This is the best video I've ever seen on the current state of fusion power research. Excellent talk! It's amazing how little press this critical research gets.

This is probably the best talk about fusion that I have heard so far. This stuff is great.

Fantastically clear and yet not too dumbed down. Once sustained energy-positive fusion is realised, *then* we'll *really* be around 50 years from using it as a viable power source. It will probably take that long to solve the problems of fuel production, economically viable construction methods, maintainable design, NIMBY syndrome etc.

Outstanding presentation. And although I have a degree in EE, I don't know the physics of fusion all that well and had an easy time following. And it is very promising to see that High Temp super conductors show so much promise in increasing high field fusions potential, especially at the University scale of research projects

Most organized, clear and efficient talk of this kind I have seen.

Engineer Zach is right mentioning that perception is a main obstacle in getting new things .Perception is very difficult to change. But Europe has manage to overcome it regarding fusion building ITER. They are seeing prospects for it in the future .

A great video that lays out fusion and the current state in a way that could help inform people on it and help tackle the fusion tech scams and click bait that seems to crop up like weeds. It was well worth the time to watch :)

Sheer gold dust, great information and brilliantly put together and presented too - riveting stuff!

Excellent presentation Zach. Thanks for sharing. Fusion- Getting us on track for the humanitarian work ahead.

Excellent talk. Best summary I've seen yet.

Wow this really answers all those details they tend to exclude in pop science. Also very well presented and comprehensible even for a layman. Thanks for this upload

I have used a plasma cutter a few times and it really demonstrates the challenges of trying to contain such an incredibly hot energy. The cutters plasma stream is only around 20.000 Celsius and slices through inches thick steel like a hot knife through butter so I can only imagine what an incredible hurdle 1.5 million C plasma is to overcome.

Would have loved to have a mention of the Focus Fusion approach. LPP has achieved high enough temperature to use pB11 fuel in a pulsed configuration and is currently working its way through the engineering problems required to continue scaling down the plasma (increased density).

Fantastic video. Kudos to Mr. Hartwig.

Great speech! Deserve way more views, since public awareness is the key to make fusion happen. The more vocal the public is about desiring fusion power plants, the more investors and governments may take action. Relying solely on the academic and government research sectors would be too sluggish. We humans should grasp the timely opportunity to at least resolve the crisis of climate change.

I hope I get to see Fusion Power in my lifetime.

This best part of this is the honesty of not wanting to collect funds, but the interest in understanding and sharing information. Fusion power plant was suppose to be accomplished back in 1980's. It is looking more like a history book written than viable energy. Somehow, there is something missing here that could simplify the process (need another Eistien). Very good presentation.

We can achieve fusion by harnessing the power of 200db chair squeaks.

best fusion presentation I have seen.

Thanks Zach for the excellent talk!

I also found this video extremely enlightening. Had no idea that a mini revolution was taking place in fusion power development thanks to new superconductors. When I first heard about Lockheed's portable fusion reactor it seemed like pie in the sky. Not so dismissive anymore. Exciting times.

I am a great admirer of the work you and Prof Whyte's team are doing at MIT. Anything that demonstrates a Q>1 sooner than ITER is very welcome to me, as it could be the spark (no pun intended here) that ignites an explosion in fusion investment and progress and that is good for everyone. This video is a nice sales pitch, but I think that your presentation is oversimplifying things a little and as a result is treating competing confinement concepts a bit unfairly. E.g. the results of competing experiments have to be put into context of what part of the underlying physics they were meant to test and how much budget was available to achieve those results. Often it is only one aspect of the underlying physics that really needs testing in order to really validate a concept. Sometimes several different experiments were used to test individual parts of the Lawson criterion (for cost reasons). The results achieved by Helion, Sam Cohens FRC and and TAE (among others) should be looked at with this taken into account. Many times it was limitations of the experiment (and its scope) and not the underlying physics that prevent a higher Q. Also worth mentioning that most magnetic confinement concepts will also befit (at least to some extent) from the increased magnetic fields achievable with REBCO HTSCs. This is not limited to Tokamaks. I also thought that Park's recent publications regarding the high beta experiments at EMC2 sort of invalidated Rider? Please don't take this the wrong way. I like what you guys are doing. I just think that the other approaches do deserve to be treated fairly.

