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Dennis Whyte

๐Ÿ‘ค Speaker
1833 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

Fusion breaks that trend in the following way.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

So, fusion doesn't work on a chain reaction.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

There's no chain reaction.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

Zero.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

So, this means it cannot physically exponentiate away on you, because it works...

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

And actually, this is why stars โ€“ by the way, we know this already.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

It's why stars are so stable, why most stars and suns are so stable.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

It's because they are regulated through their own temperature and their heating.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

Because what's happening is not that there's some probability of this exponentiating away.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

It's that the energy that's being released by fusion basically is keeping the fire hot.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

Okay.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

And these tend to be โ€“ and when it comes down to thermodynamics and things like this, there's a reason, for example, it's pretty easy to keep a constant temperature like in an oven and things like this.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

It's the same thing in fusion.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

So this is actually one of the features that I would argue fusion breaks the โ€“

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

breaks the trend of this is that it's it has more energy intensity than than than fission on on paper but it actually does not have the consequences of control and sort of rapid release of the energy because it's actually it the physical system just doesn't want to do that yeah we're gonna have to look elsewhere for the weapons with which we fight world war three fair enough uh so

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

So plasma is a phase of matter or state of matter.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

So unfortunately, our schools don't... It's like, I'm not sure why this is the case, but all children learn the three phases of matter, right?

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

And what does this mean?

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

So we'll take water as an example.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

So if it's cold, it's ice.