Can Nuclear Fusion Reactors Save The World?

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Can Nuclear Fusion Reactors Save The World?"

Stuff You Should Know (iHeartPodcasts) — June 19, 2026 Hosts: Josh Clark & Charles W. "Chuck" Bryant

---

Main Theme & Purpose

In this feature-length episode, Josh and Chuck explore the science behind nuclear fusion reactors, focusing on whether fusion could solve the world’s energy crisis. They take a deep dive into the large-scale international ITER project, discuss the physics of fusion versus fission, talk through the challenges of containing plasma, and speculate about the promises and pitfalls of this futuristic energy source. The conversation also covers historical milestones, rival approaches in fusion research, and some fun tangents—all with the pair’s trademark accessible style, humor, and clarity.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction to ITER & The Promise of Fusion ([01:31]–[06:21])

• Josh introduces ITER ("International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor"), a massive, multi-billion dollar fusion project in France, likened to the pyramids at Giza in terms of human ambition ([04:36]).
• Main promise: If ITER succeeds, it could unlock "cheap, abundant, climate-friendly energy for all" ([01:18]).
• The project’s timeline has slipped: originally aiming for 2025, now projected for 2034 ([01:24]).
• Quote:

  "If we can figure out nuclear fusion, Chuck... The world's energy problems will be solved for millennia."
  – Josh Clark ([05:53])

2. Fusion vs. Fission: The Science & Potential ([06:21]–[08:52])

• Fusion: joining atomic nuclei to release energy, mimicking the sun's power source.
• Fission: splitting nuclei—a process already used in today's nuclear power plants.
• Fusion offers much more energy per kilogram of fuel vs. fission (4–7x more, and millions of times more than coal).
• Quote:

  “Fusion produces four times more energy than fission...and ten million times the energy as coal.”
  – Chuck Bryant ([08:06]–[08:19])

3. Fusion’s Challenges: Net Energy & Materials ([09:14]–[11:42])

• Two main technical hurdles:
  1. Achieving net positive energy output (more energy out than in).
  2. Designing materials that can withstand the hostile plasma environment.
• To date, "every single thermonuclear reactor that's ever been built has just been impressing people with knowledge."
  – Josh Clark ([11:45])
• ITER aims to produce 500 megawatts of fusion power; current reactors produce only 10 megawatts net gain, for brief windows ([12:10]).

4. How Fusion Works: Plasma & Fundamental Physics ([13:46]–[24:45])

• Fusion occurs in the plasma state, where atoms are ionized at extreme temperatures.
• Achieving fusion requires temperatures hotter than the sun’s core (over 100 million Kelvin), because Earth can’t replicate stellar gravity.
• The goal: get nuclei close enough for the “strong force” to overcome electromagnetic repulsion and fuse ([22:07]).
• Fuel focus:
  • Deuterium-Tritium fusion (achievable, but tritium is radioactive and rare).
  • Deuterium-Deuterium fusion (ultimate aim: uses fuel from seawater, low radioactivity, but requires even higher temperatures).

5. Reactor Designs—Tokamaks, Stellarators, and More ([15:34]–[37:22])

• Historical context: Parallel developments in the US (Stellarator, figure 8 design) and the USSR (Tokamak, donut/torus design).
• The Tokamak (donut/torus-shaped) has dominated for 50+ years: electromagnetic rings confine the plasma.
• Innovations: Adding internal electromagnetic fields to stabilize and further heat the plasma.
• Lockheed Martin’s "Skunk Works" claims a much smaller, high-beta compact fusion device, but skepticism abounds due to lack of released data ([33:46]–[36:04]).
• Quote:

  “If one company can figure out how to create a thermonuclear fusion reactor here on Earth that's scalable, that fits in a truck... then that person would be very wealthy.”
  – Josh Clark ([34:17])

6. Alternative Approaches: Inertial Confinement with Lasers ([39:32]–[41:03])

• National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore Lab uses 192 laser beams to implode a tiny fuel pellet, creating fusion via inertial confinement.
• Josh teases Chuck:

  “That’s your preference of the two?” – Josh
  “Well, actually, whichever one works is going to be my preference.” – Chuck ([40:48]–[40:55])

• Inertial confinement achieves extremely high pressures in tiny, fleeting bursts.

7. Cold Fusion & False Starts ([41:34]–[42:59])

• The allure of room-temperature (“cold”) fusion: no need for extreme materials science.
• High-profile claims in the 1980s proved unrepeatable, but research continues with extremely limited net energy yield.

8. Economics & International Collaboration ([43:02]–[44:03])

• The ITER project is financed by major international stakeholders: the EU, US, South Korea, China, and Russia.
• US commitment is comparatively small.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "It's like trying to hold jelly with rubber bands." – On confining plasma ([15:40])
• “There are a few downsides. Tritium is radioactive, for one.” – Chuck ([24:54])
• “We have to get them within 1 times 10 to the negative 15 meters of one another.” – Chuck, on proton proximity for fusion ([22:14])
• Extended riffing on the sun’s powers:

  “The sun fuses 620 million metric tons of hydrogen every second...enough power to light up New York City for 100 years.” – Chuck ([09:50])

• “There are two big stumbling blocks: temperature and pressure.” – Chuck ([29:28])
• “If we can just figure this out, we will have a... totally green, clean, no pollution, no greenhouse emissions [fuel].” – Josh ([06:04])
• “Maybe if we told protons we were creating energy, they’d be more willing to fuse together.” – Chuck, jokingly personifying atoms ([22:31])
• “It's just creating steam... all you're still trying to do is create steam.” – Josh ([24:10])

---

Detailed Timeline & Key Segments

• [01:31] – Introduction to ITER, the “star in a bottle” analogy, project cost/timeline
• [04:36] – Conceptualizing fusion’s scale: Giza Pyramids comparison
• [06:21] – Fusion explained versus fission, the sun as inspiration
• [08:06] – Energy impact: fusion vs. fission vs. coal
• [10:13] – The sun’s ongoing natural fusion
• [13:46] – Plasma: the fourth state of matter
• [15:34] – US vs. USSR innovations: Stellarator vs. Tokamak
• [17:23] – Temperatures required, why hotter than the sun’s core
• [20:02] – Physics: overcoming electromagnetic repulsion
• [24:10] – Practicals: extracting energy as steam
• [29:28] – Two fundamental technical barriers: temperature & pressure
• [30:48] – Magnetic confinement (tokamak / ITER) details
• [33:46] – Lockheed Martin’s claims, scientific skepticism
• [39:32] – Inertial confinement: lasers at NIF/LLNL
• [41:34] – Cold fusion’s garbled legacy
• [43:02] – Funding and international cooperation

