WEBVTT

1
00:00:09.750 --> 00:00:29.949
Mark Kushner: So today it's my great pleasure to introduce to you Dr. Tom Melbourne, who's actually an alumnus of our of our program here in nuclear engineering. He received his Phd. Under Jim Durstadt, actually, in 1978. And he's had a long and illustrious career. I've actually known Tom since we worked together at San Diego National Labs

2
00:00:29.950 --> 00:00:46.579
Mark Kushner: many years ago Tom was the senior manager overseeing the dynamic Dynamic Material Properties group there. He's also done a ton of work with high energy, density, physics in general there, including inertia, confinement, union on the Z machine his Sandia career was 31 years

3
00:00:46.881 --> 00:01:01.820
Mark Kushner: but then, after that he headed off the Naval Research Lab, where he became superintendent of the entire Plasma Physics Division. So those of you taking Nurse 471 with me right now, you know, I just sent out a link for the Nrl plasma formulary. Well, that was Tom's group.

4
00:01:03.240 --> 00:01:22.843
Mark Kushner: so after that he retired. Quote unquote, I'll say but he hasn't hasn't been in retirement of leisure. He's been busy working hard traveling all over the place, consulting for several fusion companies, including Hb. 11. Energy and fuse Federal energy. And you'll hear about some of that today.

5
00:01:23.280 --> 00:01:42.856
Mark Kushner: he's also an adjunct professor of nurse now. And we are very much hoping to finalize the paperwork today. About him teaching nurse 472 next semester. So intro to the fusion devices and technology. And and so Tom will be great, as you'll see, and hoping to have you all there.

6
00:01:43.200 --> 00:02:06.899
Mark Kushner: He's also a distinguished visiting scientist at the University of Rochester's Laboratory for laser energetics. He's also the author co-author on over 160 peer reviewed publications. He was recognized in 2,004, with the University of Michigan's engineering alumni merit award in nurse, and he's also a fellow of the Aas in physics. The Aps division of plasma physics.

7
00:02:06.900 --> 00:02:21.760
Mark Kushner: the I. Triple E and the American Nuclear Society. In 2019 he received the I Triple E nuclear and Plasma Science Society, Peter Klotz, award for pulse power and a Lockheed Martin Nova award for thermonuclear neutrons on the Z machine in 2,003,

8
00:02:21.890 --> 00:02:41.979
Mark Kushner: so that I'm really just looking forward to hearing more about Tom's latest adventures. With these fusion companies. But before that we have one very important piece of business, which is this which is the most shares shared prize in all of plasma physics. The Lipsy mug congratulations, Tom.

9
00:02:43.090 --> 00:02:44.210
Mark Kushner: This is

10
00:02:45.240 --> 00:03:09.530
Mark Kushner: so. This is the updated right, because I have one of these from many years ago on my double dipper, anyway. Thanks, Ryan. It's great to be here. I'm excited. I've got a lot that I'm going to try to cover here. But it's it's gonna be.

11
00:03:10.010 --> 00:03:13.260
Mark Kushner: you know, 55,000 feet wide.

12
00:03:13.470 --> 00:03:21.109
Mark Kushner: and you know, not in great depth. And then you can come back and and ask other, and I would point out that

13
00:03:21.170 --> 00:03:37.579
Mark Kushner: much of this talk. So I got invited, as you'll see, to give a write a paper for Physics of Plasmas, a perspective article. So you can find that paper in Physics of Plasmas. So.

14
00:03:37.880 --> 00:03:46.590
Mark Kushner: as I say, I was invited at the 20 it was 2022 conference.

15
00:03:46.730 --> 00:03:49.720
Mark Kushner: Yep, that's right. And it was

16
00:03:49.970 --> 00:03:54.929
Mark Kushner: different, you know. So this was the 1st Aps meeting after Covid.

17
00:03:55.130 --> 00:04:06.780
Mark Kushner: but it was also the 1st Aps meeting where there were all of these private fusion companies there, and the DOE was talking about private public partnerships.

18
00:04:06.850 --> 00:04:11.969
Mark Kushner: and there was a mini conference that started on the very 1st morning.

19
00:04:12.190 --> 00:04:17.410
Mark Kushner: and I've never so they grossly underestimated the interest in it.

20
00:04:17.769 --> 00:04:28.860
Mark Kushner: It was overflow into the hall. There were so many people interested in what was going on in private public partnerships and whatnot.

21
00:04:29.260 --> 00:04:33.439
Mark Kushner: So I've never seen such excitement.

22
00:04:33.530 --> 00:04:56.789
Mark Kushner: and after that Yuri Schumach invited me to write the article that this was about, and that, and the excitement also came at that meeting because of this report by the National Academy of science and engineering about bringing fusion to the Us. Grid. And the idea of.

23
00:04:56.860 --> 00:05:04.789
Mark Kushner: you know, developing roadmaps and all the technology on a timeline to actually construct a

24
00:05:05.200 --> 00:05:11.800
Mark Kushner: fusion pilot plant an Fpp in a finite amount of time.

25
00:05:12.050 --> 00:05:16.050
Mark Kushner: So this was what all the excitement was about.

26
00:05:16.660 --> 00:05:20.580
Mark Kushner: So when I got asked to write this perspectives article.

27
00:05:21.050 --> 00:05:24.320
Mark Kushner: Different people have different perspectives.

28
00:05:24.460 --> 00:05:29.369
Mark Kushner: Right? So if you look at physics of plasmas, there's a whole bunch of

29
00:05:29.430 --> 00:05:40.310
Mark Kushner: perspective articles by like people from zap that talk about? Why sheer flow stabilized deep hinges are so good, or commonwealth fusion. Well.

30
00:05:40.320 --> 00:05:48.399
Mark Kushner: you ask a guy with a long history like me, and I go. Hmm perspective. I've got a 50 year perspective.

31
00:05:48.580 --> 00:05:49.980
Mark Kushner: right? So

32
00:05:52.830 --> 00:05:57.660
Mark Kushner: the laser was in 1st constructed in 1960,

33
00:05:58.170 --> 00:06:04.060
Mark Kushner: and by 1974, a company here in Ann arbor, Michigan

34
00:06:04.320 --> 00:06:06.609
Mark Kushner: made the 1st public

35
00:06:07.230 --> 00:06:14.510
Mark Kushner: fusion. Neutrons from deuterium tritium fusion down on south and off South Industrial

36
00:06:14.660 --> 00:06:18.399
Mark Kushner: Parkway in the south part of Ann Arbor

37
00:06:18.960 --> 00:06:29.449
Mark Kushner: in 1973. I was an undergraduate taking Nurse 3, 11. The same nuclear physics course that any undergraduate takes

38
00:06:29.630 --> 00:06:41.960
Mark Kushner: today was from a professor named Dick Osborne, and he was a consultant, and he said, invited students to go visit this laser that was being built in Ann Arbor.

39
00:06:42.240 --> 00:06:50.230
Mark Kushner: So in 1973, I said, Wow, this fusion stuff sounds really cool, and I've always wanted to do research.

