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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

I mean, we'd seen it in glimpses before in magnetic confinement at relatively small levels.

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

But apparently, it seems like in this experiment, it's likely to be a dominant, dominated by self-heating.

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

That's a very important, that's a very... So that makes it a self-sustaining type of... It's more self-sustaining, it's more self-referential system, in a sense.

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

And it sort of self-evolves in a way.

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

Again, it's not that it's going to evolve to a dangerous state.

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

It's just that we want to see what happens when the fusion is the dominant heating source.

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

We try to use all these analogies.

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

What actually happens?

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

Actually, there's usually mass confusion about this.

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

So what's going on in this form of energy?

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

So the fuel is delivered in a discrete, the fusion fuel, the deuterium and tritium, is in a discrete spherical, it's more like a BB, let's call it a BB.

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

So it's a small one.

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

And all the fuel that you're going to try to burn is basically there.

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 it's about that size.

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

So how are you going to get โ€“ and it's at โ€“ literally, it's like at 20 degrees above absolute zero because the deuterium and tritium are kept in a liquid and solid state.

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

It's actually โ€“ and it's very โ€“ and in these particular experiments, they can introduce one of these โ€“

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

these targets once per day, approximately something like that.

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

Cause it's very, it's very, it's a kind of amazing technology actually that I know some of the people that worked on this back in the, is they actually make these things at a BB size of this frozen fuel.

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

It's actually at cryogenic temperatures and they're almost like smooth to the atom level.