Welcome to text stuff. This is the story. I'm as Voloscian here with Cara Price. Hi AHAs Hi Cara. So this week I wanted to ask a simple but very big question, which is can nuclear fusion save the world, and if so, on what timeline?
Is?
It ridiculous for me to ask what nuclear fusion is. I genuinely don't know.
Not at all actually, And it's a little confusing because we hear so much about nuclear all the time at the moment, especially with the new demands for energy from the AI industry. But people are normally talking about nuclear fission rather than nuclear fusion. But I'm going to let Alex Creeley explain this, who works at a company called Commonwealth Fusion Systems.
So, fusion is the process of powers of stars. You take small atoms like hydrogen, you can bind them together. You make bigger atoms like helium, and that releases like a whole bunch of energy. So it's a bunch of potential advantages. It's clean, it's firm, so it turns on when you want it, not when you don't. And hopefully if we can make it work in a power plant on Earth, it'll change the way the world makes electricity.
So, as you were saying, like, this is obviously a concept that is different than nuclear fission, but I still can't understand the difference between nuclear fusion and nuclear fission.
Well, well, let's toss back to Alex for that.
Fission and fusion are like exact opposite processes. You take big atoms like uranium, you split it apart from smaller atoms. So fusion's combining fission splitting apart. Oh, that actually makes sense.
It's actually deceptively simple. You know. Fission, as I mentioned, is the process by which today is nuclear power plants are powered, and it's a process that we've mastered, essentially splitting the atom. Nuclear fusion, on the other hand, works in the lab, but it hasn't yet been commercialized.
So there are people though that think that nuclear fusion can save the world, even though we haven't perfected this process yet.
Yeah, there've actually been several big breakthroughs in the last few years and a glut of funding. I think I read that twelve nuclear fusion startups have raised more than one hundred million dollars each in the last few years.
Thank god.
My other guest today came to this space early before it was as hot as it is today. Her name is Gabriella Hurst. You probably know she is.
I do.
She's a very interesting fashion designer whose career I followed for a while.
Actually, yes, so. She was the creative director of Chloe. She now runs her own brand. She designed Jill Biden's inauguration dress. She's one of the most celebrated fashion designers in the world. And she made her mission to make fashion production more sustainable, which is how she got intrigued, believe it or not, by nuclear fusion.
I believe it's around eighty five percent of the world is moved with fossil fuels, and I knew these idea that we were going to consume less energy was just mistaken. And I found this article in the Financial Times and something inside me when like this is it like I have found a holy grail of sorts.
Beginning of sentence, I found this article in the Financial Times is something I do every other every other time.
Literally, that's literally how we function.
So Gabriella became a global ambassador for nuclear fusion. She linked up with Alex Creeley at Commonwealth Fusion Systems and she used a runway show at Chloe back in twenty twenty two with Gigi had died walking to bring the world's attention to fusion.
And I could probably argue that we wouldn't be talking about nuclear fusion in this way had she not put on this fashion show.
Well, she certainly brought the topic out of the academy and into the kind of popular cultural conversation before anyone else. I mean that said, of course, there's been investment interests around this for a long time. Sam Altman became the chairman of one of the nuclear fusion startups called Helian,
back in twenty fifteen. But I think bringing it into the mainstream was something that Gabriella really can credit for, and she and Alex together helped me really dive into this question, which is can it save the world, and if so, on what timeline? Alex, when will someone like Abriella be able to use fusion to manufacture I just.
Want to say I'm the least of the problem. I would say, like, how about.
About how about Zara.
Or how about all the AI people want to thing? Just know, I'm just like, I'm really not a problem.
In the scale we want.
We want to make enough fusion for everyone that's like the goal and.
Went when what is the fundamental challenge of commercializing this that the idea has been actively invested in since the late fifties early sixties. We're seventy years in, but there's a new for one of a better word energy, it feels like around this.
