Oh My God. I swear this Isn't a fusion channel,
but This is such big news that I had to make of it. Whoa,
did you see that We finally to make fusion? Okay,
that was pretty good. Thank you.
I thought so, but of course I saw I'm in the middle of the, oh, I gotta correct
you just a little bit. We've been doing fusion here in the US on planet Earth
since like the 1950s. What? So this isn't a thing. No, it's definitely a thing.
They have a positive Q for the first time ever. It's a huge deal.
First time in human history. I don't, um,
know what that is. Yes, it's confusing. I'm gonna,
I'm making the video right now. Great. Okay.
I'll just go back to whatever I was doing before. Good idea. See ya.
Hey, there's sentient atomic structures trace here. The regular one this week,
the Lawrence Livermore lab in California said that they finally achieved fusion
with a positive cue in a single laser remission. Put simply,
this is very Exciting. For the first Time ever,
they got more energy out of a fusion reaction than they put in. This,
of course does not mean that fusion is here and that we finally solved it,
but the ratio of energy in to out is a big deal.
We want more energy out than we put in. That's the promise of fusion.
And that ratio, by the way of in to out is called Q.
Positive Q more out is great,
but there are a ton more problems to solve like a lot more.
Let me explain what just happened in this news and tackle each bit of it at one
piece at a time.
The Lawrence Livermore lab shot 192 lasers at a tiny capsule filled with fusion
fuel. That fuel is deuterium and tridium, which are both isotopes of hydrogen.
They have extra neutrons. It's not that important for you to know that, but it,
that's what it's the laser's energy hit the capsule and converted to x-rays that
heated the fuel pellet inside and caused it to collapse into a super heated
plasma. It's a form of matter that's sort of like a gas, but really, really hot.
And from there,
the hydrogen isotopes inside smushed together making heavier particles.
And when things do that, they release energy. And that is what happened.
That's the story.
It was so exciting because the amount of energy that was released when they
smushed together was more than the lasers put in.
So imagine if you heated up a teapot and out came super heated water
rather than just hot water.
That's essentially like a crazy version of what just happened.
So what they did is they put in about two megajoules of energy and they got
about three out. This is a cue or gain an energy of 1.5.
And this has never happened before in all of human history. Well,
that we know of.
More energy came out of a reaction than we put in that cue is the breakthrough.
We've never even reached the break even point acute of one before. Now,
although we've been inching closer and closer to this over the past several
years, the amount of energy sounds big three megajoules,
but that's enough to boil about two and a half gallons of water far from
powering a car or a house or using fusion to change the world.
The fusion capsule that they shot all the lasers at is called a hole rum.
It's new for each fusion attempt. They don't reuse them. They're made by hand,
actually by robots and 3D printers, but they're still tweaking the designs.
Also, the power to charge the lasers that is in factored into the queue.
and just the actual power released.
If they were including the charging of the lasers,
that would be like 300 megajoules to overcome,
which would mean the queue would be so tiny.
. Remember the reaction released three megajoules.
So still a long way to go. I, I know what this sounds like. Wtf. Why?
Why do we even care about this then?
But you should care because science is transparent.
So they've shared this with the whole scientific community and the scientists
who study fusion really care the research institution.
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory gives them insight into how to make
actual fusion tech work. And since it's publicly funded,
it's available to everyone. This isn't supposed to make power.
It's not a fusion plant.
It's a research facility and it tests concepts for use elsewhere.
And hopefully other scientists all over the world are gonna take this
information and incorporate it into future designs and help them understand
fusion just a little better.
Lawrence Livermore nerds know that the lasers could be better.
They're not as efficient as the modern laser. They're based on 1980s tech.
They know that the lasers didn't hit the capsule evenly and the fuel didn't burn
a hundred percent efficiently. So they can tweak all of those things,
but they're learning how fusion burns good. And that's it .
Now we know for the first time ever that the cue can be positive.
I actually interviewed scientists at the Lawrence Livermore lab years ago for a
story and the guy sat down and he said,
I love proving theorists wrong because nature will tell us
what we can do. It doesn't matter if you have it on paper,
it doesn't matter if we thought that the queue could be positive.
Now we know nature has shown us, yes, it can happen.
More research is needed.
All the fusion projects globally are watching each other and they were learning
from the successes and failures and incorporate those into their future
attempts. And this is why it's important.
We've gotta learn how to make hundreds of HighQ ignitions like way more than
1.5 every minute. We've gotta learn how to harvest the heat to generate power.
And we've gotta learn how to build these at scale to bring this power
everywhere. Eater,
another giant tac reactor in France has been being built my whole life.
And that's not a scalable system. , we've got a lot to learn,
but knowing that positive Q fusion is even possible and that we can do it is so
heartening and so exciting. It is a massive break. Ah.
Nice pun when you hear.
The whole time.
