Fusion Energy

Transcript EP. 2: Our Future, Transformed: Fusion Energy

Astrophysicist Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi, Visiting Robinson Professor, explains how fusion energy might transform the way we live, and how the Artemis moon project is a stepping stone to technological advances that will help us on Earth.

Dr. Gregory Washington:

Just weeks ago, scientists reported creating a fusion reaction where it produced more energy than it took to start the reaction. How’d they do it?

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi:

Great question. They spent a lot of money. They spent a lot of years. They got really smart people working on the problem.

Dr. Gregory Washington:

Maybe we can flip this a little bit and talk a little bit about, what is the potential? Obviously, we know the challenges we’re having currently with fossil fuels. But what is the potential of this type of energy? Why should all of these students here be excited about it?

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi:

Right, so if this gets to the point of being, you know, going from experiments to actual working rectors, then it’s real. This is what stars do, right? Energy is the currency of the universe. But you look at a star. They pump out copious amounts of energy for billions of years. How are they doing it? Fusion. So if we could do the same thing here on Earth, we have the same potential. Now, there is still some competition from fission reactors; they’re getting better, too, they’re getting less waste with new technologies, but this one promises to not have the problems of nuclear waste. And, also, it’s important to recognize that there’s different approaches to fusion. So one can lead to a better method, you know, that becomes even cleaner and even more energy efficient. And there’s even a possibility of one type of reactor that can give you, like, energy out with virtually no energy in.

Dr. Gregory Washington:

Wow.

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi:

Yeah.

Dr. Gregory Washington:

And the byproducts?

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi:

So the byproducts, it really depends, right? So if you look at the two main types. You have inertial confinement, where you hit a fuel pellet with lasers. And there’s also magnetic confinement, okay? So the problem with both of these reactors is either the fuel waste is radioactive or they’re shooting out neutrons, right? So you don’t want neutrons slamming into your DNA; let’s just put it that way, right? Neutrons are sneaky because they don’t have an electric charge, so they can just go wherever they want and not get repelled by the electric charges of nuclei or the electron clouds that surround them, and that can lead to, you know, in your DNA, for example, it hits one type of atom, changes it, because what happens is once that neutron is in a nucleus it’ll decay and become a proton. So now you’ve changed from one type of atom to a new type of atom that’s radioactive. So it’s not like perfect yet, but, you know, you can screen these things. If you have, say, a meter of concrete, then you can stop those neutrons from escaping and now you have a much better, cleaner energy source.

Dr. Gregory Washington:

That does bring up the safety concerns, right?

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi:

It does.

Dr. Gregory Washington:

If something were to happen and those neutrons were to escape, then you have.

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi:

Yeah, and so with internal confinement fusion you have a cleaner system. The other problem is that the magnetic confinement when sometimes the magnetic field just completely breaks down and dumps all of its energy in a process called quenching. And these things weigh tens of thousands of tons, right? So, you know, all kind of badness is going to happen if that thing blows up, right? So, you know, there’s various approaches, like, the standard magnetic confinement machine is called a tokamak, but there’s another type called a stellarator, which is going to come a generation later. The tokamak is simpler but bigger, heavier, and not quite as efficient. But the tokamak is sort of like a stepping stone to working stellarators, which weigh, like, much less and are much more efficient.

Dr. Gregory Washington:

So the potential of clean energy is indeed real.

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi:

It is 100 percent real. So what they’ve done is a major leap forward. Now, you can go and have a dedicated facility that goes from, you know, inefficient lasers, inefficient experimental process to an efficient process, and then you get to that point where you get that clean, abundant energy.

Dr. Gregory Washington:

So, in essence, the power of the sun can be harnessed.

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi:

Absolutely, the power ... you know what I call it, because nuclear has become a bad word? Natural mass energy. Because, you know, if you look at the nuclear constituents, protons and neutrons, okay? Now, you’ve heard, ‘Oh, a proton is made of two up quarks and a down quark.’ If you add up the masses of the two up quarks and a down quark, it’s only one percent the mass of the proton. What’s the other 99 percent? That’s energy in the gluons, the field that binds them together. So what we’re really doing is tapping into that concentrated energy inside the nucleus. So suppose the good doctor and I, President Washington and I, are protons. If you weigh both of us, right, together we may weigh 400 pounds. But suppose now you fuse us, make us Siamese twins. We won’t weigh 400 pounds once we’re combined, we’ll weigh only, say, 360. Where’d that other 10 percent go? That’s that energy that was freed, right? Yeah, yeah. So that’s, you know, that’s the power of the sun. That’s the power of a fusion weapon that we use. But instead of having uncontrolled reaction, we now have controlled reactions that we can control ourselves and use it to our own advantage.

Dr. Gregory Washington:

Does this mean the end of fossil fuels?

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi:

A lot of people will say yes, I say no, and here’s why. If you think about it, I give you a gallon of liquid and that thing can move two tons, you know, 20, 30 miles really fast, okay? So fossil fuels are, they have an energy density and they are incredibly portable, all right? So the question is, can batteries get to the point when they can replace fossil fuels and have a similar energy density. It may not be realized in the lifetimes of you and me, who are in our early 20s, but for our grandchildren, right? That very well could be the world they live in.

Dr. Gregory Washington:

This has been outstanding, and thank you. And thank you all for attending the first episode of Mason: Our Future Transformed.