40
00:06:50.240 --> 00:07:01.280
Mark Kushner: Little did I know, 50 years later we would have scientific proof of fusion. But we're still not there with the engineering right?

41
00:07:03.220 --> 00:07:05.010
Mark Kushner: And this was based.

42
00:07:05.110 --> 00:07:07.501
Mark Kushner: If you look at the paper,

43
00:07:08.050 --> 00:07:15.000
Mark Kushner: a lot of the paper is tracing the history and the fact that, you know, in 1960

44
00:07:15.150 --> 00:07:43.339
Mark Kushner: people had been thinking about thermonuclear fusion, mostly with magnetic devices. And then they had this laser, and it was like, Oh, we can do something with these superpower lasers and whatnot. And immediately they started saying, Oh, wow! We'll be able to get to thousands of grams per CC. With the compressions and heat them and whatnot. Well, unfortunately, it was over optimistic thinking one day, at best.

45
00:07:43.410 --> 00:07:49.570
Mark Kushner: computer models, very idealized equations of state and whatnot.

46
00:07:51.420 --> 00:08:05.790
Mark Kushner: there's a little click here. It was. You know, the Icf idea of radiation coming in ablating the target, the rocket force or imploding, blowing off and imploding

47
00:08:06.300 --> 00:08:09.750
Mark Kushner: it collides, compresses, heats.

48
00:08:09.870 --> 00:08:37.570
Mark Kushner: So there was a 1 d model. It's an interesting little anecdote. Greg Moses, who, I think, is still doing some work for Los Alamos, was at Wisconsin for years was the graduate student before me for Jim Dudesat. He went to Livermore for a summer, brought back a report about the Wazer code, the one D. Rad Hydro code. He wrote that as part of his Phd. And called it

49
00:08:38.080 --> 00:08:40.220
Mark Kushner: plasma, hydrodynamics

50
00:08:40.320 --> 00:08:41.900
Mark Kushner: or Phd

51
00:08:42.280 --> 00:08:52.410
Mark Kushner: and implemented flux limiters for electron thermal conduction into it. And, by the way, Livermore still use uses

52
00:08:52.700 --> 00:08:56.500
Mark Kushner: flux limiters in their whole round modeling to this day

53
00:08:56.650 --> 00:08:59.010
Mark Kushner: 50 years later, we still don't have.

54
00:08:59.140 --> 00:09:07.220
Mark Kushner: So you can just look at this. There's there were lots of papers that came out. The physical principles were there.

55
00:09:07.480 --> 00:09:12.860
Mark Kushner: The detail of implementation was off by orders of magnitude.

56
00:09:13.430 --> 00:09:25.139
Mark Kushner: people thought, Oh! With a kilojoule of laser energy. They were going to get ignition. Then it was the next big laser that was built. No, it's going to be 10. No, it's going to be 100

57
00:09:25.350 --> 00:09:29.320
Mark Kushner: over 2 megajoules, and it's just barely there.

58
00:09:30.000 --> 00:09:31.760
Mark Kushner: So energy matters.

59
00:09:31.790 --> 00:09:32.950
Mark Kushner: And

60
00:09:34.586 --> 00:09:45.569
Mark Kushner: there were industrial programs. There were. I actually one of my strongest job offers other than Sandia was to go to Mcdonnell Douglas engineering in St. Louis.

61
00:09:46.090 --> 00:09:52.920
Mark Kushner: They had an industrial magnetic fusion program. They wanted me to start up an Ife program.

62
00:09:53.650 --> 00:10:04.280
Mark Kushner: I said, I don't think it's premature. I think it's a bit premature. And over the over the decades part of my thesis here is that

63
00:10:04.470 --> 00:10:16.339
Mark Kushner: DOE became all about science and not about engineering. And now that we've got the science proven, now, we still have a big deficit in engineering that we're trying to make up.

64
00:10:18.690 --> 00:10:34.580
Mark Kushner: So once again at the 50,000 foot level. Another interesting thing that I discuss in the paper is the dichotomy of fusion, energy versus national security. So all the way back to

65
00:10:34.710 --> 00:10:38.380
Mark Kushner: before the laser was developed.

66
00:10:39.270 --> 00:10:43.719
Mark Kushner: All of fusion. Energy was equated with magnetic fusion.

67
00:10:43.940 --> 00:10:47.891
Mark Kushner: and all of the money that was going there

68
00:10:48.980 --> 00:10:56.369
Mark Kushner: from the Government for fusion. Energy was for magnetic concepts. When the laser 1st came about.

69
00:10:57.140 --> 00:11:03.360
Mark Kushner: they said, No, we don't. We don't have enough money. We don't want to fund this. So it was actually

70
00:11:03.800 --> 00:11:05.769
Mark Kushner: became a dod

71
00:11:06.020 --> 00:11:10.649
Mark Kushner: funded project. And this dichotomy between

72
00:11:10.720 --> 00:11:25.200
Mark Kushner: civilian funding of fusion energy being almost totally synonymous with magnetic and national security, and Nsa. Funding with inertial fusion. Energy has persisted to this day.

73
00:11:25.750 --> 00:11:36.760
Mark Kushner: and the interesting thing is, when you still look at everything having to do with fes, the Fees act reports, and whatnot. That roadmap paper that I showed.

74
00:11:37.200 --> 00:11:43.919
Mark Kushner: What was it, couple before? I mean? This roadmap is for a magnetic fusion plan.

75
00:11:44.000 --> 00:11:50.559
Mark Kushner: Not for an inertial. In almost every document you see out of DOE right now

76
00:11:51.400 --> 00:11:56.920
Mark Kushner: talks mostly about magnetic. And then it says, Oh, by the way, we're also trying to grow

77
00:11:57.040 --> 00:12:00.520
Mark Kushner: an inertial fusion energy or ife program.

78
00:12:01.560 --> 00:12:03.469
Mark Kushner: So it's just part of the history.

79
00:12:04.030 --> 00:12:05.750
Mark Kushner: Interestingly.

80
00:12:06.010 --> 00:12:11.120
Mark Kushner: jumping all the way to 1998 to 2,008.

81
00:12:11.370 --> 00:12:13.560
Mark Kushner: There was a

82
00:12:13.860 --> 00:12:22.060
Mark Kushner: congressionally mandated program called The High Energy Power High Average Power laser Program, hapel.

83
00:12:22.640 --> 00:12:24.050
Mark Kushner: which was

84
00:12:24.180 --> 00:12:27.219
Mark Kushner: jointly managed by Nrl.

85
00:12:27.540 --> 00:12:31.410
Mark Kushner: And Livermore, and largely became

86
00:12:31.760 --> 00:12:33.089
Mark Kushner: the the

87
00:12:33.340 --> 00:12:39.009
Mark Kushner: leadership under the leadership of John Sethian at Nrl. For 10 years

88
00:12:39.320 --> 00:12:45.960
Mark Kushner: they actually got funding that the Nnsa. Had never asked for and didn't really want.

89
00:12:46.030 --> 00:12:49.859
Mark Kushner: But it was Congressional earmark. And

90
00:12:50.680 --> 00:12:57.480
Mark Kushner: interestingly, they made tremendous progress on a lot of the things that you're hearing today.

