To be honest this explanation is much clearer than "dumbed down" versions. I mean, this IS dumbed down a lot, but having numbers and key concepts that many other science communicators skip for the sake of attracting "wide audiences" really helps. This video is a gem, as well as the first part

I thought this was a good balance of not being too technical, while still expecting some ground knowledge. Good for people who know the gist of what fusion is and want to learn more about it.

This is really well made! the round numbers definitely helped my comprehension, as well as the regular comparisons to other types of fusion so we get a general idea of the relative differences. I especially liked the graph with the Sun's temperature and fusion rate compared with human-devised fusion methods.

The most surprising thing I learned in astrophysics was that the p-p fusion process gives off like no energy and takes about a million years to happen per reaction (on average). Then the D-T reaction happens within a second

I wouldn’t underestimate people’s curiosity in plasma physics and fusion technology. I don’t think you should minimize details on the technical aspects of the subject, so long as you can explain them well! Please keep it up and produce more when you can! *Subscribed*

please keep providing materials ! This is by far the best video on nuclear fusion there is on youtube. As a solid state physicist I would like to consider switching to this amazing field and those videos will hopefully be my starting point!

A version of this video (and all my other educational ones) without background music is available on my DailyMotion: www.dailymotion.com/video/x892b48 I wonder how many people unsubscribe after this video... Probably a bit too technical, sure to annoy cold fusion proponents and climate change deniers. Oh well.

I came upon your fusion videos today by way of random KZfaq recommendation. And I gotta say, I’m glad I found your channel, because your stuff is really well made. (Even aside from the raw pedagogical content itself, the production values are actually quite solid, even for as “basic” as most of the visuals you present may be. In other words: even if a big chunk of what’s presented is tables and graphs and diagrams, the tables/graphs/diagrams themselves are nicely done, and the animations and other little details are, dare I say, pretty “slick”.) You’re clearly someone with real experience in the field who has a solid grasp on the fundamental principles involved in the field of fusion; and your videos do a great job of striking a balance on complexity, to where someone like me with a pretty generalized undergrad-level background in physics can readily understand what you’re getting across while also not feeling like the video is talking down or just too oversimplified. Your ability to convey reasoned, realistic expectations with a healthy dose of skepticism lends a lot of credibility. I always appreciate seeing videos with real citations, too. And the occasional dash of humor here and there is great-up to and including the incisive bit about climate change denialists. I presume your most recent video likely caused a big spike in interest to your channel; and I’m glad for it, because that made it possible for me to find a real gem: a channel with great videos but disproportionately low visibility. Keep up the good work. 🙂

Wow! This video is amazing! This information is not easily available anywhere in this kind of detail. I really don't know how you were able to simplify the material the way you have. Thank you very much! Would love to hear more of this, do you have a Patreon?

You're amazing dude. Very happy I found this channel, though you're crushing my hopes of us developing near-infinite energy, it's really nice to get an intimate understanding of how the science works.

You have one of the best channels on youtube. Thank you.

This is the honestly the best. Thank you. The world has been in need of a proper crash course on fusion energy for some time.

Thanks for the video. I know next to nothing about fusion, and your last video was a great introduction - very well explained and easy to understand. Glad I found your channel as these videos come out

Going through the playlist, and actually learning some new stuff. Thank you.

When they fuse mass within a Tokamak reactor, how do they get the fused mass out? Wouldn't the fused mass eventually dilute your reaction medium until the probability of fusing becomes unsustainable?

Very concise and informative!

Was going to give this video a thumbs up after watching anyway, but seeing "helium mix optimal" forced me to pause and do it immediately

Excellent content. Perfect amount of technicality while being understandable. I’m subscribed and notifications are on. Looking forward to more videos

The video was well made, thank you!

No complaints from this stickler for accuracy in fusion reporting, a fine treatment all around. Though the climate change thing at the end seemed a bit weirdly tacked on. I would add though for those wishing to know more about WHY plasmas in thermo disequilibrium can never produce power, the relevant important paper here is the 1995 PhD thesis by MIT student Todd Rider: "Fundamental limitations on plasma fusion systems not in thermodynamic equilibrium".