---

Additional Fun Facts and Tangents

• Historical side-notes: Stellarator’s origins, the “star in a box” built by a 16-year-old named Taylor Wilson ([10:34], [44:38]).
• ITER’s gigantic cost: $50 billion and counting ([05:26]).
• Parties to ITER: US, EU, South Korea, China, Russia—collaborative big science ([43:02]–[43:51]).
• Accessible explanations: humor on fusion/fission “buttons,” analogies to horses moving the ISS, and comparisons to everyday background radiation ([06:38], [24:10], [27:34]).
• Public outreach: recommended further reading (“Star in a Bottle” article in The New Yorker) ([07:42], [44:10]).

---

Final Takeaway

Fusion, if achieved at commercial scale, could provide nearly limitless, clean energy. While projects like ITER hold promise, daunting scientific and engineering challenges remain. But as Chuck puts it:

“Whichever one works is going to be my preference.”
([40:54])

For now, nuclear fusion remains “the future that’s always just beyond the horizon,” but progress continues—with genuine hope for a breakthrough that just might save the world.

---

Want More?

• [07:42] – Read: “Star in a Bottle” (New Yorker article by Rafi Khatchadourian)
• [44:16] – See: Taylor Wilson’s TED Talk (the teenage backyard fusion researcher)
• [44:16] – Try: Instructables for amateur fusion builds (not net-positive, but educational)

---

This summary presents key themes, context, and highlights in the tone and language of Josh & Chuck, focusing solely on episode content and omitting intros, ads, and listener segments.

Transcript

[Podcast Host]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

Guaranteed Human

[Advertisement Voice]

Sun's out so dads are too.

[Chuck Bryant]

This Father's Day at Lowe's, shop the

[Advertisement Voice]

gear that'll make his summer get two

[Chuck Bryant]

free select Dewalt power tools when you buy a select 5amp hour battery kit

[Advertisement Voice]

for weekends in the garage. Plus get a free Blackstone 6 piece stainless steel griddle kit when you buy

[Josh Clark]

a select Blackstone griddle.

[Chuck Bryant]

Our best lineup is here at Lowe's,

[Advertisement Voice]

valid through 624 while supplies last.

[Chuck Bryant]

Selection varies by location.

[Podcast Host]

Mom, can I have Lingokids? Zach Lingokids please?

[Chuck Bryant]

When did we become the Lingokids house?

[Podcast Host]

No idea. Last week it was dinosaurs. This week it was Lingokids.

[Josh Clark]

Why Lingokids?

[Podcast Host]

Because it's the best thing ever. We can play games with astronauts, wild animals and superheroes.

[Advertisement Voice]

With more than 4,000 interactive games, songs and shows, LingoKids is the number one entertainment platform for young kids.

[Podcast Host]

So so no dinosaurs and dinosaurs, mango cakes.

[Advertisement Voice]

Everything kids love.

[Josh Clark]

Download it for free. Do you want to find a stress free way to buy your next car? Start at CarMax and shop your way. If you want to browse with confidence, get pre qualified online with no impact on your credit score and shop cars within your budget. From luxury cars to family rides, CarMax has options for almost every price range, including more than 25,000 cars priced under $25,000. So hey, want to get started? Just head to CarMax.com for details and get pre qualified today. Want to drive CarMax? Hey everybody, I'm back. I first heard about Iter, which is the nuclear fusion reactor being built in Europe from a New Yorker article called Star in a Bottle by Rafi Kachadourian. If you find this episode floats your boat, I highly recommend reading that article too. The whole idea of what they're trying to do, which is to contain plasma, that crazy intense fourth state of matter that the sun and lightning are made up of, into a chamber here on earth where it has no business being really, really caught my attention. And if they can do it, extremely cheap, abundant, climate friendly energy will be unlocked for all. And who knows what will follow after that. The Eider group was shooting for 2025 to start, but recently changed their date to 2034. You can pass the time while you wait by enjoying this episode.

[Podcast Host]

Welcome to stuff you should know from howstuffworks.com.

[Josh Clark]

Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry, who's barrel laughs. And this is stuff you should know.

[Chuck Bryant]

She gave Us. The old quick start.

[Josh Clark]

Yep.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like, I don't want to hear it anymore. I'm pressing record.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. She knows that it shuts me up. Or at least cuts off whatever conversation I'm chiding her with.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was great. I'm telling you. If we could release the 20 seconds before each show as its own show. Yeah, it would be terrible. No one would care.

[Josh Clark]

No, we'd think it was funny, but everybody else would be like, you edit this out for a reason.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yep.

[Josh Clark]

So, Chuck, how you doing?

[Chuck Bryant]

Great.

[Josh Clark]

Have you ever been to Az en Provence, France? No.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is that a place?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I haven't.

[Josh Clark]

It is a rustic little town in Provence. And it is strangely, maybe even ironically, in the non Hipster use, but in the actual. Yeah, it's a real word definition of the word. Also site to one of the most futuristic engineering projects humanity's ever undertaken.

[Chuck Bryant]

Meat or Meep. That's the sound it makes.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I thought you were mocking me.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, no, no.

[Josh Clark]

For being thrilled by the thought of this thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, it is kind of funny that this thing's in a sleepy little town. It's like Hamlet, maybe even CERN in Switzerland. That's not in the city, is it?

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Chuck Bryant]

You can't build these things in cities. That's why they're in sleepy towns.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because no one knows they're being poisoned.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And you can push the mirror around pretty easy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Exactly.

[Josh Clark]

This thing is called ITER I T E R. Which is an acronym for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

Which really gets the point across.

[Chuck Bryant]

Did you know the word acronym is an acronym? That's not true.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

I just want to see how long you would try and sort it out in your head.

[Josh Clark]

I would have kept going 30 seconds maybe.

[Chuck Bryant]

That would have been a great joke. I could have just kept it going. Like. I'm not going to tell you.

