higher will be required, which rules out NIF as ever generating net energy. BTW, I did DD fusion in a pulse-powered Z-pinch back in the 80’s, but suffers from the rep rate problem.
This is a nice thing about First Light's BFG fusion gun, the rep rate is really easy if they can get the 400x or more gain they hope to achieve. Machine 4 that they're building is looking to reach 100x fuel gain
Meanwhile, we got a crapton of uranium and thorium just sitting around decaying...
NIF was never really design for net energy, it wasn't really design for fusion confinement projects. It was for nuclear weapon research, with fusion power stuck on the side. One of the reason why their progress is so slow is because the nuclear bomb scientists get first dibs on the lasers and lab time. The fusion power people have to wait weeks or months between experiments.
Are there any scholarly papers or journal articles on Z pinch fusion that you recommend? What institution were you at that was working with Z pinch?
@@Alondro77 yeah, Fission could be everything we need if only people who don't know anything about it would just let the experts get on with it.
Sabine...you are such a legend! Absolutely love your extensive knowledge and brilliant commentary, but your awesome German dry wit is what keeps me coming back 😂.
Love your work, keep being awesome! 🫡
Vielen Dank und viel Respekt aus Kanada 🙏
Thanks for the comprehensive review. It is good to know so many different types of fusion types being tested by various startups around the world -- I only know Tokomak before watching this video.
Thanks Sabine.
For little reactors, the thermal and magnetic gradients are mind bogglng.
For big reactors the size and cost are mind bogglng.
What would happen if someone was to extract an Atom and a Proton from a fart before fusing them together using a Electron?
@@PSYCHIC_PSYCHO There are some people whose farts reach the requisite energy levels.
@@NuisanceManThe physics seems perfectly sound, but with the escalating cost of a good vindaloo, it's just not commercially viable.
@@PSYCHIC_PSYCHO A fart atom🤔
Fartonium?
@@tylerdurden3722 "Fartonium"?, interesting 🤔; you can join my team of Fartologists.
I like that Helion produces electricity directly rather than having to spin a big turbine. If it works, then that seems like it would be a huge boost in efficiency.
Unfortunately there are more issues with getting it working than mentioned in any of the recent PR push by Helion (i.e. Real Engineering video, and appearance on Simone Geirtz' channel): ruclips.net/video/3vUPhsFoniw/видео.html
@@AthAthanasius - Yes, I've watched Real Engineering's video, and a response video to it. The electromagnetic extraction of energy is elegant, but the details of the nuclear physics may prove problematic. Like all engineering, its balancing pros and cons to get something that actually works ... to be seen.
@@AthAthanasius Real Engineering's response video is pretty uninformed.
@@djdoc06 They don't need to engineer a power plant. The reactors make electricity directly, the next one they're building will have more pulses and produce electricity at a net gain. They've already produced electricity, just no net gain.
If Helion produces any net energy, the radiation will melt-down the building.
I wonder if the reason fusion gets all the love is because it's not yet regulated like fission. You can make a pretty good pitch if you assume a best-case-scenario for your own technology's regulatory framework, while comparing it to the current highly-outmoded regulatory framework of your competition.
Excellent Sabine for giving ur valuable information on such a crucial topic
Thank you, Dr. Hossenfelder. Bringing many alternatives into one review is useful and valuable. I hope you release an update to this every year for the remainder of this decade. We need to see trends. It'll be interesting to see if privately funded fusion is always 7 years away after 7 years; more than 4x 'better' than existing fusion research. 🤔
Best Wishes. ☮
I like that. Privat;y finder fusion is always 7 years away. 4x better than government funded research.
Well, it used to be 50 years away, so 7 years away is better. I just hope it's not a case of "always decreasing by 7x but never reaching 0" kind of situation ;)
@@afz902k Thank you for replying. I remember claims from the '70s, 80s, and 90s that Nuclear Fusion was about 30 years away. That "always 30 years away" is what I'm alluding to. I don't remember claims of 50 years away.
Can you remember where you got the "50 years away" from?
I believe 7 years to market is just about tolerable to attract private investment. However, I don't expect claims of "7 years away" will have reduced to zero in 7 years time. I'll be happy to be proven wrong.
Thanks again for commenting.
Best Wishes, ☮️
@@gbulmer I remember recent claims of commercial fusion reactors being at least 50 years away. Fission in the US isn't doing much better, not even two PWR reactors Plant Vogtle in Georgia can be finished after decades (hard to find reliable source about that)....
