00:00This is a very exciting subject that you're going to be talking with me about today.
00:03China has made an artificial sun.
00:07Yes.
00:08I'm just like, I thought we had a sun already.
00:11I didn't know we needed a new sun, but I guess it's cool to have one because of all the
00:14solar implications, right?
00:16Yeah, it's always good to have a spare of anything, I guess.
00:19Sure, sure.
00:21So, like, the artificial sun is kind of China's buzzword for it,
00:25but it's actually a bit more of a mouthful what this thing stands for.
00:29It's called the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak.
00:33It's a type of nuclear fusion reactor.
00:35It's not the first of its kind, but the reason why it's been making headlines last week and this week
00:40as well
00:41is it was able to maintain a temperature of 158 million degrees Fahrenheit,
00:46which is around five times as hot as the sun, for 1,056 seconds.
00:51That's around just over 17 minutes, I believe.
00:54It smashed previous records.
00:56So hotter than the sun.
00:59Hotter than the sun.
01:00It needs to be hotter than the sun.
01:01Like, we'll probably go into those reasons in a second, but it needs to be that hot.
01:06Really what it is is just, like, this big kind of, like, coils of plasma inside a donut-shaped, like,
01:13reactor
01:13that's being contained by magnets, which hopefully one day we'll be able to make energy from.
01:20But this is very early stages right now.
01:22That's so exciting.
01:23So what is the difference between fission and fusion?
01:28Because I hear these two terms a lot, and I'm not really a physics expert, but it's all very important
01:33stuff for keeping everybody alive, right?
01:35Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:36Well, actually, one is quite good at also endangering life, too.
01:40So fission is the one that, like, I'm referring to here.
01:44Fission is when we have, like, a load of very heavy kind of, like, elements, like plutonium, like uranium.
01:50We fire a neutron into them, and it splits them apart, and that splitting apart also releases a lot of
01:55energy.
01:56Now, we use that in nuclear reactors to, like, make energy.
02:00We've also used it in the past in, like, bombs, in nuclear bombs, in thermonuclear bombs, to cause immense devastation.
02:07But either way you look at it, fission is the splitting of the atom.
02:12Now, fusion is something that we haven't ever been able to achieve in terms of, like, producing enough energy to
02:18be worth doing it yet.
02:19But it's the thing inside, like, stars.
02:22Like, so fusion is the thing that happens inside the hearts of stars under immense pressure and, like, high temperatures.
02:28You get smaller elements, like hydrogen, that can form together to make heavier elements, helium, and release energy as a
02:36consequence.
02:37Now, the reason why that's way more exciting than fission is fission produces loads of dangerous, like, radioactive waste and
02:44byproducts and stuff.
02:45Fusion doesn't, and fusion also produces a lot more energy.
02:48If you're able to get it going right.
02:51So, that's the difference between the two.
02:53Now, the more important question is, is that how does the fusion reactors work?
02:58Because, like, this is the actual thing that's happening here, right?
03:01Yeah.
03:02Yeah, yeah.
03:03So, on Earth, we're not really able to kind of, like, create the pressures that you would see at the
03:09heart of the sun.
03:09You need so much mass, like, squished together into doing that.
03:12But what we can do is we can make things very, very hot.
03:15In fact, we can make them way hotter than the sun.
03:17So, what we do is we get all of this, like, plasma.
03:20We stick it inside a fusion reactor.
03:22We heat it up with magnets, sending a current round it sometimes.
03:26That's one of the common ways.
03:27You can also use lasers to heat it up as well.
03:29But I think the kind of most common and most popular method right now is with magnets.
03:35You heat that plasma up so much until, like, what is inside that plasma tends to be isotopes of hydrogen
03:41combined together, release energy.
03:44And that's how we're able to do it.
03:46The only problem right now, and we're kind of, I imagine we're going to get onto this,
03:51but, like, the only problem we have right now is we put a load of energy in to make that
03:55happen.
03:55We can't get as much out.
03:57So, we're not actually making energy on this thing.
03:59Oh, goodness.
04:00So, what are their plans for this?
04:03I guess it's to build bigger and bigger reactors, get more and more plasma inside,
04:10heat it up to hotter temperatures, and find better ways to heat it up.
04:14So, they're just trying to make the whole thing way more efficient, like, in every way that you can look
04:18at it,
04:19but also just expand the base of, like, how much plasma you can have at these temperatures,
04:23and then, like, just iterate and hope that that improves enough for us to have a good energy source.
04:29Because we can make fusion happen.
04:31Like, fusion is a thing that we can do.
04:33It's just about the energy kind of optimization of it that we're really stuck on right now.
04:37I mean, you know, efficiency is helpful.
04:40And how does this compare to the other reactors that they've been having so far?
04:44So, look, the East reactor is the most promising of the ones that we've seen.
04:48But then, you could probably say that at any point in history, right?
04:51Like, the current reactor is the most promising one that it looks like.
04:55But it's also, there is a really big reactor that's coming into play.
04:59It should be coming online in a few years.
05:01It's called the ITA reactor.
05:03They're building it at the moment in Marseille, in France.
05:06And it's an international collaboration.
05:08So, every state in the European Union, the UK, Switzerland, China, India, and the US as well.
05:15So, all of these, like, all of these states are getting together to build this one reactor.
05:19It's going to be the biggest one there is.
05:20And they're hoping, especially using this data from East, that they can, like, make this process more and more, like,
05:28efficient.
05:28But I can't say, and I don't think anyone else really can either, when it will become efficient.
05:33There's, like, a common joke among, like, people who are into fusion.
05:36The fusion, like, fusion energy is only 30 years away and always will be.
05:40Like, it's the idea that, like, as advancements increase, we realize how much more we have to learn before we
05:46can do it.
05:46But there's a load of promising, kind of, movements in this field.
05:50So, it's exciting in that way, I guess.
05:51And this artificial sun that's hotter than the sun feels like it's, like, stepping stones to get there, right?
05:58Yeah, exactly.
05:59Exactly.
05:59So, any fusion reactor does need to be hotter than the sun to work because it doesn't have those pressures.
06:04But the fact that they're able to make this thing last as long as it did.
06:07They also, like, they also broke another record with it back in, like, May of last year.
06:13It ran for 101 seconds at 216 million Fahrenheit, which is, like, it's, like, the hottest that we've ever been
06:21able to make anything.
06:22And the core of the actual sun, by contrast, reaches temperatures of around 27 million Fahrenheit.
06:28So, we're doing good at heating things up.
06:30We just need to find a way to get the energy out of that.
06:33Goodness, goodness.
06:34It's getting me all hot flashes just thinking about it.
06:37Well, this is very exciting news, Ben.
06:39I can't wait to see what more comes of it.
06:41Yeah, me too.
06:42I'll be following you keenly.
06:43All right.
06:44We'll look forward to that.
06:45Thanks again.
06:46Okay.
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