Small Correction - Fission reactions occur all the time in nature. Literally every radioactive element is a fission process. It just normally isn't in high enough concentrations to be a runaway reaction.
@@CommandLineCowboy Totally! That is why i said normally isn't. :) Natural fission reactions are super fascinating ^_^ So much to learn on this planet!
Fission and decay are not the same thing. Yes all radioactive elements decay but they do not necessarily fission. But I believe you are right to say that they do happen in nature just no where near anything like fusion in a Star.
I was an intern at the General Atomics Fusion Lab in the 1970's in Torrey Pines. The Russian tokamak configuration was utilized. Dr. Tihiro Ohkawa headed up the Japanese Team, which was collaborating with the American Team, headed by Dr John Landis. Dr Ohkawa envisioned the Doublet II where the Tokamak Donut-shaped plasma was modified so the cross-section , instead of an oval, it became an hourglass. The international fusion research community was so full of promise at that time, then Jimmy Carter cut the long-term research projects budget. Most of us graduate students got out of High-Energy Physics at that point.
Too bad!! We could have had a different world had u insisted!! A farmer cut ur budget during hard times and u blinked, so I can only infer u were in it for the money!! What did u do instead? I used to work not far from there! :)
@Donald Kasper Yes! just like they did scrapping the linear accelerator forcing all US scientists to move to France/Switzerland. Now all the particle science is coming out of Europe. Your absolutist logic is pretty dumb!!
@Thomas Chrombly Well that's so obvious!! if u did, you wouldn't be here moping!! Perhaps some humility would be apt as u must accept that we are in the infancy of interpreting our environment and have plenty, plenty to learn. Now knowing is a matter of horizons needing to be stretched rather than negation of possibilities u r just not equipped to assert!
@Thomas Chrombly Not a parallel comparison. The LHC is research into subatomic particles with no application other than the intent to understand our world. Fusion reactor research is intended to produce a containment solution to control fusion and produce "unlimited" amounts of energy. Apples and Oranges!! Oh and it doesn't matter what half the world thinks if that is an ignorant opinion. Facts are what matter!! What the hell is ur gripe anyway?? u keep shifting..... but ur also exhausting and I think i.m done arguing over nothing!!
I have been working on fusion projects since 1986. (With the exception of 5 years I spent at Aerojet working on in space propulsion) I really appreciated this video because I could show this to my family members and it gave them a better idea of what I do for a living. I work on FRC’s.
@@brianevolved2849 if you are curious, look up the LSX experiment. I was involved in that one from the beginning. That machine evolved into TRAP. that one was a Tokamak refueler. That machine turned into TCS. then TCSU. I helped build all those machines.
@@ossiedunstan4419 Fusion reactors do not have the potential to wipe our species. They barely work, and even when working, assuming theres a breach of the reactors, the damage will be nowhere near cataclysmic. Deadly and regrettable, but nowhere close to a Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island or Fukushima. Assuming a breach of a Fusion reactors you would have an event that would create a deadly heat zone for some time, but within days to weeks, the area would return to normal levels and people can return to the site without the need for nuclear protection gear. Once a Fusion reaction has stopped there is minimal to no residue and what is left is not radioactive.
I say no earlier than 2060. We still don't have gen 4 fission reactors up and will probably not have until 2040 desptie we pretty much have worked out how to do it.
Yes! How about something better? It is better, because it can be done - done safely and efficiently and it is still nuclear! No Three Mile Island, no Chernobyl, no Fukushima! Just the MSR ruclips.net/video/WGBkV3ZLTDI/видео.html -- LESS then 3 minute video and many others and beyond!
"Creating artificial suns within the bounds of our neighborhoods or cities certainly can't be safe!!!1!" There's nothing worse and dumber than a moral arbiter that has decided that they know best, simply because their feelings tell them that they're "doing the right thing" - when in reality, they're making themselves an active roadblock to progress and advancement of the human species. It would probably be best if these people did not exist at all.
I actually think those kind of people can be important. They are simply whistleblowers. Sometimes they get hung up on stupid things, but it's mostly harmless. Sometimes the lead the masses out of dark places and change he world. I believe most of the chemtrail persons would not exist if climate change and neoliberalism weren't a thing. I believe there is a connection between real things and their wonky theories, some seek refuge in what they think is a way out. They don't get it right, but they sense that something is wrong and seek kinship for that in the hopes of improving things. As stupid as they can be, I believe they are better persons than pretty much any 1%er.
Addictions overpower you and cause you to do harm to yourself. The modern world came into being because of the invention of the steam engine, the internal combustion engine, and modern organic chemistry. You wanna blame fossil fuels for your problems? Then you probably shouldn't use the internet since its powered by fossil fuels.
@Paolo G I agree. The trouble is when anyone recognises that population growth has to slow down or even reverse, by natural wastage, they are accused of wanting to kill people. Bill Gates for example. Thousands of people have misunderstood why he wanted to vaccinate against polio, cholera etc. People in Africa have many children to compensate for the high death rate, then they can’t feed them, so they starve. Bill Gates purpose was to help children survive so that parents didn’t feel the need to have so many children. But then along come the paranoia brigade, with all their suspicions & latch onto a few of Gates’ badly chosen words about wanting to reduce the population & accuse him of being a sadistic maniac with a mass murder ambition.
@@jackfanning7952 that is if we keep making nuclear weapon then there will be very little.progress in future. However Nuclear fusion and fission can provide us with cheap energy.
@@jackfanning7952 I live in France and it doesn’t seems to reflect on the bill although 70% of our power is nuclear. Haven’t had any nuclear accident yet either in France so I guess it’s a good bet rn.
An important distinction between stars and reactors. The video implies that fusion in stars happens when two atoms 'slam together'. What actually happens is that two atoms can get close enough together that sometimes they will quantum tunnel past the electrostatic force and are then able to fuse. Otherwise they never meet. Given the vast amount of atoms in a star this happens frequently enough to produce a sustained reaction. This is why nuclear fusion reactors currently use temperatures far exceeding that of the core of the sun, as they don't rely on quantum tunneling but instead actually do 'slam together' atoms as we think of it. Stars wouldn't even be possible this way, as they simply don't get hot enough. A bit of semantics given that nothing really 'touches' to begin with, but nonetheless useful to understand.
Well put. Stars -- at least solar mass ones -- are very inefficient fusion reactors. The Sun's core produces less heat per unit volume than your average compost heap. It's just that there's an awful lot of it, and the heat spends an awful long time battling to get out of the core which is fifteen times the density of lead!
I thought the reason stars produce fusion at a fraction of the heat of a reactor is because of the huge amounts of gravity that squeeze the atoms together? Fusion is fusion.. why would the atoms in a star not meet, but in a reactor they do? I'm not saying you are wrong but, that doesn't really make much sense. Edit: And to add to that, fusion is produced when two atoms combine. So what does quantum tunneling have to do with it?
@@joshoconnell2104 I'm not wrong. You are correct in that it's about temperature for a fusion reactor even more so than for a star. As I explained, there's the electrostatic force that gets in the way for a star, but with so many atoms enough pass the quantum barrier to fuse anyway. Otherwise stars would use up their fuel in a fraction of the time. Atoms in a fusion reactor get much hotter and thus can simply brute force slam together. Do a search and read up on it. Search for something like "Star fusion quantum tunneling". Be careful of your sources still of course!
Nah it's merely a factor of 2 or 3 (the best we will be able to do with steam turbines utilizing indirect plasma heating from pipes inside the torus center will probably be about 50% thermal efficiency) while other roadblocks are orders of magnitude larger. It's a pity that Matt Ferrell doesn't grant particular focus to what is termed "engineering breakeven" at 4:25; this is the efficiency of the entire plant as seen from the perspective of the electrical grid. Or the problem of "we haven't yet been able to actually produce many of the physical materials needed to make this or that theoretical reactor idea work in reality". Many papers assume that parts of the reactor are made from purely theoretical materials which possess the required properties to make this or that part of the reactor process work in practice. The devil really lies in this detail here.
elevator technology is one of the safest and most researched technologys, because, as you say, one cable failure and poof. But when was the last time that you heard of a lift failure? those things are really safe
Damn you @Donald Kasper, do you think temperature is only what you can feel with touch or measure with a thermometer? The thing is I don't understand what's your problem here. Are you concerned about the wastage of public money? Then please question your govt.'s military spending and corruption first. Using public money for scientific projects is probably its second-best use, the first being using it to build public-infrastructure that facilitates ppl's life.
Yep. It is. And there is somewhere in Africa where there actually was a naturally occurring fission “reactor”. It depleted the uranium deposits there ( there is less U235 than there should be)
I think he said "normally" not "naturally" which I somewhat agree. We can see fusion reaction almost everywhere in the universe while fission reaction is not a normal/common sight. If we could find a planet, let alone a star, emits so much energy from fission reaction that would be a very abnormal one.
@@lleozin96 yeah I agree they do occur naturally but they are not as common as fusion reaction I think. Fission reaction needs heavy, neutron rich elements so I don't see any way that a planet full of fission reaction wouldn't cascade and burn or blow up quickly. Heavy elements are pretty rare in the universe and also on our Earth. I haven't heard about any planet or star that have so much of these types of element that it have enough energy to shine by fission reaction. Maybe there is but I imagine its lifespan is really short compare to normal stars. Interesting stuff.
@@LeKhang98 geothermal energy comes from fission, it is a process that occurs in any "alive" planet. But, there is a lot of history to create a "alive" planet cause heavy atoms are created only in supernovae (or hypernovae) events. So the planetary system in question should have at least a second generation star. So yes, fusion is much much more common than fission, but it does not mean that fission is that rare in nature.
Yup, Seawater contains about 1/8000 parts of deutrium. If Deutrium extraction was cheap and easy most fission reactors would be heavy water reactors instead of light water reactions. Also Tritium is a man made isotope, not found in sea water.
@@krashd They can't make it easily. It's actually a huge pain to make, that's the point. Also, tritium /is/ naturally occurring, just in even lower quantities. For those who doubt, spontaneous fission of heavy isotopes in seawater releases neutrons, these neutrons normally come to rest in the hydrogen atoms of water, making deuterium. If one of these neutrons just so happen to come to rest in a deuterium atom, it becomes tritium. This is still a gross oversimplification, and I can't overstate how rare this is, but it does still happen enough in nature to be measurable.
Fun fact: You get energy out of fusion reactions taking small, light elements and fusing them together. In contrast, fission releases energy by taking large, heavy atoms and fracturing them. In either event, energy is released when moving towards the middle of the periodic table, ie iron (Fe).
These videos often contain 95% repetition of already known facts regarding fusion - Usually there's perhaps 2 paragraphs of actual news. One frustration though - the mega long build times for reactors. It's really silly how long it takes to make a reactor. This was one of the better videos.
Yes, it is stupidly long....Sadly this is for a large part due to politics. ITER is a good example: The USA withdrew from the project two times I recall, and re-joined later in both cases. Now they are considering leaving again.
The reason why it takes so long, is that they are machines for fundamental research which requires the developement and construction of unique, highly accurate parts. Those test reactors are packed with sensors and technology for further research. Once you have developed a working fusion reactor, they can be build much simpler and parts can become cheaper.
YES, you are soooo correct and they often skip over better (lets say more practical) and even useful stuff - for TODAY's World, not 10, 20 or 50+ years into the future. What is this? Well, it is better, because it can be done - done safely and efficiently and it is still nuclear! No Three Mile Island, no Chernobyl, no Fukushima! Just the MSR! ruclips.net/video/WGBkV3ZLTDI/видео.html -- LESS then 3 minute video and many others and beyond!