Very informative and well presented at least for the layman such as myself.

Wow what a great talk in fusion. Surprised that iter is already antiquated. Wonder if they're considering upgrading the magnets.

Very interesting lecture. Thank you for sharing.

Good presentation. Thank you!

fantastic talk

I'm gunna make Zach my Ph.D. advisor one day jeez, so inspirational!

Great lecture!

Thank you

Why are there no recent updates? Can more detailed ARC/SPARC timelines be shared?

Direct Energy Conversion ! I have been keeping an eye on fusion research for about twenty years or so, and this has always been one area that has always captured my attention. Even the physicist's out there must concede that our technology in this area has been woefully neglected. This is like having the power of a star and using a one centimeter square solar panel to make use of it (extreme example, but you get my point). I am quite sure that fusion is coming soon, but I have to wonder how much longer it is going to be before we get away from this primitive heat exchange and turbine driven electricity conversion process, which is maybe thirty percent efficient, it's not terrible sure, but given that we will conquer fusion, it seems almost offensive to "waste" so much of that bounty on such a primitive mechanism of energy capture .

Stan Sandu A short autobiography, to give you the confidence that in this life, up to 77 years old, in 2019, I have managed to accumulate a good general culture, to know and understand things in the seen and unseen world. I was born on October 10, 1943, in a family of peasants, neither rich nor poor, that is, with a house, with birds and animals in the yard, with a garden, with trees and a few hectares of field work. I did the primary school classes 1 ... 4 in the village Lacu-Sarat near Braila, grades 5 ... 7 in the commune of Chiscani, then the professional school for 3 years as a laminator worker in the city of Braila. The 4 high school classes 8 ... 11 I did in the evening, I did a year and a half army. I started working at the factory at 18 years and worked until I was 60 years. I did 6 years faculty in the evening at the specialty of the Technology Construction of Machines , and in the last 30 years until retirement in 2002 I worked as a technological engineer. Since 1967, I have been pursuing scientific research and scientific research in the world regarding the construction possibilities of a controlled thermonuclear reactor and I understood things as a participant in the research activities. So what I'm telling you are things that almost 100 percent have been proven and researched. Because of this I have been drafting a project for the controlled thermonuclear reactor since the 1970s, I even submitted it as an invention in 1969, and in 1971 it was rejected. But over time I have improved it as a project, but after 2010, after taking a 3-year Theology course, I discovered that the scheme of the controlled thermonuclear reactor project corresponds to the description of Patriarch Enoch in the "Book of Enoch" ”Chapter 68. And the device for producing and propagating a strong electromagnetic flux, indispensable for the creation and operation of the magnetic trap in the reactor, coincides with the diagram on the tombstone of Pacal from Palenque-Mexico. I understand that the projects of controlled thermonuclear reactor proposed and realized in the world during the last 60 years of type: tokamak, stelerator, laser and many other types, have nothing to do with the working model of the Sun, and analyzing their constructive problems. and of the operating technology, we understand that these so-called controlled fusion reactors are worse than nuclear fission reactors, and let's see some very difficult problems. 1). The internal surface of the nuclear combustion chamber in a Tokamak or a stelator is directly exposed to millions of degrees plasma, that is to the flux of radiation and heat that melts and erodes the internal surface of the combustion chamber, which must be replaced by more. many times during the life of the reactor. But this internal surface of the combustion chamber is also linked to the lithium blanket (tritium breeder), which, though, must be irradiated with neutrons from the plasma. This results in the irradiation of all components, their deterioration, and their maintenance and replacement must be done with robots by manipulating them from a distance. 