David Kirtley

We look at how these systems might fail.

And in fact, some of the analysis we do is we did this analysis for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over the last few years, looking at how do you regulate fusion power?

As we're building the first fusion power plant, we need to make sure we're regulated safely.

And so we spent a lot of time doing the technical case and the political case in the United States of how to regulate fusion power.

And so the analysis we did is assume you have a fusion power plant that's operating.

And then at any one time, a meteor strikes it.

The whole thing is vaporized.

What is the impact of that?

So this is worse than you could ever imagine an actual physical scenario.

But let's start there.

And the answer is you don't need to evacuate the populace nearby the fusion power plant.

And

One of the keys I think that I come to when I think about this is the fuel.

in that in a fusion generator, you are continuously feeding in this hydrogen, these deuterium fuels.

And at any one time in a helium fusion system and most fusion systems, you have one second of fuel in that system.

And so what that means is if you stop turning on, if you stop putting fuel into that system, fusion just stops.

But what it also means is that if something really catastrophic happened and for whatever reason,

You have all that fuel that's not in the system.

And fusion is so hard to make happen.

You hit it with a meteor, you do anything in that nature, and fusion doesn't happen.