Gates's Terrapower moved out of China a few years back, then they changed design or two and promised demonstration reactor by 2025-2027. This project is easy to follow although new problem seems to be inability to procure small amount of Russian HEU. Let's see what they show in 7 years :)
Best wishes, peace, make fusion great!
@@gbulmer It's sad to see this idiotic joke again. It's "always 30 years away" because worthless scum regan killed funding besides token life support to enrich his buddies with stolen taxes so OF COURSE it didn't move any! It had no right to! And uneducated spewing "always 30 years away" ensured there was no $ raise after that, so it was self fulfilling...
Uploaded again, you're the best. And suggestions for new episodes:
1. Quantum ZENO effect 2. Weak young sun paradox. Thank you
I just love the conciseness of this video! Very informative!
Great overview, thanks. I love Helion's concept for direct electricity generation from the expansion of the plasma in the magnetic field. It's way past time the human race moved beyond heating water into steam to turn a turbine to generate electricity. That's so primitive. Hope Helion's design works.
Great video on an important subject, Sabine. Thank you. It may be a long shot, but I'm rooting for Helion because of the way they are extracting power from the reaction.
Agree. Even if other approaches work most of them have extreme built in costs for radiation containment, maintenance of the reactor vessel and conversion losses of 30-40% in the boiling of water to run a turbine to generate electricity.
Fully agree with your opinion. I expected some more excitement from Sabine when mentioning Helion. It is not just one more startup in Sabina’s classification, but a class in itself.
I'm actually rooting for NovaFusion
Excellent breakdown. I had the pleasure of attending a seminar hosted by General Fusion back in 2012 at UBC, and back then they were looking at using explosives to simulate the compressive force of the pistons - explosives being easier to time in perfect sequence than pistons. They were also trying to work out the Deuterium-Deuterium reaction as their primary fusion force at the time, since Tritium is fairly hard to come by unless you're the Japanese government. (If you don't get that reference, Fukushima has a bunch of tritium-laced water in storage tanks, as a result of the cleanup efforts, and unfortunately all the fusion research in the world is not enough to use it up faster than it's being collected, leading to some controversy over storage problems.)
careful, this is a scammer
Then why all the talk about shortage of tritium on earth and why not just use whatever operational nuclear reactors we have to make more?
@@johndawson6057 There's more than enough for research purposes, but nowhere near enough for economic scale fusion.
And why not make more? Keep in mind what it took for Fukushima to make this stuff. We're talking a power plant that melted down and got flooded with sea water. Not exactly a good situation...just a great source of Tritium for researchers to work with.
Yes, we can probably build a safer version of this sort of thing...but it would probably be cheaper and more efficient to just build enough fission power plants to run the world directly than to build enough tritium breeder reactors to make up the difference for mass adoption of fusion power.
And unfortunately, setting up these breeder reactors would be a major blow to the main thing that makes fusion theoretically superior to fission as a major power source: the nuclear waste issue. If you're running fission plants to make the fusion fuel, you've still got fission waste to store for 10 kajillion years.
@@rashkavar The plans of most fusion startups is to do the tritium breeding in the fusion reactor itself, which is theoretically possible, but hasn't been demonstrated yet beyond one small test. That is still an assumption as the testing of it can't really be done until you get a sustained fusion reaction itself working. Both ITER and some of these startups have that testing included in their designs. None of them I'm aware of plan to depend on fission reactors for tritium fuel. Time will tell.
No, tritium in Japanese tanks is orders of magnitude too small to run any single fusion plant. But that’s not the point, which was for you to put some dirt on Japanese nuclear cleanup hiring nobody and nothing.
A part from the video itself, which is excellent, I much appreciate the clarification about when to say "torus" instead of "donut".
thankyou for bringing companies to our knowledge that haven't invested suspicious amounts into PR ( *cough cough,* Helion, *cough cough* )
Many thanks for the work collecting all this info together. A great summary, thanks, Sabine. One maybe to add next time is LPPFusion - who are still trying to solve the reasons why Dense Plasma Focus doesn't scale. To be fair to them, they have made progress from the disappointments of this approach in the 1960s and they now have one of the highest wall plug efficiencies of the privately funded efforts. Proceed on all fronts!
Incidentally, their approach DOES scale, but the issues they have are at least partially resolved using quantum magnetic field: "We have performed many simulations of the plasmoid which include this QMF effect, starting in 2005 [17] which show that in this case fusion power can potentially exceed bremsstrahlung emission by as much as a factor of 2, allowing ignition of the fuel and an 80% burn-up of the fuel in the plasmoid".