2). Tritium is radioactive, the half-life is 12.3 years, and the lithium blanket must be one meter thick. Tritium is difficult to maintain, can penetrate concrete, rubber and some types of steel. It turns out that deuterium-tritium technology is not good, and the power plant would work INTERMITENTLY, and it is difficult to protect against radiation: coils that produce the magnetic field, diagnostic and control equipment, humans and the environment. So far, the technology of tritium production has been made only by computer modeling without experimental data. 3) .The superconducting magnets are INEFFICIENT allowing the fusion plasma instability. The superconducting coils produce a magnetic field only around the coil, and the distance to the thermonuclear plasma area is about 1.5 meters, due to the thickness of the vacuum vessel, due to the lithium blanket of one meter thick (lithium blanket) and plus the coil housing that produces the magnetic field. The only reasonable RECIPIENT for a plasma with millions of degrees is an electromagnetic field in continuous circulation stratified and interwoven as a rigid and mobile wall. Let us not forget that the Sun has a strong electromagnetic trap, that otherwise the solar radiation from the nuclear fusion of the Sun would have spread throughout the solar system and the Sun would have gone out. 4). Plasma neutrons degrade the structures, and molten lithium is at risk of fire and explosion. Bombardment with fusion neutrons removes atoms from their structural positions, making them radioactive and weakening the structure that must be replaced periodically and "buried" for several decades. Biological screening is also required when the reactor is not running. Remote handling equipment and robots are required. There will be extended downtime for repairs, even minor repairs. 5). At the fission reactors 500 people are hired in four weekly shifts (permanently), and at a fusion reactor 1000 people should be employed. The harsh realities of thermonuclear fusion with such installations and technologies: tokamak, stellerator and laser deny the praise of fusion supporters with: unlimited, clean, safe and cheap energy! 6). Plasma fusion combines three parameters: temperature, particle density and time, which at certain values start the reaction and self-maintain, and in the case of the tokamak or the stellerator, respectively, the particle density is extremely low. If we don't have particle density, we don't have a magnetic trap, then we don't have nuclear fusion. We must not forget that even in a hydrogen bomb, there is first a fission reaction produced by a small atomic bomb to heat the hydrogen bomb's contents to the temperature required for fusion and at the same time provide the required particle density. So in our controlled fusion, we must ensure the strictly necessary: temperature, concentration and duration. There are many SCIENTIFIC and TECHNICAL OBSTACLES! The sun works easily because it has good technology and a powerful electromagnetic trap. All studies show that the stars are composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium (92% hydrogen and 7.8% helium). And the surface temperatures of the observed stars decrease with the decrease of the solar mass, some reaching 2900 Kelvin degrees. Which shows that at a smaller fusion reactor with a spherical combustion chamber the fusion temperature will be lower. There are too many orders and many coincidences in the workings of the stars, that we must believe that the stars are created and overseen as artificial bodies of God with His angels and His extraterrestrial people, as the Patriarch Enoch tells us in his book. Current fusion facilities are just projects that cannot be connected to the mains to provide electricity. These installations have only worked for a second or a little longer, while a fusion power station must operate continuously all the time! In order to make it less difficult to make a compatible fusion reactor, we must really understand what MATERIAL and ENERGY is, what is the MAGNETIC FIELD and the ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELD, so that we can re-engineer an appropriate magnetic trap, without modeling on the computer with data. theoretical. We must understand that nuclear fusion is not just a source of heat, but that it TRANSFORMS a part of the mass into a certain form of energy, according to the relation in which the Energy (E) equals the mass (m) multiplied by the speed of light at square. But be careful! Missing mass as a result of fusion, we say that it is transformed into energy, which is in fact the ELECTRIC ETER, also a material mass with other characteristics, with energy particles many thousands times smaller than electrons. We collect these particles of electric ether with the electric generators and they hand us the domestic and industrial electrical equipment. These particles of electric ether, if they bond to one another, can form a portion of a magnetic field, respectively a bond between certain particles. And with this electric and magnetic ether, certain actions can be performed. Because of this, magnetic fields can be transformed into electromagnetic fields that can move in space, and which in between can space thermonuclear plasma, which is not yet a completely decomposed matter. The condensed ether particles form the seen matter: protons, neutrons and electrons, which in turn when they form a visible body no longer manifest their electric field or magnetic field as in the component ether particles. The path to a fusion power plant is through the reaction of the proton-proton and deuterium-deuterium respectively.

How sustainable is the supply of the materials required by their proposed SPARC device? And what would be the realistic life of a production reactor? I've seen it suggested that these might be problematic issues, but don't have the background to judge if this is a fair critique.

