Technology is [almost] always overestimated in the short term, and underestimated in the long...

Whoever the scientist was that named it the "PP Chain" knew darn well what that sounds like.  🤣🤣

MORE NUCLEAR ENERGY VIDEOS PLEASE SIMON PLEASE

From an idiot that enjoys learning new things. Thank you for dumbing some of it down. I really enjoy these videos.

“combined with a form of FUSION, the MACHINES had found ALL THE ENERGY they would ever need…”

Back in a previous career I was a sales rep. General Atomics Fusion division was one of my biggest accounts. I got to do all kinds of work at their Tokamak. I had to go through a whole training giving the whole history of this research. It was fascinating. I sold them products for the cooling lines to keep the giant magnatrons they used cool. I got to be in the control room during a "shot" multiple times. It was so cool. Like being in NASA mission control.

I have no idea how much research you had to put into this project to even begin to comprehend it enough to explain it to your audience. However, I very much appreciate it. This is a fascinating experimental construction that is absolutely mind boggling

Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you, tomorrow, you're always a day away.

Say for a moment that tomorrow the people at ITER get the reactor work and it makes a bunch of power in a stable manner.  How many years until the rest of the world has similar power plants?  That building is huge and extremely complex, it would probably be another 20 years just to recreate everything at another site.  If the all of the countries each wanted a few dozen sites, bottlenecks in the production cycle would cause even more delays.

[3:06 frame 4] "Aliens" (Insert impact font atop Giorgio Tsoukalos' face overlaid on that frame)



Yes, I caught a single-frame error/gag.

14 years ago we did a report on fusion power, and why it's always 20-30 years away. The TL;DR is that funding keeps changing. And by changing, I mean getting cut. Fusion is one of the few areas of science where you can throw money at it, and see (relative) proportional advances. One of the big hurdles is the plasma models, and in order to solve them, you have to run tests. Lots and lots of tests. Those tests cost money. Then in order to advance further, you need a bigger more powerful reactor. Those cost LOTS of money. Then you have to do even more plasma model tests. Due to changing politics, etc. the funding and research money is constantly in flux. Fusion power will eventually be here, but the "when" is the only variable. Who will solve it? Whoever is throwing the most money at it.

Ah ITER, always love seeing videos on this.

Another perfect video with an interesting topic

So, still just heating water into steam to turn a turbine.  Admittedly, it's a really neat way to heat water...but I'm still waiting for some massive breakthrough where we can directly harness the energy without all the extra steps.  Thermophotovoltaics or something similar perhaps.

Can you talk about conventional nuclear plants as well?
You can include specific ones, like Thorium nuclear plants

I don’t care how much protection there is, when I hear 15 million degrees I get nervous

2:13 diese Animation ist nun Eigentum der Bundesrepublik Deutschland

Interesting fact: The Helium "waste" product wouldn't be waste at all... We now get it as byproduct from the oil industry. Due to the war in Iran, we have a shortage again just like in 2022, but much worse. Helium only gets generated by alpha radiation or nuclear fusion. And it escapes into the atmosphere and then space. So we need a new way to create huge amounts of it and recycle as much of it as possible. Because you can't imagine how many important things rely on helium... Mainly science, anything needing a light gas but avoiding hydrogen because it's less inert and tends to go boom if it accumulates, so many things from gas chromatography to x-ray spectroscopy etc. And anything needing the best magnets, superconductors needing liquid helium cooling. Which is in many scientific instruments from mass spectrometers, nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers, particle accelerators to the MRI (Similar to the NMR just mentioned, but scanning for a specific element in a specific molecule and only one resonance it has in 3D space instead of analysing the resonance of a single atom, to find out about its bonds in a molecule via fourier transformation of the resonance signal, which is very useful to identify unknown substances.

Where extreme cold meets extreme heat , could the Seebeck effect generate electricity without any steam power for ITER , the voyager space probe running for nearly 50 years uses this principle .

I know you've knocked out some absolute YouTube bangers in your time, but this one is especially good! Well done, what a masterclass  in presentation, research and dry witted jokes.