Dennis Whyte
π€ SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
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.
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.
So in the end, you have to basically convert it into heat in some way.
So in the end, what fusion makes mostly is like very energetic particles from the fusion reaction.
So you have to slow those down in some way and then make heat out of it.
So basically the conversion of the kinetic energy of the particles into heating some engineered material that's on the outside of this.
Physics, I can show you all the equations that tell you about how it slows down and converts kinetic energy into heat.
And then what that heat means, you know, you can write out like an ideal thermal cycle, like a Carnot cycle.
So the physics of that, yeah, great.
The integrated engineering of this is a whole other thing.
All of the above.
I mean⦠The ignition?
You know, I have⦠So, you know, just to wave the flag a little bit.
So MIT was a central player in this accomplishment.
Interesting, I would say it showed some of our two best traits.
So one of them was that theβ¦
Like, how do you know that this happened?
This measurement, right?
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.
We call it alpha, but it's helium.