I like this!

I would like it if you would address the problem of fuel cost. Surely using Tritium makes a solution less viable for implementation.

As is always the case, progress in fusion power generation waits on other areas of science and technology to catch up. You couldn't make a heavier-than-air airplane even if you knew the theory until someone else made the right kinds of motors to power them.

What about Focus Plasma Fusion?

High temperature superconductors were discovered in 1986. I saw high temperature superconducting ribbon being used in a physics lab in 2002. So why is ITER still proceeding with low temperature superconductors 20 years later? It seems kind of crazy.

as with most things it often comes down to innovations in materials. Enter Graphene superconductors. (what's the temp needs of that material anyway??) good luck MIT!!

Why does YBCO use copper oxide instead of silver?

Such a difficult engineering task! Will we ever achieve a continuous process? Can it be made efficient enough to actually create more power than it utilizes? I guess time will tell.

any thoughts on a stellarator using htc magnets ? seems to be the way to go, as it brings the best plasma sustainability, and more efficient magnets together.. the shape is bullshit hard to build, yes, but.. it has already been done, so every succesive one will be cheaper, less complex and better..

This is always what saves the world. This kind of room.

Construction on ITER has not even started. Could it not use high-temperature superconductors?

Binding energy isn't the source of fusion energy; since binding energy INCREASES when light elements fuse, it causes the energy released by the reaction to DECREASE.

Ca we use glass fiber to deliver nutron

This speaker is very credible. It is a shame that budget cutters make funds scarce for this work.

We need more options for low carbon energy. We can not just rely on renewables. That will not work alone. GENERATION 4 nuclear FISSION reactors are a serious option that should be tested. We need GEN 4 FISSION reactor prototypes. We have the technology and resources. Our energy demand is growing fast. China is leading the way. Using US technology. GEN 4 can be a bridge to Fusion.

ok, so who do i contact at mit, or on earth with my fusion experiment? or can i perform it myself? if its viable, i can be there for it? inertial confinement fusion is one of my considerations, but so far, of every experiment i've researched, no one has performed my experiment. n i'm pretty sure it'll work. unknown unknowns... i'm not a physicist, but i have a natural grasp for physics that is fairly rare. but i went over inertial confinement in my head before finding this video and wasn't too happy with it.

What if you had to build multiple Tokomak’s which resembled the path of an electrolyte around an atom with the only difference been that their pathways infuse.

I read that a company has reached sustained rate of 45.5 T of superconducting magnetic field. How this achievement can be translate to a feaseable SPARC??

I don’t think the net energy question actually is the holy grail. Is demonstrating net energy gain the hardest part? Or are some of those engineering questions and material science questions keeping us continually 50 years from fusion energy. I watched the talk and I’m totally convinced in my lifetime net energy production will come about. But I seems I will be long dead before power reaches the grid.

the last question was: what field of study/science; engineering, material science or physics, ect... ,is in the most need for innovation,? As in, would you say design, materials or whatever the other aspects of the physical device are, have the most problematic stituation ahead of itself?

Still waiting

OMG, what a coincidence. I was taking a bath and giving a thought on Fusion after watching a video on ITER. It came to me that ITER might have the right scale but won't reach net energy. I came to this conclusion because an ideal fusion process should require little ignition (laser,microwave,etc.). Ideally, the force or pressure should be enough to start the fusion process. If ignition is crucial then would be akin to a gasoline internal combustion engine with a spark plug while an ideal fusion reactor would be similar to a diesel engine where the pressure is so high that fuel/air mixture explodes. I was pondering a solution with very focused magnetic fields that might give it net energy with a disadvantage in scale for power production.

So how many years until you can put power on the grid? The smaller and cheaper the device, and the more Q>1 power, the better.

Interesting. But the answer to the last question seems a litte too bold to me: "What holds you back? - Nothing on the technology side." I wonder if this is true.

what if the thing spins inside the magnetic field? wouldn’t that increase the magnetic strength?? 🤔

Yes. But there is not a single word on disruptions (or ELMs, etc.). This is all very good, but when I had the chance to talk with Greenwald (the guy introducing the speaker at the beginning of the video), he told me with ARC-like design there is good news and bad news for disruption. With respect to disruptions, I don't care about the good news if there is bad news! I don't remember the details, but I guess since the magnetic energy density gets higher, the energy density available for disruption damage also gets higher. Anyway, this kind of questions cannot be left unaddressed.

