Humans are in a forever quest to find the most efficient way to boil water that spins something

"Technology is [almost] always overestimated in the short term, and underestimated in the long."

As a fusion researcher, titles like this are pretty frustrating since we have very little control over the public image of fusion, and impressions that don't click on the video get a negative impression. However, this video itself is pretty solid, i'm halfway through and it's been all good and accurate points. The key is we need a societal push to produce effective fusion, ideally similar to space-race level support. otherwise it will continue to take a long time. People like to say it's always been 20 years away, but fail to mention that that's primarily because the funding for fusion research has been slashed over and over again ever since we stopped competing with the soviet union over it as a technology. If you don't fund something, it stops moving as quickly.

The fact that we can all learn about this stuff whenever we like is absolutely incredible. Thank you so much for sharing this content with the world!

Damn, this is really impressive timing. This video clearly took a long time to make, and you managed to release it right on the heels of the major fusion announcement. Props man.

Given the last 24 hours, I'd love to hear an update on opinions of where this is all going.

Advanced fission reactors are also incredible. Breeder Reactors that produce their own fuel are also possible. You essentially use something that doesn't slow down neutrons as much as water and add thick Uranium cladding to inner walls of the reactor. Preferably that uranium is deluded in a liquid so it can be refined easily. One of the issues is that we use about 1% of the available uranium and the rest is waste. But with a working Breeder reactor you could have so much more efficient designs that don't need a refuel in decades

Amazing video. Easy to understand for People not close to the topic and slightly detailed with some technical info. Congrats !!

Great video. I’ve worked on magnetic confinement nuclear fusion at a National lab. One of the big problems is that everything is a massive partial derivative. Let’s say you have a hundred million particles inside the reactor. Each one has 7 dimensions of conserved motion. So traditionally to simulate it, you need either an extremely watered down equation that can make dozens of simplifying assumptions or a supercomputer that can take days to do a short simulation. Each particle can massively change their trajectory in just 10 microseconds, meaning if you want a perfect simulation for like 5 minutes, you need to run (100,000,000 * 5 * 60 * 10^5)^7 calculations which is probably some number bigger than the amount of atoms on earth. The good thing is that machine learning and GPUs are perfect for this kind of problem. So it’s gradually becoming the backbone of confinement modeling so the particles won’t fly out unexpectedly or the machine suddenly crash. In fact confinements not much of an issue anymore I’d say. Like I was able to take a 42 hour long simulation, rewrite it in CUDA, and have it run the same thing in less than 20 minutes. And on the experimental side, people have been able to run their devices for almost 10 minutes now which is extremely stable. And on top of all that, MIT recently made a high termperature superconductor that can generate massive magnetic fields so the machines can be scaled down to like 1/10th the size and still produce more power than ITER. While it’s still experimental, it’s basically in its last stages. The only things to worry about now is elmo. The next stage will be finding the right materials to make the walls out of that will preserve the reaction and dissipate the energy over long runs. Tungsten has been generally used as the newer material but there’s still room for massive improvement. People have been experimenting with depositing an atom layer thick lithium gas on tungsten or using Liquid Metal walls that act kind of like a waterfall + cpu cooler inside the tokamak. The tritium breeding issue is still on the horizon. Theoretically it shouldn’t be too hard to carry out. Just get a slab of lithium metal and put it right behind the tokamak or whatever device. But that’s a issue for another day. Edit: also don’t forget that’s only tokamak fusion. There’s also like 20 other types of fusion techniques, some of which are very promising. ICF (kind of a budget laser-powered nuclear bomb) is experimentally like 70% (now >100%!) of the way to net energy. This is a massive jump considering how it was 5% just 3 years ago. Other ones are field reverse configuration with folding plasma whirlpools in the z direction, magnetic mirrors, z pinch (like a nuclear lightning bolt), and whatever that doesn’t need tritium and won’t produce neutrons so that the energy can be directly harvested with a magnet. Edit: from Joesph Li I do research currently at a fusion research institute. Some things worth noting: You're right that lots of folks are looking to ML and big data but traditional MHD and kinetic simulations are still the mainstay. Whole volume gyrokinetic simulation is widely used and actively researched to better understand transport as a whole. Neutral and wall interactions, and especially precise treatment of edge regions is mostly done via traditional methods rather than ML. Next on fusion techniques. You're correct that there are many different methods for containing a plasma, but the region the device landscape looks as it does today is because magnetic mirrors, Z-pinch, and other open designs have serious inherent confinement issues. As for ICF, the NIF actually reported a break even last summer on fusion gain in 2021 (not sure if published yet). One major issue the NIF faces is that ICF fusion requires several laser shots per second to be economical, but as of now I believe the rate of discharge is closer to once every several hours. Lastly, I want to comment on smaller devices and different fusion fuels. MITs technology definitely holds a lot of promise, but one should temper expectations on output in smaller devices. Neutrons don't interact strongly and slips through solid material given enough energy (like those resulting for D-T reactions), so any D-T fuelled device necessitates fairly thick blankets and walls to efficiently extract energy. Moreover, one must still shield the outside of the vacuum vessel from neutron irradiation lest we risk the creating of radioisotopes outside the device from neutron bombardment. The obvious solution of using different fuel isn't so simple when one considers the much greater activation energy of those reactions. We can't even break even on D-T, never mind considering continuous operation on D-D or D-He3. Progress is certainly being made but science takes time. And fusion is too expensive to get wrong. It's best to not get too hasty with our expectations. Edit edit: just now, NIF achieved laser Q > 1 which is amazing for science. But it’s still a ways away from economic Q > 1 (where you can actually use it to produce power). But definitely a milestone and not number fudging anymore.

