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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

In fact, it's not clear that they would actually ignite, in fact, without this effect.

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

Anyway.

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

So we get to that.

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

So this is why there's another requirement.

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

So you must make a plasma, but you also must get it very hot in order for the reactions to have a significant probability to actually fuse.

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

And it actually falls effectively almost to zero for lower temperatures as well, too.

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

It's a really simple equation.

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

It's the ideal gas law, basically.

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

In the end, you've got a certain number of these fusion particles in the plasma state.

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

They're in the plasma state.

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

There's a certain number of particles.

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

And if the confinement is perfect, if you put in a certain content of energy, then basically, eventually, they come up in a temperature and they go up to high temperature.

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

This turns out to be, by the way, extraordinarily small amounts of energy.

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

And you go, what?

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

It's like I'm getting something to like 100 million degrees.

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

That's going to take the biggest flame burner that I've ever seen.

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

No.

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

No.

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

And the reason for this is it goes back to the energy content of this.

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

So yeah, you have to get it to high average energy, but there's very, very few particles.