I was listening at the door. Of course.
Buddy. Come.
On. Are you gonna tell 'em what fusion is like?
Fusion is two really light atoms that are smashing together to make a heavier
one compared to traditional nuclear fission plants that take heavy atoms and
break 'em apart. I was just gonna gonna get to that, but then you did. Yeah,
I did. . Okay pal. People are dropping off the video right now.
Like I can see the, because we're bantering instead of talking fusion buddy. Oh,
heavy. Okay. That, that was actually pretty good. Thank you. .
I got a million tum.
Tell everyone I say hydrogen please.
Just let me finish my video. Wait, should I go then?
Okay, Uhuh.
I'll let you finish . Okay. Hydrogen .
So where was I?
Let me scroll on my teleprompter cues in the hundred actual energy,
figure out how to harvest the energy fusion.
That's where I was and turn it into electricity.
So that's something we also have to figure out right now.
We take all of the heat that comes out of a reaction.
We funnel it through absorbent blankets into um, well into a steam boiler.
. Yes.
Fusion like actually all heat based energy generation is well,
is essentially steam power. It's done by boiling water, which turns a turbine.
And that mechanical energy generates electricity for us.
Literally the most advanced nuclear coal oil, natural gas. This is how it works.
I know it's wild.
We're basically Doc Brown trying to time travel off the front of a steam train.
But that's what we've got powering our lives right now.
And we've figured out how we can get a spark that lights the fire. That's all
we've done. Now we gotta figure out the fire part,
how to kit that spark to light the fire, how to keep the fire burning.
And once we've done that,
we'll get better and better at harvesting the power from the fire.
And that's honestly how every technology that humans have ever invented comes
about.
We find some rudimentary way to do it and eventually we end up with something
super advanced and wild.
I think the sub conversation here though is just as interesting.
My mom saw this story and she called me to ask,
how does this solve climate change? And why does this matter? And you know,
I'm gonna tell you what I told her.
Fusion matters not because it's gonna change the world immediately. It won't.
It's just one leg in a stool of a variety of renewable energies.
Wind and solar are already on this train. Traditional nuclear is two.
Climate change is driven by the byproducts of the fuel we're using to make
energy for cars, planes, trains, boats, lawnmowers, whatever the fuel is.
What matters.
The thing driving the turbine that generates the electricity matters.
Nuclear fusion just uses this Water,
a variant of water called deuterium and a rarer version Tridium.
Deuterium is found naturally all over the planet.
There's some in every gallon of seawater on earth.
That's a lot of energy potential.
How much will fusion can make 10 megawatts of power right now,
which is enough for 7,500 homes. That is a tech in its infancy.
But quote on a mass basis,
the deuterium tridium fusion reaction releases over four times as much energy as
uranium fission nuclear power, traditionally as we know it now,
and over 1 million times a fossil fuel reaction. So imagine if you could,
could go to the gas station,
get a drop of fuel and run your car for a hundred thousand miles.
Once it's become a viable way to power human infrastructure,
then we can really easily transition to everything from battery powered cars or
graphene capacitor powered cars as we'll have abundant clean energy. Everything
could be powered by a mix of fusion, wind, solar,
traditional nuclear.
Just depending on where you are on the planet and what your energy needs are,
we'd be able to emit energy everywhere and harvest it from nature easily
to keep things powered without worrying about greenhouse gases in particulates.
Remember all those projects that I've talked about over the years?
And I'm sure you've seen where the roads are essentially wireless chargers and
there's just energy everywhere. Remember,
one drop of water has a million times more energy than a drop of gasoline.
A million. And that's what you should take away from this video. A million.
It's literally just a naturally occurring variation of water.
If you don't heat it into plasma under immense pressures and temperatures,
it's just water.
If you release the heat and it kind of gets a crack in it or something,
the heat is released and it just reverts back to hydrogen or water. It sounds
like magic,
but it's science and it's the same physics we see every day above our faces in
the stars, in the sky and our sun.
Obviously more research is needed to make this a viable power source,
but right now we know it's possible to get more energy out than we put in.
Even with all the caveats that I just mentioned throughout the last 10 minutes,
that old joke that fusion is 30 years away might be less of a joke now and
instead more of a running timer. Only one way to find out, hey.
Hey buddy.
Did you, did you call me?
Did you watch this thing on Curiosity Stream about Fusion? It's awesome.
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Now all you need is some snacked.
Okay, , I gotta go see what the clone is doing.
There's more about fusion down in the description and please con consider
subscribing. Um, and you know. Thank you.
Hi buddy. What are you doing? How did you knock this over?
What do you mean you were echolocating That's, that's a future video.
After we cloned you. I, we talked about this. You can't be eating spicy.
Okay, I'll forgive you if we can watch diehard again. It's only the fourth time.
Come on, it's a Christmas movie. Let's do it.