The #fusionenergy podcast! All about nuclear fusion energy research in lively conversations between PhD researchers from the Fusion CDT and other experts!
Let us introduce all the science you need to understand the field. Then listen to us explore the burning energy (and space, astrophysics and medical) research questions and answers of fusion energy, plasma physics and materials science. Follow the podcast on itunes, apps and facebook; @glassofseawater on twitter for daily #fusionenergy research news and @aglassofseawater on instagram to see our outreach and scicomm work! Winners of the Institute of Physics (IOP) Rutherford Plasma Physics Communication Prize 2019.
Our first set S1 is a whistlestop tour of nuclear fusion as a physics process in the first episode; relating that to producing energy over the next two. We talk about forces, achieving fusion, goals of the energy mission and summarise some of the key pros and cons of our approach.
We go live to launch with a conversation in front of a British Science Week audience about how long fusion energy is taking – 30 years of fusion progress!
The second set S2 are a series of spotlights on plasma physics and fusion energy research themes. We will cover the work of our group of UK universities on magnetic confinement fusion, laser inertial confinement fusion, the materials science in extreme nuclear environments we need and the other uses of plasma in astrophysics (space) and medical applications. Don’t worry if it feels like a rush of headlines – we’ll be coming back to everything mentioned and much more as topics of episodes.
These taken together give you the science background, the rest are conversations – between us and with experts we meet – about the questions raised in the first few episodes and covering as many aspects of and ideas in plasma physics and fusion energy as we can think of!
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S1E1 – Fusion?
Into this glass we poured everything we know about nuclear physics – the processes and demands of nuclear fusion in nature. Barely enough for a meniscus, so we did some reading to top it up. Then we talked about the sun and the destruction of our galaxy. We’re ‘glass half full’ people deep down.
Coulomb force and the strong nuclear force graph – The attractive force between two protons due to the strong nuclear force is only large when they are very close together. Beyond a few femtometers (14 zeros after the decimal point) the strong force is rather weak. The Coulomb force is the attraction/repulsion between two charged objects, for the Sun we are only interested in the repulsion of this force as we are looking at two protons (positively charged) fusing together.
With both of these forces plotted over the distance between our two protons we can see that unless they are very close the Coulomb force will repel them apart. To get close enough to fuse requires collisions with a huge amount of energy, which most protons in the (pretty hot) Sun do not have!
Quantum tunnelling
Fusion in the sun – Most particles in the sun don’t have enough energy to overcome the Coulomb energy barrier and fuse, however they can quantum tunnel through this energy barrier and cause a fusion reaction. Without quantum tunneling stars the size of the Sun would not be able to support fusion reactions so you wouldn’t be here reading this!
Wave-particle nature of protons is what gives them the chance to undergo quantum tunneling to produce a fusion reaction with another proton. (Swap the electron and electron-wave for a proton and proton-wave in the linked diagram.)
Binding energy difference released as kinetic energy of daughters
In 4 billion years the Milky Way will collide with the Andromeda galaxy. We will have to move planets to see this however, as in 3.75 billion years the Sun will have become so hot that the Earth’s surface will no longer support water. So that’s all good then.
We stirred into this glass all the extra bits of garnish that make nuclear physics knowledge useful! We get strict about criteria and chat about the bottom line(s) for harnessing the energy. How are we going to boil our seawater? Tea tastes better from a glass anyway I’m told.
A main goal of the global fusion energy programme is to ensure that no long lived radioactive waste is produced, see the last paragraph on this page. (The other is to end up with a unit-price competitive power source.)
The Lawson criterion
Fusion triple product versus the temperature of the plasma. (This is the figure of merit mentioned in episode 1.)
This figure shows the triple product for 3 different fusion reactions, Deuterium with Tritium, itself and Helium-3. The blue DT curve goes lowest, meaning that a DT plasma is the easiest with which to fulfil Lawson’s criterion.
Will may have said 10^20 but obviously he meant 21.
Like what we’re doing? Why not subscribe and help us out by leaving a review?! Find us on facebook and twitter for fusion news and updates. Check out our website fusion-cdt.ac.uk/outreach/podcast-2/ for more episodes and to send us your feedback!