I do buy that a fusion machine with a net positive gain does change the game. The recent advances in magnet technology must be exploited. However I'm a bit confused about effects of the size of the torus. Just because something is bigger, doesn't make it more complicated. How much of the complexity of ITER does not stem from it's size, but from the necessity that it must produce it's own tritium? The claim is that a machine like ARC can be operated by an university. But if it should generate 500 MW that it definitly will be classified as a nuclear facility. The regulations for nuclear facilities are a big hurdle for universities.

i think his last point is maybe the most important - Put a data point (real operating device) above the Q=1 line. Doesn't have to be Q=20, Q=1.0001 is probably good enough (100KW/GW if I did the math right) to not only get the world's attention, but actually make money (not much I grant). But at that point jumping to Q=1.1 or Q=2 will be the result of incremental improvements and a Q=2 device (assuming an output like ARC projects of ~1GW) at $0.01/KWh (I pay ~$0.085 at home, I assume the bulk price is cheaper) makes enough money to continue the research from which an entire family of devices will be born. It fundamentally changes the course of human history.

Can't we model these magnetic fields mathematically, then use an evolutionary algorthm to find a design that works?

If you're worried about climate and carbon emissions, fusion is NOT what you should focus on. Look at ThorCon, they're WELL on their way to provide zero emission power cheaper than the cheapest currently available thing (coal) *within 5 years*. And there is enough Uranium and Thorium to buy us a few hundred years during which we can figure out fusion at our leisure.

I have a perpetual motion see saw which you see in my picture here. Still working on it. I'll beat the pants off of fusion! You'll see😉

wouldn't it be more environmenally preferable to collect existing tritium from fission-reactors and then burn it in fusion-reactors. It is certainly chemically difficult to sequester small amounts of tritium from large volumes of water or hydrogen gas. I think, doing it this way would be a worthwile effort for the improvement of human health. Especially now, after Fukushima-Daichi released so much Tritium in 2011.

I don't know if it makes sense to discuss energy of future that is who knows how far into the future while we need the new type of energy today or end game of humanity and nobody will need it. Isn't it more important to discuss how we can slow down the process of running into the end game first? Then we'll have more time to develop new energy? Why nobody's giving the timetable even an approximate number of how many years it'll take to realize it?

You can always rely on hi-tech colleges to have a problem with the sound somewhere along the line. MiT is archetypical among the recorded lectures online.

Didnt th MIT cold fusion debunkers get fired for incompetence?

If they could harness the EMP, they would solve their magnetism problem too.

SPARC is already further than IDER

Why the frick wouldnt they not be using superconducters already ......................

the possibly infeasible proton boron is already being fused using focus fusion. but tokamak is such a money suck and get all the attention

How does an "inexhaustible fuel supply" only equate to thousands or millions of years of "energy"?

Okey here. Remedy for , culomb neutron. I know , I know , I know. The problem is not heat and coulomb. God damn it. Send neutrons to the center. The reaction finds the right neutron and the reaction begins. You see the neutron as the problem. Not like that. My problem was a remedy for me. Yunus Emre

10 out of 10 for talk from any university. A+ for allowing comments also. I watched it to the end to make sure not to miss any. The sad part is fusion will always be out of man’s reach. Not for lack of trying or technology, but simple reason overlooked by all of those who have and will work on it. They have not stopped to reflect on the information gathered that your understanding of matter is wrong. Your models are fiction. Available information are overlooked, misunderstood and yet others been fitted to wrong models reaching wrong conclusion. You do not know where and how matter is created in nature. Nor the correct structure of it. First step in fusion is to know how and where. That provide data needed. The only progress since 50s has been searching blindly by trial and errors. All nation like circus elephants holding each others tail going in circle providing amusement for me past 42 years. The only correct part of current model is only the orbit of electron around nuclei. All the rest fiction. If you do want real breakthrough find out where and how matter is created. As I enjoyed your presentation you may like to know, it is not in the stars. Full information in my 1975 Bremen summerhouse notes. MG1

These guys just need to get into the MCU, I think they just want to build an arc reactor. Where is Stark when you need him.

lol another 40 years right? EBR-2 goes brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr (well, it did RIP).