[Josh Clark]

I would have been. I would have maybe 15 seconds. Because you would have gotten that much more. So I wouldn't have looked it up. I would have figured it out myself. Anyway, Iter is this colossal engineering project. Somebody compared it to the pyramids at Giza.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, wow.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. That's exciting stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

The thing is, it's a nuclear fusion reactor and it's the culmination of decades of attempts to create a nuclear fusion reactor. Yes, because we got fission down. And we'll talk about the difference in a minute.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But fusion has been very elusive and nowhere is it more apparent than in the ITER project.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Because this thing is going to cost approximately $50 billion when it's completed. $50 billion. They started in 1993. They're hoping to turn on the switch in 2020, but it's looking like 2023 or 2024, and it won't be starting to produce anything until the 2000-40s at the earliest.

[Chuck Bryant]

So what's the point?

[Josh Clark]

I'll tell you the point.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

If we can figure out nuclear fusion, Chuck, the world's literally the. The world's energy problems will be solved for millennia.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

If we can just figure this out, we will have a almost no radioactivity nuclear option, almost limitless fuel supply, totally

[Chuck Bryant]

green, clean, no pollution, no greenhouse emissions.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And with plenty of energy to spare using the already extant infrastructure. We have to supply power. Like you don't have to completely rebuild everything you can just to the electrical cables outside. It'll be the exact same thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. You can just go to a nuclear fission reactor and press the button that says fusion and it'll all of a sudden join atoms instead of split them.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. It's that easy. That's what the difference is. With fission, you're splitting atoms and you're gaining energy from that. With fusion, it's. You're smacking them together and you're gaining even more energy because you're exploiting a different fundamental force.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And that. I was being coy. Clearly there is no button because we would have pushed it a long time ago.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And when I say no pollution and no greenhouse emissions before the pedantic among you right in. We know that just even shipping something from here to there causes pollution and greenhouse emissions.

[Josh Clark]

Good, good.

[Chuck Bryant]

But we're talking about the output of the reactor itself is very green.

[Josh Clark]

So. So if you want to know all about iter, well, we're going to talk about it here or there, because it's just. You just can't talk about nuclear fusion reactors and not mention iter. But if you want to know a lot about iter, there is a really great article called A Star in a Bottle and it's by a person named Rafi Kachaduran or Durian. And it was written in the New Yorker not too long ago.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And man, it is every detail you want to know about the ITER project. Written really well and it's long, but it's totally worth the read.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It's all over the news lately and for good reason. You said a lot of energy. I have a stat kind of throw back to the old days here per kilogram of fuel. If we're talking fusion and fission.

[Josh Clark]

Lay it on me.

[Chuck Bryant]

Fusion produces four times more energy than fission.

[Josh Clark]

I saw seven.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's probably one of those things where it's like four to five to ten or something.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

I found four times. And 10 million times more than coal.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

10 million times the energy as coal. And that's with equal fuel per kilogram of fuel.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's just, I mean, it is the future.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And you can say, well, that's great because we want 18 million times the amount of power that coal provides. You can say, well, there, buddy. You can also bring it backwards because you can supply an awful lot of power then with a lot less fuel. Yeah. Like, the advantages of nuclear fusion are mind boggling.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure. And very few downsides. Which we'll get to, of course. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, like, really genuinely. It's not just like some like here's all the great stuff about it and just don't pay attention to all these like, really horrible aspects. Like there really aren't too many downsides. The downside is we are at this moment incapable of successfully creating a commercially viable nuclear fusion reactor.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

But we've got an understanding of what the challenges are ahead of us thanks to the last 50 or so years of really, really, really smart physicists working on the problem of nuclear fusion. And the great inspiration for nuclear fusion is the sun. The sun and all stars like it are enormous, immense nuclear fusion reactors. So if you are building a nuclear fusion reactor here on Earth, you're essentially creating a star. And that is a very difficult thing to do, it turns out.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, the sun creates. I know we talked about the sun in our very famous episode on the Sun. The sun creates 620 million metric tons of. It fuses 620 million metric tons of hydrogen at its core every second. So every second at the sun's core, it produces enough power to light up New York City for 100 years.

[Josh Clark]

New York City, every second.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that's the sun. And all we want to do is do the same thing on a much smaller scale. That's all. I think the guy, there's this kid who built one in his garage and he said he wanted to. Chris. All this TED talk, he wanted to create a star in a box is what he called it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I've seen it. Like this New Yorker called it a star in a bottle.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, this kid's name is Taylor Wilson and he's a nuclear physicist and he's like 16.

[Josh Clark]

Wow.

[Chuck Bryant]

And he created. Yeah, he created a successful one. And the Key though is not to be able to create the fusion. The key is to be able to harness enough plasma, which we'll get to at a high enough temperature and density for there to be a net power gain.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

You can create fusion, but in order to get out more than you're putting in is the only thing that matters because what you want to do is create electricity.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. That's. There's two huge challenges right now to nuclear fusion. We pretty much understand it enough to start it going and get energy from it. The problem is material science isn't at a point where it can build containment vessel to really house a thermonuclear reactor.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And then the other big obstacle is like you said, net energy gain. Like if you're putting in as much or more energy than you're getting out of your nuclear reactor, then you're wasting energy and that's the opposite of what you're supposed to be doing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. They're not just trying to impress people with their science knowledge.

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Chuck Bryant]

But up to the trying to create energy.

[Josh Clark]

Up to now though, Chuck, like every single thermonuclear reactor that's ever been built has just been impressing people with knowledge. Like they haven't gotten any net energy out of a single thermonuclear fusion reactor.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, see, I have that. They have. Right now they're up to like 10. Presently they're at 10 megawatts.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, is that right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And that's more than they put into it.

[Chuck Bryant]

A net gain of 10 megawatts.

[Josh Clark]

Currently everything I saw was when we turn this thing on, it should have a net gain.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But I didn't see that they've actually done it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, 10 megawatts now and Iter is going to produce 500 megawatts.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Once it's fully operational.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So the, the, the next challenge then is this. If we're already getting a net energy gain out of it, then that means that the net energy gain is, it's not sustainable. Like you said, you want to keep the thing going so you don't have to keep starting from scratch to power it up. You want it to basically be self sustaining. So you just have to add a little more fuel to it.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's the dream.