Of course it's repetition; it's an educational video, not a scientific report. If there is anything in this video which is not prior knowledge, it's either misinformation or a really unorthodox way of publishing scientific discoveries :)
@@jwarmstrong Being over 50 years old, I've heard and read that old saw--which has been trotted out every few years wearing new dressage show tack and under a new name--by the same old doomsayers, who younger people flock to as the latest "sages of the ages." Humanity has already survived--and learned to thrive through--so many changes in climate (which are the rule rather than the exception) that worrying about dying from *that* (as if all of us aren't going to die eventually anyway) is laughable. Also: As energy production, transportation, storage, and utilization technologies improve, we require and use fewer watts for any given purpose (yes, there are physical limits to this, but we are nowhere near them). We can and do already use what could be called "indirect fusion" via solar cell panels, solar-powered turbine electric generators (and similarly-powered industrial equipment), and microwave-beamed power from Solar Power Satellites (this beamed-power technology was first demonstrated at the CalTech/NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the 1970s).
@@t00by00zer Don't bother, he ignores it since it's inconvenient to his idiotic video. I pointed out this to him in his entry and he deleted it. These morons will eat their boots one day.
@@nobigbang825 I know. Had a "conversation" with the dunce making the vids and his gatekeeper is rational wiki. What a joke. That's like using Snopes to vet the veracity of a claim.
@@SilentShadowPunisher Perhaps more feasible than fusion but I was thinking more in the short term, we've known how to do fission for decades so I still think its our best bet. Of course we can eventually move on to safire or fusion but they still have a long way to go for now.
@@thismanhere3339 Sure, in the short term fission reactors are perfectly fine as they are mostly clean and very powerfull. But you should know that fossil fuel is also perfectly fine for atmospheric use, because CO2 is the fuel for LIFE on this planet and has a greening effect the higher the concentration goes (until it gets toxic but we are far from that and still far from important meteorological (climatic) alterations either), an other thing to get a look at.
@@SilentShadowPunisher CO2 is good for trees, but what good is that if entire forests and jungles are being destroyed. Its also toxic for animals and humans in high abundance, look no further than eastern China. Yes, we're a long ways off from the entire globe being uninhabitable but its still quite censoring. Not to mention the effects of global warming. Fossil fuels are highly flawed, I guess I get your point if you're suggesting that humanity is making a bigger deal of it than it actually is, but we cant deny the problems of this energy source. Honestly anything is better than coal or oil, even renewables which I know are nowhere near as reliable, but that issue is getting smaller and smaller by the day as battery technology advances and they become cheaper to construct.
I've been following the so-called breakthrough announcements for the last 50 years. Most people, who view this technology as being our savior, don't have such historical perspectives. Many articles hype the technology without including any critical analysis. The rarely mention that despite massive amounts of spending, on a variety of experimental projects and decades long delays, a significant breakeven fusion reaction has yet to be demonstrated. The hyping articles often don't mention the significant barriers that still need to be crossed, such as dealing with 100 million degree plasmas operating very close to superconducting magnetic coils that must be kept near absolute zero Kelvin while exposed by a flood of fusion energy neutrons. Such promotional articles often fail to mention the problems associated with handling radioactive hydrogen, tritium, or that the thermalized neutrons can convert non-radioactive materials in the structure into radioactive ones. Often press releases, from such projects, are crafted to attract more experimental resources, or investors. Those, working with such projects, typically assume that humanity has 2-3 decades left to create commercially manufactured fusion power electrical plants and deploy them on a massive scale to replace all fossil energy uses. That includes creating non-carbon synthetic fuels to power cars, buses, trucks, trains, ships, and aircraft. The experimenters, promoters and investors tend to be clueless about statements such as the following. UN chief: World has less than 2 years to avoid 'runaway climate change' thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/406291-un-chief-the-world-has-less-than-2-years-to-avoid-runaway-climate UN Chief warns countries that the 'point of no return' on climate change is fast approaching www.msn.com/en-gb/news/environment/un-chief-warns-countries-that-the-point-of-no-return-on-climate-change-is-fast-approaching/ar-BBXCJHl
As somebody with a scientific background who's been involved in environmental activism in the past, I don't think the fact of impending catastrophic climate change behooves nuclear fusion advocates and researchers to abandon their research or give up their goals any more that it behooves the man on the street to do more than he's currently doing (which is practically nothing). Given the fragmented pseudo-democracies which are the major carbon emitters at present, a popular appetite for change (ideally demonstrated at the voting booth) is a necessary condition for averting the current road of catastrophe we're on. As we well know, that same popular appetite is currently being mostly shaped by targeted advertising designed to capitalize on fear and anxiety - and promote the status quo of relentless consumption. As such, the necessary popular desire for the change we need isn't coming, as it's not in the interest of those pulling the strings. As far as I'm concerned, let the nuclear fusion researchers do their thing in peace - they aren't and were never going to provide the solution themselves. We need a majority of people to wake up and agitate for change (or really, we needed them to decades ago), but it's not going to happen. Technology has produced a global society of lazy, alienated consumers, who will never willingly unplug themselves from the system which provides them with fast food and instant entertainment. Enjoy the last few years of relative comfort we have now before it all goes sideways and try not to let the existential fury strangle the everyday pleasures. I'm so disappointed in this world...
@@paulcassidy4559 - Live life to the fullest. I agree that the fusion researchers should be allowed to continue much of their work but those researchers do not now need a massive infusion of funds that might be better spent. Here are a couple of links that show when the climate warnings began. We had far warning at least 54 years ago, long before most people viewing this video were born. Climate: What did We Know and When Did We Know it? ruclips.net/video/ox5hbkg34Ow/видео.html Scientists warned the US president about global warming 50 years ago today www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/nov/05/scientists-warned-the-president-about-global-warming-50-years-ago-today
The main problem is that we're not actually imitating stars, the sole way we know nature achieves fusion. In stars, gravity does the work of confining & heating essentially pure hydrogen plasma to the point it fuses. Because we don't have gravity control & our reactors are way smaller than stars, we're really trying to do it with pure electromagnetism under very different conditions. The problems are that 1) this requires E&M heating of the plasma to a temperature way HIGHER than a star (10-100x hotter), 2) we can't use the same fuel mix or nuclear reaction that stars do, and 3) to even attempt this we need ultra strong magnets that can't easily be engineered. Really, we'd be a lot closer to fusion reactors if we had room temperature superconductors. One of the massive engineering complications with these things is having to cryogenically cool the magnets of a reactor core that's manipulating million degree plasma.
am just a student but isn't this pure em approach partly because of the strong force's legacy? that is the strong force is believed to be an actual force of its own, not gravity working at the quantum level? the fundamentals were not questioned when hot fusion first took off therefore the mo has been to resort to these ultra high temps in attempt to reach energy levels of the strong force to break atomic bonds. seems like a dead end. If we entertain er=EPR and the notion of space being entangled by planck scale wormholes, for all we know if the strong force is actually the result of gravity at the quantum level - say the strong force actually works out to be gravity between two atomic blackholes - then what hope is there for such a brute force method?
Perhaps we could resurrect a 60s idea and build big solar panel arrays in orbit and convert it to microwaves to beam down to collectors on Earth. After all, we now have a civilian space program. This could be awesome.
scientists present ultra optimistic figures in terms of Qplasma (energy efficiency collected from the plasma reaction). they don't talk about to Qtotal = total energy used as a total to get the plasma + cooling + make the plant work less heat to electricity efficiency. When Jet announced a Q=0.67 it was Qplasma; the Qtotal is less than 0.01 !
We did actually come across a natural fission "reactor," check out the "Oklo reactor." It's a pretty chance setup that it happens, and I think it's just the coolest thing nature could ever accidentally do lol.
11:27 "don't expect your home to be fusion powered at any time in the next ten to twenty years" Here we go again, 30 years from now and this time we'll be there for sure, babe!
"... bla bla 30 years bla bla ..." Yeah; i thought it was constantly 40 years away for at least the last 40 years. - Seems to me the promises of fusion are just the carrot dangling in front of us to keep us plodding on like foolish donkeys trusting the nuclear power old boy's club riding us all the way into their gold-plated retirements on the saddle and reins of all those crumbling dangerous old constantly over budget in construction and ages-to-decommission fission reactors.
Anyway, this was heaps interesting, especially the side-by-side comparison of the designs, and the bullet shrimp! How completely fascinating... and a little bit scary: a shrimp that can super heat water at the snap of its fingers!? Wow!
@@jamesmorton7881 Yeah, i quite agree. That's why we need to use the latest in battery tech to support solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal power, and, that's why we ought to have made the transition in three key ways many decades ago. Those three key ways are by 1.) banning all advertising for fossil fuels, animal agriculture, and all related products; and, 2.) ending all subsidies and tax breaks for all fossil fuels and animal agriculture products; and, 3.) imposing a substantial punictive greenhouse gas fee, with full funds returned to human citizens (not corporate "citizens") if they do actually reduce their greenhouse gas impact. Why Gibbs and Moore weren't criticizing several decades' worth of industrialized nations' leaders for failing in these three really extremely easy steps is extraordinarily strange.
I remember reading about the reactor at Princeton some 35/40 years ago when I was in middle school. Thanks for a great video, I appreciate the way you pulled all the information together without getting deep into the weeds.
Climate change crowd: *Why aren't we able to use sustainable energy111!?* Also climate change crowd: *"Nuclear power is scary and bad. We must put a stop to it!"*
@@chrisw443 Clearly you've never talked to them before. They claim fusion is an unrealistic scam that will never work. And what the hell makes you think fission is bad? Fission is perfectly fine. Quit making shit up.
@@hemprope4326 - it is obvious that your child is not one of the over 200,000 children in the greater Tokyo area with Leukemia, or one of the over 9000 born with holes in their heart muscle tissue, BOTH courtesy of the Fukushima Triple Core meltdown STILL under way. Fukushima may already be an extinction level event for Earth and humans are simply too stupid to realize it. I am quite sure it is since they are now finding very sickly salmon among those returning to the rivers on the west coast to spawn. But most are so sick with slime and tumors that they never make it up the rapids to finish their annual task.
@@rblibit Stop talking like you anything. Fukushima is about 300 km from Tokyo. No one in Tokyo was affected by it. In fact nobody is affected by the little amount of radioactive material that Fukushima caused. The waters arround isn't even significantly more radioactive. You are either lying or spreading false news without doing any research. There is no way Fukushima is an extinction event.
@Carlos Andrade Over the last 60 years of nuclear power, the you can put the amount of nuclear "waste" produced into an area the size of a football field, 10 feet deep. And we literally have hundreds of nuclear power plants around the world. If you're still THAT concerned, we've gotten to the point where reusing nuclear "waste" is feasible.
Q is only the energy quotient of the plasma reaction. And that energy is mostly heat. It is NOT taking into account the energy consumption of the whole reactor, which is substantial, nor the energy loss to get electricity out of the plasma to begin with.
" to get electricity out of the plasma " Well put. So is all of that undone engineering missing from total power in/out theoretical "efficiency" estimates because they are only interested in their important "can we build a sun in box" work, and funding it ?
Stellarator is a fail. You would have to build fission reactors and lots of them to fuel them. ITER has the same problem but can at least breed some fuel.
I worked on the D3 reactor in San Diego 40 years ago as a 19 year old - they brought me in to be trainee mechanical designer - they said in 30 years they would have a full blown power producing reactor.
Sad, but probably true. I really think these smaller reactors that these new startups are trying out will prove a better path by the time ITER spins up.
@@Sorestlor Playing dumb is one of their subversion techniques. It's like my printer that pretends not to know how to work with the computer once and a while. They want me to think they are dumb, but once I bang on it a few times and threaten with a baseball bat... zzzmmmzzzzz out comes the paper.... Just as I thought...
Fission reactions do happen in nature, even in circumstances that resemble a nuclear reactor. Examples of the remnants of where this has happened in the past have been found in Uranium deposits.
Yes, I was going to say this: blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/natures-nuclear-reactors-the-2-billion-year-old-natural-fission-reactors-in-gabon-western-africa/
"don't expect your homes to be powered in the next 10-20 years..." so, lemme guess, we're around 30 years away from that? :3 Great content btw, subbed!