Only one in China. I suppose they are just intending a little espionage, copy the one that works best and not pay any royalties.
I like the Ductape+WD40 engineering approach. That will do it!
Excellent summary. Thank you for all the work it took to do this. I was recently wondering how this technology was coming along; thanks.
A very interesting overview, thanks Sabine. I had somehow not heard of the z-pinch technique before but it definitely seems like a promising avenue for exploration. Exciting stuff.
US DoD Sandia tried this method with disappointing results about 20 years ago with the z-machine. They try to magnetically compress a plasma using magnetic confinement Search for Sandia Z-Machine.
Most likely, Big Friendly Gun is a reference to the weapon BFG in several video games but specifically Doom and Quake. Clearly that's not what the acronym meant originally. :)
Or it's a reference to "Big Friendly Giant". From Wikipedia: *_The BFG_*_ (short for _*_The Big Friendly Giant)_*_ is a 1982 children's book written by British novelist Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake._ It was also made into a movie by Steven Spielberg, although that movie didn't do all that well when released to theaters in 2016.
pretty sure some nerd in age of 40+ referenced the doom gun 😆
I actually like Helion. One of their ideas is to have two separate reactor setups. One will produce Helium 3 exclusively. The other will be used for power production. If the video on them by Real Engineering is accurate, they're already making repeatable, reliable fusion reactions.
Well done, Sabine. I didn't know there were so many start-ups. Still, Solar Panels make electrons straight away, which is what you want, and wind gives a lot of energy at might. I live in California, and the panels on my roof, pay for both our electric cars and our electricity bill is close to zero. Seems easier than all this fusion-shmusion
Kudos to Sabina, love the humour as much as the information
Personally I think if general fusion gets their design working it'll be ahead of the competition in terms of application, the construction of it is significantly simpler than most designs, integrates sheilding, intwgrates energy capture, integrates lithium breeding, and they've been billing it as capable of being connected to existing turbines (which makes its small size critical as it can actually fit in an existing structure unlike a tokomak).
Ultimately continuous large scale plasma vessels like tokomaks and stellerators are the end goal, but I seriously doubt they'll be in the market any time soon, and certainly not soon enough.
Personally I think that if X gets their design working, it'll be ahead of the competition, for any X.
@human_shaped lol you have a point there, but my comment was more along the lines of if multiple fusion designs reach production at the same time, I think general fusions design will win out in the short term until large scale reactors start trickling in.
They should use the idea of cavitation bubbles which heat up to extreme temperatures using water for ignition. Instead of trying to use hard to make or find matter, they should use water.
Amazing incredibly informative video, breaking very complicated topics down to easy to understand tidbits, and making it pleasant and funny along the way. Who says Germans don't have a sense of humour. You are the best Sabine!
Another great summary of a complicated science and engineering topic in a way understandable at several levels.
I've been intrigued by Helion for awhile now, and I was happy to see they made Sabine's list. I just wish she'd spent a bit more time on them, perhaps explaining why she's skeptical about their timetable. Overall great video, and I'm also very enthusiastic about the future of this technology.
Same
Helion doesn't come out looking so good when looked at by "Improbable Matter", like where is the shielding from those neutrons from the side PP reaction, and his power temp fuel graphs curves are worth noting too.
Yes, IMO going directly from fusion energy to electrical energy is a great idea!
@@johnjakson444 it’s a shame his video wasn’t very good… he’s very whiny and critical… it comes across as not objective… also, I think many of the issues he raises were addressed in the supplement interview videos by Real Engineering available on Nebula.
Helion haven’t peer reviewed or published any results from their last gen machine. The actual amount of fusion being done at Helion is a secret. This means they could have a very poorly performing machine in practice.
I watched a video on Helion's approach a couple of months ago and thought it was most interesting, particularly the idea of generating electricity directly. However I have no really in-depth knowledge of the particulars of all these approaches beyond a broad understanding of what each is trying to accomplish. I do think with so many people and companies throwing the book at the problem something has to come out of it at some stage. I am wondering whether I will be around to see one of them triumph as I'm kind of living on borrowed time. One thing I do hope is that there might be some collaboration between the groups of scientist which could yield a result with a synergetic mix of ideas - it would get in the way of competition but might be a win-win.
