A Star in a Bottle

writer: Daniel Matos

The moment now is very important and can determinate our future. We must deccarbonize the grid with renewables sources: solar, wind. Probably around 2040 we´re going to max out with renewables and we won´t be able to decarbonize futher. We´re going to need another zero-carbon option.

Fusion, if we can get it going fast enough, will play a unique role in pushing us toward decarbonization. Fundamentally, what fusion is, is trying to put a star in a bottle, and tokamak is baically the simplest type of bottle, and in this case, is a magnet that holds plasma inside of it, and it insulates the fuel, the plasma, so it can get very, very, very hot.

Fusion energy is basically the universe´s choice for how it generates energy.

The reason we don´t have fusion power plants rigth now today, was largely one of scale. The mission of M.I.T is to show that you can make net energy from fusion. If you want to hold something at very high temperatures, but you can´t use a physical object to hold it, then you need a force at a distance. And this is essentially what the magnetic field does.

We embled it in a magnetic field, so these very, very, very hot particles cannot escape, and the you put it in the rigth configuration, and then it gets hot enough for those conditions to occour.

M.I.T doubled the field o three years, "the new magnet technology allows us to make fusion so much smaller with known science, that we are going to able to get there so much sooner than people has thought previously possible."

The magnet was the hardest part to do, now everything is going to be faster and eassier. It´s almost a miracle, now the economic viability for fusion is coming much, much sooner.

Being optmist in 2050 we will have about 10.000 fusion power plants producing about 20% of the global energy use without emitting any carbon, that would be really good for everybody.

"Our kitty hawk moment in fusion is seeig this hot plasma fuel make net energy for the first time. Our goal is to do that by mid-decade. It´s trajectory that comes with mankind starting with fire, that undertanding they control fire, and we´ve been through many different fundamental energy source, fusion is going to be the next and last one because it´s literally the Power of the universe in our hands "

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