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Nuclear Power: Small Modular Reactors (Narration Only)

Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur

00:00

The Physics of Fusion

Even in our Sun's core this process is so hard to do that your typical hydrogen atom will spend billions of years before being turned into something bigger. A fusion reactor mimicking the Sun's core here on Earth would need to have several tons of core material to produce enough power to run a light bulb. Thus artificial fusion power needs to massively exceed the already insane temperatures and pressure in the heart of a star for it to work. We can derive a small but long lasting power source by taking a material or radio isotope with a decent half-life say a century and let it slowly decay and absorb all that decay energy as heat energy. That's two of the ways we generate power from nucle

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