It's kind of funny that a lot of people
don't even know that this is here.
They'll say, there's a nuclear reaction on campus?
I'm like, have you never noticed the blue dome
with the brick chimney?
They're like, oh.
That's what that is?
It looks like a water tank, but it's not a tank of water.
It's a tank of science.
You can see behind us, there's some stuff coming out.
We just want to clarify.
That's not smoke.
It's not radioactive.
It's water vapor.
And it's totally safe for the environment.
And it's just how they cool the reactor.
(Brandon) I'm a sixth-year now PhD candidate.
I work here on Albany Street in a bunch of the labs
we're going to be seeing.
(Leigh Ann) And I'm a fifth-year grad student.
I work in a lot of the same labs as Brandon
and a few different ones.
After you.
(Brandon) I think the overarching goal of a lot of the labs on Albany Street
is climate change and attacking it in different ways.
(Leigh Ann)We need to understand more about the energy we are using.
Because like, we're going to get to a point
where we don't have energy anymore, and that is a problem.
The easy thing to do to create energy
was to burn things with fire.
That was easy.
But it turns out burning things isn't the ideal way
to secure electricity on the grid.
So we've done that.
We did the easy thing and now we need to do the hard thing.
(Brandon) We're going to see the fission reactor,
then we're going to go on to an accelerator lab.
We're going to see lasers, electron
microscopes, nanoparticle labs.
Bubbles.
We're going to see a fusion experiment.
Plasma experiments.
Corrosion labs.
Lots of magnets.
Yeah, magnets.
Any cool science word you can think of,
we have it on this street.
(music)
Down to the basement labs.
Where the real fun happens.
(music)
(Leigh Ann) We both study fusion energy.
(Brandon) Fusion is really cool because it can
be a base-load form of power and the fuel source
you can get from water, like from seawater.
So we have literally millions of years worth of fuel
if we can get fusion to work.
(Leigh Ann) One of the things that really gets
me excited about fusion and fission
and nuclear energy in general is the forms of energy we use now
are breaking chemical bonds.
Nuclear energy is kind of like the next step forward
in technology because we're breaking atomic bonds
and reforming atomic bonds.
And It's really the next step forward
for society and science.
(music)
(Brandon) I don't know anywhere else really,
in the world, where you have this wide array of all
these different tools that are literally
located all just down the span of like 2,000 feet down one street.
Pop it in there.
Load it in.
(Brandon) I can take my samples that came out of the reactor
and walk down the hall.
I don't have to go outside on the street
because there's all these protocols you have to follow
about the transport of radioactive material.
I can take all of my material that's
radioactive within this building to this facility, for example.
Work on it.
I can take it down to the accelerator lab and work on it.
And so normally, experiments like this
would take a really long time
and involve a lot of paperwork and a lot of money,
and here we can kind of just do everything in-house
and really really quickly, which is great.
(music)
(Brandon) We end up working in a lot of these labs.
(Leigh Ann) Yeah.We haven't worked in every single one,
but we at least work with people who use them.
And even if you don't work with the equipment in the labs,
there's a lot of times where you'll need to just go talk
to somebody in that lab because they
know about some aspect of the research you're doing.
So it's about the stuff in the labs,
but it's also about the people that we work with
and how we share information, and learn how
to do the things that we do.
(music and background talking)
(Brandon) It's pretty cool being here.
It's almost like working at a little miniature national lab
except it's at a university instead.
And we're friends with everybody there.
(Leigh Ann) There are electricians and welders and machinists
on this street that can do things
that I don't know where else you would find it
all in the same place.
Where you can be like, I need this thing welded for vacuum.
And also, this electricity that has
a ridiculous amperage that nobody else would ever need.
(Brandon) There like, Oh yeah, we can do that.
Yeah.
Probably, 1,000 people on this street
with expertise in everything related to nuclear, and energy,
and engineering, and machining.
And electrical, like everything.
(music)
(Brandon) So my analogy that you're going to laugh at, Leigh Ann,
is in "Game of Thrones"
where people are fighting these--
--tiny little battles.
And then like, off in the North somewhere,
there's like these weird dudes who hang out
on a wall that are like warning everybody
that this really, really bad thing is going to happen.
(Leigh Ann) We need the dragons.
Is that what you're saying, Brandon?
(Brandon) We need the dragons.
We need the fusion dragon.
(Leigh Ann) It's a good analogy.
(laughing)
(music)