#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: - Rocket Money: https://rocketmoney.com/lex - MasterClass: https://masterclass.com/lex to get 15% off - InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/lex to get 20% off EPISODE LINKS: Dennis's Twitter: https://twitter.com/MIT_Fusion Dennis's LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/dennis-whyte-33474a54 Dennis's Website: https://www.psfc.mit.edu/whyte SPARC: https://www.psfc.mit.edu/sparc 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 PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman 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