I'll use the wireless fusion energy from Sol in the meantime.

"mmk"

25:10 how can you talk about cold fusion without mentioning "muon catalyzed fusion" fusion can be done at cold temperatures it is established mainstream science we just need a more efficient way of creating muons.

The talk was interesting but I disagree with his treatment of LENR. LENR is a highly active field with many researchers and numerous paths of research. LENR is neither "outright false" nor "pathological science" as the speaker claims.

I just saw my first news video on this tech. It seems that the problem is that the energy needed to do fusion is more than the actual energy output. I know a lot about nuclear weapons and what they want to create is a hydrogen bomb but in a nonexplosive reactor state. Then why not do what the weapon designers did, use fission to power fusion? Use a standard fission reactor to give you the heat to initiate a fusion reaction (that's what they do in thermonuclear weapons). Either that or rig a fusion system up to a large hydroelectric dam to generate the power needed to generate the heat. Both are methods tend to be carbon free and are technically green, right? Masters Degree please...

why do the speakers need to tie fusion with climate change / CO2?? these issues could be independent. if fusion is an economically viable energy source then it will be implemented. period.

Bill Gates: "Take my money!"

I'm confused as to why hydrogen is at the sun's core when it's the lightest atom, which I think in any cloud of gas from which the sun was formed should really be at the surface. Supposing therefore that the sun is fusing whatever particles protons consist of before continuing at making helium, wouldn’t attempts to make helium first using the sun as a model prove impossible. I'm assuming that the raw material for fusing particles is dark matter of which there's a large amount at the centre of each galaxy. If, instead of there being just one 'big bang' there was one for each galaxy and when it happened for the Milky Way, large blobs of gas with dark matter at its core were cast off to become suns. If we assume that dark matter is an accumulation of the smallest particles that can't be further broken down - neutrinos perhaps - and that before a galaxy's 'big bang' all its matter has been reduced to this and drawn into a single volume at the centre of the galaxy the gravitational force and the heat that produces then becomes so great that it explodes giving rise then to the fused matter that suns, planets, and all heavenly bodies are made of and some of the dark matter escaping with the gases produced. The 'last straw' creating the 'bang' being that the total accumulation of the galaxy's matter in the form of dark matter escapes for a moment the gravitational force of the surrounding galaxies. So unless it's possible to create the total gravitational force of the sun on matter that can't be further broken down I think it not possible to fuse any two particles.

So they have climate ambassador Bloomberg addressing the graduating class who will probably. start carrying on about the climate farce. This fusion project is like the public works here that took months to rearrange some curb stones and pave a short stretch of road while creating horrific traffic. Magnetic fields are very good at confining fusion temperature charged particles in submillimeter diameter paths. They are not so good at making these particles go around corners. But the soviet era tokamak is still clogging up the fusion progress. And after 14 billion dollars, the reactor that was supposed to start up in 2017 is now set to launch in the 2030's some time. By then, fusion powered lawn mowers powered by linear reactor designs will probably be selling for $199.95 at the hardware store.

deuterium isn't fusion though. its electro dynamic fission.

STOP MOVING THE CAMERA

Let's check it 27 years from now - I imagine, things will look about the same as they used to 33 and 60 years ago...

Well, when people start lying to me to make their case I find it very difficult to swallow the rest. P11D is certainly as viable as the institutional wasteland of 40 years of tokamak technology that has consumed billions and produced nothing. He could have at least said that it was a possible contender. His agenda is obvious. Clearly his MIT discipline is the sales pitch....

Sorry MIT... the Tokamak fusion reactor is 50 year old technology. It's powered by helium three mined on the moon, and used by the superluminal fleet as fuel.

