#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
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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


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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