Excellent video Matt. Extremely informative. I used to work on ITER design, but switched to the medical field end of 2018. My only take on this is that most/all the "new" concepts you mentioned at the end has been investigated before. I feel it's like a loop where some concept gets funded, funding slows down in this concept while another concept gets more funding, then the older concept gets revived again, and so on.
Molten salt design is amazing!!! Why the hell dont we have these? Mfking military industrial complex is why. Cant make huge ammunition amounts with them. Gotta have the breeder reactors for that.... stupid war....
@@MCAroon09 : I'd get behind travelling wave reactors 100%, if there was even a single working PROTOTYPE of one in existence. As it stands, I'm in the "I'll believe it when I see it" camp.
I love your channel, so I say this only out of obligation to the urgency of our times. Your overview on fusion was fascinating, hopeful, and worthy of pursuit for the "someday it promises". My concern is that we may miss the help we can get from fission over the next 50 years while fusion is getting fully developed. Sadly, we have made fission energy so irrationally frightening and politically toxic that we are missing it's current potential to become a major form of green energy. Your overview of fission unfortunately supported these fears which relate to the 1960's fission technology we are still using to this day. We fear fission reactors because of the inherent limitations of water cooling and ceramic solid fuel designs we inherited from the rushed development of civilian fission power in the 50's and 60's. Current fission technology allows for reactors which have the inherent safety you ascribed to fusion's future. Yet fission could be commercialized across the globe in less than 20 years... 10 if Elon was in charge. Additionally they can be fueled by consuming our preexisting nuclear waste stockpile, turning a long standing problem directly into a green power asset. There isn't room to back these statements here, but I'd be happy to share more if you are interested. Modern molten salt fission designs are every bit as big an advance as a 2020 Tesla is over a current Ford ICE vehicle. But no one wants to fund building fission in exactly the same way no one wanted to fund electric vehicles before Tesla. Please give fission a fair chance to help with a sustainable future. We need all the help we can get. Again, love your channel! Sincerely, John
You're right, John. The unfortunate reality is that nuclear power is intimately tied up with politics. And that the very nature of politics seems to be based on perception and misinformation-rhetoric trumps reality. The Sierra Club used to support nuclear power. In fact they lobbied for the building of the Diablo Canyon power plant. They saw nuclear as a way to prevent the damming and flooding of pristine mountain valleys. And this was a time when few knew the potential for excess CO2 in the atmosphere to fisk up the climate and oceans. Then _The China Syndrome_ movie came out, and a few weeks later the Three Mile Island accident happened. Politics took over. The Windscale accident in the UK _did_ harm civilians (stupid reactor design). Three Mile Island in the US _did not_ (flawed instrumentation & procedures, but the containment vessel held). Chernobyl killed civilians & workers and harmed people throughout parts of Europe (bad reactor design, no containment vessel, green crew). Fukushima did not sicken or kill anyone, although being forced out of your home is harmful (unfortunate site redesign). There are, as of April 2018, 449 operational reactors in the world (Wikipedia). You never hear about the ones that work. Of course the latest reactor designs (4th generation) are far safer than old designs. I'm particularly intrigued by LFTR and it's ability to avoid creating long-term waste. Contrast this with the safety record of fossil fuels. Coal is by far the deadliest source of power. But even solar and wind, which are near the bottom of the scale, have killed more people than nuclear power (presumably installers falling off of roofs, or people electrocuted because they forgot the sun was "on"). Despite a few high profile accidents, nuclear is by far the safest. Lowest pollution, safest, but we can't move forward because of politics.
I think it was 6 or 7 years ago I was listening to an Adam Carolla podcast and the conversation they had removed the ignorance I had about the safety of modern fission power plants, especially when you compare it to coal. Plus the idea of using up the waste products from previous generation of fission power as the fuel source is absolutely incredible.
Does fission reactors imply having access to weapons grade nuclear elements? That would seem to be the biggest problem with them becoming widespread throughout the world if so.
Kevin, short answer is no. Its complex but in order to make weapons grade material, typically you need a reactor designed to optimize weapons grade material production. Power reactors are not designed for such a process and indeed can be and are designed to minimize or eliminate the likelihood of creating such material. Next generation reactors such as molten salt reactors can go even farther in this regard.
Don't invest. Engineers should understand that they are too stupid to comprehend how large scale social spending decisions are made. Returns are not measured as you say, but more importantly generation is not compared only to generation but to solutions that shift or reduce use. France has not been able to export it's nuclear technology. Germany has copied it's solar solutions planet wide and gets patent royalties. There is no "backup" required on modern grids with demand response and EVs. Neutron scattering is a loser economically and you calculate the dead by opportunity cost. The wasted money on nuclear has killed vastly more people who weren't saved by, oh, better public health. ALL nuclear fission reactors are wildly expensive and take about a decade to construct. Thorium the more so since it requires the thorium to become uranium in a breeder stage first. Even at five years and a billion dollars, no power grid on Earth cannot find far better ways to invest that money over that time: 1. Swap out a billion light bulbs, from florescent to LED, cutting 20W each (or 80W each from incandescent). That's 20-80GW x the % of time each is on, say 10% of the time. 2-8GW saved! 2. Change over 50,000 ICE vehicles to EVs at $10,000 each and install 5,000,000 solar panels at $100 each. The EVs store all the solar and take no oil, and feed the grid every day at peak times. Not only more power, but when it's needed. If each vehicle can #V2G just 1kw/day, that's 50MW for all 50,000 vehicles extra at peak, plus all the solar left over. It adds up to far more and more flexible power than the thorium. 3. Install $300M of transmission to a big dam that already exists, and spend $700M covering irrigation canals with solar shade. Less irrigation water loss, more power, more flexibility in backing up the dam since it doesn't need to release as much water and can reserve it for power reasons.
SAFIRE PROJECT is doing just this at a fraction the cost. They are even making heavy elements that were not there before. CERN asked SAFIRE to integrate their chamber as CERN has been experiencing "some hurdles", according to a phone call between the two groups chief engineers.
Technically, any home on a grid with wind, solar, coal, natgas, or hydroelectric is fusion-powered. It'd be really nice to see fusion plants coming on-line, though, especially if they have the kind of responsiveness needed to cover for the fluctuating outputs of renewables like wind and solar.
It will happen...things do eventually, with persistence. Until it does, go hell for leather with wind, solar, hydro, and wave energy. There are several options for storing energy, such as, battery, compressed air, and raising & dropping of weights.
We also have much cheaper and much safer ways to use nuclear fission. These have been ignored but companies like Moltex and Thorcon are proving it can be done. Moltex is building a plant that will be fuelled with nuclear waste at a cost cheaper than natural gas. Grid connection expected before 2030. The designs are proven. The delays are purely regulatory.
@@MCAroon09 I’m honestly not being pedantic here. But, when we were kids in the 60’s, it we were told it was more expensive to pump the water back up to the dam. I don’t know now, with the rise in renewable energy, and the dramatic fall of coal, what Dinorwig pays these days.
As a fusion scientist/engineer I can say: Cool video! Indeed tremendous progress has been made. A word of caution with respect to the startups: they are even more inclined to oversell concepts than the scientists of course... So the (inter)national fusion programmes are definitely worth following. The EU program is most advanced by far, with a DEMO reactor scheduled for construction in 2040. www.euro-fusion.org/. And to put the timeline in perspective: The first solar cell dates from 1839! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell#History But again: cool video!
As an Information technology engineer who knows nothing about nuclear physics. Nuclear explosions reaches 100 million Celsius Fusion requires 100 million Celsius Just saying 😂
Small correction: Nuclear Fission CAN occur in nature. It's just very rare. The only place on Earth it was known to happen was in Gabon, in Africa, about 1.7 billion years ago, when U235 existed in much higher percentages of natural Uranium.
Here's 2 fusion ideas: IDEA A: Using magnets to smash atoms together except alot of them at the same time via. Hadron collider. IDEA B: Microwaving a bunch of grapes and getting a whole plume of plasma.
@@t00by00zer they are not sustainable yet.. It takes more energy for the reactor to function than it produces, that's why fundings are needed.. So the research and testing can go on..
They used to say a bolt of lightening could provide a lot of electricity if it could be harnessed. If what is required to kickstart a fusion reaction is a lot of energy, perhaps they could put one of those small fussion reactors on a ship and chase lightening storms around the globe. If lightening strikes, the crew could shout "it`s alive, it`s alive!"
Just imagine if we could take all the research money for a process that may or may not work and put it into how to make solar more productive and to fund expansion of deployment. Wow we could almost be self sufficient with energy production. Just a thought.
You will, doubtlessly, now effortlessly explain how is wind and solar intermittency problem solved, the one that drives, say, Germani to higher and higher reliance on natural gas and *coal* (lignite, no less, the dirtiest kind.) Your "thought" is yet another meme propagated by the fossil fuel lobby. Think, man!
@@昭夫-o6y That, too. Investment in fusion research is minuscule compared to fossil fuel subsidies, except, perhaps, for military projects with fusion energy research as a side effect, like National Ignition Facility (laser-induced inertial confinement fusion).
a hundred years later when people look back to "older" plans or version of fusion energy plant then say "why they use "that" "that" is wasting so much time fusion is actually "easier" then you thought" when us right now "we have no idea"
It wasn't the point of the video to show that fusion is just around the corner, the point of the video was to show the amazing progress that we are making every year.
@@krashd The video shows the amazing progress we are making, however Nuclear Fusion is still 30 years or more away. Ergo the progress being made cannot be that amazing.
I hate to break it to you but SAFIRE is a scam. They aren't getting any net power and there is no quantitative evidence fusion was occurring (i.e. no evidence of fusion products like neutrons and helium.)
@@northernskies86 On what basis do you say that? Have you tried to reproduce their results? Aren't you suppose to do that before you can dismiss it? I hope you're basing your assertion on more than just the pompous fluff of prof Dave?
@@Hannodb1961 I looked at their experimental setup and it looks exactly like a Farnsworth fusor, which is an extremely inefficient way to do fusion. If they got net energy out, that would've been huge news and it would be covered everywhere. It hasn't. And yes, the SAFIRE project is based on incorrect physics about the sun being an anode for galactic discharge currents with no base whatsoever. You also can't do science without submitting your results to a reputable journal, which was never done with SAFIRE. I'll need to wait for the peer review for me to even consider it.
@@northernskies86 Well, as it happens, I believe the plasma model of the sun is way more credible than mainstream cosmology. When you have to plug magical dark matter and energy to make your models fit the observations, and almost every discovery is a surprise (but not to plasma cosmologists), you know mainstream science is broken. And where there are lots of scientists debunking and debating all kinds of alternative scientific viewpoints, its like no one will touch the plasma universe with a ten foot pole. Believe, me, I've tried to find a decent debate between mainstream cosmology and plasma cosmology, and havent found anything yet. As for SAFIRE, they said they will forgo the peer review process, and head straight to the patent office, since this technology would have massive economic potential. In that case, I would not expect to be major news until their reactor is on line and running. So, I'll just have to wait and see. If you are right, nothing will come of it.
finally someone on youtube who actually understands the difference between nuclear fusion and nuclear fission... its so refreshing to not have to correct people when their talking about a nuclear fission reactor and they call it nuclear fusion -.-'
They sure are! I didn't go into them for this video because they really deserve their own video. The science behind them is so cool ... and they look more like a piece of modern art than a reactor.