Hi, I've been an engineer on one of the largest laser driven nuclear devices for a couple decades now and while I disagree that actinide contamination of a beryllium multiplier will be a major issue for future machines (several common chemical purification techniques could refine the Be such that it is a nonissue), I liked the video overall and thought it was a good layman's overview to the present state of MFE research problems. I can also offer your viewers a bit of "inside" rumor-mill information on fusion that I don't see being reported anywhere in the press yet that they may be interested in. Perhaps you heard of the record yield shot on the NIF laser in summer of last year that produced 1.3 megajoules of energy for an input of 1.9MJ laser light and that this was 25 times the previous highest record shot taken just a couple years earlier. Well they've been trying to recreate that magic shot for over a year and a half now without success....until 2 weeks ago. The rumor is a shot in the last week of November exceeded 2.5 megajoules in yield. The scientists are in the process of crossing their t's and dotting their i's before going to publication in the coming days and issuing a press release to make sure the result is real, but it's likely to be confirmed and is beyond any shadow of a doubt an unambiguous achievement of thermonuclear ignition and breakeven in the laboratory. This is a MAJOR breakthrough (and that's coming from someone who loathes the overuse of that word) that countless scientists and engineers have devoted their entire careers to attaining without seeing it happen over the last half-century, and now it is done. NIF is of course not a power reactor, just an experiment, and so this is the achievement of scientific breakeven rather than engineering breakeven. But keep in mind there is on the order of roughly 100 times more fuel in one of these capsules yet to be burned, and the laser driver can be increased from its current 1% efficiency to >40% efficient with the use of diode laser pumps and a crystalline lasing material. Even in the very unlikely event the fusion yield of these implosions isn't increased further, this is still a tremendous milestone that brings an entirely new ultra-bright neutron source "tool" for research into the laboratory. EDIT: looks like the cat's out of the bag much earlier than I thought it would be - article is up on the Financial Times titled "Fusion energy breakthrough by US scientists boosts clean power hopes"

I’d like a citation on how fission reactors are uneconomical. I googled it and yeah they’re expensive to start up but they make a lot of power for a long time after startup. Most of the reason for shutting them down recently is fear mongering and concern trolling about nuclear accidents.

Of note: (And this is a common error in media) when you mention cooling of MRI machines, the clip is of a CT machine. This is likely a common error because CT machines are safe to film when not actively scanning, while MRI magnets are always active even when not in use.

