Why The Latest UK Fusion Breakthrough Matters

First Light Fusion has achieved a major step towards solving one of the engineering challenges behind the design of a viable fusion pilot power plant. Let's talk to one of the research team behind the breakthrough to find out exactly what has changed.

Thanks again to Mila and the First Light Fusion team for their continued work and their openness to share their progress with us.

I think Scientists are Rockstars so I made t-shirts to celebrate them

0:00 First Light Fusion Achieves Major Fusion Milestone
1:47 How to Build a Fusion Reactor
6:15 Fusion Breakthrough
12:00 Why is Fusion always 10 Years Away?

#fusion #breakthrough #explained

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[DrBenMiles]

Thanks again to Mila and the First Light team for their continued openness to share their progress with us.

[mceajc]

As a teenager, the joke that had been around for thirty years was that fusion was "always 50 years away". So getting to "always 30 years" or "always 10 years" away is a huge improvement in the span of thirty-odd years.

[arieverhoeff]

Great, now fusion is only 10 years away

[webx]

"The landscape has changed, because we now have achieved gain."

This is exactly the part tons of people missed about the success of NIF. We can now see the finish line, so we have the tools to chart a course in that direction.
It also makes funding easier to justify. Instead of pointing off into the void, we have a flag out there and we can say "See that? Let's go there."

This will hopefully snowball, and hopefully means those "20 years away" timelines are effectively frozen.

[daveozip]

Thank you for this very interesting analysis of the topic. I see most of the comments below have focussed on the time to commercialisation, but I think the real payload of this video is how mathematical modelling is changing the landscape.

Modelling physics requires that we understand enough of the way the universe works such that we can codify a small part of it mathematically. When you are breaking new ground as nuclear fusion is then we see our understanding being challenged every step of the way.

The point about this method is that the more we know, the faster we make progress. There are two benefits that pop out of this - first we have a viable fusion reactor, which in itself is a game changer for climate change and geopolitics of the Middle East. - and secondly we have a set of tools which mean we can take greater strides in understanding fundamental physics.

Both of those things are game changers and I applaud the progress being made by this team. Congrats - and thank you.

[barrymayson]

There comes a tipping point in most technology where before we are working blind then someone finds the light switch and rapid progress is made to the next room and we start searching for the light switch again. We may even go into the wrong room first.

[alexandermarsteller]

Things always brushed under the carpet: I'll believe them that the approach with the gun works, but the entire lithium curtain thing is a different beast.
Lithium is chemcially fairly aggressive and can corrode steel. But you need it to be Lithium because you need to take the excess Neutron of the fusion reaction to produce more of the Tritium used as fuel for the fusion (the only other source of tritium is waste from nuclear fission plants, but the worldwide production is nowhere near enough to run a power plant on.).
In short: just getting the fusion rection to be net positive still won't be enough to get a full scale power plant.

[IAmJamesTheFirst]

Nice video. I like how the breakthrough is basically turning a electric rail gun into a conventional gun. Whereas a conventional gun will have a primer and gunpowder to push a projectile this rail gun uses electricity as a primer and metal foil as a kind of gunpowder that explodes into a plasma and pushes the flyer/projectile. Very cool!

[stevenrn]

So we’ve gone from being 20 years away to being just 20 years away.

[BrooksMoses]

I don't know if you're aware of it, but there is a fascinating book that really documents the _start_ of the "fusion is always 10 years away" idea, which I think you'd enjoy. It's called "PROJECT SHERWOOD: The U.S. Program in Controlled Fusion", published in 1958 as part of the declassification of the U.S. research into fusion reactions, and contains detailed reports on the U.S.'s research projects from 1951 to 1958. That puts it almost perfectly at the cusp of where people were starting to grasp how difficult a problem this was, and the project reports are detailed enough that you really get the perspective of seeing what that realization like at the time, to the people who were figuring it out.

It's almost heartbreaking watching them get to the top of the first hills expecting to be making good progress, and then seeing the expanse of mountain still to climb that was now visible, especially with the hindsight of knowing that even that was a small fraction of what was truly ahead. Even in the dry scientific writing, some of that sense of dauntedness comes through.

[iamscoutstfu]

Smoothbrains not understanding the immensity of the breakthroughs in the past two years be like : "10 yEaRs aWaY FoReVeR DURHUR"

[ebbinandflowin]

Hello Dr. Ben! Thank you for yet another excellent video demonstrating your skills in asking the questions and pursuing the answers. It also helps to have the contacts and the reach you have. Cheers to you~!

[ThreeTwentysix]

Wow, Mila Fitzgerald is a first class communicator. There aren't many people with the advanced knowledge that she has that can communicate it so well.

[alexseioo]

I remember the time when it was said fusion is always 50 years away. Then it became "always 40", then "always 20", now "always 10". It's just an anecdote about too optimistic predictions. But the progress is constant and noticeable. If nothing else the brute force approach of ITER will be eventually successfull.

[Juttutin]

If you dig through history, you will find that fusion used to be said to have always been 50 years away. When I visited JET a couple of decades ago, the joke was that fusion was forever 30 years away. More recently I've heard "20 years away". Today was the first mention of it having "always been 10 years away".

That's some kind of progress I guess.

Edit: just got too the bit of the video where you discuss this!

[charlie]

Great video. Super excited for the future of fusion.

[ernstboyd]

something that is always omited about the sun being hot and dense
enough to produce fusion is that it doesnt - only VERY slowly

[rayoflight]

You're right more than anyone may believe Prof. Miles, when you say: "We have to confirm that the Universe works the way we think it works" when we reach some operating conditions that have never been practiced before.
As an example, the forces holding together the atoms of the projectile under that immense speed - do act the way we expect? I would use the fields theory to solve the problem...

[sawyeriii]

Addendum: I am unsure if this is the origin of future tech being 10 years away, but it was a series of events that influenced the 10 year meme.

FYI: An author famous for science fiction writing, Arthur C Clarke, was interviewed twice about space elevators and their potential of becoming a reality ten years apart. The first time he stated they would become a realistic technology 10 years after people stopped laughing about it. The second time he stated the same and added and I believe they've stopped laughing. I believe that's the general story, I leave finding out the specifics to those interested in science fiction to fact predictions or space elevators.

[kdw]

I haven't even finished this video yet, but it amazes me how many things that would change the world, such as Fusion, a cure for aging, a cure for cancer etc, have much less funding that you would expect. You would think that almost unlimited funding would be available for them since they are so important. It is something to see such a lovely physicist.