Beautifully written and delivered. This is such a gift. Videos like this are exactly why I am grateful that services such as KZfaq exist. Thank you!

I really enjoyed the video. So valuable to see actual numbers and graphs that aid in understanding. I knew the p+B cros section was small, but this is the first time I have seen it compared to D+T so clearly. Plus the huge difference in energy gain. Guess I can cross off Eric Lerner and Focus Fusion. Too bad, I think his approach is very interesting.

this channel is better than most out there, I'd say channel size is 1% of what it should be

I'd love to hear what your thoughts are regarding wendelstein 7x, or in general stellerators vs tomakaws. Great video thanks!

"I am also in full agreement with the scientific consensus that human activity is rapidly altering the climate of our planet. I don't recommend subscribing to this channel if you think otherwise" Wouldnt you rather climate change deniers expose themselves to more scientifically accurate media? i know your videos havent been targeted at changing peoples opinion on the topic, but IMO i'd rather have deniers spend their time watching videos on this channel than listening to joe rogan.

Very clear and concise. Thank you!

I’m new to the community but love the fusion content keep it coming!

Very much enjoyed the explanation, thank you for the time and effort you put into it! Always wonderful to have a complex topic broken down in an easy and accessible way, lets one gets one foot in the door and figure out where to poke around next!

Best video on explanation of fusion I've seen.

Intuitively, I prefer the aneutronic concept as it provides a more direct path to electrical generation. Thxs to your video I see that makes for a steep climb to fusion.

Studying quantum physics has given me a basic understanding which allowed me to appreciate how well this analysis boils down fusion to a few important factors without getting lost in the weeds.

Great video, youtube should recommend your channel more.

I liked the gesture at the end. Take a clear stance and everybody knows, what he is subscribing to. The video is so attractive, you don't see the punch coming. Also: The people you mention are contrarians. Many don't shy away from accusing others of stupidity or even evil intent. Be blunt with those, they don't get respectful discourse anyway and will suspect you to be untruthful, if you try to establish productive communication.

This is fascinating. I agree with the others -- this is a perfect mix of technical and approachable. Thank you very much!

Ahhhh the mention of cold fusion makes me feel young again. Flashes of the late 80's come rushing back :) - you make me feel like spring has sprung!!!

Thanks for the clear explanation of thermonuclear fusion vs. beam-target and less useful variations. It helps me understand why confinement of the plasma is so hard, it has to be thermonuclear and sustained and controlled and kept away from the wall. Plus, you delve into the tritium processing issues, please make a whole video about the technology needed for breeding blankets and tritium processing.

Good video that goes more in depth and yet is very accesible

I am so glad your channel exists! I have never come across such high quality explanations of fusion

Great series of explanations. And don't think the Kirov helium mix reference went unnoticed! ;)

Great video and a good balance between not too technical but also not too basic. Very happy I found your channel :)

Re lattice fusion. There is a loophole. If the ground state of interstitial protons/deuterons is a resonant dipole-dipole mode (only possible if the effective well potential is sufficiently shallow, as in Pd and nickel [111] surface), the Jastrow repulsion factor disappears for the tails of the 2-particle correlation amplitude. Not many people know this...haha.

Excellent work here mate, well done. Very clearly explained!

Awesome video, great explanation! Really puts into the perspective how much work needs to be done. The ratio of how many fusions don't happen and instead the particles get deflected is dreadful. But perhaps it's just a great field to improve upon, just like semiconductors have improved immensely over the last 30 years. One has to hope, fusion will one way be viable, with tools currently unknown to us. On a closing note, I am not sure it was necessary to call out climate deniers at the end of the video. Such claims only serve to further divide and alienate the two camps and is not much related to the topic of the video. (I fully believe climate change is real)

These videos are phenomenal. Thank you for your work.