Wendover and real engineering fighting each other like siblings always makes me chuckle

In spite of there being 100s of fusion videos on UKposts, you find the perfect balance between highly engaging presentation with juicy technical details and engineering considerations, like Tritium breeding and annual consumption. Well done, Real Engineering.

The thing is that unlike some other technologies were their was something missing we didn't know that made a massive leap forward, theirs doesn't appear to be anything as of yet like that with Fusion. We just have to do the hard work and make out plasma hotter and more stable till its hot enough and stable enough for it to be cost effective.

Just had a nuclear module and this video basically covered the first introduction lesson, thanks for the quick and easy explanation.

Breeder blankets: being a nuclear engineer who has researched tritium breeder blankets, one material being considered is F-Be-Li molten salts. It gives you a combination of features: as a heat transfer fluid, Be for neutron multiplication, and the lithium to generate tritium. It would also maximize tritium generation if enriched to nearly 100 percent as Li-6. Looking forward to your documentary on Helion since I have been reading up on them.

The good thing with fusion always being 20 years away, is that one day you can honestly say it's 20 years early.

At this point, there is no debating the fact that this channel produces the absolute best video content on pure unadulterated engineering so I wont comment on that. I just love the fact that Wendover Productions and Real Engineering, my two favourite channels, are buddies and can engage in friendly "leg-pulling" on UKposts with complete understanding. Cheers guys!! I would love nothing more than the two of you co-creating a video or a series of videos together which have aspects of both engineering and business on some of the most pressing issues/problems. Merry Christmas and a happy new year World :) Much Love!!

Thank you , your the first one I read who explained it properly

I ran a copper alloy foundry for a while, and several of my customers made me sign agreements that said that the facility did not work with ANY beryllium alloys (they are common in electrical contact gear made of copper alloys). I always thought it was because Be is insanely toxic, but in hind sight, there may have been radiological considerations after watching this episode. All of the customers asking for those "no Be" contracting were defense contractors, and it would make sense that they were sensitive to background radiation in their bearing components.

My dad works at LLNL and has worked with top scientists at NIF. He’s the one who brought many of them into the lab by hiring them as his post-docs. These are the smartest people in the world. I knew we could do it from day one. Just didn’t know it would be this soon. It’s been a proud day for my family.

I'm not entirely sure, but my understanding is that He3 (for the most part) does not fuse with another H1 atom to become He4 (it does on occasion, but it's a miniscule amount of the He4 atoms that are produced during fusion in a star). The main branch of the proton proton chain which produces He4 is when 2 He3 atoms fuse together into He4, releasing two H1 atoms.

Years ago I have seen the TEXTOR research reactor. And they were testing materials in the plasma flux. And the story we were told by researchers was that they do a few experiments per week, and all of them destroy the samples. It took them several years to find Tungsten to use for the walls in ITER

This is a great overview of the potential of fusion energy and some of the current challenges, Brian. We're looking forward to welcoming your audience into our facility in next week's video so we can go deeper into our approach to fusion.

I love the jabs all of you educational creators take at each other in your videos. It offers a nice break to laugh during such complicated Videos that contain such vast amounts of information.

The timing of this video was incredibly impeccable

I have worked in ITER for 6 years. Extremely good video.

I want to say a big thank you for highlighting the challenges engineers face in making research breakthroughs a viable solution. I work with research, and they come up with interesting prototypes, but a lot of them won't make it any further due to fundamental problems (be it economic or resource limitations). I don't think many people understand that research this is just a first step in developing a successful product.

I’ve come to realize all of electricity is based on finding the best way to boil water

It's amazing to see how every question we think we have an answer for needs sooo much more thinking.

#HelionEnergy #Fusion directly uses the magnetic field like a piston converting it directly to electricity. An amazing approach.

In light of breaking news in the US on Nuclear Fusion, I find the TIMING of this video very interesting, because it must have taken time to do all the animation in this video, so clearly you were not influenced by the Breaking News. I don't know what to make of all this, so I remain a skeptic until I'm convinced otherwise.

Maybe, just maybe, that fusion power plate I “built” in the original SimCity in the early 90’s could become a reality before I die… and nice touch on that Wendover Productions bit 😂

So if one force is the center connected to the core, there is a second force that pulls the first one on each end pulling one another around the first force but the negative ground in-between the two is actually the negative requirement.