So the central challenge of fusion is to get your fuel hot and to keep it hot without spending so much energy keeping it hot that it's not worth it. So to do fusion, your fuel needs to be like one hundred million degrees one hundred million degrees, one hundred million degrees. It's like it's a number that's so large it's kind of meaningless.
Because comparely to the times of the heat of the sun.
Yeah, it's it's hotter than the core of the sun, hotter than the core of the sun.
Yeah, and you can create that heat here on Earth today.
Today, today we can. Yeah. So it sounded like science fiction, but like we do it every day. But there's a new energy in it now. So people are working for this a long time. But the technology you need to do that to get the fuel hot and keep it hot is all different types of technology. It's like building on the just general progress of human civilization over the
last seventy years. We now have new types of magnets, new types of lasers, new materials, new computational ability to optimize stuff, and all of that has kind of gotten us to the point where we're ready to take what was a science experiment which is really cool or really hot maybe and turn that into a power plant. So it's coming soon. There's a lot of companies working on it. I think a lot of us are target targeting early twenty thirties, so not too long from now.
Gabrielle, when you first got interested in this in twenty twenty one, was that some kind of breakthrough that made it more relevant or what was the was the moment then?
I think it was reading how much the private sector had like Gearrope in recent years, because before it was only publicly funded and it was a Cold War race, and he had a momentum, right, and then it kind of I think it was around the nineties where it
slowed down. Of it the momentum of the evolution of fusion energy, and it was that understanding of the private sector investing and that big players were getting involved and the good the button, the ugly were getting involved, and so I was like, Okay, there's something here, and I did the research, meaning I used it as a research for my collection, which you can imagine telling a French Meissan studio saying well, this season, we're going to study fusion and we're going to be set a few private
sector and a few public sector.
And they weren't be like what is she on?
And that we did and it was it was amazing how the teams interpreted everything, Like we really did prints of like isotopes and like you know the Runway show, we use a master of lights that was all the circles.
Of a tacomac.
But it was really that spark of like, oh this is getting caught not found intended.
And what is a token mac?
Yeah, so tokmac is like the type of fusion machine that we build. There's like a whole zoo of types of fusion machines. The donut and you make it out of magnets. So I think the tokmak. The word is a contraction of like toital magnetic chamber. Toidal is just like the math word for donut shaped, So donut shape magnetic chamber. And we're we're building like that type of fusion.
Machine and that will live inside the power plant exactly.
Yep. That's the heart of the power plant. So we use these magnets. We make a donut shaped star and then the star makes the energy and then we extract that and boil water and make steamage like.
A steam engine, just that it's powered by instead of coal, it's by fusion.
Yeah. Humanity has gotten very good at boiling water over the last couple hundred years, and we still do that. Actually, even for fusion, we just come up with very clever ways to boil the water.
This is about generating heat to boil water. That's what it comes down to.
Yes, yep, Yes, surprisingly a lot of thinking into that.
Yeah, you talked about this kind of moment where a whole bunch of public investment that was kind of latent exploded into privatization. That's something most people are very familiar with when it comes to AI, the fundamental dapper research that in the last few years has kind of exploded into a very immediate consumer product. Space is another example, right, SpaceX and Blue Origin others building on the kind of NASA and Soviet rocket tree platform technology to privatize space.
But where does fusion sit within this kind of public to private paradigm.
It's a similar idea where there's like foundational research that's happened all around the world since the fifties, and there's just a lot of understanding of the science that we've developed and a lot of like adjacent technolog that we've developed, and it doesn't seem like it's going very fast until like it hits a tipping point where a bunch of commercial entities like investors and stuff come in and they look at it and like this looks really close, Like
it doesn't look close, and all of a sudden it kind of passes a tipping point where it looks like we're going to invest in this, and like we think this is a real short term thing that we can commercialize and deploy all of the world. And what commercial entities are good at is scaling, so like not just build one, build like thousands, which is what you need for power.
But I also I would say that what is different from is a very focus on much more grounded It's not like a wild West goal rush like AI where people are like in pre idea stage getting funded. It's really grounded in deep science in the fact that we are here because fusion exists. We are a product of fusion. So it's really harnessing the energy. So there's a much more holy aspect to it.
