Menu
Sign In Search Podcasts Charts People & Topics Add Podcast API Blog Pricing

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

So it's easy.

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

You take that curve and you go, that's slope and you work backwards and you go, if you don't start in the early 2030s, like it's not going to have a, it's not going to have a significant impact by that time.

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

So, all of them share this idea.

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

And in fact, it's not just the companies now.

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

The U.S.

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

federal government has a program that was started last year that said, we should be looking to try to get like the first, and what I mean by like, what does it mean to start, that you've got something that's putting electricity on the grid, a pilot, what we call it.

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

And if that can get started in the early 2030s, the idea of ramping it up makes sense.

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

That's math, right?

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

So that's the ambition.

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

Then the question is โ€“ and actually, this is different because the government program โ€“ and they vary around in this.

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

So for example, the United Kingdom's government idea was to get the first one on by 2040.

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

And China has ambitions probably middle 2030s or maybe a little bit later.

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

And Europe, continental Europe, it's a little bit โ€“ I'm not exactly sure where it is, but it's like later.

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

It's like 2050 or 2060 because it's mostly linked to the ITER timeline as well too.

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

The fusion companies, which makes sense, it's like, of course they've got the most aggressive timelines.

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

It's like, we're going to map the human genome faster as well, too, right?

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

So, it's interesting about where we are.

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

And I think, you know, we're not all the way there, but my intuition tells me we're probably going to have a couple of cracks at it, actually, on that timeline.

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

Yeah.