Using Laser Based Inertial Containment in Fusion

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Dr. Dennis White has worked on magnetic confinement and neurofibon. He says laser based inertial confinement was used by DOE's National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in December. "The physical world that's all around is just, you're blowing my mind," he said of our ability to filter out ionizing radiation.

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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Dennis’s Website: https://www.psfc.mit.edu/whyte
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MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center: https://www.psfc.mit.edu
MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center’s YouTube: https://youtube.com/@mitplasmascienceandfusionc6211
Commonwealth Fusion Systems: https://cfs.energy
Commonwealth Fusion Systems YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CommonwealthFusionSystems

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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