[Josh Clark]

So let's talk about the history of fusion reactors, Chuck.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It kind of goes back to this guy named Lyman spitzer. He's a 36 year old Princeton astrophysicist and this was in the 1950s and he was recruited to work on the H bomb and and went out and got a copy of a paper that was released from Germany, I think. Right.

[Josh Clark]

That Argentina.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, Argentina, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

They announced that they had.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, how did I get that wrong?

[Josh Clark]

They had successfully built a fusion reactor.

[Advertisement Voice]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So he gets this paper, goes on a ski trip, starts thinking about how he can do this, takes a little break from his job building the H bomb, and figures out, you know, I think it's possible if we can harness this plasma. I guess we should just go ahead and define what plasma is, since we keep saying it.

[Josh Clark]

Well, there's the normal three energy states that we're familiar with. Water, solid and gas, liquid, solid and gas. Right, right. There's a fourth one. It's plasma. And plasma is basically like an energetic gas where the temperatures are so high that whatever atoms you put into it, the electrons are stripped off and allowed to move around freely.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Basically the surface of the sun is plasma. That's what plasma is. It's a gas. It's a roiling gas that's really hard to control and is really unpredictable, which

[Chuck Bryant]

is when you see the sun like that rippling, wavy looking thing. That's plasma.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And the reason the sun manages to stay together is because it is enormously massive and has a ton of gravity at its core.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, we don't have that advantage here on Earth.

[Josh Clark]

We don't. So we try to make up for that by increasing. Increasing the temperature.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And he was onto it way back then in the 1950s. If we can just harness this, if we can just get it hot enough. And he created a tabletop device called the Stellarator. And it was in a figure eight position. It was a pipe and a figure eight. And this would keep things from banging into walls? Theoretically, yeah. And he was on to something because, well, we'll get to Lockheed later, but they're using a similar device now, a figure eight.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah, yeah. I didn't realize that was a figure 8.

[Chuck Bryant]

It is. Which is weird because what they eventually found out was that a donut shape was really the key to get that net gain.

[Josh Clark]

So the, and the, the reason that they found out that a donut shape worked was because in the, I think the late 50s, the US had run up against the wall. They were saying like, okay, we've got this, but we can't control the plasma because think about it, what you're trying to do is create a star inside something, but it can't touch any of the vessel that it's in or else it'll just completely erupt. It Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. They compared it to holding jelly in rubber bands.

[Josh Clark]

Right. It was just like, you can't. They couldn't figure out how to control the plasma. Yeah. So when the US Ran up against this wall, they said, hey, rest of the world, we're going to declassify what Lyman Spitz. Lyman Spitzer.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Has been doing. Help us out and like, we'll share if you guys share. And it turns out that the Russians had already come up against this problem and licked it. They figured out that if you put the thing in a. What's called a toroidal shape. A donut shape.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Using electromagnets, you can tame the plasma, essentially. And the, the, the donut shape itself was pretty ingenious. But the real stroke of genius was by running electromagnets in rings around the donut. So it's like you have a donut and you put a bunch of earrings around it, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And those are electromagnets. So you're creating an electromagnetic force field which contains the plasma, but then you also put an electromagnetic force field in the middle of the plasma. So not only does it heat it up to the temperatures you want, and it also stabilizes it further. So the Russians had invented what they call the tokamak, which is this donut shaped nuclear fusion reactor that basically became the standard for the next 50 years or so.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, you basically could achieve a really dense, super hot plasma. And we'll get into temperatures and stuff in a bit, but since we can't create that kind of pressure that they have in the sun due to their gravity. Their gravity. The sun's gravity, you know, the sun and all those people.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like you said, we had to make up for it here on Earth with temperatures.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Because apparently if you are in a. In the middle of a nuclear reactor, a nuclear fusion reactor, you're going to find that the temperatures inside are about six times hotter than the core of the sun. Not even the surface of the sun. The core of the sun. And the reason why it has to be so much hotter is because, like you said, we can't replicate that density. We can get to those temperatures that we need, but we can't get to that density. So we have to make up for it. So we'll talk about kind of the physics of what's going on here and why you have to have high temperatures and what we're making up for with density and everything right after this.

[Podcast Host]

Mom, can I have Lingokids? Dad, Lingokids, please.

[Chuck Bryant]

When did we become the Lingokids?

[Podcast Host]

House no idea. Last week it was dinosaurs. This week it's Lingokids.

[Josh Clark]

Why Lingokids?

[Podcast Host]

Because it's the best thing ever. We can play games with astronauts, wild animals and superheroes.

[Advertisement Voice]

With more than 4,000 interactive games, songs and shows, LingoKids is the number one entertainment platform for young kids.

[Podcast Host]

So no dinosaurs and dinosaurs.

[Josh Clark]

Lingokids.

[Advertisement Voice]

Everything kids love.

[Josh Clark]

Download it for free.

[Podcast Host]

The following ad is sponsored by Pets Best Insurance Services. You knew right away. He's perfect. The one for you. Those puppy dog eyes. Eyes that cute little button nose. You don't even mind the drool. When you find your perfect match in a dog or cat, the love is unconditional. Your budget, on the other hand, has realistic limits. Help protect your heart and your wallet with pet insurance from Pets Best. With plans starting from less than a dollar a day, you can get up to 90% cash back on eligible vet bills. Pets Best makes it easy to pick a plan that works for you and your bank account. Find the perfect match for your Perfect [e-mail] Pet insurance products offered and administered by Pets Best Insurance Services, LLC are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company or Independence American Insurance Company for terms and conditions, visit www.petsbest.com. policy products are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company, Independence American Insurance Company or Ms. Transverse Insurance Company and administered by Pets Best Insurance Services, LLC. $1.00 a day premium based on 2024 average new policyholder data for accident and illness plans. Pets age 0 to 10.