91
00:12:57.820 --> 00:12:59.720
Mark Kushner: right about

92
00:13:00.150 --> 00:13:09.820
Mark Kushner: damage to optics and reflecting optics versus transmission optics. People are talking again about making

93
00:13:09.940 --> 00:13:27.479
Mark Kushner: wetted foam shells to do mass production, how to protect the walls from neutron damage, but also embrittlement from alpha particles embedding themselves, and, you know, causing Helium embrittlement.

94
00:13:27.620 --> 00:13:44.209
Mark Kushner: how to track and inject and whatnot. A lot of those things were developed. And then in 2,009, when the budget process in the government kind of went off the rails and a key Staffer retired. That was pushing this.

95
00:13:44.340 --> 00:13:46.809
Mark Kushner: It went away, and

96
00:13:47.180 --> 00:13:56.179
Mark Kushner: I'll just editorially say that all the money right now. So this was up to 25 million dollars a year, which doesn't sound that big.

97
00:13:56.480 --> 00:14:00.450
Mark Kushner: But it was making a tremendous impact, and it's still

98
00:14:00.620 --> 00:14:05.220
Mark Kushner: in uninflated dollars more money than is going into ife

99
00:14:05.590 --> 00:14:07.479
Mark Kushner: per se right now.

100
00:14:07.720 --> 00:14:17.970
Mark Kushner: and certainly in inflated dollars is much less so. If we had had this work going from 2,009 to 2024,

101
00:14:18.110 --> 00:14:23.830
Mark Kushner: we'd be a lot closer to actually being able to build a power plant than we are today.

102
00:14:24.900 --> 00:14:26.950
Mark Kushner: And as part of that also

103
00:14:27.160 --> 00:14:30.130
Mark Kushner: at Nrl, the Electra

104
00:14:30.190 --> 00:14:33.240
Mark Kushner: laser was built, which

105
00:14:34.040 --> 00:14:45.760
Mark Kushner: put out up to 700 joules at 5 pulses per second, and at 1 point ran for 90,000 shots continuous operation. So that was 10 h of 2 and a half. Hertz.

106
00:14:47.370 --> 00:15:00.379
Mark Kushner: this is now what at Nrl is being used to develop the Argon fluoride laser concept, and is being used for some other things, and then at

107
00:15:00.410 --> 00:15:06.219
Mark Kushner: Livermore they developed the 1st diode pump, solid state laser or dipsel

108
00:15:06.971 --> 00:15:14.049
Mark Kushner: laser for, and fired it for 300,000 shots. This was what 50 joules

109
00:15:14.070 --> 00:15:18.039
Mark Kushner: whatnot. So there were. There was work on repetitive lasers

110
00:15:18.280 --> 00:15:27.599
Mark Kushner: of 2 kinds, and there were work on many of the system issues which are so important to inertial fusion energy.

111
00:15:29.910 --> 00:15:39.259
Mark Kushner: There was also the last snow mass event. Now, this year I'll just jump ahead. This year I went to a meeting

112
00:15:39.530 --> 00:16:06.589
Mark Kushner: that was not Snowmass. It was Avon down the road, because Avon isn't quite as pricey as snowmass, so it sounded better to DOE that that they didn't have it in Snowmass. But it was a meeting on inertial fusion, energy and the star hubs. We'll say just a little more about that but the last real Snowmass meeting, which was where the Fusion Community used to get together to plan the future roadmaps

113
00:16:07.130 --> 00:16:08.820
Mark Kushner: in that meeting.

114
00:16:09.220 --> 00:16:12.990
Mark Kushner: The Magnetic Fusion Committee. Well, everyone met together.

115
00:16:13.220 --> 00:16:17.640
Mark Kushner: Then the Magnetic Fusion community went off.

116
00:16:18.110 --> 00:16:19.880
Mark Kushner: met for 2 weeks.

117
00:16:19.890 --> 00:16:25.110
Mark Kushner: and came to no definite conclusions, because they can never agree about anything.

118
00:16:25.520 --> 00:16:50.440
Mark Kushner: The Ife community spent one week and developed this roadmap, which really is still pretty operative, and I've seen it pop up in some of the talks in Livermore about planning, and it. It looked at the separability of inertial confinement, fusion as opposed to magnetic fusion. Right? So the point is here.

119
00:16:50.530 --> 00:16:51.920
Mark Kushner: You can have

120
00:16:52.250 --> 00:16:55.429
Mark Kushner: different drivers, pulse power.

121
00:16:55.960 --> 00:16:59.100
Mark Kushner: eczema lasers, solid state lasers.

122
00:16:59.180 --> 00:17:03.280
Mark Kushner: even accelerators. Heavy ion fusion is still not off the table.

123
00:17:03.320 --> 00:17:08.479
Mark Kushner: They could be used for regular targets with Z pinches with fast igniters.

124
00:17:08.560 --> 00:17:17.919
Mark Kushner: And you know, the idea was you would develop driver technologies in parallel. You would develop supporting technologies

125
00:17:18.920 --> 00:17:23.810
Mark Kushner: where they were common as a common project, and then.

126
00:17:23.880 --> 00:17:26.420
Mark Kushner: later on, you would decide

127
00:17:26.690 --> 00:17:33.489
Mark Kushner: which ones look the best and build an engineering test, facility and a and a demo. So the idea of

128
00:17:34.440 --> 00:17:36.879
Mark Kushner: looking for commonalities

129
00:17:37.300 --> 00:17:47.619
Mark Kushner: embracing the separability of, you know, a containment chamber or 1st wall materials or whatnot can become in between different approaches

130
00:17:48.264 --> 00:18:03.119
Mark Kushner: and different drivers is persisting to this day, and a lot of the things that were developed in the apple program influence. What's actually in in this report, and you can actually download that report

131
00:18:04.290 --> 00:18:06.200
Mark Kushner: all right. So, jumping even

132
00:18:06.300 --> 00:18:07.660
Mark Kushner: further ahead.

133
00:18:10.610 --> 00:18:12.919
Mark Kushner: we've gone through

134
00:18:13.410 --> 00:18:20.620
Mark Kushner: in this period of time, especially after 2,008 a period where there's really no

135
00:18:20.830 --> 00:18:29.810
Mark Kushner: funded ife the labs like Sandia and Livermore funding some Ife work out of Ldrd

136
00:18:29.910 --> 00:18:37.179
Mark Kushner: laboratory directed research and development funds, but there's no funds that are called Ife

137
00:18:37.690 --> 00:18:38.880
Mark Kushner: and

138
00:18:39.210 --> 00:18:42.279
Mark Kushner: but nif is being built, and Nif

139
00:18:42.350 --> 00:18:43.500
Mark Kushner: was

140
00:18:44.200 --> 00:19:11.950
Mark Kushner: ending construction around the 2010, 2011 timeframe, and then the National Ignition campaign or the Nic. Came, and people were eagerly anticipating, because there were certain people in leadership saying, we got this nailed right, you know ignitions coming soon, and then we're going to start spinning this off into power plants.

141
00:19:12.100 --> 00:19:13.040
Mark Kushner: you know.