Still is always important as you briefly mentioned that atomic fission is far better then coal, oil and gas since the power that it give us is much more reliable and in the long run more economically efficient (to not talk about safety compared to the others). You should do a whole video about the pros since you're trusted and have quite the following.

i love you get into the real details, not just simply regurgitate the basic pop science stuff

You timed this video perfectly 👌 Not being sarcastic, this highlights what a breakthrough today was. Ignition has happened! I know it’s still years before anything resembling a power generating reactor is realized but I feel the forever 20 years away has today become actually 20 years away, maybe even less. Excited!

As a kid, I did a science fair project on nuclear fusion, and back then nuclear fusion was 20 years in the future. Problem is: this science fair was over 40 years ago.

Every time there's a problem, you can always count on him to explain how we can counter it. He would then list the disadvantages of the counter, then a solution to COUNTER the COUNTER to the original COUNTER.

Oh man, what unfortunate upload time

Just had a mega milestone in human history! 50% more power harvested than used for the reaction. This is actually a pivotal moment in our species' history.

6:24 - Incorrect, the byproduct of the D + T fusion reaction leads to a neutron along with the He nucleus. The neutron is very much a danger radiation hazard. The neutron will be captured by the fusion reactor components and activate those components causing them to become radioactive. The other aspect is also the fact that we actually want that neutron to effectively create more Tritium as well with a Li blanket as part of the reactor structure as Tritium has a ~12 year half life (so it has to be produced).

Having a practical working super conductor might be a stepping stone to undertanding fusion there seems to be a lot of "push" to get things done maybe some "di-hedral" to help pull you up as well 🖖

What timing! I would love an update considering the most recent developments in Fusion energy.

The timing of this 😂

This video really revealed the problems with the tokamak reactor design. We need a different approach for fusion to work.

I stood inside the largest fusion reactor about 6 months ago while on a shop visit…. The one being installed in France… Absolutely amazing.

unfathomable is a fun word, love your channel dude. you have the same vibe as economics explained and I'm here for it. keep up the good work and I wish you success in all your endeavours

Man the animations gets better and better every time, nice work!

Beautifully presented friend

“The Power of The Sun, in my Palm of my Hand” -Doc Ock

US DOE just announced a breakthrough in Fusion. Would love to hear an update of this so-called breakthrough and if they had really solved the fusion problem

This is a great video, and answers several "why this way and not this other way" basic questions which are not obvious and are actually not easy to find online. Great job!

Man I have no clue about nuclear fusion but I have become addicted to learning about it for some reason

tl, dw: The problem with nuclear fusion is that the energy needed to create the conditions needed for fusion is often too high to be practical, and the tritium needed for the process is becoming increasingly rare. However, research is ongoing into developing ways to extract more energy from the fusion reactions than is needed to create them, using high-energy neutrons.

I want to say, your videos are always amazing. I've always loved physics, but after high school I was scared off of engineering, and went to management and economics... Finding your channel has reignited the interest i have in physics and engineering as a whole, and i want to thank you for it. I hope i can find it in myself to actually pursue this interest while i still have the time.

US Department of Energy: Hold my beer

No matter what kind of reactor we make, it the most basic concept, it's just a fancy water boiler. We might have come a long way to react difference energy source but the way we harness that energy is the same as we did 200 years ago, we just heat up water to make steam that is the used to produce mechanical energy that is then converted into electrical energy. If we really want a game changer, we need to figure out a way to turn those fuel straight into the energy source we needed. We need to figure out how to make a nuclear reactor that doesn't use water to create electricity.

Good job!!!

Fantastic video as always!! Your content is just a joy to watch, I get excited whenever I see a new RE video available. Super excited to see the extended Helion video! Your channel motivated me to sign up for Nebula/CuriosityStream and I am super grateful. Thank you!!

I can really see you spending weeks on that script and animations. Through only consuming it we never really apreciate the work behind it, so I want to say THANKS!!!

The brightest minds of several generations working with increasingly more precise methods of measuring reality just to make fire spin. And it's awesome.