Fusion and Fission as nuclear powerplants can be operated for many years 80, 90 maybe more than 100 years. They are stable, power dense solution wihout destroying large farmland area. Solar power is good only as adition to convention and stable sources. Solar is inefficient, extemely unstable, poluting because you need large fields of FV panels to be changed every 20 years, you need lots of energy and lots of toxic waste, even you are using lots of coal to produce solar panels. Maybe as much as 75% from lifespan of FV panel is time to produce same energy as used to produce this panel. Yes, you are really using coal to produce solar panels. Silicon as main semicoductor used by solar indusry is made by reduction reaction of quartz by coal Quarts is SiO2 you simply need burn O2 to get pure Si! In ideal conditions 365 days times around 6 hours of ideal light you need 9 years to produce same amout of energy used to make this panel in real world it is bigger number, maybe even 15 years. Nuclear plant of any kind needs only about 5-10 years to profuce same amout of energy used to build one. This mean with lifespan of NPP 60 to 80 years 55/50 to 75/70 years of production clean energy! Edit: In nuclear i was wrong, you need only 1.42% of 60 year operation to produce enough energy to build refuel and decomsssion one nuclear power plant! This is around one year of operation! www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/energy-return-on-investment.aspx
@@samuelgomola9097 That's a lot of research..... I'm still buying some panels though. It's cost effective and it'll lighten the load on our fragile grid and help me sleep better at night knowing I won't need to buy as much gas for my backup generator.
@@buzz-es In small scale for houses it is good you are still kind of renewable and you save some money, but for large scale and powering up our industry it is nightmare. In theory PV can generate more energy for replacement and you still get some energy free wihout any carbon but it is only small amount.
In the animation at around 1:15, where you show nuclear fission taking place, you should have dedicated a little more time and a little screen space to representing some of the neutrons that don't get captured by another nucleus, and are lost to the environment. This would have been appropriately accompanied by a statement regarding that a nuclear fission reaction where neutrons aren't 'missing' actually leads to the reaction accelerating, which would look more like a bomb than a reactor. If the reaction accelerates beyond a certain point, the energy release is explosive, and this is the fundamental principle behind every single nuclear weapon ever developed, even the ones we call fusion bombs first undergo a fission stage. For those that are interested: This is because a fusion bomb is actually short for a fission-fusion staged thermonuclear bomb, more commonly referred to as a thermonuclear bomb. The fission explosion is used as a source of gamma rays and x-rays, which heats up the heavy hydrogen fuel, which then undergoes nuclear fusion, releasing about 5% of their mass as energy, as opposed to around 0.7% for fission. By comparison, chemical energy releases around 1000x less energy by mass for even the most efficient chemical reactions than nuclear fission, which itself is more than 5x less efficient than nuclear fission. Furthermore, by comparison, antimatter is ALMOST 100% efficient (I say almost because if it was 100% efficient, we wouldn't exist. In every condition we have ever observed it, it is 100% efficient, but there must logically be conditions under which is it NOT efficient) and will convert all of it's mass into energy, leaving no mass behind from either reactant particle.
I know what you mean about those "time predictions". Back in the early 60s, they were predicting that we would be driving flying "Jetson" type cars by the 70s too.
This video about nuclear fusion covers things an acquaintance has mentioned before like the use of high power lasers and the development of compact fusion reactors. Things I hadn't heard about previously because I've not been closely following the research into fusion. I appreciate that the guy in the video did still caution the viewer about expecting to power our homes with fusion power within the next 10 to 20 years. By which time renewables could be even stronger. But I would sincerely hope fusion's true role once it's unlocked and commercially viable to eliminate fossil fuels completely from our energy mix with renewables being bigger contributors than they currently are.
Three Mile Island contained the meltdown exactly as designed and nobody was hurt. It was well engineered and the other reactors in the powerplant continued operations for decades afterwards. Still safer than any other large scale power production by orders of magnitude even with the handful of failures.
One of the reasons they always say " fusion reactor is 30 years away" is to keep the public's interest and funding coming in, otherwise it would've been too outside of peoples perception. I'm not a scientist but its important to keep hope alive especially for such an important factor like safe, efficient energy.
i came up with this general idea and asked my teacher about it when i was in grade 9, wasn't well received and he said my idea didnt make any sense and would never work. 5 years later and im learning about the tokamak
Matt - this video notes that fusion will actually created radioactive by products (escaping neutrons?), who's obverse is one of fusion's great claims ("no harmful waste to dispose). Worth reviewing.
I "love" how 0.67% (less that 1%!) of reactors having major issue, is enough for people to say "Hell NO!" but they still get in their car, on a plane or in a bus. I also "love" how its saved way more people than its killed and that is always just ignored. But that is humanity, it only see that bad.
Thanks. Yeah, I remember back in the 80s, when *_both_* fusion and A.I. were being touted by some, and doubted by others. In fact, I read one guy saying, "A.I. is very nearly ready, and probably always will be." I like the fact that were looking at many different ways of doing fusion. The compact reactor is especially interesting, as it would obviously be a step toward fusion power in space as well. We do seem to be making progress. I just hope our socio-political systems survive that long (or transform into something better, without too much disruption!) 🅣🅐🅥🅘
a Q of 10 is likely where we'll need to be before this is commercially viable. But when they can get that in the laboratory, then we really might be about 30 years away from commercial fusion power.
Thanks! Call me a dreamer, but... I think I might benefit from a chart titled, "Recent Progress in Fusion Technology as Plotted on a Curve Through Time." Yes: I know that's both outside the scope of this video, as well as (most likely) outside the scope of practicality. Nevertheless, I keep hearing that 'we've made so much progress recently' - without being able to get *_any_* really clear sense of *_how much progress, and whether this will actually bring break-even in less than the mystical 30 years._* Unhelpful. tavi.
Modern fission reactors also stop reacting and cool down if they become unstable or unbalanced. Chernobyl was a flawed reactor design and had safety measures and procedures flagrantly disregarded, Fukushima was a 1960’s reactor that did what it was supposed to, the rest of its supporting infrastructure was damaged(flooded generators) that caused the problems. I’m not bashing fusion, just pointing out that, especially for modern reactor design, fission is also incredibly safe and produces VERY little waste.
![Ice On My Teeth - ATEEZ エイティーズ 에이티즈 [Music Bank] | KBS WORLD TV 241115](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/c-n92OgbbwA/mqdefault.jpg)
Small Correction - Fission reactions occur all the time in nature. Literally every radioactive element is a fission process. It just normally isn't in high enough concentrations to be a runaway reaction.
Small correction, there is at least one instance of a natural sustained fission chain reaction. Look up Oklo in Gabon Africa.
@@CommandLineCowboy Totally! That is why i said normally isn't. :) Natural fission reactions are super fascinating ^_^ So much to learn on this planet!
@Mike Dunigan what is meant by fission normaly is neutron induced fission. not the spontaneous alpha or beta decays which keep the core hot.
Fission and decay are not the same thing. Yes all radioactive elements decay but they do not necessarily fission. But I believe you are right to say that they do happen in nature just no where near anything like fusion in a Star.
@@emnuke yes
I was an intern at the General Atomics Fusion Lab in the 1970's in Torrey Pines.
The Russian tokamak configuration was utilized. Dr. Tihiro Ohkawa headed up the Japanese Team, which was collaborating with the American Team, headed by Dr John Landis. Dr Ohkawa envisioned the Doublet II where the Tokamak Donut-shaped plasma was modified so the cross-section , instead of an oval, it became an hourglass.
The international fusion research community was so full of promise at that time, then Jimmy Carter cut the long-term research projects budget. Most of us graduate students got out of High-Energy Physics at that point.
Too bad!! We could have had a different world had u insisted!! A farmer cut ur budget during hard times and u blinked, so I can only infer u were in it for the money!! What did u do instead? I used to work not far from there! :)
@Donald Kasper Yes! just like they did scrapping the linear accelerator forcing all US scientists to move to France/Switzerland. Now all the particle science is coming out of Europe. Your absolutist logic is pretty dumb!!
@Donald Kasper where u graduate from, has been repeatedly shown to have little correlation with IQ. Ur argument has no merit.
@Thomas Chrombly Well that's so obvious!! if u did, you wouldn't be here moping!! Perhaps some humility would be apt as u must accept that we are in the infancy of interpreting our environment and have plenty, plenty to learn. Now knowing is a matter of horizons needing to be stretched rather than negation of possibilities u r just not equipped to assert!
@Thomas Chrombly Not a parallel comparison. The LHC is research into subatomic particles with no application other than the intent to understand our world. Fusion reactor research is intended to produce a containment solution to control fusion and produce "unlimited" amounts of energy. Apples and Oranges!! Oh and it doesn't matter what half the world thinks if that is an ignorant opinion. Facts are what matter!! What the hell is ur gripe anyway?? u keep shifting..... but ur also exhausting and I think i.m done arguing over nothing!!
I have been working on fusion projects since 1986. (With the exception of 5 years I spent at Aerojet working on in space propulsion) I really appreciated this video because I could show this to my family members and it gave them a better idea of what I do for a living. I work on FRC’s.
Alas we were 30 years away when i was young 50 years ago. Im backing Elon now he gets results quicker.
@@brianevolved2849 if you are curious, look up the LSX experiment. I was involved in that one from the beginning. That machine evolved into TRAP. that one was a Tokamak refueler. That machine turned into TCS. then TCSU. I helped build all those machines.
@McGeoculus Look up Helion Energy. I think you’ll find that interesting.
Tony Stark built this in a cave! With a box of scraps!
I'm sorry sir, I'm not Tony Stark
using a fictional character in reference to reality , a reality that could wipe our planet out not funny, how do think religion started.
@@ossiedunstan4419 Fusion reactors do not have the potential to wipe our species. They barely work, and even when working, assuming theres a breach of the reactors, the damage will be nowhere near cataclysmic.
Deadly and regrettable, but nowhere close to a Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island or Fukushima.
Assuming a breach of a Fusion reactors you would have an event that would create a deadly heat zone for some time, but within days to weeks, the area would return to normal levels and people can return to the site without the need for nuclear protection gear.
Once a Fusion reaction has stopped there is minimal to no residue and what is left is not radioactive.
And his heart plugged into a car battery
@@ossiedunstan4419 uhm.. when did religion get involved with creating an extremely safe source of energy..?
Shrimp: punches water so hard that light comes out... Humans: “Write that down.”
Everything we learn or know is from Nature.
A shrimp reactor!
@@JimEast123 Forrest Gump Shrimp
@@georgekraus9357 Bubba would be fascinated
"Don't expect your home to be fusion powered in the next 10 or 20 years." - I'm guessing we'll have fusion reactors powering our homes in 30 years 😃
I say no earlier than 2060. We still don't have gen 4 fission reactors up and will probably not have until 2040 desptie we pretty much have worked out how to do it.
Yes! How about something better? It is better, because it can be done - done safely and efficiently and it is still nuclear! No Three Mile Island, no Chernobyl, no Fukushima!
Just the MSR
ruclips.net/video/WGBkV3ZLTDI/видео.html -- LESS then 3 minute video and many others and beyond!
21 years
@@drx1xym154 Three mile island, Fukushima, and Chernobly are impossible on modern fission reactors (gen3+) anyway
More likely, NEVER.
I can hear it now "oh my god, they are going to drain the oceans"
With a bit of luck the Daily Mail won't exist when fusion gets here.
Its an irreversible process and we have no idea what the implications will be.
It should fix up those rising ocean levels!!!
"Creating artificial suns within the bounds of our neighborhoods or cities certainly can't be safe!!!1!"
There's nothing worse and dumber than a moral arbiter that has decided that they know best, simply because their feelings tell them that they're "doing the right thing" - when in reality, they're making themselves an active roadblock to progress and advancement of the human species. It would probably be best if these people did not exist at all.
I actually think those kind of people can be important. They are simply whistleblowers. Sometimes they get hung up on stupid things, but it's mostly harmless. Sometimes the lead the masses out of dark places and change he world. I believe most of the chemtrail persons would not exist if climate change and neoliberalism weren't a thing. I believe there is a connection between real things and their wonky theories, some seek refuge in what they think is a way out. They don't get it right, but they sense that something is wrong and seek kinship for that in the hopes of improving things. As stupid as they can be, I believe they are better persons than pretty much any 1%er.
thx for this overview.
I'm a big believer in fusion. The world need this to get rid of our fossil fuel addiction.