142
00:19:14.600 --> 00:19:16.650
Mark Kushner: really quickly. Well.

143
00:19:17.210 --> 00:19:21.879
Mark Kushner: so in preparation for that there was a

144
00:19:22.180 --> 00:19:24.730
Mark Kushner: chartered to the National Academy

145
00:19:24.830 --> 00:19:31.139
Mark Kushner: to evaluate the readiness of the Us. For inertial confinement, fusion.

146
00:19:31.500 --> 00:19:42.360
Mark Kushner: and that ended up being in 2 reports. There was the inertial confinement, fusion, target report. And I was on that National Academy sub panel

147
00:19:42.580 --> 00:19:43.790
Mark Kushner: because

148
00:19:44.410 --> 00:19:52.529
Mark Kushner: some of the principles of the fusion targets were classified. So they needed people with clearances who could do that.

149
00:19:52.630 --> 00:19:54.900
Mark Kushner: write a total report

150
00:19:55.040 --> 00:20:15.409
Mark Kushner: in a classified way, and then redact it down to a point where it could be for published openly, and then that fed into the broader report that was headed by Jerry Kolsinski and Ron Davidson. They're the 2 chairs of it.

151
00:20:15.530 --> 00:20:31.060
Mark Kushner: And basically they said, Yeah, we're, you know, a lot of the things are are ready. They embrace no down selection of the drivers at this time, because it's premature, etc. It's a very reasoned report. But

152
00:20:31.420 --> 00:20:33.190
Mark Kushner: it basically

153
00:20:33.260 --> 00:20:38.660
Mark Kushner: said, You know, there shouldn't be a major investment in Ife, though.

154
00:20:38.750 --> 00:20:40.780
Mark Kushner: until ignition's achieved

155
00:20:43.360 --> 00:20:47.390
Mark Kushner: alright. So I just told you. There's been decades of

156
00:20:47.630 --> 00:21:10.769
Mark Kushner: fusion, energy, science. And I'm not saying this is factual. This is not. It's just the way it was. This is not aspersion on anyone but Fes had been. You know no one has extra money. We're funding iter. We're funding d 3D. We're funding Princeton. We don't have extra stuff. So they chose to interpret that

157
00:21:10.910 --> 00:21:16.770
Mark Kushner: as saying, until you get ignition, we're not going to really spend any money on Ife.

158
00:21:17.620 --> 00:21:19.000
Mark Kushner: So what happened?

159
00:21:19.820 --> 00:21:22.379
Mark Kushner: Anyone remember when ignition happened?

160
00:21:23.520 --> 00:21:49.670
Mark Kushner: Not 2012, August 2012. Well, that was, that was Lawson criteria, right? So it took 9, 10 years. So once again, Ife has been a big waiting game waiting for, you know, money waiting for ignition, waiting for things to actually get to what are arguably some of the hardest things is the engineering.

161
00:21:49.810 --> 00:21:54.670
Mark Kushner: And when we had lunch earlier today, we were talking a lot about that.

162
00:21:56.210 --> 00:21:58.430
Mark Kushner: did I? Yeah. So

163
00:21:59.793 --> 00:22:00.840
Mark Kushner: and so

164
00:22:01.190 --> 00:22:06.890
Mark Kushner: DOE is not fes is not still not investing

165
00:22:06.960 --> 00:22:08.359
Mark Kushner: an Ife.

166
00:22:08.750 --> 00:22:09.780
Mark Kushner: but

167
00:22:10.030 --> 00:22:12.140
Mark Kushner: Arpa-e gets created.

168
00:22:12.940 --> 00:22:14.809
Mark Kushner: and Pat Mcgrath

169
00:22:15.590 --> 00:22:19.199
Mark Kushner: pitches the idea of having some fusion

170
00:22:19.590 --> 00:22:20.900
Mark Kushner: ideas

171
00:22:21.250 --> 00:22:27.190
Mark Kushner: as part of Arpa-e Advanced Research Project agency energy

172
00:22:27.370 --> 00:22:30.019
Mark Kushner: right, based on the Darpa model

173
00:22:30.330 --> 00:22:31.140
Mark Kushner: that

174
00:22:31.290 --> 00:22:35.249
Mark Kushner: get some of the most innovative defense systems.

175
00:22:35.270 --> 00:22:39.279
Mark Kushner: So interestingly, part of it was

176
00:22:39.380 --> 00:22:40.670
Mark Kushner: about

177
00:22:41.400 --> 00:22:43.570
Mark Kushner: what's in between.

178
00:22:43.650 --> 00:22:55.209
Mark Kushner: Right magnetic fusion is here. Low density, large volume, long time frame. Icf is over here. High density, high temperature.

179
00:22:55.400 --> 00:22:58.390
Mark Kushner: you know. Burns are occurring in

180
00:22:58.510 --> 00:23:09.899
Mark Kushner: tens of picoseconds or hundreds of picoseconds. It was about more of the magneto inertial fusion areas that were in between.

181
00:23:10.160 --> 00:23:24.339
Mark Kushner: and that and Sandy is Mag lift which Ryan worked on and teaches as part of the 590 course. Right is, was one of the reasons why they said, you know, there's a lot of stuff.

182
00:23:24.420 --> 00:23:41.670
Mark Kushner: So Arpa funds leap ahead. Stuff, not the mainline program, right? So they said, all this money from Fes is going into Tokamax and maybe spherical Tokamax. All this is money from Nnsa is going to Icf.

183
00:23:42.070 --> 00:23:49.489
Mark Kushner: What about the magneto inertial stuff and all of the alternate concepts? So they started up the Alpha program.

184
00:23:52.020 --> 00:23:53.030
Mark Kushner: Switch

185
00:23:54.730 --> 00:24:04.609
Mark Kushner: led to the formation. They funded some of the initial research at Washington that allowed Yuri Schumach and his people to start up. Zap

186
00:24:07.310 --> 00:24:22.090
Mark Kushner: fuse was started in 2019, and we'll talk about fuse in a few minutes. I'm now on the board. There. They're following bag lift. And then there were other things in the next follow on program. Right? Alpha, beta

187
00:24:23.380 --> 00:24:24.819
Mark Kushner: acronym soup

188
00:24:25.673 --> 00:24:35.149
Mark Kushner: you know, they did more for Zap. They helped get Cfs get high temperature, superconducting central solenoid for the spark

189
00:24:35.300 --> 00:24:37.800
Mark Kushner: projects that they're doing right.

190
00:24:38.310 --> 00:24:51.939
Mark Kushner: They worked with type, one energy for superconducting, for stellarators. They funded Wisconsin to start looking at implications of high temperature superconductors for mirrors.

191
00:24:52.010 --> 00:24:58.759
Mark Kushner: and they funded some arf work at at my lab nrl.

192
00:24:58.840 --> 00:25:06.000
Mark Kushner: And there's a company around that. So they really did their job of catalyzing some different ideas.

193
00:25:07.940 --> 00:25:08.889
Mark Kushner: All right.

194
00:25:10.010 --> 00:25:11.460
Mark Kushner: So finally.

