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

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

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