David Kirtley: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and the Future of Energy | Lex Fridman Podcast #485

Author: Lex Fridman - Bewertung: 109x - Views:892

David Kirtley is a nuclear fusion engineer and CEO of Helion Energy, a company working on building the world's first commercial fusion power plant by 2028.

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*Transcript:*

https://lexfridman.com/david-kirtley-transcript



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*EPISODE LINKS:*

David's X: https://x.com/dekirtley

David's LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4qX0KXp

Helion: https://www.helionenergy.com/

Helion's YouTube: https://youtube.com/HelionEnergy



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*OUTLINE:*

0:00 - Introduction

3:14 - Nuclear fission vs fusion

13:14 - Physics of E=mc^2

18:28 - Is nuclear fusion safe?

23:50 - Chernobyl

30:17 - Geopolitics

32:12 - Extreme scenarios

39:07 - How nuclear fusion works

1:11:59 - Extreme temperatures

1:17:00 - Fusion control and simulation

1:28:54 - Electricity from fusion

2:02:59 - First fusion power plant in 2028

2:09:52 - Energy needs of GPU clusters

2:20:16 - Kardashev scale

2:28:12 - Fermi Paradox



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