S1E3 – More Knowledge is More Power
Ok this one’s a tall glass so we’re continuing where we left off – talking about the serious side of working with nuclear things. How we’re going to meet the criteria we were talking, including shortcuts. We close these intros with a number of ‘promising’ tangents to tease future episodes for you!
Energy density is a very important concept for energy production. Fusion is extraordinarily good (and, unlike Uranium, there’s lots of it and it’s all around the world.)
As solar panels have changed the market in precious metals (how will we recycle their waste?)
We teased a HUGE issue in energy right now as the Energy Transition gets into gear. We will be coming back to it but to prime you for the coming changes read this take.
Like what we’re doing? Why not subscribe and help us out by leaving a review?! Find us on facebook and twitter for fusion news and updates. Check out our website fusion-cdt.ac.uk/outreach/podcast-2/ for more episodes and to send us your feedback!
LIVE!
Our launch party (coinciding with British Science Week 2018) included this episode recorded in front of a live public audience. We discuss 30 years of fusion progress – the things we’ve learned, the hiccoughs, the tangents and whether ‘why is it 30 years away?’ is a good question. Join the crowd!
While Bhav’s doing yet another cake analogy why not read this review of the materials science challenge posed by fusion and think about applying to the Fusion CDT one day (other materials science doctoral programmes are available)! It’s a huge team effort!
Fusion triple product vs Moore’s law from 1960 to 2005, along with particle accelerator energy. Moore’s law – number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since their invention. Basically, you know how fast computers got better? Fusion progress is faster than that.
OK, so, bottom line time, what sort of spin offs have we got? This page is part of a big list put together by Eurofusion (sort of a European Space Agency for fusion) and goes into the mobile comms links but there’s a bunch of alternative applications for the knowledge we’ve gained!
Like what we’re doing? Why not subscribe and help us out by leaving a review?! Find us on facebook and twitter for fusion news and updates. Check out our website fusion-cdt.ac.uk/outreach/podcast-2/ for more episodes and to send us your feedback!
S2E1 – Talk-o-mak
We’re back! New glass, same seawater. A neat trick if you think about it. We’re kicking off with the favourite glass – favourite to win that is. This episode is a spotlight on magnetic confinement fusion. It’s the route to fusion farthest along and often involves tokamaks (which we focus on for simplicity… for now!)
Brush up on the Lorentz force on a charged particle moving in a magnetic field.
The original Spitzer paper proposing Stellerators in which he mathematically ‘shows’ that tokamaks must be unstable. Experimentalists 1 – Theorists 0. This round anyway.
… & her name is Ksenia Alexandrovna Razumova – a great name. Andrew apologises to Ksenia and the team for letting them down with his inability to remember basic Russian naming convention.
When Andrew says that inside a tokamak is a vacuum – clearly that’s not true while the plasma (fuel) is in there too. It is true, though, that the gas fuel is an order of magnitude less dense than air.
Like what we’re doing? Why not subscribe and help us out by leaving a review?! Find us on facebook and twitter for fusion news and updates. Check out our website fusion-cdt.ac.uk/outreach/podcast-2/ for more episodes and to send us your feedback!
S2E2 – Now for Something Completely Laser
This time our glass is positively effervescent – filled with High Energy Density Physics. To Will’s delight, we finally recorded an episode on laser fusion. In this episode we give an overview of Inertial Confinement Fusion with help from one of our fabulous academics: Dr Kate Lancaster.
Check out this particle for an exquisite picture of a Indirect Drive hohlraum
S2E3 – Blood, Sweat and Materials Science
Never mind the seawater. Today it’s all about the glass and its materials. What happens in the challenging environments of a fusion reactor? Does the glass even exist yet? And maybe there’s some other material questions to be answered…
The last glass in our set: what can we do with plasma besides fusion energy? The answers will include fundamental physics, manufacturing, medicine and space tech… and we’re just getting started. What better teaser to keep listening as we start our focus episodes?!