Excellent video. Understandable for someone in a different field

Very good videos, I have watched your 3 part fusion series. I would love to see a deeper dive into the lattice confinement fusion if there is enough data to cover the topic yet. Is that possible for a part 4 or 5?

I absolutely looooved this

Excellent video with really clear graphics. You could explain why proton proton fusion has such a small cross section, instead of just giving a figure of 10-25 , and why the sun has to be so large . I have heard it said that the energy density in the sun is about that of a garden compost heap. Is this true? I have now subscribed

A very good video on fusion, very simple, informative and with cited sources! Absolutely brilliant! I instantly subscribed.

A wonderful video. Your explanation has allowed me to understand why companies such as First Light fusion might not work. The DeLorean statement is, however, heartbreaking.

Thank you, I now understand this field a bit more even though quite a bit went over my head, I was left thinking that a Fusion Physicists role has a lot in common with herding cats 🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈 Great job, keep the videos coming 👍

Finally a good video about fusion! and someone that knows what a barn (unit) is!

So glad you made the follow ups

This item is a balance between technical explanations and graphs to explain the challenges involved with Fusion. Fusion does work in the Sun, but trying to re-create this reaction (with a positive energy output) is very challenging. The article is quite interesting.

Brillant outro. Just had to toss that in there.

Very nicely done. Lots of good facts shown with clear graphics and narration. I've been following the general topic for "a long time" but somehow missed the points about few explicit collisions lead to actual fusions but the momentum and KE goes from fast particles to slow ones anyway. For fusors, I thought the main problem was ions banging into the grid, draining KE from the beam and melting the grid.

Thankyou for a very succinct explanation of the whys and wherefores. I look forward to hearing more from you.

If accelerating particles or generating gamma rays is the issue, can't we simply use products of fission reactions? For example, in a lattice-confinement schema, can't we pump deuterium into fuel rods to act as a neutron moderator while also fusing and releasing more energy?

LOL I find your dark sense of humour refreshing :D

Thank you very much for the video! I'm looking forward to the next one!

Fantastic video. I learned a lot more about fusion.

Outstanding, earned my subscription. Content was really relevant and concise. We have been banging away at engineering hot plasma fusion for a long time. Given that fusion is a QM process, have there been attempts to increase nucleus tunnelling through the Coulomb barrier by increasing the de Broglie wavelength of the reactants ?. Is this what’s occurring in muon catalysed D-T fusion ?.

i wish you discussed the difference between tokamaks and stellarators. there are also so much more proposals like lasers shooting at tiny hydrogen pellets and liquid sodium cavitation reactors, it's very hard to find any actual information on their characteristics behind all the marketing fluff.

Great video, very educational. My only criticism is the music is very distracting. Maybe it isn't to others, but I prefer to concentrate on video without any distraction.

Awesome stuff! Very interesting. Felt like it was a 2 minute video

Another excellent post

thank you so much for uploading!

Thanks for sharing your knowledge and expertise.

Let me just check if I understand: the reason why higher temperatures are favorable is because that then makes the atoms more energetic (they move around more) and because of that they are more likely to collide with one another. Right? What I may be a little confused about is how the temperature can effect the effective cross-section of the atoms…. If at all. If someone can please help me or clarify any fault in my understanding, I would very much appreciate it.

Really great content! Well done! 👏

Another great video. Can anyone explain exactly how, if it ever happens, the above unity energy could be collected to generate electricity?

Thank you for your videos.

It seems the history of science is full of scientific consensus.

Very well put. After a few views, I think I got it.

Excellent video. One thing I do not understand, however, is why couloumb scattering is a problem in a fusor. Will the energy exchanged between couloumb-scattering atoms not be preserved since the atoms are not scattered away and out of the system? And if it is contained within the vessel, where else can the energy go? Couloumb scattering is elastic as far as I can remember.

Consider: Protons are not static. Spins, velocity, phase of two protons must be complimentary for the protons to unlock the coulomb path matrix (not a barrier) The “fusing” is actually “a melding”, a sharing of quantum waves that results in one or more of the waves becoming redundant ( single waves in aneutronic fusion )

I heard you say "every division on the y axis, the cross section changes by ten times" at 5:41. I looked it over but the increment of the y axis seems to be 100 times instead of ten. (0.01, 1, 100.) Hopefully someone can tell me if I made a mistake somewhere.