195
00:25:13.660 --> 00:25:15.060
Mark Kushner: technically.

196
00:25:15.430 --> 00:25:19.910
Mark Kushner: the Lawson Criterion was 21 0, 8, 0, 8, right

197
00:25:22.870 --> 00:25:24.480
Mark Kushner: actual

198
00:25:24.650 --> 00:25:26.730
Mark Kushner: gain was

199
00:25:26.790 --> 00:25:29.290
Mark Kushner: December 5, th 2022,

200
00:25:29.680 --> 00:25:30.920
Mark Kushner: and

201
00:25:31.010 --> 00:25:32.340
Mark Kushner: you know there's this

202
00:25:32.610 --> 00:25:35.050
Mark Kushner: article with over a thousand

203
00:25:35.150 --> 00:25:40.129
Mark Kushner: authors on it. And thank you know my name's on it. Your name's probably on it.

204
00:25:40.990 --> 00:25:50.759
Mark Kushner: I mean. It was supposed to represent the fact that this was the culmination of decades, of work, of people across the fusion complex

205
00:25:50.770 --> 00:25:54.420
Mark Kushner: right working to to advance. Icf.

206
00:25:55.860 --> 00:25:57.030
Mark Kushner: And

207
00:25:57.700 --> 00:26:04.570
Mark Kushner: in a handful of shots, because Miff was the biggest laser the country thought they could afford

208
00:26:05.070 --> 00:26:10.119
Mark Kushner: that had just barely enough energy to maybe be able to get the job done.

209
00:26:10.630 --> 00:26:25.459
Mark Kushner: and at the end of the day the overconfidence in 2 and 3D simulations. So now we move from overconfidence in one d simulations. Now we're up to 2 and 3D simulations. But it's interesting if you talk to a guy like Omar Hurricane.

210
00:26:26.330 --> 00:26:33.419
Mark Kushner: It wasn't. It was when they stopped, just relying on the codes and started looking, did an exquisite

211
00:26:33.660 --> 00:27:00.009
Mark Kushner: amount of work with the diagnostics, and then a lot of deep thinking by the most powerful computer, the analog brain right in developing simple physics models. They finally made it work. They made perfect targets. They, the laser people, made perfect laser beams as perfect as they could, and they've gotten some gain. And you see, I mean, they're actually up to a gain of almost 2 and a half

212
00:27:00.050 --> 00:27:02.740
Mark Kushner: energy out from

213
00:27:03.980 --> 00:27:06.140
Mark Kushner: infusion

214
00:27:06.550 --> 00:27:07.565
Mark Kushner: from

215
00:27:12.010 --> 00:27:26.709
Mark Kushner: So I think this is backwards. This is backwards. This should be target energy out versus laser energy in, because it's only 2.2. How did I do that? But anyway, the point is, the gain is right. So, anyway.

216
00:27:28.090 --> 00:27:29.450
Mark Kushner: we now.

217
00:27:29.950 --> 00:27:32.930
Mark Kushner: So I if you know Mike Campbell.

218
00:27:33.500 --> 00:27:43.229
Mark Kushner: he's another gray beard, and we are doing a lot with the inertial fusion community. And you know he likes to say, you know, this puts

219
00:27:43.310 --> 00:27:51.420
Mark Kushner: Icf clearly in the leadership position for fusion, because it has actually shown a propagating burn.

220
00:27:51.740 --> 00:27:54.339
Mark Kushner: I mean the the if you really look at.

221
00:27:54.350 --> 00:28:09.319
Mark Kushner: not to cast shade on the magnetic fusion community, but the burns that they have gotten in like jad or jt. 60 or whatnot. Those are, I believe, mostly beam fusion reactions, because they have such

222
00:28:09.320 --> 00:28:24.669
Mark Kushner: heavy neutral beam injection. It's more of a what was known years ago as Tftr, the Princeton machine, where they were having a background plasma and then putting beams in that could

223
00:28:24.820 --> 00:28:26.740
Mark Kushner: could interact.

224
00:28:26.950 --> 00:28:40.070
Mark Kushner: So now we've actually shown the conditions of propagating burn. And it's really interesting when you go through and and look at them. But it's beyond the depth. We can go in this talk

225
00:28:42.870 --> 00:28:44.670
Mark Kushner: alright. So

226
00:28:44.680 --> 00:28:49.669
Mark Kushner: now we're more to today. Right? So finally.

227
00:28:50.050 --> 00:28:53.360
Mark Kushner: ignition is achieved. Fes says.

228
00:28:53.640 --> 00:28:57.390
Mark Kushner: And in an essay say what the government always says.

229
00:28:58.200 --> 00:29:05.650
Mark Kushner: we need a committee. We need a study group. We need to write a paper. We need to write a report right?

230
00:29:05.660 --> 00:29:11.700
Mark Kushner: Professor Mcbride. How many committees have you been on community, Kitty committees, Scott.

231
00:29:11.800 --> 00:29:12.940
Mark Kushner: whatever.

232
00:29:14.240 --> 00:29:23.151
Mark Kushner: So I mean, you can read these words. I'm not going to read them all to you. But it said, Okay, you know, we really do need to

233
00:29:23.670 --> 00:29:31.150
Mark Kushner: start building up an ife program. But where are we going to get the money? It's a pivotal moment.

234
00:29:32.205 --> 00:29:36.440
Mark Kushner: but the government never does anything quickly

235
00:29:37.030 --> 00:29:51.469
Mark Kushner: but public private partnerships. Ppp, so this is like the Government's favorite acronym right now it was that for NASA and Spacex and the other companies.

236
00:29:51.480 --> 00:29:58.099
Mark Kushner: It's now being applied to fusion, as you're gonna see. And you can see these other things. And then.

237
00:29:58.300 --> 00:30:12.960
Mark Kushner: as a result, there is some money, but it's still, as I say, less money than went into the hapel program, but they have created 3. What they call Ife star hubs, one is centered at Livermore

238
00:30:13.000 --> 00:30:18.330
Mark Kushner: and has a number of different participants. You can look this up if you're interested.

239
00:30:18.390 --> 00:30:20.859
Mark Kushner: The rise at Csu

240
00:30:21.667 --> 00:30:37.560
Mark Kushner: Once again has multiple participants. And actually a company called Marvel Fusion from Germany might have seen articles recently. I think they invested 40 million dollars. They've got a new building, and they're building

241
00:30:37.620 --> 00:30:44.270
Mark Kushner: 100 to 200 jewel class short pulse lasers at Colorado State.

242
00:30:44.300 --> 00:30:49.730
Mark Kushner: And then there's another one at Rochester laboratory for laser energetics.

243
00:30:50.140 --> 00:30:51.300
Mark Kushner: So they're

244
00:30:51.380 --> 00:31:03.799
Mark Kushner: they're trying to create this community infrastructure that looks a little bit like the hapel program, but they're doing it on a fraction of the budget for the magnetic fusion.

245
00:31:04.280 --> 00:31:10.409
Mark Kushner: The other private public partnership program they have. And this is one of their view. Graphs is kind of

246
00:31:11.680 --> 00:31:20.699
Mark Kushner: busy. The main thing is, you might have heard about the milestone based fusion program. So they put out a bid. And they said.

