US scientists making a huge breakthrough.
A source tells CNN
that for the first time
ever, researchers
have been able
to create energy from a fusion r
Now, Laura,
I could explain all of this
in great detail.
But basically, it's a giant step
a clean energy future
without dependance on fossil fue
Now, sad
and I mean, that's all you need
The Department of Energy is yet
to officially announce
the breakthrough in just a few h
But here to help explain to us a
CNN chief
climate correspondent Bill
Weir and science
educator Bill
Nye, host of The End Is Nigh.
Let me begin with you, Mr.
Nye. On this point,
because although Alison
and I clearly know
everything about have any questi
you can feel free to ask us any
you might have.
But could you just explain
for those of us
who don't know how this is
such a miraculous occurrence?
So I'll ask you a question.
Do you know that the sun
the sun is a continuous fusion r
naturally has a definite.
Are you really or not? This is.
So a nuclear weapon.
Can you.
We had to terminate World War Tw
We're splitting very large atoms
Gave off tremendous amount of en
But there's another amazing thin
that happens in nature,
where you smash
tiny, tiny
parts of atoms together, protons
and they fuze
and convert a tiny amount of the
into energy, into heat, heat and
And that was the mythic hydrogen
But for all this time, for 80 ye
people have tried to try to get
where you could do it
in a controlled fashion,
using a tiny amount of material.
And the material would be
hydrogen
that has an extra neutron,
which was the smell.
Marbles were deuterium.
And then if there's two extra
neutrons, that's tritium.
And so using lasers,
they zapped this container.
This whole room
this gold thing with the deuteri
And the lasers create X-rays,
and the X-rays create constant a
interfering shockwaves
that get the thing to fuze
without a giant magnetic bottle
and without the gravity of a sta
And so this is the first time,
by all accounts,
they've gotten more heat out
than they put in.
And this is amazing.
And as far as I know,
in the reporting the last few da
no one's mentioned that Enrique
and his colleagues
and University of Chicago
did the first chain reaction,
which led to all the nuclear pow
we have now.
Yeah. On December 2nd.
1942. Okay.
So it's quite a little chain str
that it's very close to 80 years
to the day that this breakthroug
occurred And so you guys,
if this would work.
Yeah,
if this is a harbinger,
if this is really the beginning
of something huge,
it would change the world
Thank you for explaining that to
I want to know
I mean, I was going to say
all that, but Bill.
Bill Weir, tell us what we need
Bill just did editions on your d
The bill.
No, it's a star in a box.
This is the whole idea.
This is why
nuclear physicists
have been salivating on this ide
forever.
It's taking a star
and putting it in a box on Earth
and tapping that energy
that goes forever.
It's what Iron Man has in his ch
Okay, now we understand
it's this endless clean energy m
And the appeal of it is,
is you don't have any nuclear wa
There's no fallout. There's no a
We don't have to drill
or mine for fuel anymore
because the fuel is seawater.
We have 30 million years of sea
water, theoretically,
to feed these machines.
But the what Bill is describing
there's 200
lasers aimed at
what is essentially a peppercorn
of hydrogen.
A long way
from there
to where you can plug in your house to th
This is for our grandkids, proba
as a as a meaningful technology
Maybe you're more optimistic
than I am about how fast this ta
In the meantime,
there's all this incredible
breakthroughs that are happening
with wind and solar.
And,
you know, more
will go online
next five years
that went online in the last 20.
So it'll be interesting to see
how this news is received by tho
who say we should be
putting our billions of dollars
into the technology
we know works today
and getting off oil and gas ASAP
And then maybe, you know,
saving life
as we know it
before we go for these amazing m
But at the same time
the promise of this,
you know
private money
is going to chase public after t
And so this could be
a brave new world built.
Is there do you think that it co
in our grandchildren's lifetime?
Could it be conceivably sooner
Absolutely.
I mean,
so just
you think about how quickly
people went
from discovering chain
reactions,
the Sizzler
and crossing the street in 1928.
And they had this idea.
And then
just two decades later,
we had nuclear power plants.
Well, this could be the beginning
of something amazing.
So everybody
you know, this expression
H2O, high water.
There's no shortage of hydrogen.
If we can find a way to make thi
continuously,
what you do is capture the heat
and almost certainly capture the
boil water and make steam
and run a turbine,
just as we do
now in a coal fired plant or a
natural gas fired plant
or a nuclear plant using fission
So it's really an exciting thing
and it shows you
the value of just investing.
Like you just
just invest in basic research.
There is no right answer.
And I got to say, Bill,
to me, it's it's don't make me p
We don't want to have to pick
and we
because the climate
situation is so serious, we want
as I like to say everything all
We want to develop wind and sola
We want to develop
this fusion technology, if it's
We want to avoid.
You may know NIMBY, not in my ba
We want to avoid banana.
Build absolutely nothing anywher
anything. We can't do that.
We get
we have to build power lines.
It's going to have to go through
right away.
We've got to find ways
to distribute electricity
and include everybody.
In a future so that we have
a higher quality of life
for more people on Earth.
And we can avoid having
catastrophic climate consequence
This is one more piece in the pu
invest, invest, invest, and plus
I was born in the U.S.
I don't know any better.
Okay.
So I want the U.S.
to lead in this technology.
I don't want to be catching up w
researchers in other parts of
the world who are fine people.
Yeah. Yes.
I want as a as a proud American.
Yeah.
You make a great point.
You make a great point, Bill.
And I mean, this is such a great
You know, so often, Bill, we hav
And it's really discouraging
climate news
and it's catastrophic, in fact.
And this is such a hopeful
exciting story.
So thank you both for explaining
so well to us. Really great.
Let us, taxpayers
and voters, let's invest,
change the world. Thank you. Yea