David Kirtley

It's a light helium molecule.

That's correct to say at today's power level.

I think what's interesting is the idea that as we deploy the same power source that powers the universe here on Earth as humans, can we do more?

Can we have access to much more electricity and much more energy and do really interesting things with that?

And still there's large amounts, millions and millions of years of power, even at much higher output power levels for humanity.

So in fusion, you take these lightweight isotopes like hydrogen and deuterium, and as you combine them and take these molecules and get them closer and closer together, some really interesting fundamental physics happens.

So first, these atomic nuclei are charged.

They have an electric charge.

And they, like charges, repel.

And I think everybody is familiar with that, where you take two positive charges and you try to push them together and the electromagnetic force between them repels them.

So you have a force that's actually pushing against them.

So in fusion, you work to get your fuel very hot, very, very high temperatures, 100 million degree temperatures.

And temperature really is kinetic energy.

It's motion.

It's velocity.

So that these particles are moving so fast that even though they're coming together and there's this repulsive electromagnetic force, they can still come close enough that another force comes into play, which is the strong force.

And then once you get within a very close distance, on the order of the scale of those nuclei themselves, of those atomic nuclei, so the tiniest thing you could imagine and probably way smaller than that, these particles then are attracted to each other.

and they combine and they fuse together.

At that point, you create heavier atomic nuclei that have a slightly less mass, slightly less total mass in the system.

And that mass equals MC squared as energy.