But you use the phrase holy grail.
Yeah, but it's really even if you look at the poetry of the line that he said, or it's just so simple, but it's the truth. But fission you have to break, and for fusion, you have to fuse, right, And I think what we need is a lot of fusion in this world instead of breaking apart. So I think there's something that I find very spiritual in the science of all of it that's really interesting. Yeah.
I think it's one of the things we thought about too, is like fusion powers the universe, Like the universe has already chosen fusion as like the main way to make energy, and so like it seems like a good choice that human civilization should eventually get to that same choice.
It's proven, Is it proven?
Yes, it's a brun model.
We like to talk about podcasts as the theater of the mind. Garyell, what's it like as an outsider, like talk about the process of translating this through fashion from mass audience. I mean, you had obviously a huge platform. I think you had Gigi had Deed walk in that show.
Alex, a lot of models in our Big Models, Alex Costanini.
There's a yeah, what you're trying to achieve and did you do it? Well?
What I tried to achieve was I think information is very siloed. So the science community, the fusion community all know what's going on and the updates, and the fashion community all know their own things, and it's all very silo or information. And if I just get a few more people to know about it, just did you need that public support in a way? So I think I got like at least ten more people to know about it.
Maybe a few more solid And I think on our side, it's like that is so important because like we're working to get the technology to work, but that is not sufficient to really achieve like the longer energy mission of fusion. It's like you need a world who understands fusion and is excited about it and like wants to bring it
all forward. Like you need politicians involved, you need like heavy industry, you need like financing, you need public policy, you need all of these pieces together, and like the only way you educate that much larger group of people is to have a much wider platform, and like all the work the gabrielity is critical to that wider platform.
And it kind of paid off. I guess would you feel the need to do that again or do you think like mission accomplished.
In terms of no, no, no, till fusion is in the grid, the mission is not accomplished.
Until fusion is in the grid, the mission is unaccomplished.
Yeah, I think we're clear now.
I agree.
We did get an article in Vanity Fair.
So I think it's about telling these great news because it's great news. There's like brilliant people like my friend Alex doing this work in the world, and they could have used that brilliance for something else and using it to save our buds. And it's a very holistic approach. Is like its whoever wins the race's good for.
All of us.
So I read it. I read a piece this morning actually which said that around a dozen nuclear fusion startups in the US have raised more than one hundred million dollars in recent years. One of those, of course, is Commonwealth Fusion Systems. Gabriella, you studied the whole ecosystem. I think you met a lot of the companies, Why Commonwealth and why Alex in terms of one of the companies that you want to make a special effort to showcase they.
Are transparency their commitment to the timeline. And I don't think we ever spoke about this meeting a lot of the members. I never met somebody with a big ego. I met very dedicated people that were extremely committed to this vision and this passion and all rooted for like, oh shit, we have a big problem. Our humanity is facing a big problem, and we're going to commit our
life to this. And so it was really the people that made me think common World fushould and they're really going at it in the timeline.
I think you guys are like what on timeline or not? Something too not too oft.
We're moving fast. We always want to be faster, but we're moving fast.
I'm moving fast towards what are you doing? What does it mean to be the director of the Tokomac operations? Like just break it down for us in a very simple way.
Sure.
Sure, So I end up with two jobs right now. We're a startup, so you know, with more jobs than you like. One of my jobs is the director of Tokmac Operations. So right now we're building a demonstration plant just outside of Boston. It's not yet a full power plant, but it shows that all the stuff works, and so I am managing the operations team for that, like, once we finished building it, how do you turn it on? Like which buttons do you push? And like hopefully don't
break it. And actually the process of transitioning that job to some other people because we've like kind of trained up a great team. So I'm transitioning now to be the chief engineer for ARC Design. And so ARC is our power plant that'll be in Virginia. We're starting the design process for that and so today most of my time is focused on the power plant design.
