#353 – Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

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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EPISODE LINKS:
Dennis’s Twitter: twitter.com
Dennis’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com
Dennis’s Website: www.psfc.mit.edu
SPARC: www.psfc.mit.edu
MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center: www.psfc.mit.edu
MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center’s YouTube: youtube.com
Commonwealth Fusion Systems: cfs.energy
Commonwealth Fusion Systems YouTube: www.youtube.com

PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: lexfridman.com
Apple Podcasts: apple.co
Spotify: spoti.fi
RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/
YouTube Full Episodes: youtube.com
YouTube Clips: youtube.com

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– Medium: medium.com

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