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Dennis Whyte

πŸ‘€ Speaker
1833 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 – Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

And then we haven't even talked about how do you then get the fusion energy out, which is mainly because these things are basically micro implosions which are occurring.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 – Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

So this energy is coming out to some medium on the outside that you've got to figure out how to extract the energy out of this thing.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 – Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

So in the end, you have to basically convert it into heat in some way.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 – Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

So in the end, what fusion makes mostly is like very energetic particles from the fusion reaction.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 – Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

So you have to slow those down in some way and then make heat out of it.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 – Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

So basically the conversion of the kinetic energy of the particles into heating some engineered material that's on the outside of this.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 – Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

Physics, I can show you all the equations that tell you about how it slows down and converts kinetic energy into heat.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 – Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

And then what that heat means, you know, you can write out like an ideal thermal cycle, like a Carnot cycle.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 – Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

So the physics of that, yeah, great.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 – Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

The integrated engineering of this is a whole other thing.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 – Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

All of the above.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 – Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

I mean… The ignition?

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 – Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

You know, I have… So, you know, just to wave the flag a little bit.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 – Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

So MIT was a central player in this accomplishment.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 – Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

Interesting, I would say it showed some of our two best traits.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 – Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

So one of them was that the…

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 – Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

Like, how do you know that this happened?

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 – Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

This measurement, right?

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 – Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

So, one of the ways to do this is, if I told you, is that in the DT fusion, what it actually, the product that comes out is helium.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 – Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

We call it alpha, but it's helium.