Nuclear Fusion: Who'll Be First To Make It Work?

Correction to what I say at 25:08 -- That should have been 100 million Kelvin, not 100! Sorry about that.

In this video we survey the biggest and most interesting nuclear fusion startups which want to make nuclear fusion commercially relevant. What are the different approaches, how far along are they, and what are the pros and cons. This video has been in the works for months and it's the longest video we've made so far, almost half an hour, so I hope you have a comfortable seat!

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00:00 Intro
01:35 Nuclear Fusion Pros and Cons
04:37 Approaches to Nuclear Fusion
07:34 Field Confinement, Tokamaks
12:57 Field Confinement, Stellarators
16:19 Field Confinement, Plasma Beams
21:15 Inertial Confinement
24:04 Hybrid Approaches
27:31 Summary
28:20 Learn Physics With Brilliant

#science #tech

[JustPassingThrough]

What a star. Sabine manages to provide an excellent overview but in an interesting, entertaining and actually humorous way. Speaks for 30 mins whilst maintaining one’s interest. Marvellous - love the videos. Thanks.

[datup]

I almost spat out my Flammkuchen when you said it was named after one of EM's children 🤣...top notch!

[tremkl]

For April’s Fool Day, you should release an episode of Gobbledygook without the Science.

[johanlindeberg]

09:17 Tokamak Energy, a spherical tokamak ST80 HTS
11:05 Commonwealth Fusion Systems SPARC
12:49 ENN Fusion Technology
13:59 Type One Energy
15:03 Renaissance Fusion
16:13 Helical Fusion, nTtau, Princeton stellarators (psi)
16:28 tae Technologies (tri alpha energy)
19:13 Zap Energy
20:44 MIFTI
20:57 NovaFusion
21:48 first light
23:55 HB11 Energy
24:05 generalfusion
25:20 Helion Energy

[richardhull]

I currently am doing D-D fusion in my small lab at a Q total of 10e-9 using IECF. It produces enough neutrons to do a number of good activation experiments of several elements. The one thing learned by actually doing fusion by any method is that net power production from fusion is a tough nut to crack. The common man is easily impressed by the press. Sabine is always a voice for reason and logic. This is something rare among people and even many scientists in the fusion biz. Sabine has, for the first time, pulled together the encyclopedia of current startup efforts with significant details around each effort and the fusion fuels used. Finally, I hold out little hope in any current fusion effort such as ITER, a multi-billion dollar debacle, or any of the startups with their ridiculous hyped grid ready fusion promised in the late 20' or the mid 30's. The key to commercial viability is a Q total >20 but with Q total >100 being far more viable with the ability to work 24-7-365 for a number of years as with the current fission, coal, gas and hydro plants. Oddly, this continuous expectation of energy from our wall outlets has persisted as a mindset for over a century now.

[stephenkneller]

Thank you Sabine for going over the different reactors, their operating principles, and the companies pursuing them. It was very informative.

[aaronohrt]

My three takeaways from this video about fusion:
1. Wow. I too am now actually optimistic.
2. Sabine is an international treasue.
3. I need to do more with my life. Absolutely inspiring human ingenuity and effort. Incredible.

[andrewlitfin]

"I came out of doing this video being more optimistic about nuclear fusion than before. It seems likely to me that at least one of these approaches should work out in the end, though I haven't been able to make up my mind which one's the most promising." Given your usual scepticism towards all things, these two sentences actually fill me with great hope for the future.

[michaelcoulter]

My favorite is General Fusion. The rotating shell of molten lithium and lead absorbs radiation which protects the reactor and provides a way to extract the heat. Bombarding the lithium with neutrons produces tritium which is needed to fuel the reactor. A demonstration plant at 70% scale is scheduled to start operation at Oxford in the next couple of years.

[MikkoRantalainen]

I sure hope Helion can get their technology to work for real because ability to generate electricity directly from the fusion without using high-tech steam engine sounds really good.

[walnutclose]

Thank you, Dr. Hossenfelder, for this brilliant review of fusion and fusion startup companies. Without question the most informative and interesting half hour I've spent this year, and for some time before that. Just. Excellent.

[mikeconant]

Sabine, this is one of your best videos yet, especially for those of us most interested in how physics principles translate into useful applications. Well-researched, balanced, un-hyped, and succinct.

[Techmagus]

Others would tingle around making money as "investment consultants" showing around those results on flip charts to investment bankers. So thanks Sabine for the hard work putting all these together into a video and give it away for free.

[Kevin_Street]

Thank you for a really interesting and useful video! I love how you just explain things without attempting to make everything "fun" like many of the older science channels on YouTube. You do have a sense of humor but it doesn't get in the way of explaining the science. That approach is very much appreciated.

[matthewgillam-lewis]

I had to be rushed to the emergency department while I was watching this video because your joke about Elons favorite child ST80-HTS had me literally dying. Omg. Dr Hossenfelder, you’re often very funny, but that was solid gold! 🙌 Thank you so much for your detailed and in-depth science videos. I learn so much from you and love your sense of humor. (And I’ll be sending you the bill from my hospital visit as a token of appreciation. 😆)

[protocol]

You can call it Nova Fusion if you want to. Trademarks like that are product/industry specific. As long as you aren't planning to market the output electric charge as a hair volumizer, you are probably fine. 😜

[Sarafan]

Thanks for reuploading with the corrections! Great overview on the subject. Exciting times lie ahead :)

[DEtchells]

Brilliant overview and summary, Sabine!

I find it amusing that two of the approaches involve respectively gunpowder and steam pistons. Steampunk fusion 😂

[andybaldman]

SPARC is a partial acronym. Dennis Whyte explains it in his Lex Fridman appearance. ARC (Affordable, Robust, Compact) is the eventual end-to-end pilot plant they plan on making eventually. SPARC is a component of it, and is the actual tokamak. It's named SPARC as a play on words, because it's the thing that 'sparks' the fusion reaction.

[petermainwaringsx]

That is the best and most comprehensive video I've seen about Nuclear Fusion. I've learned more about the various approaches to fusion in this one video, than I have in dozens of others. What a shame Tokamak Energy doesn't call their device "Peter". 😎 Thanks Sabine.