Thankyou for such a comprehensive overview of what is currently going on in the field. A most riveting talk!
The important thing about Helion was that they achieved the 100,000,000k mark in their experimental reactor Trenta in 2022, meaning they're much closer to getting the temperature right than other approaches with say at 3,000,000k mark. Also using the plasma to harness direct induction inside their machine can't be understated for it's simplicity compared to other approaches. So it's interesting, I'm curious to see how their Polaris machine turns out.
I can't speak to timelines, seems these approaches are making some headway, with many of these startups being too new to have come to fruition yet. Certainly by 2030 i would expect at least some net positive experimental machines. Commercialization is too nebulous, people have a wide range of ideas of what that means, and thus some expectations are probably too high.
Wonderful summary, thanks Sabine!
When it came to the startup name ChatGPT found, I initially understood "nowhere fusion" and thought it was totally apt. I'd really love to see fusion happen with proper output, but after watching I came out more sceptical than before. - Very cool overview video.
I watched this episode already. When I was done, RUclips told me it didn't exist and I was plunged into an existential crisis.
I'm going to invent a machine that makes it so that whenever the Police measure my car's velocity, they won't know where it is.
Considering the accuracy that the police measure your velocity, I suspect they could locate your car very precisely. (Me remembering watching a documentary where they measured some police speed guns and found them wildly inaccurate.)
Incredibly informative. Just putting all these things side by side is a huge advance for transparency. I wonder. I have long felt First Light's is the simplest approach of all and is going to win this. It reduces fusion to a repeatable, entirely mechanical process. None of the others, including the "mixed" confinement ones, are as simple. Removing complexity seems to me the first order problem here.
This is fantastic, well delivered, well informed and well funny. More please
this was phenomenal. i have watched several videos from several channels on the future of fusion and i never felt i was getting a reliable comment about any of them; now, for the first time, i do. i think the biggest advantage you have over those other numerous channels that i tried for news about energy, physics and engineering is that you are:
1. most maximally educated on the topics
2. reliable
the first one is obvious but the second one comes as a surprise to me. don't get me wrong, i am not offending you; i mean literally any channel that i have watched during the years starts as reliable and objective but then you can see the patterns of bending the truth to promote or demote something. either to attract more clicks or to compensate for a compensation ;). that is not the case with you. i think it is because of your highly developed and vast personality.
i hereby thank you and have a suggestion for the future videos:
you are exceptionally fit to talk about the critical topics related to physics, technology and engineering out there. people like me are in need of a person like you to comment on these topics. i believe if a person really understands something, they can talk about it in simple terms and even make a couple of jokes about it on the way. on many channels, you can see several layers of work: first they try to get their facts right, then they try to make it simpler and then they try to integrate jokes and humor into it. the results are at best disoriented. sentences that contradict each other and humor that point to unrelated directions. you on the other hand, are like a poet: even the single words are speaking.
so in essence, maybe if you are willing to, you can add a new playlist to your channel to freely comment on critical and new engineering and tech news and ideas. the problem with being really powerful is that you can't see you power, others can. i can only imaging that if you just make free comments on cellphone batteries (without doing any additional research) how beautiful and attractive that could be to the youtube community.
to summarize: i think this video is phenomenal because you are freely giving us you opinions on a matter. i think you are at a level of intellect that can actually help the world with that. if 99.9999 percent of people start to give their opinion on some matter of science or technology without doing any research, they would give you their integrated compensations for not knowing the reality. you on the other hand are completely different, you can give your opinion freely and it will integrate all the knowledge there is. a scientist, an artist and a sorceror in one.
The older I get the more sceptical I get about Fusion technology. I am convinced there will be children born today who reach my current age of 40 and will still be waiting for it to happen. I'm more interested in the enormous fusion reactor which crosses the sky for all of us on a daily basis- seems like a pretty convenient energy source if we learn how to store it properly.
that is a good point you make and it is not to detract from the inventiveness and ingenuity of all those involved in the research. In the 1980's the standard joke about nuclear fusion was that it is only 30 years from being a reality. Now the problem is that we may no longer have 30 years to play around with, since a built in feature of the dominant capitalist system, is destruction of the environment and planet we live in.
As always, thank you for doing this.
Would you consider looking at the feasibility of their claims? These companies say that can get it working by such and such date, but it might be good content to go over what they're using in these projections. I bet you'd get a lot of business interested views looking for someone to digest the technical projections.