An effective solution is to continue fusion research, along with all of the nuclear chemistry to produce needed materials, and build fission power plants. Spent nuclear waste can be easily stored, and some of it, such as depleted uranium and tritium as important uses.

That was really engaging, it went in depth about the challenges and provided information you don't typically hear about fusion

Tbh, this kind of story where it says something like "they do everything differently and achieve goals everybody dreamed of" sounds like a scam... Really looking forward to the documentary!! :) Great work! Thanks for addressing this subject.

Eventually check the mathematics myself, but I've always wondered why neutrons themselves couldn't be kinetically induced to fuse seeing as though there would be no coulomb repulsion. Then by inducing beta decay, we could turn those neutrons into protons while they're already Bound in a nucleus. Kind of like building a ship in a bottle, in which you build the ship first.

The tokamak is a dead end for a fusion reactor. In 40+ years the two big questions still remain unanswered... 1. How do we get heat (energy) out in a usable manner? 2. How do we get waste products out, additional fuel in, all while keeping fusion ongoing? The tokamak being a sealed system can never solve question number 2. What is needed is a new process.

I watched the Engineering The Future episode about Fusion, and found it fascinating and hopefully this renewable energy source can become a reality soon! Please could you make a video about space mining, and why we haven't seen it yet!

This video was perfectly timed

The Tokamak creates a D - shaped magnetic containment field limiting the compression available. Restructuring into a true circular shape, control of the magnetic containment becomes less problematic. By varying the field strength on the confinment coils, the plasma stream can be reshaped into a smoother round shape; allowing a consistant density of plasma. Increasing the magnetic containment and processional frequency, the plasma stream is compressed in diameter thereby increases the molecular density of the plasma stream as well as it's angular velocity.

You nailed it, and yes it will remain a pipe dream for many more decades!

And just one day later..... the big breakthrough was revealed.

Well this aged like fine milk...

1:40 right, the USA and USSR just so happened to think of the same breakthrough at the same time... Operating Paper Clip had nothing to do with that and the Germans already experimenting with this technology 🤔🤦‍♂️

Loved the version of "the swan" at the background.

This video and production quality is PHENOMENAL. Bravo on all the hard work!

Great video! Love the sound design in the animations too!

Don't know where you find 216 - 560 tonnes of Beryllium (Be) needed for the reactor ? I found on Iter website : "The 440 first wall panels will be covered with 8-10 mm of beryllium armour, for a total of approximately 12 tonnes of beryllium distributed over a surface area of about 700 m2.". So Iter is going to use 12t and a little bit more ~12.5t in total if we count other systems that require Be. And even if Iter claims that they'll only need to replace these panels once, that's only 24 tonnes of beryllium. So, where did you find this 216-560 tonnes range ?

Fusion isn't going to be really practical until they develop cold fusion with Helium 3. There are no neutrons or even photons. Just pure kinetic energy on a charged particle, easily turned into electricity. You can't do cold fusion if there are free neutrons and every other reaction produces neutrons, either main or side reactions. There are no side reactions with He3, so no neutrons that need shielding and cooling. He3 has some really interesting cryogenic/magnetic properties that can facilitate getting past the coulomb barrier. We can mine Iron, Titanium and He3 on the Moon to build ships to mine the asteroids. Mars already has 2 captured asteroids to start with.

What a difference 24 hours makes.

I'm really looking forward to the documentary on helion. Full scale documenteries on such topics always excites me.