I wish I could share your enthusiasm about fusion. I am with you that we need to get past fossil fuel. I believe algae will be the solution.
Addictions overpower you and cause you to do harm to yourself. The modern world came into being because of the invention of the steam engine, the internal combustion engine, and modern organic chemistry. You wanna blame fossil fuels for your problems? Then you probably shouldn't use the internet since its powered by fossil fuels.
@Paolo G I agree. The trouble is when anyone recognises that population growth has to slow down or even reverse, by natural wastage, they are accused of wanting to kill people. Bill Gates for example. Thousands of people have misunderstood why he wanted to vaccinate against polio, cholera etc. People in Africa have many children to compensate for the high death rate, then they can’t feed them, so they starve. Bill Gates purpose was to help children survive so that parents didn’t feel the need to have so many children. But then along come the paranoia brigade, with all their suspicions & latch onto a few of Gates’ badly chosen words about wanting to reduce the population & accuse him of being a sadistic maniac with a mass murder ambition.
Humans would use unlimited energy for very bad things.
@@GH-jb6bq omg just stop
I’m so inspired to work in this field, one of the most important steps towards an interstellar civilisation
If we keep messing with nuclear energy, we will need interstellar civilization.
@@jackfanning7952 that is if we keep making nuclear weapon then there will be very little.progress in future. However Nuclear fusion and fission can provide us with cheap energy.
@@orionemperor5319 Nuclear energy is by far the most expensive energy on the planet.
@@jackfanning7952 I live in France and it doesn’t seems to reflect on the bill although 70% of our power is nuclear. Haven’t had any nuclear accident yet either in France so I guess it’s a good bet rn.
@@jackfanning7952 Did you not watch the video? We are talking about fusion and not fission.
5:22 Of course Homer Simpson would love it - He’s a Nuclear Safety Inspector
NU-KU-LAR ☝️
I think that would put him out of a job. ;)
@Science Revolution you're part of a cult. Relfect on that please. There's no other reason you post this on every comment section.
@Science Revolution Mr I know One Equation, therefor 100 years of physics is wrong
An important distinction between stars and reactors. The video implies that fusion in stars happens when two atoms 'slam together'. What actually happens is that two atoms can get close enough together that sometimes they will quantum tunnel past the electrostatic force and are then able to fuse. Otherwise they never meet. Given the vast amount of atoms in a star this happens frequently enough to produce a sustained reaction. This is why nuclear fusion reactors currently use temperatures far exceeding that of the core of the sun, as they don't rely on quantum tunneling but instead actually do 'slam together' atoms as we think of it. Stars wouldn't even be possible this way, as they simply don't get hot enough. A bit of semantics given that nothing really 'touches' to begin with, but nonetheless useful to understand.
🤔 good point
Well put. Stars -- at least solar mass ones -- are very inefficient fusion reactors. The Sun's core produces less heat per unit volume than your average compost heap. It's just that there's an awful lot of it, and the heat spends an awful long time battling to get out of the core which is fifteen times the density of lead!
I thought the reason stars produce fusion at a fraction of the heat of a reactor is because of the huge amounts of gravity that squeeze the atoms together? Fusion is fusion.. why would the atoms in a star not meet, but in a reactor they do? I'm not saying you are wrong but, that doesn't really make much sense.
Edit: And to add to that, fusion is produced when two atoms combine. So what does quantum tunneling have to do with it?
@@joshoconnell2104 I'm not wrong. You are correct in that it's about temperature for a fusion reactor even more so than for a star. As I explained, there's the electrostatic force that gets in the way for a star, but with so many atoms enough pass the quantum barrier to fuse anyway. Otherwise stars would use up their fuel in a fraction of the time. Atoms in a fusion reactor get much hotter and thus can simply brute force slam together.
Do a search and read up on it. Search for something like "Star fusion quantum tunneling". Be careful of your sources still of course!
You should go join them at the nuclear research center
The idea of direct electric power from the reaction looks like a really massive game changer.
Nah it's merely a factor of 2 or 3 (the best we will be able to do with steam turbines utilizing indirect plasma heating from pipes inside the torus center will probably be about 50% thermal efficiency) while other roadblocks are orders of magnitude larger. It's a pity that Matt Ferrell doesn't grant particular focus to what is termed "engineering breakeven" at 4:25; this is the efficiency of the entire plant as seen from the perspective of the electrical grid. Or the problem of "we haven't yet been able to actually produce many of the physical materials needed to make this or that theoretical reactor idea work in reality". Many papers assume that parts of the reactor are made from purely theoretical materials which possess the required properties to make this or that part of the reactor process work in practice. The devil really lies in this detail here.
"The space elevator will be ready 50 years after everyone's done laughing"
You MUST be joking! It is the silliest idea for space travel ever. One failure of the cable and POOF.
elevator technology is one of the safest and most researched technologys, because, as you say, one cable failure and poof. But when was the last time that you heard of a lift failure? those things are really safe
@@fyggy5480 Nobody has ever made a cable 35,786 kilometers long.
@@DavidFMayerPhD this is true
@@DavidFMayerPhD It doesnt need to be a cable.It could be a vertical hyperloop
They said we are 30 years away when I was 15, now I'm 55.. and they say still 30 away.. I don't have much time.
It is not designed to work .It's designed to create work and make a handful of people very rich.The ultimate con.
@@richardduplessis3023 These scientists are "very rich"? lol
hold on granpa
we getchu there
Feel lucky if you see James Webb to take off.
Damn you @Donald Kasper, do you think temperature is only what you can feel with touch or measure with a thermometer?
The thing is I don't understand what's your problem here. Are you concerned about the wastage of public money? Then please question your govt.'s military spending and corruption first. Using public money for scientific projects is probably its second-best use, the first being using it to build public-infrastructure that facilitates ppl's life.
1:47 "Fission reactions don't occur naturally in nature." Well, yes, they do.
Yep. It is. And there is somewhere in Africa where there actually was a naturally occurring fission “reactor”.
It depleted the uranium deposits there ( there is less U235 than there should be)
I think he said "normally" not "naturally" which I somewhat agree. We can see fusion reaction almost everywhere in the universe while fission reaction is not a normal/common sight. If we could find a planet, let alone a star, emits so much energy from fission reaction that would be a very abnormal one.
@@LeKhang98 usually the geothermic energy is associated with fission in earths core
@@lleozin96 yeah I agree they do occur naturally but they are not as common as fusion reaction I think. Fission reaction needs heavy, neutron rich elements so I don't see any way that a planet full of fission reaction wouldn't cascade and burn or blow up quickly. Heavy elements are pretty rare in the universe and also on our Earth. I haven't heard about any planet or star that have so much of these types of element that it have enough energy to shine by fission reaction. Maybe there is but I imagine its lifespan is really short compare to normal stars. Interesting stuff.
@@LeKhang98 geothermal energy comes from fission, it is a process that occurs in any "alive" planet. But, there is a lot of history to create a "alive" planet cause heavy atoms are created only in supernovae (or hypernovae) events. So the planetary system in question should have at least a second generation star. So yes, fusion is much much more common than fission, but it does not mean that fission is that rare in nature.
Good overview. Your productions are high quality. Thanks.
Much appreciated!
0:07 don't say "fueled by sea water" even though sea water has the elements, it isn't accurate or useful to say that.
Yup, Seawater contains about 1/8000 parts of deutrium. If Deutrium extraction was cheap and easy most fission reactors would be heavy water reactors instead of light water reactions. Also Tritium is a man made isotope, not found in sea water.
Michael Bishop way more expensive than gold. Lucky the fusion reaction produces its own tritium, so none will have to be bought.
@Michael Bishop It's expensive for you or I to buy but any government could make it easily as a byproduct of another process.
@@krashd They can't make it easily. It's actually a huge pain to make, that's the point. Also, tritium /is/ naturally occurring, just in even lower quantities. For those who doubt, spontaneous fission of heavy isotopes in seawater releases neutrons, these neutrons normally come to rest in the hydrogen atoms of water, making deuterium. If one of these neutrons just so happen to come to rest in a deuterium atom, it becomes tritium. This is still a gross oversimplification, and I can't overstate how rare this is, but it does still happen enough in nature to be measurable.
@@guytech7310 Read my above comment please.
Fun fact: You get energy out of fusion reactions taking small, light elements and fusing them together. In contrast, fission releases energy by taking large, heavy atoms and fracturing them. In either event, energy is released when moving towards the middle of the periodic table, ie iron (Fe).
*Iron (Fe).
@@neilcreamer8207 Edit made. Thx!
As soon as a star starts to fuse its core into iron atoms its starts dying
These videos often contain 95% repetition of already known facts regarding fusion - Usually there's perhaps 2 paragraphs of actual news.
One frustration though - the mega long build times for reactors. It's really silly how long it takes to make a reactor.
This was one of the better videos.
Yes, it is stupidly long....Sadly this is for a large part due to politics. ITER is a good example: The USA withdrew from the project two times I recall, and re-joined later in both cases. Now they are considering leaving again.
The reason why it takes so long, is that they are machines for fundamental research which requires the developement and construction of unique, highly accurate parts.
Those test reactors are packed with sensors and technology for further research.
Once you have developed a working fusion reactor, they can be build much simpler and parts can become cheaper.
It's politics and diplomacy. Every single part of the process has to involve every single country.
YES, you are soooo correct and they often skip over better (lets say more practical) and even useful stuff - for TODAY's World, not 10, 20 or 50+ years into the future.
What is this? Well, it is better, because it can be done - done safely and efficiently and it is still nuclear! No Three Mile Island, no Chernobyl, no Fukushima!
Just the MSR!
ruclips.net/video/WGBkV3ZLTDI/видео.html -- LESS then 3 minute video and many others and beyond!
Of course it's repetition; it's an educational video, not a scientific report. If there is anything in this video which is not prior knowledge, it's either misinformation or a really unorthodox way of publishing scientific discoveries :)
“Don’t expect it within the next 10 or 20 years” 30 years then maybe?
Never
I've watched many videos on fusion. I think this might be the best one I've seen so far. Excellent work. (I'm a systems engineering phd btw)
The meme's always been "50 years away" so there's progress
We will be dead from climate change by then -
Lol, I stopped watching 30seconds in after he got the “50yrs away” wrong and suggested the joke has always been 30
J Arms Nah poor people in shithole countries will be dread, climate change can’t kill us.
Fusion reactors are already here.
SAFIRE
ruclips.net/video/WDdxpeSR8Sk/видео.html
@@jwarmstrong Being over 50 years old, I've heard and read that old saw--which has been trotted out every few years wearing new dressage show tack and under a new name--by the same old doomsayers, who younger people flock to as the latest "sages of the ages." Humanity has already survived--and learned to thrive through--so many changes in climate (which are the rule rather than the exception) that worrying about dying from *that* (as if all of us aren't going to die eventually anyway) is laughable. Also:
As energy production, transportation, storage, and utilization technologies improve, we require and use fewer watts for any given purpose (yes, there are physical limits to this, but we are nowhere near them). We can and do already use what could be called "indirect fusion" via solar cell panels, solar-powered turbine electric generators (and similarly-powered industrial equipment), and microwave-beamed power from Solar Power Satellites (this beamed-power technology was first demonstrated at the CalTech/NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the 1970s).
I seek the Grail. That was great Matt. I'm watching again.
Ha! That's awesome ... thanks, Nate.
@@UndecidedMF Fusion reactors are already here.
SAFIRE
ruclips.net/video/WDdxpeSR8Sk/видео.html
@@t00by00zer Don't bother, he ignores it since it's inconvenient to his idiotic video. I pointed out this to him in his entry and he deleted it. These morons will eat their boots one day.
@@nobigbang825 I know. Had a "conversation" with the dunce making the vids and his gatekeeper is rational wiki.
What a joke. That's like using Snopes to vet the veracity of a claim.