So basically, this is what's so brilliant about them is that they're doing both the demo and the commercial at the same time.
It's not like a linear thing.
It's like, oh, well, first we are going to do the demo and then we're going to do the commercial plan we don't have that time, so they're doing both.
Yeah, and it's like the first one is sparked the one we're building now. It like proves out all the technology. It like proves out that we as an organization can figure out how to build stuff, and then we take all of that experience, all that learning, and we bring it to the real commercial power plant which sits on the grid makes electricity. You know, it looks like a coal power plant, but without the coal part.
Off the break Why wind and solar energy aren't enough and how AI demand plays into everything, Stay with us. Samultman is involved with one of the nuclear fusion companies called is it Helion or Helios Helion, Heleon, and they've promised commercial deployment and to provide power to Microsoft by twenty twenty eight. Yeah, is that credible? And what's your timeline?
Yeah?
So our timeline is the early twenty thirties, and I think we try to avoid very specific numbers until we're fairly confident we can actually deliver on those. So early twenty thirties. Our first plant will be in Virginia, and we've actually also signed they're called a power purchase agreement. Basically someone signed up to buy your electricity. We've signed one with Google and one with any which is an Italian energy company. They'll both buy electricity from the same
plant in Virginia. There's other companies working on this helion as one of them. I think different companies have slightly different philosophies of like how ambitious to be with their timelines. We think our timelines are like very ambitious, but also realistic. I think maybe there's some skepticism as to how realistic other people's timelines are. But at some level it's good to be ambitious, like going fast is good, as Gaby said earlier, like anyone gets fusion working, that's good for
the world, Like that's good for humanity. And so we're rooting for these other companies. It's a friendly rivalry. We are working toward our timelines. We think our times are realistic, and other people they have their own technology, they have their own timelines that they're working toward.
So I mean, you very clearly articulated the mission, which is getting energy onto the grid. That's the clearest articulation of the mission that I've I've heard talk about what does it mean to get the energy onto the grid? And why is that the mission?
Because we are in this path and it really is about the burning of fossil fuels. We can go on and on about the many things, but it's the burning of fossil fuels, which if you look at it in abstraction, is a really bad idea, right, but it produces energy. It's like we're taking dead fossils, taking it out of the earth, burning it, shooting it to the atmosphere. It's just like the process is so polluting, it's like burning death.
Like I don't want to be too dramatic, but literally, And so it is the burning of fossil fuels that has to stop. And it's not raining in the Amazons. I don't want to ruin your day, but it's not raining in the Amazons. It's like we are in a really pivotal point where all the dreams that we had to control the temperature that's done. That doesn't mean we're
still not going to need fusion. So as soon as we can get the burning of fossil fuels with whatever technology that has the scale, because we know that wind and solar don't have the scale to take this, and.
They also harder to integrate onto the grid because their fluctuations.
Right yeah, and wind and solar are great, they're great, we should do more of it, but they have their challenges. And it's like, especially in areas that they have fluctuations that aren't well suited, Like places are cloudy all the time, probably you shouldn't install a bunch of solar. And then especially in like big population centers, so like we're in New York City, it's really hard to power all of
New York City with wind and solar. You just need so much land and then all the transmission of getting the electricity from wherever you made it to where you need it. That big cities are much better suited to like a box that makes electricity, yeah, rather than like
like collecting it out of the environment. That's where fusion strong point is is like it is big population centers, it is areas that are really energy intensive, and then it helps smooth out all the challenges of wind and solar that are on and off and on and off. You can do energy storage, but that adds up pretty quickly as well as being challenging, especially when you if you're so much wind but then it's not windy for
a week. You know, a lot of energy storage, but fusion allows you to like smooth all that out with stuff. We call it firm, but it's like on when you need it, off when you don't energy.
What needs to happen between now and the twenty thirties for you to achieve your mission.
Yeah, it's a great question. A lot of things, and I'll start with like, we have to finish developing the technology.
You can create the heat, but what can you not do?