In principle I'd really like to, in practice it's not possible because that information just isn't publicly available. We have contacted all the companies who are in the video and that's about as much as we got out of them.
Brilliant,, articulate and dry humorist all rolled into one!!
Rare combination and much admired by me. Thanks for your many interesting videos 🌹😘
I love Sabine's dry sense of humor!
Thank for the awesome review, the amount of work needed to make a video like this is unbelievable I suppose. (Did anyone make the astonishing sum of the fundings of all these projects together? I'm glad for the employees anyway.) As for the perspective, well, if one asked 30 years ago "how long does it take to see a viable commercial reactor", the answer was always "30 years". Now, skipping what the researchers boast, a sensible answer appears to be the same "30 years". (So I'll never see it happen, but maybe a solid progress in my knowledge is already achieved : number "30" is kind of magic).
I think the answer is now more like "10-15" years, not 30. Of course, that's still just a prediction and not a certainty, but at least the predicted wait is getting shorter!
30 years ago the joke was 50 years and always will be. (Seriously, google it) The goalposts were moved to keep pace with progress. I've even heard it unitonically told as "20 years and alwayswill be". Triple product (temperature x time x volume) advancement has been on par with moores law going back decades. It's a stupid joke told by ignorant people and always has been.
When I was a kid in the 80s, it was only 20 years away.
Given that all of these hope for a commercial reactor in the 2030s, the answer is actually 7 to 10 years away.
@@jakeaurod I read in a blog where they did research into where that originate from. The 20 years time table, was if we had a Manhattan style program to develop nuclear fusion, that about 0.5% of the US GDP in the space of 5 years, we never did, so we don't have nuclear fusion.
It's not a startup, but Lockheed's Skunkworks department has been working on small, 'portable' fusion reactors for a long time and have an interesting design.
As a continuation of this episode it might be interesting to talk about the non-startup organizations working on fusion.
To be honest Lockheed is probably full of shit. You don't make fusion portable before it works at all.
Lockheed announced their 'portable' fusion reactor 8 years ago and we've had radio silence ever since. I doubt they're any closer than any of these other startups.
No they have not. They have a whitewashing department that crates positive news for a company that usually only creates death. There is nothing interesting or real about their design.
Great video, very informational, thank you!
Thank you very much for this, really interesting video!
Very well done! At the beginning, I wondered if you would mention two companies I have been watching for some time. Yes, you mentioned them both, General Fusion and Helion. :) Your explanations were also very well done. For the short time you spend on each (which I know is the purpose of the video - to introduce your watchers) your explanations are well-balanced; not too much and enough to help us understand the differences. Thanks!! I love your videos. :)
Helion are liars. They say they are doing fusion in their machine but they have no neutron shielding. As the video says, if they were doing He3 and deuterium reactions, they'd also be doing D-D reactions releasing neutrons that would kill anyone in the building. No shielding means no fusion.
Brilliantes Englisch, geballtes Wissen, Begeisterung und ein starker Auftritt! Tolles Format, freue mich auf mehr!😋
I can't wait to see your next video on the current breakthrough in fusion. This is amazing.
;)
In 1967, when I was in college, I did a paper on articles about "Magentohydrodynamitic generators" , my spelling may be off a bit, but I have been waiting for seeing something work before I pass from this world, I remember a couple of companies were doing this, one of them was Allis-Chalmers, another was either Westinghouse or GE, maybe both. Interesting report Sabine.
I like the big friendly gun. Everyone is thinking of all these advanced techniques and they are like, 'lets shoot it with a gun'. It is actually inspiring how many different and creative ways people have come up with to approach this.
Considering the ridiculous technology and materials that go into the National Ignition Facility target capsules that will get vapourised immediately, the gun seems a lot simpler and cheaper.
I liked this as well. An inexpensive method that doesn't work is preferable to a multi-billion dollar one.
I Wonder if it was a DOOM reference from them for the BFG
@@pattheplanterThe gun targets is at least as complicated as the NIF target. An is the secret sauce behind the BFG. The engineering and science of the pellet is the bit they absolutely refuse to discuss or talk about to any journalist.
@@fidgeysrii4888 It probably a play on the big friendly giant story.
People go crazy about fusion, but it is much more difficult to achieve then they imagine. A better and more achievable power source is a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor. Why no one speaks about them? They are near perfect solution to current problems of the world!
My best guess is the Nuclear weapon non-proliferation treaty.
In theory civilian reactors are allowed. But in practice: it is very difficult to design a reactor that can prevent NATION STATES from diverting material.
