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: – Rocket Money: https://rocketmoney.com/lex – MasterClass: https://masterclass.com/lex to get 15% off – InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/lex to get 20% off

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