247
00:31:21.110 --> 00:31:23.449
Mark Kushner: We've got a certain amount of money

248
00:31:23.480 --> 00:31:25.709
Mark Kushner: that we're going to put out this year.

249
00:31:25.740 --> 00:31:28.520
Mark Kushner: and the companies that are going to bid

250
00:31:28.730 --> 00:31:33.980
Mark Kushner: are going to tell us what their approach is, and then they need to

251
00:31:34.600 --> 00:31:43.590
Mark Kushner: within a year to give us their prototypical design of a fusion hour pilot plant.

252
00:31:44.320 --> 00:31:46.470
Mark Kushner: and then, if

253
00:31:47.100 --> 00:31:55.140
Mark Kushner: will choose a winner or loser or 2, and we'll actually put some money to augment their private money to do that.

254
00:31:55.770 --> 00:31:59.380
Mark Kushner: So the main thing down here, other than that concept

255
00:31:59.510 --> 00:32:01.550
Mark Kushner: was that commonwealth

256
00:32:01.710 --> 00:32:03.699
Mark Kushner: now known as Cfs.

257
00:32:03.980 --> 00:32:04.840
Mark Kushner: like

258
00:32:05.130 --> 00:32:07.959
Mark Kushner: Kentucky fried chicken is now Kfc.

259
00:32:08.773 --> 00:32:18.200
Mark Kushner: Rialta Thea Tokamak, energy eximer sap type one. These companies all got some money

260
00:32:18.690 --> 00:32:27.129
Mark Kushner: from this milestone program to start planning out how they would do so. This was, you know. So this is mirror.

261
00:32:27.480 --> 00:32:31.240
Mark Kushner: standard, tokamac, spherical tokamac

262
00:32:32.960 --> 00:32:36.220
Mark Kushner: pro icf fast ignition.

263
00:32:36.960 --> 00:32:39.150
Mark Kushner: Icf hybrid drive.

264
00:32:39.180 --> 00:32:42.490
Mark Kushner: shear, flow, stabilized Z. Pinch another.

265
00:32:42.890 --> 00:32:51.220
Mark Kushner: Think this one's stellarator, and I don't even know what the is off the top of my head. So it was once again meant to be

266
00:32:51.350 --> 00:32:54.270
Mark Kushner: a broad brush of many

267
00:32:54.925 --> 00:33:04.020
Mark Kushner: companies and different approaches. So the government doesn't immediately pick a winner or loser. Right? They're kind of putting it into a portfolio.

268
00:33:05.960 --> 00:33:07.310
Mark Kushner: all right. So

269
00:33:09.260 --> 00:33:12.320
Mark Kushner: we've got private public partnerships.

270
00:33:12.600 --> 00:33:13.725
Mark Kushner: And

271
00:33:15.650 --> 00:33:20.669
Mark Kushner: what Ryan was was telling you so technically at the end of 2019

272
00:33:21.433 --> 00:33:36.250
Mark Kushner: after 10 years running the plasma Physics Division and doing all the administrivia as well as having a bi-coastal relationship with my family from the West Coast to Washington, DC, I said, Okay, that's enough.

273
00:33:37.120 --> 00:33:41.759
Mark Kushner: And I went to do some consulting work.

274
00:33:42.500 --> 00:33:47.500
Mark Kushner: and from family now lives in the Portland

275
00:33:47.720 --> 00:33:50.709
Mark Kushner: area. Beaverton, to be precise.

276
00:33:51.040 --> 00:34:15.460
Mark Kushner: and I thought, Well, you know, but I still love what I'm doing. So I'm going to try to find ways of getting engaged. Well, what you're going to hear is when I 1st wrote this paper I'd been working with Hb. 11, energy on proton Boron Fusion. This is a company based in Australia, and when you think of lasers and fusion, you think of Australia first.st Right?

277
00:34:15.610 --> 00:34:39.620
Mark Kushner: No, but I'm trying to help them out, and then you'll also hear about exomer energy which came along afterwards. And then, just over a year ago, or maybe just under a year ago, I got onto the Fuse Advisory Board. So I've got private fusion companies popping out of the woodwork, saying, You seem to know something about this subject. Can you help us

278
00:34:39.739 --> 00:34:42.870
Mark Kushner: sort some of these things out? And because

279
00:34:43.040 --> 00:34:45.089
Mark Kushner: this is what I love to do.

280
00:34:45.110 --> 00:34:53.600
Mark Kushner: even after 50 years, I say yes, they say, will you teach 472? I say yes, and my wife goes, okay.

281
00:34:53.790 --> 00:34:54.790
Mark Kushner: whatever

282
00:34:55.010 --> 00:34:56.659
Mark Kushner: float your boat.

283
00:34:57.310 --> 00:34:59.109
Mark Kushner: So Hb. 11.

284
00:34:59.600 --> 00:35:04.479
Mark Kushner: So it was started around the ideas of Heinrich Hora.

285
00:35:04.630 --> 00:35:27.659
Mark Kushner: who was originally from Austria, but was for many years at University of New South Wales, in Sydney, and did a lot of work with George Miley at Illinois, and published a lot of papers, and he had published papers on using short pulse lasers to try to ignite non-equilibrium burn of the proton Boron

286
00:35:27.920 --> 00:35:30.819
Mark Kushner: Fusion cycle in materials.

287
00:35:31.810 --> 00:35:35.559
Mark Kushner: So I'm retired. They're looking for someone to help.

288
00:35:35.760 --> 00:35:42.780
Mark Kushner: And so they end up calling me, these are the people on the board. So

289
00:35:43.710 --> 00:35:46.679
Mark Kushner: Heinz is now in his nineties and really not

290
00:35:46.770 --> 00:36:03.699
Mark Kushner: doing much. Peter Hoffman is from Germany, but he's now working in China because he had to mandatorily retire in in Germany. Addie Patterson built nuclear reactors in Australia, Dmitry Batani, you might know he's at Lully, in France.

291
00:36:03.810 --> 00:36:12.069
Mark Kushner: Then my buddy, Mike Campbell, Fabio Bologna is the head of fusion. Energy for the Iaea in Luxembourg

292
00:36:13.091 --> 00:36:15.999
Mark Kushner: me, and then Max Payback

293
00:36:16.110 --> 00:36:16.785
Mark Kushner: is

294
00:36:17.590 --> 00:36:25.450
Mark Kushner: emeritus Livermore, designer and the inventor of the fast ignition concept. So that's who's advising them.

295
00:36:25.970 --> 00:36:30.730
Mark Kushner: And, as I say, they're looking at using short pulse lasers

296
00:36:31.080 --> 00:36:32.260
Mark Kushner: to

297
00:36:33.660 --> 00:36:35.800
Mark Kushner: burn proton boron.

298
00:36:36.130 --> 00:36:50.589
Mark Kushner: because the problem with proton Boron is. And I think it's on the next few graphs. So we'll we'll kind of say that. But this this shows we we did manage to get, you'll see, get an infuse proposal. So what we're trying to do.