Moltex is my favorite here but it is still a uranium plutonium fuel mix, they have several designs, but there are others including Mr Gates fission investment, these and other decouple the constant fission heat supply that is in the molten salt coolant loop with the power generation that can be run at different rates making them into excellent peaker plants.
It's actually even less achievable than fusion. That's the reason why we don't have it already.
I enjoy the high signal:noise ratio from Sabine's videos
I was hoping to see Sabine's take on Focus Fusion (LPP Fusion). I did see her take on a company doing a deuterium / boron reaction, but I don't think its the same company. Not a shill for them, just looking to get a 2nd opinion other than their own.
It’s ashame they never get invited to the party 🎉 it will be a different story if they get it working, I too was hoping to hear her thoughts about Focus Fusion as well. They need to do an episode about the underdog of fusion.
LPP fusion is always left out, this despite the fact that they are closest to net energy of all the privately funded startups with the least amount of funding.
It doesn't help that Dr Lerner is out of favor regarding his plasma universe theories, and is constantly criticizing the big bang, like it never happened. If he would stick to his LPP work he might get more support otherwise he looks like a crackpot. Its also unfortunate that his ideas on the BB also attract the electric universe loony crowd.
That's quite an array of new fusion projects. Interesting to hear about this.
You should do a video on the "safire sun" reactor thing. It looked a bit like a scam that needs debunking but I'm not qualified so I don't know for sure. And I haven't seen much reaction about it. Maybe that's a sign. 😅
Their website says "replicating the atmosphere of the sun", but all fusion in the sun is in the core. I don't plan to invest in this either.
Scam or self-delusion I'd say
@@MattNolanCustom Both are quite common.
All they need to do is watch "Spiderman 2" to see how Doc Oc made it work! XD
@@Alondro77 LOL 😃Yeah, everyone knows fantasy is reality.
SPARC is a partial acronym. Dennis Whyte explains it in his Lex Fridman appearance. ARC (Affordable, Robust, Compact) is the eventual end-to-end pilot plant they plan on making eventually. SPARC is a component of it, and is the actual tokamak. It's named SPARC as a play on words, because it's the thing that 'sparks' the fusion reaction.
👍 Excellent summary! I like general fusion because it addresses neutron radiation up front.
Like others, eg. New Energy Times, Sabine recognises the different uses of Q - we can call them Qplasma and Qmachine. To put fusion experiments into context, the recent record-breaking JET run had Qp of 1 and Qm of 1%. For a commercial device, we need Qm of about 30. Thus we need a factor of 3000 increase over the JET result. Even with the 30 figure, the electricity production will be one third of this, giving an effective Q of 10. Draw your own conclusions.
I was on the same thinking.
Sabine should have described the wast difference between the Qreaction and the Qoverall. She mentions it but NOT how big of a difference it is between them.
Any approach with charging and shooting things at pellets or compressing is totally out since it is vertually impossible to do this at such high frequency that would be needed in order to create powerlevels needed to overcome the power needed to create the situation.
Left is the plasma approaches with tokamaks, stellarators and so. They all have two big problems. 1) fast neutron/blanket problem that makes it difficult to find a material that can stand the bombardement and create more tritium for the ongoing process. 2) price, even if the thing would create energy with a Qoverall much higher than 1, it would be so many times more expensive than fission that it would never become commersially viable.
Thank you. Your ability to explain those concepts in a way understandable to a layman is outstanding.
I remember reading about the promise of Nuclear Fusion, in the 1960's. And it has an earlier history. Many billions of dollars have been spent trying to make it happen. At first countries had programs, now the private sector is giving it a go. These has been some meager success.
Very insightful. Love the dry humour too.
I really enjoyed this video and many of the other videos on this channel. As a mechanical engineering professor in the Seattle area, I do have one little niggle. I've toured and met with the CEOs of both Zap Energy and Helion Energy. Both companies are technically in Everett Washington, about 20 miles north of Seattle. Its a distinction only someone in the Seattle area would care about. (But people from Everett care about a lot) 🙂
Huh, I had no idea. I'll try to keep it in mind. Greetings to Seattle!
@@SabineHossenfelder We got a lot of nearby cities, all part of the same greater Seattle metropolitan area, that are doing much of what Seattle is known for. Boeing is in Everett, Microsoft is in Redmond, Starbucks and Amazon are both Seattle, but I think those are the exception, not the rule.