The Laser-Based Inertial Containment

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Laser-based inertial confinement is kind of a little bit of an underdog. It's 20 degrees above absolute zero because the deuterium-intratum are kept in a liquid and solid state. So what it does is that the lasers actually don't heat. What you want to do is get essentially a rocket going out like this. And then what happens is that the sphere so rapidly compresses the fuel, that what happening is that you're squeezing down on it.

Dennis Whyte is a nuclear scientist at MIT and the director of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(05:54) – Nuclear fusion
(23:53) – e=mc^2
(38:20) – Fission vs fusion
(43:32) – Nuclear weapons
(47:19) – Plasma
(54:29) – Nuclear fusion reactor
(1:09:50) – 2022 nuclear fusion breakthrough explained
(1:30:27) – Magnetic confinement
(1:49:36) – ITER
(1:54:23) – SPARC
(2:08:23) – Future of fusion power
(2:16:55) – Engineering challenges
(2:35:36) – Nuclear disasters
(2:40:21) – Cold fusion
(2:54:36) – Kardashev scale
(3:04:00) – Advice for young people