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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

So it sort of goes to your comment aboutโ€ฆ

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

I have to suspect this because anything that is high tech and is like a really important thing in our economy tends to never find its way as only one manifestation.

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

Like look at transportation as well too.

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

We have scooters, Vespas, overland trucks, cars, electric cars.

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

Of course we have these because they meet different demands in it.

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

So what's interesting, you know, that I find fascinating now is that we have infusion.

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

It's going to look like that, that probably there's the, while the near term focuses on electricity production, there might even be different kinds of markets that actually make sense in some places, less than others.

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

It comes to trade-offs because we haven't really talked about the engineering yet, but engineering really matters like to the, to the operation of the device.

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

And so it could be that, you know, I suspect what we'll end up with is several different configurations which have different features, which are trade-offs, basically, in the energy market.

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

Yeah.

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

So the first one is just the cost of building a single unit.

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

So Fusion has, and it's actually interesting, you talked about the different models that you have.

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

So Fusion has, one of its interesting limitations is that it's very hard to

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

it almost at some point becomes physically impossible to actually make small power units.

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

Like a kilowatt, a thousand watts, you know, which is like a personal home, like, you know, this is about a thousand watts or your personal use of energy, of electricity is about like a thousand watts.

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

This is basically impossible for a single, you know, unit to do this.

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

So like you're not going to have a fusion like power plant

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

like as your furnace or your electric heater in your home.

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

And the reason for this comes from the fact that fusion relies on it being, it's not just that it's very hot, it's that the fusion power is the heating source to keep it hot.

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

So if you go too small, it basically just cannot keep it hot.