[Advertisement Voice]

They track they target prices can climb. Startpage is the private search engine that helps keep what you look up online from becoming a price tag. Try [e-mail] that's startpage.com

[Josh Clark]

so, Chuck, we're talking about nuclear fusion, and it's actually surprisingly understandable at its most basic core.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, you're fusing atoms. It's not the hardest thing in the world to wrap your head around.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, so with fission, we're splitting atoms. You're taking an atom and you're splitting its nuclei apart. You're splitting the neutrons and the protons apart from one another. And when you do that, one of the four fundamental forces, electromagnetic force, pushes them away and you get this burst of energy. Yeah, with fusion, you're taking nuclei from different atoms. You're taking protons and neutrons, and you're smashing them together. And. And when you do that, you're unleashing what's called the strong force, which, appropriately enough is stronger than electromagnetic force, which is why nuclear fusion yields more energy than nuclear fission.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Einstein himself said, you know, each time you smash these things together, you're going to lose a little bit of mass. And that little bit of mass is a ton of energy, as it turns out.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. The famous E equals MC squared.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And I don't think he realized in 1905. Or maybe Einstein did.

[Josh Clark]

Einstein probably did.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, Einstein probably did.

[Josh Clark]

I would guess he did.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So the problem is, even though it is very easy just smash some protons together, there is a tremendous amount of resistance to that smashing together.

[Chuck Bryant]

They don't want to smash together.

[Josh Clark]

No. Because it's just like if you take a magnet, two magnets.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And you put the positive poles toward one another, they repel one another. Right. Yeah, same thing. That's. That's the same principle on an atomic level, too. If you take protons, which are positively charged particles, and try to put them together, they repel one another. And the closer you get them together, the stronger the repellent force is, the electromagnetic force.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

But if you can get them close enough, the electromagnetic force is overcome by that strong force, the strong nuclear force, and they become bound together. Because the strong force is. Is that one of those four fundamental forces of the universe, and that is the force that keeps atoms together. And that force is stronger than the force that repels, like charged particles.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And when you talk about close, they need to be within 1 times 10 to the negative 15 meters of 1 another.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So that is, if you'll indulge me.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure. Are you going to read a bunch of zeros?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. It's 000-000-0000,000 meters apart.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

That's how close they have to be.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. To get them to accept one another and defuse. I think I have a theory that if they're not fusing because they think they're going to be made into a bomb, and if we told them that we were creating energy, they might be more willing to fuse together.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Because protons are peaceniks. Everybody knows that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

So when they do fuse together. Right. When you do cross that threshold and the strong force takes over and overcomes the electromagnetic force, like we said, a tremendous amount of energy is released, and it's released in part in the form of neutrinos, neutrons. Right. Which are neutral particles which suddenly start carrying a tremendous amount of kinetic energy. So let's say you have one atom, you got another atom, and they're both like, I'm not getting close to you. We're not Going to get. Okay, we got together.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

That force that, that mass that's displaced is transferred through the neutron that gets kicked off of the atom, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And is carried out. Now, a neutron doesn't have any kind of positive or negative charge. It's neutral. It's a neutron. Which means that it can pass through the very electromagnetic fields that are keeping this plasma where this reaction is taking place together. Once that happens, Chuck, it can go out to what's called a blanket wall in a thermonuclear reactor, warm it, and then that heat is transferred into a water cooling system. The water is warmed up, turns steam, which generates a. Which I guess moves the turbine.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And then all of a sudden the turbine's producing electricity.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It's funny how just it gets so complex, but all you're still trying to do is create steam. Yeah, it's like turn a turbine.

[Josh Clark]

It's like hooking the ISS up to a horse.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

You know, move it over there.

[Chuck Bryant]

So there are a few types of fusion reactions. The ultimate goal right now what we can do on a small scale is what's called a deuterium tritium reaction. Yeah, that's the one that we can currently achieve. That's one atom of deuterium and one atom of tritium combining to form a helium four atom and a neutron.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

The ultimate goal. I mean, that's good and that'll create a lot of energy. But there are a few downsides. Tritium is radioactive, for one.

[Josh Clark]

You have to mine it from lithium.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And lithium is fairly rare.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure. The ultimate goal is to reach deuterium deuterium reactions, which is two deuterium atoms combining to form that helium 3 in a neutron. And you can get that from the seawater. It's abundant, almost limitless. And I couldn't find this, but I think clean water can be a residual effect of this. Am I wrong?

[Josh Clark]

I don't know if it'. Swell. You're probably not injecting water, but to get the deuterium. I mean, desalination plants are the key to the future as far as supplying the world with fresh water.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I thought I saw somewhere where it was an actual byproduct.

[Josh Clark]

Is that right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. But then I couldn't find it, so I'm not sure if that's right or not.

[Josh Clark]

You know what, you just jogged my memory. I feel like in a hydrogen powered car, water is one of the byproducts, so.

[Chuck Bryant]

Maybe so.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, don't quote me on that though. At the very least, It's a great way to create energy.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And you also can get tritium from helium. I believe. So even now with the deuterium tritium reactions that we're working on, there's already a workaround, you know, like you can create a thermonuclear reactor that's a breeding reactor to where the byproduct helium can be used to harvest more of the fuel. You're using tritium.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And aren't we running low on helium?

[Josh Clark]

We are. Which is like. Remember when we were talking about the dirigible, the zeppelin? Which one was it? Well, how blimps work.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And then a long time ago we did one on the Mars turbine. Yeah. Mars turbine requires helium.

[Josh Clark]

But yes, there is very clearly a helium shortage. And the idea that we're just using it for party balloons rather than this.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Is scary. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And don't be confused. We say things like deuterium and it sounds super complex. All that is hydrogen with an extra neutron.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's an isotope.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So there's three isotopes of hydrogen and they're all still the same element. They're all still hydrogen, but they have different configurations as far as their neutrons go. So protium is a hydrogen isotope with one proton and no neutrons. Deuterium is a hydrogen isotope with one proton and one neutron. And tritium is a hydrogen isotope with one proton and two neutrons. And like you said, tritium is radioactive, but the beauty of it is you need very, very, very little of it to fuel a nuclear fusion reactor and it becomes a stable helium, a non radioactive helium in the reactor. So you don't have this leftover radioactive fuel. Isn't that awesome?

[Chuck Bryant]

I think they said there's an it would be equivalent of the radiation we just see every day and walking around on the street. Right.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. The background radiation. I believe I saw that too. The thing is, the parts to the nuclear reactor themselves will become irradiated over time. Apparently, though, compared to the kind of radioactivity that's generated from nuclear fission, this stuff you could just disassemble and bury in the desert for 100 years, go back and dig back up and it'll be totally inactivated. So the stuff that is radioactive is extraordinarily manageable.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it is. And like I said, we don't want to make it sound like this is perfect. There is, they do predict the short to medium term radioactive waste problem and they say that's due to activation of the structural materials.