The man is good for talking but I'm not sure he will be able to answer to the old boys from JET for some pratical questions. The nasty material needed to cope with the physical constraints in order to produce fusion , make the difference between a hot plasma with no atomic reaction and the one making 14 Mev neutron used to heat but also to produce Tritium from Lithium Tiles. Because only few experiences were made so far to produce Mjoules of fusion power , it's quite surprising from a young guy to talk about fusion as an expert. Surely is spent time to read report thesis , modified few times by the authors before publication. But certainly no chance for him to read log books about the daily problems the true experts have to resolved to make their PHD supervision pleased to make their pape for making fusion reaction controled. How many people in science remove data informations that doesn't match their theory? Keeping the goods results but without understanding why they are good some time to time! I 'm not sure as an educated american , he knows what the JET staff did, to be the best team in the world. The answer is simple, the man in charge at the top was so competant, that he could took decision in short delay, forseen the delays and the effets of them, organise the transfert of competance between teams to avoid waste of time, delegate power decision even at low level staff because above diploma, experiences make big difference. Any staff from the man in charge of the lift to the man in charge of the control room get opportunity to be an important staff for the success just for the sake to be able to provide informations easly...And above that when people are from different countries wtih different approch for learning, thinking, the result is better than the one who get the same training. And in Europe the contribution of the selected staff among laboratories even for technical staff with different curiculums for the same speciallity brought a huge impact on day to day progess. Delegation of manager skills bring a new approach of human resources never knowned before. The people who think technology is not a problem because everything can be produced on tendering action are wrong. Just for the fact the a tokamak is not a standart nuclear plant. And regarding the energy involved for igniton, the cleaness, the radiation penetration, the heating system, the dynamic of the particles in the plasma, the time of reaction to controled the process, the fueling , the collection of energy produced; the fusion technology is still far away to be a reality for replacing the fission nuclear plant. So far nearly all the tritium is used by military programs to the H bomb. This impose to master the tritium production. To ignit the plasma the tokamak must be feed by a nuclear grid to bring the M Amp for the magnetic field and the other heating system cooling system the diagnostic system. Even the approach can be improved by new material, we are still required top quality for anything because the environnement. Nothing to compare with the classic nuclear plant . And that cost a lot with no garantie for the final result

"For $20 billion in cash," Steve Cowley of Culham says, "I could build you a working reactor. It would be big, and maybe not very reliable, but 25 years ago we didn't even know if we'd be able to make fusion work. Now, the only question is whether we'll be able to make it affordable." This statement was made with full knowledge that even the basic premise of virtually limitless controlled fusion power on Earth has never been demonstrated. Giving fusion researchers $20 billion would thus be totally irresponsible. But if by some miracle they succeeded in solving the myriad problems of reactor degradation from radiation, stable confinement, energy conversion to a useful form, etc., finding a limitless source of cheap energy would still be the moral equivalent of giving a loaded gun to a mentally retarded child.

The premise that fusion would do away with fossil fuels is ludicrous. Quite the opposite, the world runs on liquid fuels not electricity. Cheap and abundant electricity (which is what we hear fusion will produce) will be used to extract the vast but too difficult and too costly oil that remains in the ground. And will also enable the manufacture of synthetic oil which is also too expensive now to be marketable.

You demonstrate arrogance here by being so dismissive of the stellerator path to fusion. Stellerators are much more stable than tokomaks, which suffer from serious issues with the plasma's eddy currents shocking out to the confinement walls. The issue comes down to stability and density. While Tokamaks have great density, they are much more unstable, whereas stellerators have great stability, but lack in density. The question then becomes which can you likely scale? The tokamak struggles with a physics problem (highly complex 3D plasma flows); the stellerator struggles with scaling (the physics of the plasma are stable, but need to scale to increase density). I believe that it is easier to increase the density than it will be to understand and control an unstable 3D plasma flow.

Fusion??? More like CONfusion if ya know what I mean.

For you people who expect everyone to swallow MIT blather...let's remember Jonathan Gruber, MIT which gave us "You can keep your Doctor" yadayadayadayada.GET REAL!

6-minutes into the video...MIT doesn't know shit. I am sure DARPA's done it.

individuals want their own power supply, This system is for companies to sell energy to the people, when the people want to produce their own power... billions to make and trillions in profit if they succeed :( Makes me want a Horse, not a Tesla.