299
00:36:50.680 --> 00:36:57.510
Mark Kushner: When they 1st approached me with this I said, this, everyone knows proton Boron doesn't work.

300
00:36:57.580 --> 00:36:59.130
Mark Kushner: and Heinz

301
00:36:59.220 --> 00:37:05.430
Mark Kushner: is a theoretician who has a lot of wild ideas, most of which aren't practical.

302
00:37:06.870 --> 00:37:09.669
Mark Kushner: But there was experimental data.

303
00:37:09.860 --> 00:37:18.270
Mark Kushner: and it was by people I respected. There were experiments done in Moscow in 2,005. Christine le Bun from Luli

304
00:37:18.300 --> 00:37:20.609
Mark Kushner: did some in France.

305
00:37:20.680 --> 00:37:26.160
Mark Kushner: Then there were things on the Prague asterisk laser. They were making lots of Alpha particles.

306
00:37:27.490 --> 00:37:29.280
Mark Kushner: So it was like, well.

307
00:37:30.470 --> 00:37:33.210
Mark Kushner: I'm skeptical. But I got to understand this.

308
00:37:33.660 --> 00:37:37.080
Mark Kushner: So anyone was who was at the lunchtime discussion

309
00:37:37.930 --> 00:37:46.290
Mark Kushner: now knows that it was all beam target interactions. Right? Sharp pulse lasers were accelerating protons in the material.

310
00:37:46.470 --> 00:37:53.620
Mark Kushner: There's a big cross section at about an Mev. They made lots of alpha particles. It'll never scale the energy.

311
00:37:54.560 --> 00:37:58.980
Mark Kushner: So I've been trying to work with them to try to figure out

312
00:37:59.370 --> 00:38:04.330
Mark Kushner: how to to do that. And in the meantime, you know. So

313
00:38:04.440 --> 00:38:09.870
Mark Kushner: Arpa E. And and infuse, has had some interest in the work, because

314
00:38:10.190 --> 00:38:16.439
Mark Kushner: at the Aps meeting recently, Scott Hsu was saying, we need to do more in alternate fuels.

315
00:38:16.790 --> 00:38:39.989
Mark Kushner: They want some rigorous scientific work quantitatively. So that's part of what I've been trying to do. Also, people have heard. There were no lasers in Australia, really, and the company is looking to start building those up with the university, and so, if nothing else, we'll seed some

316
00:38:40.370 --> 00:38:44.167
Mark Kushner: new research capabilities in a company

317
00:38:44.960 --> 00:38:46.200
Mark Kushner: with.

318
00:38:46.970 --> 00:38:48.820
Mark Kushner: That's an ally.

319
00:38:48.870 --> 00:38:51.970
Mark Kushner: And, as I say, if you haven't known this.

320
00:38:52.050 --> 00:38:54.140
Mark Kushner: this is Sigma

321
00:38:54.811 --> 00:38:59.749
Mark Kushner: V bar, right? So this is reactivity as a function of temperature.

322
00:39:00.500 --> 00:39:03.580
Mark Kushner: The blue curve is Dt

323
00:39:04.070 --> 00:39:05.660
Mark Kushner: full reaction.

324
00:39:05.680 --> 00:39:12.260
Mark Kushner: This gold curve is Dt. Alphas! Only because only the alphas propagate the burn.

325
00:39:12.510 --> 00:39:15.150
Mark Kushner: So proton Boron

326
00:39:15.560 --> 00:39:22.390
Mark Kushner: crosses over in the activity space at about 200 Kev. And if you're a theoretician

327
00:39:23.119 --> 00:39:35.140
Mark Kushner: that doesn't sound too bad. But in the practical world, I mean 200 Kev. I mean, the Nif targets are igniting at about 10 Kev. And maybe

328
00:39:35.350 --> 00:39:40.299
Mark Kushner: propagating up to 15 or 17. I mean, we're not even at the

329
00:39:40.360 --> 00:39:50.270
Mark Kushner: at the beginning of reactivity. And it's because the cross section is over here. And this is a new cross section. So I can't delve into the details that much.

330
00:39:50.940 --> 00:39:55.729
Mark Kushner: But we've been. I've been helping them put together techno economic models.

331
00:39:56.160 --> 00:40:02.989
Mark Kushner: The main thing is, you know, you have to. If you don't, this is a loop, right? You can get this immediately.

332
00:40:03.370 --> 00:40:16.769
Mark Kushner: But you know you've got an efficiency of converting energy into electricity. You've got an efficiency of the laser. You have to have an A to GA. Deficiency times gain of 10 or more

333
00:40:16.780 --> 00:40:28.720
Mark Kushner: so with the kind of efficiencies that lasers have or might have, you need to have, gains of 100 200 300, none of which have been even seen yet.

334
00:40:29.020 --> 00:40:29.890
Mark Kushner: Right.

335
00:40:30.780 --> 00:40:36.799
Mark Kushner: but that then sizes, your laser and your target chamber and all those things.

336
00:40:40.100 --> 00:40:41.540
Mark Kushner: So

337
00:40:42.780 --> 00:40:43.540
Mark Kushner: yeah.

338
00:40:44.840 --> 00:40:53.160
Mark Kushner: so, as I say, we got a an infuse Grant, you'll hear about that in a minute, and this is just a lot of busy work, but just a couple

339
00:40:54.260 --> 00:40:54.930
Mark Kushner: oops.

340
00:40:55.100 --> 00:40:57.280
Mark Kushner: About 36 h ago

341
00:40:57.360 --> 00:41:01.500
Mark Kushner: this proposal to Arpa E. Went in with me.

342
00:41:01.730 --> 00:41:04.346
Mark Kushner: retired me as the Pi.

343
00:41:05.190 --> 00:41:15.409
Mark Kushner: For Hb. 11, and a consortium of Voss scientific prism. The triforce institute that Adam Sephco has at Rochester in the flash code.

344
00:41:15.510 --> 00:41:27.819
Mark Kushner: trying to develop modern tools, to evaluate alternate fuel cycles. Not just proton boron, but lidt or catalyzed D or tritium lean or whatever.

345
00:41:27.960 --> 00:41:32.029
Mark Kushner: So we'll see. Actually, Arpa E is interested

346
00:41:32.250 --> 00:41:39.889
Mark Kushner: in this. We proposed it as a concept paper, and we knew of several proposals other people put in

347
00:41:40.120 --> 00:42:00.609
Mark Kushner: that were rejected in this one, they said, send us the full thing, and Scott Shoes said, he's interested in this topic, so we'll see where it goes. You can say something, Nick, I'm confused. I feel like your previous 2 slides. Were you saying that you've now figured out that this concept doesn't work because their activity is really low. And the previous experimental data was all being target.

348
00:42:01.350 --> 00:42:06.860
Mark Kushner: Yeah, I can't tell the full story. The main thing is, they were just saying, Oh, we'll just hit it

349
00:42:07.020 --> 00:42:12.839
Mark Kushner: hit the target with a very intense beam, and we can ignite this non-equilibrium burn.

