#353 – Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy
Description
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: https://twitter.com/MIT_Fusion
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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