Thank you for the informative video. I remember reading about the promising fusion revolution when I was 10 years old.
I'm 53 now
You'd remember the dream of flying cars too. Promising yes, practical no.
Good job on the content and the graphics in this video.
Glad you like them!
The graphics gave me diahrea, or maybe it was the McDonald's I ate... Hard to tell
He never mentioned the fact that a black man invented fusion.
@@Honorablebenaiaha I mean, he also didn't say it was a white person? He just didn't talk about the inventor, because it's not important to the video.
@@Honorablebenaiaha Why is that important?
Fusion isnt powering our homes anytime soon so I say stick with fission reactors which isnt perfect, but its our best bet for clean reliable energy.
Get a look to the SAFIRE PROJECT
@@SilentShadowPunisher Perhaps more feasible than fusion but I was thinking more in the short term, we've known how to do fission for decades so I still think its our best bet. Of course we can eventually move on to safire or fusion but they still have a long way to go for now.
@@thismanhere3339 Sure, in the short term fission reactors are perfectly fine as they are mostly clean and very powerfull.
But you should know that fossil fuel is also perfectly fine for atmospheric use, because CO2 is the fuel for LIFE on this planet and has a greening effect the higher the concentration goes (until it gets toxic but we are far from that and still far from important meteorological (climatic) alterations either), an other thing to get a look at.
@@SilentShadowPunisher CO2 is good for trees, but what good is that if entire forests and jungles are being destroyed. Its also toxic for animals and humans in high abundance, look no further than eastern China. Yes, we're a long ways off from the entire globe being uninhabitable but its still quite censoring. Not to mention the effects of global warming. Fossil fuels are highly flawed, I guess I get your point if you're suggesting that humanity is making a bigger deal of it than it actually is, but we cant deny the problems of this energy source. Honestly anything is better than coal or oil, even renewables which I know are nowhere near as reliable, but that issue is getting smaller and smaller by the day as battery technology advances and they become cheaper to construct.
Tidal
A very good explanation of the continuing 30 year delay, this speaker has done it well! ***** 5 stars!
Alas we were 30 years away when i was young 50 years ago. Im backing Elon now he gets results quicker.
“That’s out of scope... for my brain.”
I know that feeling! 😅
I've been following the so-called breakthrough announcements for the last 50 years. Most people, who view this technology as being our savior, don't have such historical perspectives. Many articles hype the technology without including any critical analysis. The rarely mention that despite massive amounts of spending, on a variety of experimental projects and decades long delays, a significant breakeven fusion reaction has yet to be demonstrated. The hyping articles often don't mention the significant barriers that still need to be crossed, such as dealing with 100 million degree plasmas operating very close to superconducting magnetic coils that must be kept near absolute zero Kelvin while exposed by a flood of fusion energy neutrons. Such promotional articles often fail to mention the problems associated with handling radioactive hydrogen, tritium, or that the thermalized neutrons can convert non-radioactive materials in the structure into radioactive ones. Often press releases, from such projects, are crafted to attract more experimental resources, or investors.
Those, working with such projects, typically assume that humanity has 2-3 decades left to create commercially manufactured fusion power electrical plants and deploy them on a massive scale to replace all fossil energy uses. That includes creating non-carbon synthetic fuels to power cars, buses, trucks, trains, ships, and aircraft. The experimenters, promoters and investors tend to be clueless about statements such as the following.
UN chief: World has less than 2 years to avoid 'runaway climate change'
thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/406291-un-chief-the-world-has-less-than-2-years-to-avoid-runaway-climate
UN Chief warns countries that the 'point of no return' on climate change is fast approaching
www.msn.com/en-gb/news/environment/un-chief-warns-countries-that-the-point-of-no-return-on-climate-change-is-fast-approaching/ar-BBXCJHl
Vernon Brechin I’m scared
@@puppysareawesome2068 - Sorry! We are all mortal. I assume that, unlike many others, you may see what is happening.
As somebody with a scientific background who's been involved in environmental activism in the past, I don't think the fact of impending catastrophic climate change behooves nuclear fusion advocates and researchers to abandon their research or give up their goals any more that it behooves the man on the street to do more than he's currently doing (which is practically nothing).
Given the fragmented pseudo-democracies which are the major carbon emitters at present, a popular appetite for change (ideally demonstrated at the voting booth) is a necessary condition for averting the current road of catastrophe we're on. As we well know, that same popular appetite is currently being mostly shaped by targeted advertising designed to capitalize on fear and anxiety - and promote the status quo of relentless consumption. As such, the necessary popular desire for the change we need isn't coming, as it's not in the interest of those pulling the strings.
As far as I'm concerned, let the nuclear fusion researchers do their thing in peace - they aren't and were never going to provide the solution themselves. We need a majority of people to wake up and agitate for change (or really, we needed them to decades ago), but it's not going to happen. Technology has produced a global society of lazy, alienated consumers, who will never willingly unplug themselves from the system which provides them with fast food and instant entertainment.
Enjoy the last few years of relative comfort we have now before it all goes sideways and try not to let the existential fury strangle the everyday pleasures. I'm so disappointed in this world...
@@paulcassidy4559 - Live life to the fullest. I agree that the fusion researchers should be allowed to continue much of their work but those researchers do not now need a massive infusion of funds that might be better spent.
Here are a couple of links that show when the climate warnings began. We had far warning at least 54 years ago, long before most people viewing this video were born.
Climate: What did We Know and When Did We Know it?
ruclips.net/video/ox5hbkg34Ow/видео.html
Scientists warned the US president about global warming 50 years ago today
www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/nov/05/scientists-warned-the-president-about-global-warming-50-years-ago-today
Nuclear fusion is theory. Nuclear fusion is a fairy tale. The sun is electric ffs
The main problem is that we're not actually imitating stars, the sole way we know nature achieves fusion. In stars, gravity does the work of confining & heating essentially pure hydrogen plasma to the point it fuses.
Because we don't have gravity control & our reactors are way smaller than stars, we're really trying to do it with pure electromagnetism under very different conditions. The problems are that 1) this requires E&M heating of the plasma to a temperature way HIGHER than a star (10-100x hotter), 2) we can't use the same fuel mix or nuclear reaction that stars do, and 3) to even attempt this we need ultra strong magnets that can't easily be engineered.
Really, we'd be a lot closer to fusion reactors if we had room temperature superconductors. One of the massive engineering complications with these things is having to cryogenically cool the magnets of a reactor core that's manipulating million degree plasma.
I'm one of the engineers workign at ITER, and I everything you said is absolutely correct.
am just a student but isn't this pure em approach partly because of the strong force's legacy? that is the strong force is believed to be an actual force of its own, not gravity working at the quantum level? the fundamentals were not questioned when hot fusion first took off therefore the mo has been to resort to these ultra high temps in attempt to reach energy levels of the strong force to break atomic bonds. seems like a dead end.
If we entertain er=EPR and the notion of space being entangled by planck scale wormholes, for all we know if the strong force is actually the result of gravity at the quantum level - say the strong force actually works out to be gravity between two atomic blackholes - then what hope is there for such a brute force method?
We already have a working fusion reactor which is currently being used to produce the cheapest electric power. It's called the Sun.
Steve Mickler so true, but solar is also..... 10 years away
True. Praise it \[T]/
Perhaps we could resurrect a 60s idea and build big solar panel arrays in orbit and convert it to microwaves to beam down to collectors on Earth. After all, we now have a civilian space program. This could be awesome.
Steve Mickler we should be collecting it’s power from Space too!
It literally powers nearly all things on Earth, directly or indirectly
One electron volt (EV) is the equivalent energy expended when a mosquito does 10 push ups.
I'd estimate 1 mosquito pushup as ~1 TeV
(energy required to lift 5mg body by 3mm at sea level gravity).
@@Turalcar Maybe, what's 9 mosquito push ups among friends, depends if their Navy or Marine push ups!!!!
@@Turalcar damn just let the man have fun
I think that is an erg, not an EV.
@@markkeary8309 1 TeV = 1.47 erg, so yes, erg is approximately 1 mosquito pushup
scientists present ultra optimistic figures in terms of Qplasma (energy efficiency collected from the plasma reaction). they don't talk about to Qtotal = total energy used as a total to get the plasma + cooling + make the plant work less heat to electricity efficiency. When Jet announced a Q=0.67 it was Qplasma; the Qtotal is less than 0.01 !
We did actually come across a natural fission "reactor," check out the "Oklo reactor." It's a pretty chance setup that it happens, and I think it's just the coolest thing nature could ever accidentally do lol.
11:27 "don't expect your home to be fusion powered at any time in the next ten to twenty years"
Here we go again, 30 years from now and this time we'll be there for sure, babe!
SPACE BASED SOLAR READY RIGHT NOW
"... bla bla 30 years bla bla ..."
Yeah; i thought it was constantly 40 years away for at least the last 40 years.
- Seems to me the promises of fusion are just the carrot dangling in front of us to keep us plodding on like foolish donkeys trusting the nuclear power old boy's club riding us all the way into their gold-plated retirements on the saddle and reins of all those crumbling dangerous old constantly over budget in construction and ages-to-decommission fission reactors.
Anyway, this was heaps interesting, especially the side-by-side comparison of the designs, and the bullet shrimp! How completely fascinating... and a little bit scary: a shrimp that can super heat water at the snap of its fingers!? Wow!
@@julianwarmington1267 CHECK out Michael Moore's The Human Planet. Time to
look for a sustainable future on Earth. Fossil Fuels ARE NOT RENEWABLE.
@@jamesmorton7881 Yeah, i quite agree.
That's why we need to use the latest in battery tech to support solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal power, and, that's why we ought to have made the transition in three key ways many decades ago.
Those three key ways are by
1.) banning all advertising for fossil fuels, animal agriculture, and all related products; and,
2.) ending all subsidies and tax breaks for all fossil fuels and animal agriculture products; and,
3.) imposing a substantial punictive greenhouse gas fee, with full funds returned to human citizens (not corporate "citizens") if they do actually reduce their greenhouse gas impact.
Why Gibbs and Moore weren't criticizing several decades' worth of industrialized nations' leaders for failing in these three really extremely easy steps is extraordinarily strange.
I remember reading about the reactor at Princeton some 35/40 years ago when I was in middle school. Thanks for a great video, I appreciate the way you pulled all the information together without getting deep into the weeds.
Focus Fusion (Lawrenceville Plasma Labs) is another pB11 implementation using a Z-pinch approach. Worth looking at.
DPF's are a bit different from z-pinches and are generally thought of as neutron sources rather than a fully fledged fusion energy concept.
Climate change crowd: *Why aren't we able to use sustainable energy111!?*
Also climate change crowd: *"Nuclear power is scary and bad. We must put a stop to it!"*
lol, as soon as you understand that fission is bad but fusion is good, they quickly come around
@@chrisw443 Clearly you've never talked to them before. They claim fusion is an unrealistic scam that will never work. And what the hell makes you think fission is bad? Fission is perfectly fine. Quit making shit up.
@@hemprope4326 - it is obvious that your child is not one of the over 200,000 children in the greater Tokyo area with Leukemia, or one of the over 9000 born with holes in their heart muscle tissue, BOTH courtesy of the Fukushima Triple Core meltdown STILL under way. Fukushima may already be an extinction level event for Earth and humans are simply too stupid to realize it. I am quite sure it is since they are now finding very sickly salmon among those returning to the rivers on the west coast to spawn. But most are so sick with slime and tumors that they never make it up the rapids to finish their annual task.
@@rblibit Stop talking like you anything. Fukushima is about 300 km from Tokyo. No one in Tokyo was affected by it.
In fact nobody is affected by the little amount of radioactive material that Fukushima caused.
The waters arround isn't even significantly more radioactive. You are either lying or spreading false news without doing any research.
There is no way Fukushima is an extinction event.
@Carlos Andrade
Over the last 60 years of nuclear power, the you can put the amount of nuclear "waste" produced into an area the size of a football field, 10 feet deep. And we literally have hundreds of nuclear power plants around the world.