[Josh Clark]

Right. The actual thermonuclear Device itself.

[Advertisement Voice]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And while you don't need much tritium, even a few grams of tritium is problematic. But hopefully, you know, there's no accident. Although they say accidents with these. If you just turn the power off, it stops everything.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's not like a chain reaction can occur like a fission reactor. And there's not out of your control.

[Josh Clark]

There's not a meltdown. There's. Which also, if you want to know more about that, go listen to our How Nuclear Meltdowns Work episode. That was pretty good. We released it right after Fukushima.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But it applies to all fission reactors.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

So the goal is ultimately deuterium. Deuterium reactions where you're sound clean. It does. And the reason why is again, it's abundant fuel. You can get it from desalinating seawater. And then secondly, it's not radioactive at any point, so it wouldn't make the, the thermonuclear reactor itself radioactive.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

The reason why we're not doing that already is because we can't achieve the temperatures necessary.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. Which leads us to the two big stumbling blocks. Everyone knows this is a great idea. There's no one out there saying, oh, I don't know about this fusion thing. Creating a star in a box sounds kind of weird. The problem is the barriers that we have here on planet Earth, which is one temperature and two, pressure. We have achieved. The temperature, which is the requirements is 100 million kelvin. And like you said, that's about six times hotter than the sun's core, which is pretty intense. And the other is pressure. Like we said, we need to get them within. I'm not going to make you read all those zeros again, but smash them that close in order to fuse. And since we don't have that kind of mass and gravity that the sun does, there are a few pretty genius ways that we're working around that.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, there's basically two as it stands. And then the Lockheed Martin one, which a lot of people are skeptical about, we should say is kind of a variation on the. On one theme. But there's basically, there's two ways that we figured out to create nuclear fusion reactors so far. One is using magnetic confinement and. And the other is using inertial confinement. So magnetic confinement uses that tokamak technology.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's sort of like cern, you know, it's using magnets to create pressure. I guess in CERN's case, you're using it to create speed.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

But in this case, it's to create pressure.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So what you're doing is you have a, you have this doughnut shaped chamber and that's your reaction chamber. And then again, rings around the donut that go around the inside and outside of the donut. I know, I'm kind of imagining wonderful donuts.

[Chuck Bryant]

We're going Homer Simpson here.

[Josh Clark]

They create electromagnetic fields. Now remember, this plasma is hydrogen gas that's been heated up to a temperature so hot that the electrons just float off and move around freely.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

And because of this higher temperature, these particles have become really, really energized. So they're moving and bouncing all over the place and the pressure's building up. But because electrons are negatively charged and because protons are positively charged, if you use alternating electromagnetic fields, you can contain this plasma so that this incredibly hot gas that's six times hotter than the core of the sun can be contained within the electromagnetic fields.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And we talked about power in, power out. You'd need about 70 megawatts of power to create this to start this fusion reaction, but you're going to yield about 500 megawatts.

[Josh Clark]

That's the ITER project, I believe.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's the ITER. And that's, that's only a 300 to 500 second reaction. But like we said earlier, the eventual goal is that it's sustaining itself.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Which is just a beautiful concept.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So basically what they do is they have the, the gas is injected into the chamber, the hydrogen gas, and then there's the electromagnetic fields that are holding the plasma in place. But then, remember we said the Russians figured out that if you put an electromagnetic field in the middle of the whole thing, it will stabilize that plasma, but it also heats it up. So it serves this double purpose. And then just to add a little extra temperature, they shoot it with microwaves and some other stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And then heat it up. And then as the plasma goes crazy and all the fusion energy is released, the neutrons move their way outside of the electromagnetic field into the blanket, which they heat up and the heat energy is transferred to power that turbine.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

Move the horse down the, down the

[Chuck Bryant]

lane and it's just creating steam.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And I mean, that's like, that's what ITER is doing right now. That's what they're trying to prove. And then also, as ITER is spending billions and billions and billions of dollars and running into tons of delays. Yeah, it's an amazing project. Lockheed Martin basically just came out and said, oh, by the way, this thing that you're trying to do, that's going to be 100ft tall and require staggering amounts of energy and money, we're doing one that puts out the same amount of energy as yours, but it's a tenth of the size, which means it's almost out of the gate. Commercially viable.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. That is their Skunk Works division of Lockheed. And they announced this like three days ago here in mid October. And they've gotten a lot of blowback from the scientific community because they wouldn't release data. They don't have data. They said it's a high beta device right now and kind of shut out the scientific community as far as questions go. And every scientist that I saw interviewed for this said, yeah, they're trying to get some attention, to get some partners to join in.

[Josh Clark]

Well, yeah, plus it makes you want to run out and buy Lockheed Martin stock. Because if one company can figure out how to create a thermonuclear fusion reactor here on Earth that's scalable, that fits in a truck. Yeah. Then that person would be very wealthy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So it's a dubious claim, but they are, you know, they're working toward a good thing. I'm not like poo pooing the whole thing.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

But until they have hard data and like some proof, then I think the scientific community's got their arms folded right now.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And I mean, they have released some details. It's just not detailed enough for a scientist. It's detailed enough for Aviation Week.

[Chuck Bryant]

I bought it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. They wrote an article on it. And basically what they, what the guy they interviewed was saying was that over at Iter, they have a low beta ratio, which is the amount of electromagnetism that you need compared to the amount of plasma you can put into the chamber.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So there's like 5% plasma to 95% electromagnetivity.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Or electromagnetism just to keep this plasma thing from just blowing up.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Because that can happen.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

They might not melt down, but if everything went wrong, the whole thing could blow up.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, and you know, you know what an atomic bomb is? It's. It's a fusion reaction.

[Josh Clark]

Right. This is a lot of those all put together in 100 foot tower. This guy was saying that the beta ratio for their machine is like 100%. So what he was saying is they figured out a way. And again, it's not very detailed, but they figured out a way to contain the plasma, but in a way that also allows it to expand.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Because if you think about it, the more plasma there is, the more hydrogen atoms there are. The more hydrogen atoms, more isotopes there are, the more nuclear fusion reactions or events you can have, the more energy you can yield. Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So they're saying they figured out how to contain the plasma, but again, like you said, the scientific community is really skeptical because they think it's just a PR stunt.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I think they made the mistake by saying they invented a magicometer to make it all happen and don't ask about it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, right.

