Here's my conversation with David Kirtley (
@dkirtley), a nuclear fusion engineer, all about the physics and engineering of nuclear fission, fusion, and the future of energy.
David is leading a team that's working to build the world's first commercial fusion power plant by 2028. This was a super technical conversation and a fascinating one, for both the near-term and the long-term future of human civilization.
It's here on X in full, and is up on YouTube, Spotify, and everywhere else. Links in comment.
Timestamps:
0:00 - Introduction
3:14 - Nuclear fission vs fusion
13:14 - Physics of E=mc^2
18:28 - Is nuclear fusion safe?
23:50 - Chernobyl
30:17 - Geopolitics
32:12 - Extreme scenarios
39:07 - How nuclear fusion works
1:11:59 - Extreme temperatures
1:17:00 - Fusion control and simulation
1:28:54 - Electricity from fusion
2:02:59 - First fusion power plant in 2028
2:09:52 - Energy needs of GPU clusters
2:20:16 - Kardashev scale
2:28:12 - Fermi Paradox