Outstanding

Thanks man, great explanation. Based on the progress made by different laboratories and the upcoming ITER, do you think fusion will be ever, I don't know, in like a century, a truly revolutionary power source?

Great video

A review of the triple product in relation to the various proposed schemes would be nice. And don't forget Lerner's LPPFusion which claims to hold the record.

Very useful!!

I loved the video!

can we use antimatter to fuse atoms ? it will overcome the repulsion problem

so in a thermonuclear device, particle beams are used to heat the bulk plasma so then temperature can fuse them together? just how hot can you make it this way? i thought RF fields are used to heat it up

Thanks for the video. Just one thing I'd like to ask - you mentioned that nickel is the most stable yet when I searched youtube about all the space mumbo jumbo, a theory says that everything will be Iron? How is that possible? (I don't understand nuclear physics beyond the simple concepts so perhaps it's a dumb question) Also, do I see kirov reporting at 9:00?

Very good

Hello. Your work is insightful and well made. While your expertise lies with fusion are you also knowledgeable in matters of fission? If so there would be some interesting topics too.

I don't think it is as discussed *in what form* energy is released from a nuclear reaction. Imagine a proton from the right colliding with a neutron from the left, both with the same momentum with respect to each other. If a deuteron (pn bound state) is formed, in which form the energy from the mass defect (between deuteron and p + n) is released? how would the release of that energy still conserve total monentum?

MORE!

Seems like it would be easier to engineer/develop a beam target that would have fusion rate of 1/100 vs. trying to control thermo nuclear plasmas in a magnetic bottle... ? Is there a plot that shows the Q for different beam targets?

Thanks excellent video!!! Where can I find how to plot the Rutherford scattering on top of the cross section diagram?

Cold fusion is real and has been demonstrated in a lab (muon-catalyzed cold fusion). It's just hard to imagine it ever being anywhere close to efficient enough to produce usable energy.

Good video, but unfortunately I’m one of those that holds the theory that man made global warming is real but statistically not significant compared to other factors and we need to stop polluting the planet with man made gasses ( like the ones used in solar cell production, 17,000x more of a GHG than CO2 and increasing @ 11% per year) yet will continue watching your videos!

Hi, what are your thoughts on "dense plasma focus" route that LPPFusion is pursuing? And a related question, what are your thoughts on molten salt reactors, will we be able to use our "spent" fuel for some thousands of years? Thanks

I guess two intersecting beams of deuterium nuclei have been explored. The beam intersection would be localized in space, and the deflected nuclei could be gathered with a "magnetic lens" such as those used in plasma thrusters.

10:45 OK, I'm guessing here: The yellow one is an ion channel; if it's in plasma then it would be from a disintegrating cell. The other two look like enzymes of some sort?

Proton-Boron fusion, is it easier to get the required higher temperatures by simply using bigger devices? If temperature weren't a factor that would be the best option due to no electrons and commonly available ingredients, right? What would a 7 million square kilometer tokamak get us to in terms of temperature?

13:36 what about Muon-Catalyzed Fusion?

I think it would be a good idea to build a modern advanced nuclear energy reactor (LFTR, small form reactor, etc.) to power the electrical grid system that feeds the experimental fusion plant so we won't be wasting electricity from a power grid that's ran off of non efficient fossil fuel sources, etc. Then we can more freely experiment with a electrical power source. Plus, the advancements of nuclear energy options has improved so much that I really hope we start utilizing it because our tech, knowledge, safety measures, engineering, material science knowledge, etc. Have advanced so far that we can and should utilize this energy option and prove that we can overcome our past traumas that solely came from us not fully understanding how to go about nuclear energy but I truly believe that we have the ability, knowledge and understanding to embrace nuclear energy options and greatly improve our electrical grid and our qualities of Life.