[Chuck Bryant]

I did see though that where Lockheed was using the figure 8 stellarator configuration.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And I think that's true. I tried found a couple of more sources that were kind of vague about it and I think the details on it are just vague, period. But I don't know why they would abandon the donut shaped if the figure 8 was, you know, 1950s technology that sort of been disproven.

[Josh Clark]

Well, supposedly their whole jam was that the. Even in the donut, in the tokamak.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

This donut shaped reactor plasma has a tendency to just move around and make its way out.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

Like it's not. It's still not fully contained.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And they're using something basically mirrors to catch the plasma that's getting out and moving it to parts of the electromagnetic field that are less dense. So there's a bunch of protons in this part of the field. That field is being strained, but then maybe there's not that many protons over here. So they use mirrors to direct the protons to the low density area.

[Chuck Bryant]

Just keep it all even of the field.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, to even the whole thing out. Which makes sense. But again, if you're not releasing data, don't expect the scientific community to buy it.

[Chuck Bryant]

You got that right.

[Josh Clark]

So there's another way to build a thermonuclear reactor that's currently being worked on too. And we'll talk about that right after this stuff. You should know.

[Podcast Host]

Mom, can I have Lingokids? Dad, Lingokids, please.

[Chuck Bryant]

When did we become the Lingokids house?

[Podcast Host]

No idea. Last week it was dinosaurs. This week it's Lingokids.

[Josh Clark]

Why Lingokids?

[Podcast Host]

Because it's the best thing ever. We can play games with astronauts, wild animals and superheroes.

[Advertisement Voice]

With more than 4,000 interactive games, songs and shows, LingoKids is the number one entertainment platform for young kids.

[Podcast Host]

So no dinosaurs and dinosaurs, Lingokids, everything kids love.

[Josh Clark]

Download it for free.

[Podcast Host]

The following ad is sponsored by pet's Best Insurance Services. You knew right away. He's perfect. The one for you. Those puppy dog eyes, that cute little button nose. You don't even mind the drool. When you find your perfect match in a dog or cat, the love is unconditional. Your budget, on the other hand, has realistic limits. Help protect your heart and your wallet with pet insurance from Pets Best. With plans starting from less than a dollar a day, you can get up to 90% cash back on eligible vet bills. Pets Best makes it easy to pick a plan that works for you and your bank account. Find the perfect match for your Perfect [e-mail] Pet insurance products offered and administered by Pets Best Insurance Services, LLC are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company or Independence American Insurance Company for terms and conditions, visit www.petsbest.com. policy products are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company, Independence American Insurance Company or Ms. Transverse Insurance Company and administered by Pets Best Insurance Services, LLC. $1.00 a day premium based on 2024 average new policyholder data for accident and illness plans. Pets age 0 to 10.

[Advertisement Voice]

AI is taking over the Internet. Made up facts, technology thinking for you. StartPage is the private search engine that still finds what you need without the noise. Try [e-mail] that's startpage.com stuff you should know.

[Chuck Bryant]

So, buddy, magnetic confinement is pretty neat. And we talked about that and that's understandable and I love it. I want to date it, but internal confinement, I want to marry because it has lasers. At the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, they are actually using laser beams. They have a device called the NIF device where they focus 192 laser beams on a single point in a 10 meter diameter target chamber called a hallraum. That's got to be German. And basically inside that target chamber they have a little tiny pea sized pellet of deuterium, tritium and a little plastic cylinder. It's funny that it can be plastic somehow.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, you'd think it would introduce like impurities or something into it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Or it would need to be like iron or something. I don't know. It just seems unstable. But that is 1.8 million joules of power from these lasers. That's going to heat the cylinder up, generate some X rays, and then that radiation will convert that pellet into plasma and compress it. So again, they're creating plasma, but instead of smashing it together with magnets, they're superheating it with lasers.

[Josh Clark]

So that's your. That's your. Your money's on that one. You like that?

[Chuck Bryant]

I just think it's Neat, because I like lasers.

[Josh Clark]

But that's your preference of the two?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes. Well, actually, whichever one works is going to be my preference.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that one will yield 50 to 100 times more energy. More energy out than energy put in.

[Josh Clark]

I gotcha.

[Chuck Bryant]

So that's, that's a good goal.

[Josh Clark]

So yeah, I guess basically the whole point of magnetic confinement is that if you can do without electromagnets, you're, you're, you have a more simple and elegant.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, you mean the internal confinement or inertial. Inertial.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's what I mean. Inertial confinement. Basically the whole thing just happens so fast. You don't even need these magnets to confine plasma because you're not creating the sustained ignition. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I might have said internal confinement before, by the way.

[Josh Clark]

It's inertial.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I know.

[Josh Clark]

That's all right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So what about cold fusion, buddy? That was all the rage. I remember back in the 80s.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, because in 1989 some researchers said that they successfully created nuclear fusion using just room temperature stuff like palladium. They took palladium and banana peels and beer cans, pretty much heavy water which had deuterium in it, and they put the whole thing together and created nuclear fusion without the high temperatures. Hence the name cold fusion. And if you can get around these high temperatures, then you work out the whole material science problem. Right. And if you work out the whole material science problem, then this is, it's a desirable thing to have cold fusion. The problem is a lot of scientists tried to replicate these guys findings and weren't able to. So basically they were kicked to the curb.

[Chuck Bryant]

So does that mean has cold fusion been abandoned or are people still trying to get on that train?

[Josh Clark]

No. In 2005 some UCLA researchers basically said we think we might have this thing down. And they did. It's something called pyroelectric crystal fusion. Pyroelectric fusion.

[Chuck Bryant]

These are crystal.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Or basically it's the same result. They, they do what would be called cold fusion. The problem is it has a negative net energy yield. You have to put in a lot more energy than you get out of it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. Well that's no good.