Yeah, so we can create the heat, but right now it takes more energy to do the fusion process. Then you get out of the future process. So it's like a really cool science experiment. You can make fusion happen, but it's not a power plant, and so there's a lot of technologies that goes into getting that final step and then efficiently getting the heat out and using it for something. There's a lot of scientists and engineers all
around the world working on this. People really care about this, like people have dedicated their careers to making this happen. In addition to that, we need a supply chain. So like building one power plant awesome, really cool, great for a step, Like we need a lot of these. It's like to really make an impact on the grid, To really make an impact on carbon emissions, you need thousands of power plants. So we need to develop global supply chains who can make all the stuff that you put
into a power plant. We need the right policy. So having governments around the world combination of encourage people to do fusion but also regulate it in an appropriate framework. We want to do this very safely, but we want to do it appropriately, So we want to regulate things
appropriately for the actual risks of them. And so getting the right regulatory and framework around the world and getting awareness in so like one of the big philosophies that CFS has had is like, we only want to go into communities that want us there, So we don't want to like bust down the door and be like we're building a power plan here, like too bad for you.
And so having people who are aware of fusion, who are interested in fusion, who are excited about fusion really helps us go build power plants because then people are like no, no, no, please come here, like we want this new power plan here. So you need all these pieces to come together to build power plants.
The Ft said, in seven decades of experiments, no group has developed a machine that can produce more energy than the power hungry devices consume. You believe that's about to change.
It has changed. So twenty twenty two, a lab in California that Lawrence Livermore National Lab produced more energy out than in. That's the first time ever in human history that's happened. And it was after the Financial Times article, so it's yeah, an update and.
After my show.
So I looked like I was like some oracle and like it's like three months later.
Yeah, it was like and then it was more onto like and people started texting me, oh my god, this fusion thing, and I'm like timing, and so.
We hope to be the second place to do that. So this lab in California has done it. We hope to be the second place to do that. And then the next step is go from make more energy out to make enough more energy out that you can make a power plant.
And Gabrielle, what's changed since you did the show?
This is a big change.
I do think that there is much more awareness that breakthrough got a lot of media attention. When I started, the AI boom wasn't happening, Like AI was talked about the fear of AI, but it wasn't like a booming.
So I think it is definitely something that is really thought through.
Yeahs as the need and as you said, the very good definition of power hungry devices.
It's true.
One of the reasons, I mean, we were going to build a power plant regardless of AI. One of the reasons we're building it specifically in Virginia is because of data centers. The Virginia area has so many data centers they really, really, really need more electricity. And so they
were again very excited. Both the individual community was excited because it was a fusion plant, but like the state of Virginia and like the power producers there were very excited that fusion was coming because they need electricity.
I mean, also just how the culture has changed, right Like if you look at twenty twelve period with AI, there was like Jeffrey Hinton, who just won the Nobel Prize. He and his lab couldn't get access to the supercomputers at the leading universities, so they bought in video chips, figured out how to basically engineer them to be AI chips,
and this amazing boom was born. What's changed in terms of the culture, in terms of the perception of the industry since you've been working in it at Eggs and what still needs to change.
I've been in fusion now for ten years. It's a little bit longer. I started started undergrad doing some internships, and I think at the time it was still viewed as an academic pursuit. It was a scientific interest. I got into fusion for the Climate Mission, for the Energy Mission of like we need energy, and we want clean energy, we want for an energy but broadly it was still in the academic realm. And over those ten years people have realized that like, no, no, this is coming soon
right on this precipice. It's like fusion, Like it feels impossible until all of a sudden it feels inevitable. I mean like powered flights the same way. Like a week before the Wright brothers through their airplane, there was like this whole article about how flight's impossible and like we should stop this folly of that, you know, to waste the time. That's really changed. I think that a lot of the attitude around the world has changed, like yeah, this is you know, some crazy scientists.
