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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

What it does is it does those things.

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

And it should get to the point where it's producing over 100 million watts of fusion power.

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

But remember, it's 40 times smaller.

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

So ITER was 500 megawatts.

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

Technically, our design is around 150 megawatts.

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

So it's only about a factor of three difference despite being 40 times smaller.

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

And we see QP large, order of 10 or something like this.

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

At that state is very important scientifically because this basically matches what ITER is looking to do.

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

The plasma is dominated by its own heating.

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

It's very, very important.

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

And it does that for about 10 seconds.

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

And the reason it's for 10 seconds is that in terms of that, that basically allows everything to settle in terms of the fusion in the plasma equilibrium, everything is nice and settled.

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

So, you know, you have seen the physical state at which you would expect a power plant to operate basically for, for magnetic fusion.

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

Like, wow.

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

Right.

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

But it's more than that.

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

And it's more than that.

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

It's because about who's building it and why and how it's being financed.

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

So, that scientific pathway was made possible by the fact that we had access to a next generation of magnet technology.

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

So, to explain this real quick, why do we call it, you said it in the words, a superconducting magnet?