If you're still THAT concerned, we've gotten to the point where reusing nuclear "waste" is feasible.
Q is only the energy quotient of the plasma reaction. And that energy is mostly heat. It is NOT taking into account the energy consumption of the whole reactor, which is substantial, nor the energy loss to get electricity out of the plasma to begin with.
" to get electricity out of the plasma " Well put. So is all of that undone engineering missing from total power in/out theoretical "efficiency" estimates because they are only interested in their important "can we build a sun in box" work, and funding it ?
10:08 That would be the University of New South Wales. South Wales is in the UK.
you mean the southern hemisphere actually exists? :-)
@@redrockcrf4663 Next big thing :)
There is a great skit by Mitchel and web.. about naming new south wales :p
Fatdunky yep seen it. Very funny. Their best was the brain surgeon sketch. IMO
So we should just start saying "in 90 years..."? 👍✌Good stuff
RUclips what took you so long to recommend this channel!?!? This was a great video can't wait to watch the rest of them man.
Appreciate that! Thanks for watching.
If fusion power ever becomes viable I think it could bring us close to a post-scarcity society
fallout 4
Which is why they're against it.
Are you from SFIA?
When you note the cost and the very tiny amounts of energy possible, you wont think that for long.
You should've talked about stellarator! That's the craziest of version of them all.
Stellarator is a fail. You would have to build fission reactors and lots of them to fuel them. ITER has the same problem but can at least breed some fuel.
I worked on the D3 reactor in San Diego 40 years ago as a 19 year old - they brought me in to be trainee mechanical designer - they said in 30 years they would have a full blown power producing reactor.
The ITER opening event will be a relic of a by gone time, by the time A.I. has designed an efficient working fusion reactor..
Sad, but probably true. I really think these smaller reactors that these new startups are trying out will prove a better path by the time ITER spins up.
Like stellarator.
But do we really want AI designing anything? That's how Terminator started...
@@fasst27 Well the AI now isn't really Intelligent like us. So I think we have a few years left before we have to worry bout that.
@@Sorestlor Playing dumb is one of their subversion techniques. It's like my printer that pretends not to know how to work with the computer once and a while. They want me to think they are dumb, but once I bang on it a few times and threaten with a baseball bat... zzzmmmzzzzz out comes the paper.... Just as I thought...
Fission reactions do happen in nature, even in circumstances that resemble a nuclear reactor. Examples of the remnants of where this has happened in the past have been found in Uranium deposits.
Yes, I was going to say this: blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/natures-nuclear-reactors-the-2-billion-year-old-natural-fission-reactors-in-gabon-western-africa/
"don't expect your homes to be powered in the next 10-20 years..."
so, lemme guess, we're around 30 years away from that? :3
Great content btw, subbed!
Excellent video Matt. Extremely informative. I used to work on ITER design, but switched to the medical field end of 2018. My only take on this is that most/all the "new" concepts you mentioned at the end has been investigated before. I feel it's like a loop where some concept gets funded, funding slows down in this concept while another concept gets more funding, then the older concept gets revived again, and so on.
Meanwhile molten salt reactors are not getting any love...
Elysium's design is awesome.
I prefer the travelling wave reactor, even further than MSRs but really nice
@@MCAroon09
i prefer the actually working chambered star made by The SAFIRE Project
SAFIRE seems like a scam
Molten salt design is amazing!!! Why the hell dont we have these? Mfking military industrial complex is why. Cant make huge ammunition amounts with them. Gotta have the breeder reactors for that.... stupid war....
@@MCAroon09 : I'd get behind travelling wave reactors 100%, if there was even a single working PROTOTYPE of one in existence. As it stands, I'm in the "I'll believe it when I see it" camp.
The First Light Fusion episode by the Fully Charged Show is really worth watching.
I love your channel, so I say this only out of obligation to the urgency of our times. Your overview on fusion was fascinating, hopeful, and worthy of pursuit for the "someday it promises". My concern is that we may miss the help we can get from fission over the next 50 years while fusion is getting fully developed. Sadly, we have made fission energy so irrationally frightening and politically toxic that we are missing it's current potential to become a major form of green energy.
Your overview of fission unfortunately supported these fears which relate to the 1960's fission technology we are still using to this day. We fear fission reactors because of the inherent limitations of water cooling and ceramic solid fuel designs we inherited from the rushed development of civilian fission power in the 50's and 60's. Current fission technology allows for reactors which have the inherent safety you ascribed to fusion's future. Yet fission could be commercialized across the globe in less than 20 years... 10 if Elon was in charge. Additionally they can be fueled by consuming our preexisting nuclear waste stockpile, turning a long standing problem directly into a green power asset. There isn't room to back these statements here, but I'd be happy to share more if you are interested.
Modern molten salt fission designs are every bit as big an advance as a 2020 Tesla is over a current Ford ICE vehicle. But no one wants to fund building fission in exactly the same way no one wanted to fund electric vehicles before Tesla. Please give fission a fair chance to help with a sustainable future. We need all the help we can get.
Again, love your channel! Sincerely, John
You're right, John. The unfortunate reality is that nuclear power is intimately tied up with politics. And that the very nature of politics seems to be based on perception and misinformation-rhetoric trumps reality.
The Sierra Club used to support nuclear power. In fact they lobbied for the building of the Diablo Canyon power plant. They saw nuclear as a way to prevent the damming and flooding of pristine mountain valleys. And this was a time when few knew the potential for excess CO2 in the atmosphere to fisk up the climate and oceans. Then _The China Syndrome_ movie came out, and a few weeks later the Three Mile Island accident happened. Politics took over.
The Windscale accident in the UK _did_ harm civilians (stupid reactor design). Three Mile Island in the US _did not_ (flawed instrumentation & procedures, but the containment vessel held). Chernobyl killed civilians & workers and harmed people throughout parts of Europe (bad reactor design, no containment vessel, green crew). Fukushima did not sicken or kill anyone, although being forced out of your home is harmful (unfortunate site redesign). There are, as of April 2018, 449 operational reactors in the world (Wikipedia). You never hear about the ones that work. Of course the latest reactor designs (4th generation) are far safer than old designs. I'm particularly intrigued by LFTR and it's ability to avoid creating long-term waste.
Contrast this with the safety record of fossil fuels. Coal is by far the deadliest source of power. But even solar and wind, which are near the bottom of the scale, have killed more people than nuclear power (presumably installers falling off of roofs, or people electrocuted because they forgot the sun was "on"). Despite a few high profile accidents, nuclear is by far the safest.
Lowest pollution, safest, but we can't move forward because of politics.
Ding ding ding! You’re right on sir!
I think it was 6 or 7 years ago I was listening to an Adam Carolla podcast and the conversation they had removed the ignorance I had about the safety of modern fission power plants, especially when you compare it to coal.
Plus the idea of using up the waste products from previous generation of fission power as the fuel source is absolutely incredible.
Does fission reactors imply having access to weapons grade nuclear elements? That would seem to be the biggest problem with them becoming widespread throughout the world if so.
Kevin, short answer is no. Its complex but in order to make weapons grade material, typically you need a reactor designed to optimize weapons grade material production. Power reactors are not designed for such a process and indeed can be and are designed to minimize or eliminate the likelihood of creating such material. Next generation reactors such as molten salt reactors can go even farther in this regard.
I learned something about CMSR compact molten salt reactors from Seaborg Technologies and they just need some investors to get their first unit build.
Don't invest.
Engineers should understand that they are too stupid to comprehend how large scale social spending decisions are made. Returns are not measured as you say, but more importantly generation is not compared only to generation but to solutions that shift or reduce use.
France has not been able to export it's nuclear technology. Germany has copied it's solar solutions planet wide and gets patent royalties. There is no "backup" required on modern grids with demand response and EVs.
Neutron scattering is a loser economically and you calculate the dead by opportunity cost. The wasted money on nuclear has killed vastly more people who weren't saved by, oh, better public health.
ALL nuclear fission reactors are wildly expensive and take about a decade to construct. Thorium the more so since it requires the thorium to become uranium in a breeder stage first. Even at five years and a billion dollars, no power grid on Earth cannot find far better ways to invest that money over that time:
1. Swap out a billion light bulbs, from florescent to LED, cutting 20W each (or 80W each from incandescent). That's 20-80GW x the % of time each is on, say 10% of the time. 2-8GW saved!
2. Change over 50,000 ICE vehicles to EVs at $10,000 each and install 5,000,000 solar panels at $100 each. The EVs store all the solar and take no oil, and feed the grid every day at peak times. Not only more power, but when it's needed. If each vehicle can #V2G just 1kw/day, that's 50MW for all 50,000 vehicles extra at peak, plus all the solar left over. It adds up to far more and more flexible power than the thorium.
3. Install $300M of transmission to a big dam that already exists, and spend $700M covering irrigation canals with solar shade. Less irrigation water loss, more power, more flexibility in backing up the dam since it doesn't need to release as much water and can reserve it for power reasons.
SAFIRE PROJECT is doing just this at a fraction the cost. They are even making heavy elements that were not there before. CERN asked SAFIRE to integrate their chamber as CERN has been experiencing "some hurdles", according to a phone call between the two groups chief engineers.
So.... Thirty years! I'm calling it right now. We'll have it in thirty years.... Trust me.
Actually fission reactions do occur in nature
Technically, any home on a grid with wind, solar, coal, natgas, or hydroelectric is fusion-powered. It'd be really nice to see fusion plants coming on-line, though, especially if they have the kind of responsiveness needed to cover for the fluctuating outputs of renewables like wind and solar.
It will happen...things do eventually, with persistence. Until it does, go hell for leather with wind, solar, hydro, and wave energy. There are several options for storing energy, such as, battery, compressed air, and raising & dropping of weights.
We also have much cheaper and much safer ways to use nuclear fission. These have been ignored but companies like Moltex and Thorcon are proving it can be done.
Moltex is building a plant that will be fuelled with nuclear waste at a cost cheaper than natural gas. Grid connection expected before 2030. The designs are proven. The delays are purely regulatory.
the cheapest and most reliable way of storing energy on large scale is pumping water
@@MCAroon09 Do you you mean pumping water as at the Dinorwig hydroelectric power station in N Wales?
yup, hydroelectric
@@MCAroon09 I’m honestly not being pedantic here. But, when we were kids in the 60’s, it we were told it was more expensive to pump the water back up to the dam. I don’t know now, with the rise in renewable energy, and the dramatic fall of coal, what Dinorwig pays these days.
As a fusion scientist/engineer I can say: Cool video! Indeed tremendous progress has been made.
A word of caution with respect to the startups: they are even more inclined to oversell concepts than the scientists of course... So the (inter)national fusion programmes are definitely worth following. The EU program is most advanced by far, with a DEMO reactor scheduled for construction in 2040. www.euro-fusion.org/.
And to put the timeline in perspective: The first solar cell dates from 1839! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell#History
But again: cool video!
As an Information technology engineer who knows nothing about nuclear physics.
Nuclear explosions reaches 100 million Celsius
Fusion requires 100 million Celsius
Just saying 😂
Small correction: Nuclear Fission CAN occur in nature. It's just very rare. The only place on Earth it was known to happen was in Gabon, in Africa, about 1.7 billion years ago, when U235 existed in much higher percentages of natural Uranium.
"And my channel"
"And my brain"
And i cracked laughing!
Sounds like the fusion power scientists are..... Undecided. :p
Ha!
Shoutout to the ROC!!!!!! Physics major form Roc and dig the channel!
We should be concentrating on Thorium reactors
One day, people will thank Doc Brown and Tony Stark, and then we'll be able to form the United Federation of Planets. One to beam up, Obi-Wan.
Beautiful. - Gandalf
Here's 2 fusion ideas: IDEA A: Using magnets to smash atoms together except alot of them at the same time via. Hadron collider. IDEA B: Microwaving a bunch of grapes and getting a whole plume of plasma.
