Show Notes
There’s this joke that fusion is always 30 years away. 50 years ago, it was 30 years away. 20 years ago, it was still thirty years away. Today, though… we might be within a decade. We spent the first half of the season on nuclear fission, and the last episode on many of the other energy sources that will play a role in meeting humanity’s growing energy demands and building an Age of Miracles. All of them will be critical. But there’s a growing chorus of people who believe that if we’re going to meet the demand for 3-5x the amount of energy we use today, and do it with clean energy, we’re going to need clean energy. And that as we climb the Kardashev Scale – the framework for measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy it can use – fusion is going to be our ladder. In today's episode, we’ll cover the basics of fusion energy – what it is, how it works, why it matters, how progress is measured, and what the main approaches are.
Thank you to this episode’s guests: Clay Dumas, Andrew Côté, Sehila Gonzalez, Ian Hogarth, and Ryan Umstattd.
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Timestamps: (00:00) The fusion race (06:55) How does fusion work? (16:02) Fusion reactor designs (20:24) History of fusion (25:02) The three approaches to plasma confinement (30:50) The tokamak (35:24) Iter (41:54) Recap (49:01) Revisiting why fusion matters
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More from "Age of Miracles"
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We're kicking off the first of our bonus episodes with Tyler Bernstein, founder and CEO of Zeno Power, where he shares in-depth how they're creating radioisotope power systems for lunar applications. 🔥 Apply to join over 400 founders and Execs in the Turpentine Network: https://hmplogxqz0y.typeform.com/to/JCkphVqj
We can live in an Age of Miracles, but it’s going to take a lot of work. Energy abundance is the most important thing we can work towards as a species. More than simply surviving climate change, we have the opportunity to unlock a new level of human thriving if we can successfully navigate this transition. That’s why we chose to do the first season of Age of Miracles on the energy sources of the future. In this episode of Age of Miracles, the final episode of season one, Packy and Julia reflect on the importance of energy abundance, how nuclear energy helps us unlock it, and what the future might look like when we do. Thank you to all of our guests this season for making this show possible—we're so grateful.