Like whatever I was confronted constantly is like from really smart people that I respect, like this is not gonna even happen. I remember when we did the panel in Cops. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And what was the name of the former Dee arnimonies yes, yes, he was a non believer and he turned his believer. So there's there's a lot of believers now. Also, we haven't really talked that it doesn't use uranium.
We're getting close, and I think the world recognizes that, and I think which is great also because because of the awareness, we get help and support from a much wider range of people than we would have ten years ago. So suppliers we go, we need to order this weird part and like ten years ago and be like yeah, yeah, get in line, like you know, maybe someday they're like, oh, this is for fusion, great, like front of the line, like we'll make this thing for you.
So it's mostly exciting.
Yeah, it's all. It's all sorts of stuff ranging from like big things of small things that are moving this faster carbrio.
You mentioned uranium. Why and what are the misconceptions that you're battling.
No, it's not the misconception. It's just that we know that uranium can be weaponized and fision, yeah for fiicient, not for fusion, and fusion doesn't use uranium, and this idea of energy that is not weaponized it's very appealing. Just to be clear, I have nothing against about nuclear fission, Like I'm like make nuclear great again. It's as I get the end of the day, we want to replace
fossil fuels. That's that is and it's going to take a whole landscape of energy, right, fusion, wind, solar, geo thermal, now the technology to get geo thermal. It's like advancing as well from areas that usually wouldn't have geo thermal.
Yeah, you can think of it like like there's a portfolio of ergy, just like the same way you like a financial portfolio. It's like portfolio of energy solutions that each are good in certain areas but maybe more challenging other areas.
And if this works, would it not become one hundred percent No?
No, Like fusion is great, it has a bunch.
Of country like mine doesn't need fusion. Uruay is completely hydro, does not need fusion. All the energy that was producing my country is clean because we didn't have oil and to import oil is very very expensive. So for US, oil wasn't the easy option. But how do you power this country? Oh, we have a lot of rivers, so you'reways one of the cleanest countries in the world.
Self promoting my country or like Iceland has geo thermal. Yeah, they don't need they don't need a bunch of fusion. But like large population centers or it's like very remote areas like there's like very few people when in solar are so much better, Like you don't need a giant power plant. Yeah, but for cities, especially for countries that are very oil intensive or very natural gas intensive or coal like that's for fusion.
Big magnufacturing, big magnufacturing data center.
It's part of a portfolio. It's not like fusion is not the solution everything. It's part of a portfolio.
Can you clear fusion save the planet? How? On on what timeline?
The answer is yes, Yes, definitely is going to be one of the leading energies. And for those that want to leave the planet, they think they have to go to Mars, they even need fusion for their rockets. So without fusion they cannot even leave. So fusion is gonna happen one way. For those that are really ambitioning to be out of I mean I like it here, they are going to need chuation for their rockets.
So one way or an now or chuation has to happen.
Yeah, I mean I think the having fusion in the world just makes a lot of things better. It reduces all of our emissions. You can also think of it as like energy is no longer a thing that you have to dig out of the ground. That like some countries have it in the ground, some countries don't. People fight wars over that. Yeah, Like fusion means energy is a manufactured product. You don't have to fight wars over energy Anymoreah, there's emissions things that about fusion that would
be great. There's like geopolitical things about fusion that would be great, and like on what timeline like soon, Like I think the more help we can get, like the more people around the world that know about fusion, that are excited, that can take their talents from wherever they come from and like apply it to fusion, like, the faster it's.
Going to be.
I definitely feel much better informed after this than I did before. And thank you for laying out something which feels complicated and scary in a way which was easy to consume and understand.
Thank you for having us, Thank you for having us. That's it for this week for tech stuff.
I'm Kara Price and I'm os Voloshin this episode, was produced by Eliza Dennis, Tyler Hill and Melissa Slaughter. It was executive produced by me Karra Price, Julian Nutter, and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvel for iHeart Podcast. Kyle Murdoch mixed this episode and you also rode theme song.
Join us on Friday for the Week in Tech, where we'll run through the headlines you need to follow.
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