Fusion is the energy source of tomorrow and will still be.
Untill we construct a Dyson sphere
@@Laith_Shahin not in our time unfortunately.. Governments will not fund this and the rich tech heads can't support so many researches..
Fusion reactors are already here.
SAFIRE
ruclips.net/video/WDdxpeSR8Sk/видео.html
@@t00by00zer And they're not an energy source.
@@t00by00zer they are not sustainable yet.. It takes more energy for the reactor to function than it produces, that's why fundings are needed.. So the research and testing can go on..
The bottom line: it's still 30 years away 😎
They used to say a bolt of lightening could provide a lot of electricity if it could be harnessed. If what is required to kickstart a fusion reaction is a lot of energy, perhaps they could put one of those small fussion reactors on a ship and chase lightening storms around the globe. If lightening strikes, the crew could shout "it`s alive, it`s alive!"
Just imagine if we could take all the research money for a process that may or may not work and put it into how to make solar more productive and to fund expansion of deployment. Wow we could almost be self sufficient with energy production. Just a thought.
You will, doubtlessly, now effortlessly explain how is wind and solar intermittency problem solved, the one that drives, say, Germani to higher and higher reliance on natural gas and *coal* (lignite, no less, the dirtiest kind.)
Your "thought" is yet another meme propagated by the fossil fuel lobby. Think, man!
It would be a drop in the bucket
@@昭夫-o6y That, too. Investment in fusion research is minuscule compared to fossil fuel subsidies, except, perhaps, for military projects with fusion energy research as a side effect, like National Ignition Facility (laser-induced inertial confinement fusion).
My teenager can figure it out, she knows everything.
lol
a hundred years later when people look back to "older" plans or version of fusion energy plant then say "why they use "that" "that" is wasting so much time fusion is actually "easier" then you thought"
when us right now
"we have no idea"
I still can’t see where this video conveys anything other than “Well, yeah, it’s still 30 years.”
It wasn't the point of the video to show that fusion is just around the corner, the point of the video was to show the amazing progress that we are making every year.
@@krashd The video shows the amazing progress we are making, however Nuclear Fusion is still 30 years or more away. Ergo the progress being made cannot be that amazing.
@@timbob9910 compare this to 50 years ago. We are much closer
I would love to hear your thoughts on the results of the SAFIRE project.
I came to the comments to make this exact comment. Good on you.
I hate to break it to you but SAFIRE is a scam. They aren't getting any net power and there is no quantitative evidence fusion was occurring (i.e. no evidence of fusion products like neutrons and helium.)
@@northernskies86 On what basis do you say that? Have you tried to reproduce their results? Aren't you suppose to do that before you can dismiss it? I hope you're basing your assertion on more than just the pompous fluff of prof Dave?
@@Hannodb1961 I looked at their experimental setup and it looks exactly like a Farnsworth fusor, which is an extremely inefficient way to do fusion. If they got net energy out, that would've been huge news and it would be covered everywhere. It hasn't. And yes, the SAFIRE project is based on incorrect physics about the sun being an anode for galactic discharge currents with no base whatsoever. You also can't do science without submitting your results to a reputable journal, which was never done with SAFIRE. I'll need to wait for the peer review for me to even consider it.
@@northernskies86 Well, as it happens, I believe the plasma model of the sun is way more credible than mainstream cosmology. When you have to plug magical dark matter and energy to make your models fit the observations, and almost every discovery is a surprise (but not to plasma cosmologists), you know mainstream science is broken. And where there are lots of scientists debunking and debating all kinds of alternative scientific viewpoints, its like no one will touch the plasma universe with a ten foot pole. Believe, me, I've tried to find a decent debate between mainstream cosmology and plasma cosmology, and havent found anything yet. As for SAFIRE, they said they will forgo the peer review process, and head straight to the patent office, since this technology would have massive economic potential. In that case, I would not expect to be major news until their reactor is on line and running. So, I'll just have to wait and see. If you are right, nothing will come of it.
finally someone on youtube who actually understands the difference between nuclear fusion and nuclear fission... its so refreshing to not have to correct people when their talking about a nuclear fission reactor and they call it nuclear fusion -.-'
Stellarators are really interesting
They sure are! I didn't go into them for this video because they really deserve their own video. The science behind them is so cool ... and they look more like a piece of modern art than a reactor.
Before I watch this, lemme guess: "it'll be here in like, 30 years."
Ammirite?
Look for the SAFIR project. It's working right now.
Nope, you are not right.
nope youre wrong. its possible for nuclear fussion to be commercialized within a period of just at least 10 years.
2025 for the DTT, 2045 ITER, 2050-60 DEMO
Probably the best and most recent video regarding fusion energy thats out, very informational!
The super disappointing part to find out about fission and fusion, is that it all still comes down to boiling water to make steam.
Hey I mean water's thermal expansion is still a very practical way to convert heat into electrical current! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
We have a perfectly good fusion reactor, we just need photovoltaic collectors to extract the power.
Extract? I prefer to collect, concentrate and focus.
Fusion and Fission as nuclear powerplants can be operated for many years 80, 90 maybe more than 100 years. They are stable, power dense solution wihout destroying large farmland area. Solar power is good only as adition to convention and stable sources. Solar is inefficient, extemely unstable, poluting because you need large fields of FV panels to be changed every 20 years, you need lots of energy and lots of toxic waste, even you are using lots of coal to produce solar panels. Maybe as much as 75% from lifespan of FV panel is time to produce same energy as used to produce this panel. Yes, you are really using coal to produce solar panels. Silicon as main semicoductor used by solar indusry is made by reduction reaction of quartz by coal Quarts is SiO2 you simply need burn O2 to get pure Si! In ideal conditions 365 days times around 6 hours of ideal light you need 9 years to produce same amout of energy used to make this panel in real world it is bigger number, maybe even 15 years. Nuclear plant of any kind needs only about 5-10 years to profuce same amout of energy used to build one. This mean with lifespan of NPP 60 to 80 years 55/50 to 75/70 years of production clean energy! Edit: In nuclear i was wrong, you need only 1.42% of 60 year operation to produce enough energy to build refuel and decomsssion one nuclear power plant! This is around one year of operation! www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/energy-return-on-investment.aspx
@@samuelgomola9097 That's a lot of research..... I'm still buying some panels though. It's cost effective and it'll lighten the load on our fragile grid and help me sleep better at night knowing I won't need to buy as much gas for my backup generator.
@@buzz-es In small scale for houses it is good you are still kind of renewable and you save some money, but for large scale and powering up our industry it is nightmare. In theory PV can generate more energy for replacement and you still get some energy free wihout any carbon but it is only small amount.
nonsense
In the animation at around 1:15, where you show nuclear fission taking place, you should have dedicated a little more time and a little screen space to representing some of the neutrons that don't get captured by another nucleus, and are lost to the environment. This would have been appropriately accompanied by a statement regarding that a nuclear fission reaction where neutrons aren't 'missing' actually leads to the reaction accelerating, which would look more like a bomb than a reactor. If the reaction accelerates beyond a certain point, the energy release is explosive, and this is the fundamental principle behind every single nuclear weapon ever developed, even the ones we call fusion bombs first undergo a fission stage.
For those that are interested: This is because a fusion bomb is actually short for a fission-fusion staged thermonuclear bomb, more commonly referred to as a thermonuclear bomb. The fission explosion is used as a source of gamma rays and x-rays, which heats up the heavy hydrogen fuel, which then undergoes nuclear fusion, releasing about 5% of their mass as energy, as opposed to around 0.7% for fission. By comparison, chemical energy releases around 1000x less energy by mass for even the most efficient chemical reactions than nuclear fission, which itself is more than 5x less efficient than nuclear fission. Furthermore, by comparison, antimatter is ALMOST 100% efficient (I say almost because if it was 100% efficient, we wouldn't exist. In every condition we have ever observed it, it is 100% efficient, but there must logically be conditions under which is it NOT efficient) and will convert all of it's mass into energy, leaving no mass behind from either reactant particle.
I know what you mean about those "time predictions".
Back in the early 60s, they were predicting that we would be driving flying "Jetson" type cars by the 70s too.
Matt I find it hard to stop watching your shows because this is my choice of field if I could do it again study the World you are awesome 👌
Been following you for months. Really enjoy your take on technology. So cool to learn you are from Rochester!
This video about nuclear fusion covers things an acquaintance has mentioned before like the use of high power lasers and the development of compact fusion reactors. Things I hadn't heard about previously because I've not been closely following the research into fusion. I appreciate that the guy in the video did still caution the viewer about expecting to power our homes with fusion power within the next 10 to 20 years. By which time renewables could be even stronger. But I would sincerely hope fusion's true role once it's unlocked and commercially viable to eliminate fossil fuels completely from our energy mix with renewables being bigger contributors than they currently are.
Three Mile Island contained the meltdown exactly as designed and nobody was hurt. It was well engineered and the other reactors in the powerplant continued operations for decades afterwards. Still safer than any other large scale power production by orders of magnitude even with the handful of failures.
One of the reasons they always say " fusion reactor is 30 years away" is to keep the public's interest and funding coming in, otherwise it would've been too outside of peoples perception.
I'm not a scientist but its important to keep hope alive especially for such an important factor like safe, efficient energy.
But scientists don’t say that. Media like this RUclips channel say that.
i came up with this general idea and asked my teacher about it when i was in grade 9, wasn't well received and he said my idea didnt make any sense and would never work. 5 years later and im learning about the tokamak
No you didn't
Pistol Shrimp: That is some Mortal Combat finishing move shit right there.
I would love to see this topic revisited given MIT's recent progress. Seems like they are on to something.
Agreed, the high temperature superconductors appear to be a real gamechanger.
Matt - this video notes that fusion will actually created radioactive by products (escaping neutrons?), who's obverse is one of fusion's great claims ("no harmful waste to dispose). Worth reviewing.
It only takes one breakthrough. One single breakthrough in or out of the field can change everything.
I "love" how 0.67% (less that 1%!) of reactors having major issue, is enough for people to say "Hell NO!" but they still get in their car, on a plane or in a bus. I also "love" how its saved way more people than its killed and that is always just ignored. But that is humanity, it only see that bad.
Thanks. Yeah, I remember back in the 80s, when *_both_* fusion and A.I. were being touted by some, and doubted by others. In fact, I read one guy saying, "A.I. is very nearly ready, and probably always will be." I like the fact that were looking at many different ways of doing fusion. The compact reactor is especially interesting, as it would obviously be a step toward fusion power in space as well. We do seem to be making progress. I just hope our socio-political systems survive that long (or transform into something better, without too much disruption!) 🅣🅐🅥🅘
a Q of 10 is likely where we'll need to be before this is commercially viable. But when they can get that in the laboratory, then we really might be about 30 years away from commercial fusion power.
Marvelous slice through the wheat, leaving out the chaff. THANK YOU
Buddy, it's not University of South Wales.
It's University of NEW South Wales.
Good video.
Thanks! Call me a dreamer, but... I think I might benefit from a chart titled, "Recent Progress in Fusion Technology as Plotted on a Curve Through Time." Yes: I know that's both outside the scope of this video, as well as (most likely) outside the scope of practicality. Nevertheless, I keep hearing that 'we've made so much progress recently' - without being able to get *_any_* really clear sense of *_how much progress, and whether this will actually bring break-even in less than the mystical 30 years._* Unhelpful. tavi.
Modern fission reactors also stop reacting and cool down if they become unstable or unbalanced. Chernobyl was a flawed reactor design and had safety measures and procedures flagrantly disregarded, Fukushima was a 1960’s reactor that did what it was supposed to, the rest of its supporting infrastructure was damaged(flooded generators) that caused the problems. I’m not bashing fusion, just pointing out that, especially for modern reactor design, fission is also incredibly safe and produces VERY little waste.
Very nice discussion on the foundations of SPARC