Your Vid makes me hope, because I, as almost everyone heared the 0:05 problem and did exactly as you predicted: Giving the technology up. I apreciate that you covered both fusion-aproches in two back-to-back Videos. But also the side-informations were new for me, I wasn't cunscious that you need electricity for seawater desalination, I miss-belifed it just burns in the sun. I try to stay positive in the comment because your Vid was very informative and lot of deep pictures satisfying most of our curiosity, so pls not be ofended by my doubtful questions and the complaining about your advertisment. Or just not read further, pretending I only said positive things. 😉Could you say also something about safety, pls? I always wondered if it's not the worst idea ever to summon the literal sun on earth, what if someone gets burned? All say its clean, safe and awesome. But the same was said in the beginning as nuclear fission was invented, now we have tschernobyl and lots of toxic waste. The fusion dream could be just like that: A fake resultin in even more disaster. PS: 16:13 You know its anti-useful delete our games as it deletes all our progress there, making the time we already spent on them even more wasted. Keeping them at least gives us SOMETHING back. One shouldn't have to much apps (in their phone until it safe-capacity is full) in the first place, so your advertised apps easily fit into the mix WITHOUT deleting anything, and ONLY if briliant turns out to be not just as time-wasting as all the games, its usage time will have evolution. But if we encounter your app just as futile s most games, we can go back to OUR games without need to completly new account. We aren't smurfs. You're right in recomending not overloading our phone with games, (mainly its hardly posible to actualy play more than 2 different games without ending with doing nothing else or staying Noob in all the games forever, keeping us from actual fun-as-a-pro in all of them) but wrong in saiing we stop gaming forever. By the way, also youtube would be deleted, nobody watching your Videos. Do you real want that? Also consider that your app and some of the games cost RL-Money, deleting anything before all Money-cost is gamed-until-used-up would drain us for no reason. I just afraid you want to steal my gaming or even my gaming-accounts.

UK JET just produced 69 Megajoules of energy. Or in layman terms enough power for 4-5 hot baths after 40 years of R&D ITER originally costing 5B Euros, has been delayed and quadruple in cost. 20B Euros sure feeds a lot of R&D scientific careers for a few more years.

This is probably the most informative video on fusion that I’ve seen.

And the day this video is posted we get a breakthrough in nuclear fusion technology and are finally able to get net positive energy from a reaction. Life is funny sometimes

The Wendover cameo got me lmao

One basic problem not addressed here is the damage that high speed, highly energetic neutrons create in the fusion rectors first wall. 14 MeV neutrons will knock the atoms in the first wall off their lattice position. The resulting vacancies at these locations will migrate by diffusion and combine to form voids. This leads to rapid, uncontrolled swelling of the materials of construction that sees this neutron flux. When we were experimenting with fission breeder reactors the high energy neutrons were only about 1 MeV. These neutrons caused core structural materials to swell by 16 vol.% in as little as 360 days of operation. All that swelling introduces tremendous internal stresses and can quickly cause failure. Obviously, 14 MeV neutrons are much more energetic than 1 MeV neutrons and therefore capable of inducing damage at a very high rate. This materials problem has to be resolved before a viable commercial fusion reactor can be built.

6:40 Best crossover of the year.

What timing. This video gets released on the same day as a "breakthrough" in Nuclear Fusion is announced.

Great work Thank you

This was posted 2 days before a massive breakthrough in fusion energy(with net positive energy gain) was made at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. We’re on the brink of nearly free energy

My dad worked on nuclear fusion all his academic career , he always said that it will be the future, he's gone now and I miss him lots. He had a TOKOMAT he would go and play with every day. Interestingly this was not in China or Russia but in the west.

Breaking news just one day after your upload: For the first time, scientists were able to generate more energy than they invested in the process. The researchers used 2.1 megajoules of energy, with the help of laser beams, to initiate the fusion of two hydrogen isotopes. The fusion reaction in the facility generated 2.5 megajoules of energy.

It will also allow us to power our way to the planets and possibly the stars. Would make a great source of power for a plasma cannon as well.

So solution is combination of fission and fusion reactors plus renewables. So fission is main reliable backbone and source of tritium for fusion reactor. And elecrolisis for hydrogen and deuterium. Hydrogen will be used for fuel in fuel cell vehicles and deurerium in fusion to make helium for airships.

The timing of this video is nuts!

The timing of this video is kinda wild lol

fusion is a real as a working perpetual motion machine. the requirement is as complex as intricate mechanical contraption. something has to break reality in order for the impossible to become possible.

Rearrange spin orientation to create strong weak force became attractive force rather repulsion before the strong field brings tgem close together by entangle the opposite spin of adjacent proton to attract each other and guide heat extraction as molecules combined so ensure stability