Sooo many applications, all relying on synergy (correctly used!) between chemical and physical processes. We already use plasma loads in chip manufacturing, therapeutic uses are being developed fast and we look forward to ever more agricultural and technological applications.
Newcomers Chris and Sarah join Bhavin and Will to talk about lasers and the technology that goes into them. Also why lasers are so important and a brief look into some of their many applications.
This time Will, Charlie, Kate and new-comer Chris M have gathered to talk about this year’s Nobel Prize Winner: Chirped Pulse Amplification. We break down exactly what this technological breakthrough was and why it was so important. Then we look to the future to consider what might be the next big step in high power laser science.
If you’ve been wondering why would we call ourselves a glass of seawater, you’re in for a treat. Today Bhavin, Tom and Michail discuss how much fuel for the fusion reaction can be taken from a glass of seawater. And how much energy that could produce. The answer may surprise you.
Video explaining difference between nuclear and chemical reactions
Some information about deuterium and it’s properties/abundance
Walkthrough of calculation in a glass: 250ml of water -> 250 grams -> 13.9 Moles ~ 8.36e24 molecules -> 1.7e25 Hydrogen atoms -> 2.6e21 Deuterium atoms in a glass
NOTE: Around the 7 min mark, Tom accidentally says there are 1.7e24 Hydrogen atoms in the glass, but the actual number is 1.7e25 atoms… silly Tom
Wikipedia page of things that release around a Giga-Joules (10^9) of energy
For our anniversary episode we sat down with Prof Jim Al-Khalili! We talked about science communication (scicomm) with him and Dr Lancaster – their motivation, experiences and how to talk about complex research topics like fusion energy. Every bit as good as Radio 4 ‘s The Life Scientific!
How can we use plasma jets for propulsion? Scott’s been working on using fusion fuel as rocket technology for cubesats (satellites). We talk about Hall effect and photon thrusters too. Plasma fusion rocket science, it’s not exactly rocket science is it?
Most of us have an impression of what student life is like but maybe not that of a PhD student. This episode we have Sam, Helen, Tiantian and Emma to shed some light on the secret life of a Physics PhD student, their experiences and what they’ve learnt along the way. We chat about the love/hate relationship with research and the scary potential of life away from academia!
Nuclear energy expertise from fusion and fission combines in this episode to talk about the nuclear waste from fusion reactor designs. Where does it come from? How do we avoid making any? How do we manage the stockpile? We discuss how this key selling point for fusion energy informs our research – if the Chernobyl mini-series has you worried, let us explain how waste is dealt with!
Magnets are mission critical to magnetic confinement nuclear fusion energy and find their way into laser fusion too. Understanding the strongest magnetic fields using near-absolute zero temperature materials science would be great. But we dont. So here we talk about what we do know, how we control the world’s biggest superconducting magnets we have and where the physics research is going next!
Like what we’re doing? Why not subscribe and help us out by leaving a review?! Find us on facebook, insta, twitter for fusion news and updates. Check out our website fusion-cdt.ac.uk/outreach/podcast-2/ for more episodes and to send us your feedback!
S4E1 – Laser Fusion Schemes
A second round on laser fusion energy ignition research! Here we discuss advanced ignition schemes and big laser facilities. We also get to have a closer look at what Phil, Will and Kate actually do.
If you’re dead keen to get into QED and QCD go for it but be warned it’s post-graduate material! A one sentence guide? Here
S4E2 – STEPisode
UK nuclear fusion energy got a big budget boost last year as designs for a power plant prototype were commissioned – a project called STEP. We sit down with UKAEA CEO Ian Chapman tasked with overseeing it and dig into what it takes to turn fusion research from physics experiment to commercial reality.
The concept of ignition in inertial confinement fusion is super important – we need to produce enough heat to ignite our fuel and get lots of fusion reactions (and therefore energy) out of it. We speak with Professor Riccardo Betti about the approaches to moving towards ignition, how you know it’s happened and what needs to be done before we can get there.
This episode was recorded before the announcement from the National Ignition Facility that they had produced a record breaking 1.3 MJ of energy from an ICF shot – a massive step forward towards reaching ignition! Read more about it here.
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