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Chuck Bryant]

Iter seems like they are making headway more than Lockheed. Despite their claim. They are being like we said, it's in Europe and it's being financed by a bunch of different countries. The US is in, but they're kicking in, I think the least amount, only about 17 million euros. Last year. Of course we contributed dollars, but they're giving it to us in euros.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think the EU spends the most, about 80 million. South Korea and China kicked in about 20 and 19 million respectively each. And I saw earlier where Russia was involved, but then I didn't see what they had contributed financially.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, they're definitely involved.

[Chuck Bryant]

Are they still alright? Well, maybe they're just. We're writing a chit for them for later. They'll just pay us back.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

But it is a very expensive prospect and you need, you know, countries getting together for something like this is not the kind of thing that like the US can take on on their own, I guess. Unless you're Lockheed Martin.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And you don't have to prove your data.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So this nuclear fusion, we'll see what happens.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. You got anything else, man?

[Josh Clark]

No, I just say everybody should go read Star in a Bottle on the New Yorker. It's really, really good.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's pretty neat there. You can also go to Instructables. If you want to build a nuclear fusion reactor in your garage, you can do. So you're not going to create energy because like we said, you're going to be putting more than you get out. But there are instructions and that kid did it. His is a little more advanced than the Instructables one obviously, but yeah, nice.

[Josh Clark]

The 16 year old kid.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he's amazing. His. His was legit. He's done more than that too. His TED talk was pretty impressive.

[Advertisement Voice]

Cool.

[Chuck Bryant]

He's like working on with Home and Security already for various projects that have nothing to do with this.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I'm sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Well, if you want to learn more about nuclear fusion, you can type those words in the search bar howstuffworks.com and since I said that, it's time for listener mail. And Chuck, before we do listener mail, I want to give a shout out to our KIVA team. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

For those of you who don't know, we did a podcast many years back on Microlending and Kiva K I V A.org is a organization where you can loan entrepreneurs and well, it used to be just developing countries. Now you can do it here in North America as well. $20 at a time that you can get paid back for. You can get your money back if you're not happy or you can just keep reloaning that money and it helps them get their small business going. And we started Kiva Team many years ago and it is killing it. So you got some stats for us.

[Josh Clark]

So basically as of October 19th, we have loaned our team has loaned $2.7 million to people in developing countries.

[Chuck Bryant]

Nice.

[Josh Clark]

And in the US here and there. And the big one is, we've exceeded 100,000 loans by our team. Our team only has 8,079 members. So to all 8,079 of you guys, thank you. Way to go. Congratulations.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes. And thanks as always to Glenn and Sonia, our de facto kiva. What would you call them? Presidents.

[Josh Clark]

Presidents.

[Chuck Bryant]

Presidents of the Stuff youf Should Know team.

[Josh Clark]

Yep.

[Chuck Bryant]

Captains of the Stuff youf Should Know team.

[Josh Clark]

No, presidents.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. Presidents.

[Josh Clark]

Presidentes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Glenn's like, yes, President.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. They've been really keeping it going for us.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And sometimes we'll forget and Glenn will nudge us. Hey, guys, remember the KIVA team? We should mention it.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

The next goal we have is for $3 million in loans and we're on our way to it, so come join us. We don't begrudge people who are late to the party. Just go to kiva.org teams stuffyou should know and you can sign up.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

So now it's time for listener mail, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Indeed, sir. I'm going to call this skywriting Follow up from Australia. Hey, guys. Recently listened to how skywriting works and it reminded me of something. Although this may not be suitable for listener mail, which I disagree actually, because I'm reading it clearly. I was maybe 8 or 9 when a few friends and I were out on the street playing and doing things that nine year olds would do. So awkward to say that.

[Josh Clark]

So you're not replacing something right there?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, they were just doing nine year old things.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

Good clean fun. We looked up and saw a plane starting to skyright and were instantly intrigued at what was being written. They started with an H and then an O. This went on for maybe 20 minutes until finally the word Hooters was scrawled across the sky, albeit backwards. So I guess they had the Hooters restaurant chicken wing chain in Australia.

[Josh Clark]

I guess they're a rich kid.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Really immature rich kid.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Or that. My brain couldn't comprehend how this person managed to screw up writing a word backwards. The best reason my childish brain could come up is that skywriting took place somewhere between us and a group of people that it was initially intended for that I just thought it was written up and downwards rather than across the sky. Until now, I never understood or bothered to learn why it was like that. So thank you for keeping the podcast.

[Josh Clark]

Great.

[Chuck Bryant]

Allowing me to figure that out. That is from Marlon. Oh, boy. Hapurachi. Chi Hapurachi.

[Josh Clark]

Nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

Have you ever seen a word like that.

[Josh Clark]

Hapurachi.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hapurachi Marlin from Sydney, Australia. Man.

[Josh Clark]

Thanks a lot, Marlon.

[Chuck Bryant]

H. And that's Marlon with an A, even.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Mar. Lan.

[Josh Clark]

Huh? Well, thanks a lot, Marlon. We're gonna say it like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

If you have an awesome last name and want to share it with us, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com stuffyou should know. You can send us an email to [e-mail] and as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyou should know.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

[Podcast Host]

Mom, can I have Lingokids? Dad? Lingokids, please.

[Chuck Bryant]

When did we become the Lingokids house?

[Podcast Host]

No idea. Last week it was dinosaurs. This week it's Lingokids.

[Josh Clark]

Why Lingokids?

[Podcast Host]

Because it's the best thing ever. We can play games with astronauts, wild animals, and superheroes.

[Advertisement Voice]

With more than 4,000 interactive games, songs, and shows, LingoKids is the number one entertainment platform for young kids.

[Podcast Host]

So no dinosaurs and dinosaurs.

[Josh Clark]

Lingokids.

[Chuck Bryant]

Everything kids love, download it for free. Hey, everyone, it's Kalpen. I'm inviting you to join the best sounding book club you've ever heard with my podcast, Hearsay, The Audible, and iHeart Audiobook Club. Every episode, I nerd out with amazing guests and dive into the best new audiobooks available on Audible.

[Advertisement Voice]

It's the book club for your ears.

[Chuck Bryant]

Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart audiobook club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Advertisement Voice]

Ever look something up online and then see ads for it everywhere? That's not a coincidence. Startpage is the private search engine that finds what you need without anyone finding out you asked. Try startpage.com that's startpage.com.

[Podcast Host]

this is an iHeart podcast.

[Josh Clark]

Guaranteed Human.