350
00:42:13.550 --> 00:42:27.210
Mark Kushner: and that is still a a lot. What a company called marvel fusion is saying. And I mean we could go into lots of technical details we have identified with very high compression

351
00:42:27.310 --> 00:42:38.659
Mark Kushner: of the fuel beyond what Nif has done that you can find some space where the fuel becomes at least marginally reactive. And then there could be

352
00:42:38.940 --> 00:42:52.259
Mark Kushner: so it was for all fuel cycles. So what happens if you add some tritium? What if you put a tritium spark plug inside a proton boron shell? What if you? What is the ignition temperature for Lidt.

353
00:42:52.360 --> 00:42:55.280
Mark Kushner: LIDT. B. So

354
00:42:56.700 --> 00:43:04.719
Mark Kushner: I do believe that proton Boron alone is probably a fool's errand, but not necessarily all alternate fuels.

355
00:43:05.190 --> 00:43:11.339
Mark Kushner: and because the alternate fuels are more anneutronic than Dt.

356
00:43:12.020 --> 00:43:23.039
Mark Kushner: And don't require tea, or at least as much T tritium right? They may be better for a full system power plant. So it's a it's a longer story, right?

357
00:43:23.310 --> 00:43:26.090
Mark Kushner: But it's a valid question, all right.

358
00:43:26.240 --> 00:43:28.470
Mark Kushner: blazing on eczema.

359
00:43:28.700 --> 00:43:37.579
Mark Kushner: I'm he, you know. So where I'm trying to show Hb. 11, where things won't work and what they might need to do with pivot to pivot.

360
00:43:37.660 --> 00:43:47.689
Mark Kushner: I'm really excited to be working with exomer because they're trying to build, as it said, 10 Megajoule class lasers.

361
00:43:49.150 --> 00:44:02.319
Mark Kushner: and I put down this is that they could be relevant to Hb. 11, and but they were selected. They were the biggest. They got 9 million dollars from this DOE milestone program.

362
00:44:02.530 --> 00:44:05.000
Mark Kushner: They're building hardware

363
00:44:05.070 --> 00:44:21.290
Mark Kushner: in Denver, Colorado, right now. I was there in August, after an Ife meeting. They bought this lab and they had masking tape on the floor where the machines were going to be. I'm supposed to go back there again in December to see the machines

364
00:44:21.590 --> 00:44:23.130
Mark Kushner: that are built.

365
00:44:23.360 --> 00:44:26.319
Mark Kushner: This is what the private sector can do. That

366
00:44:26.940 --> 00:44:30.259
Mark Kushner: DOE can right, which is, build

367
00:44:30.850 --> 00:44:37.830
Mark Kushner: quickly if anyone, it's maybe not as fast as China, but faster than anything in government.

368
00:44:38.459 --> 00:44:44.150
Mark Kushner: Connor, Galloway and Alex are the ones that started it.

369
00:44:45.000 --> 00:44:50.440
Mark Kushner: Alison Christopherson. I think she was Carolyn's student. She's the head of target design.

370
00:44:50.670 --> 00:44:55.473
Mark Kushner: We're talking about experiments. They're headquartered here.

371
00:44:56.330 --> 00:45:00.139
Mark Kushner: that's where they're building their experimental facility, and they're working with

372
00:45:00.240 --> 00:45:02.909
Mark Kushner: various people, and

373
00:45:03.190 --> 00:45:06.419
Mark Kushner: there I am again on the advisory board.

374
00:45:08.120 --> 00:45:14.990
Mark Kushner: so just in a nutshell, they're looking at using long pulse Krf amplifiers

375
00:45:15.590 --> 00:45:20.490
Mark Kushner: to generate the raw energy for the laser.

376
00:45:21.450 --> 00:45:28.859
Mark Kushner: then use Raman beam combining from multiple primary amplifiers into

377
00:45:31.300 --> 00:45:34.000
Mark Kushner: a central amplifier.

378
00:45:34.650 --> 00:45:39.619
Mark Kushner: And then this then they basically their storage media. So

379
00:45:40.040 --> 00:45:43.400
Mark Kushner: with a laser, you know, you usually

380
00:45:43.910 --> 00:45:50.910
Mark Kushner: excited. And then it's in a state, and you're storing the energy, and then you release it. Well, here they're putting

381
00:45:51.040 --> 00:46:00.629
Mark Kushner: the photons into a tube of I think it'll be neon for the the picos, I mean the Nanosecond type beams.

382
00:46:01.540 --> 00:46:17.249
Mark Kushner: It will be 100 or 200 or 300 meters long. It depends on how many microseconds of energy they've put into this, and then they want to use this brilland pulse compression.

383
00:46:17.270 --> 00:46:23.400
Mark Kushner: so bring send a small, a short pulse laser of low energy, but the right

384
00:46:23.510 --> 00:46:28.950
Mark Kushner: port pulse format at a slightly, you know, right phase, matching condition

385
00:46:29.010 --> 00:46:33.470
Mark Kushner: to do real one pulse compression. It was developed

386
00:46:33.480 --> 00:46:40.710
Mark Kushner: by some of these companies, these concepts during the Strategic and Defense initiative initiative.

387
00:46:41.060 --> 00:46:42.760
Mark Kushner: The Star Wars Days.

388
00:46:42.960 --> 00:46:55.139
Mark Kushner: I joke at the MIPS. The lunch we had was which occurred in the eighties before most of you were born, and but these concepts were in principle shown

389
00:46:55.290 --> 00:47:00.279
Mark Kushner: for anti-satellite weapons. Now they're trying to apply them to fusion.

390
00:47:00.980 --> 00:47:04.305
Mark Kushner: And the interesting thing is

391
00:47:05.280 --> 00:47:20.080
Mark Kushner: this just kind of puts things in perspective. This is what Allison showed at the Ifv Star meeting Alison Christopherson. They're looking at an intermediate facility of only 4 megajoules of

392
00:47:20.900 --> 00:47:25.799
Mark Kushner: 2, you know, 245 nanometer energy, which is like

393
00:47:27.130 --> 00:47:28.840
Mark Kushner: substantially more.

394
00:47:29.300 --> 00:47:30.029
Mark Kushner: You know

395
00:47:30.580 --> 00:47:39.969
Mark Kushner: twice more than twice what nif has right. But they're gonna look at operate at a high 80 a bat, and only get a gain of 65.

396
00:47:40.480 --> 00:47:55.439
Mark Kushner: So this is a starting point, and we can't go into the details. But this just shows you what they're doing. And this could become a user facility. So people that are using Omega right now to do experiments

397
00:47:55.830 --> 00:48:03.639
Mark Kushner: in the Ife Brn report it called for intermediate scale facilities for lasers and for pulse power.

398
00:48:03.970 --> 00:48:07.969
Mark Kushner: I think exomer's 4 Megajoule system could be that

399
00:48:08.030 --> 00:48:16.529
Mark Kushner: for the laser fusion community, and you'll hear about fuse in just a minute. And this is what the thing looks like. These big

400
00:48:17.575 --> 00:48:18.490
Mark Kushner: lumbering

401
00:48:18.580 --> 00:48:24.290
Mark Kushner: microsecond discharge Krf lasers making the light

402
00:48:24.300 --> 00:48:25.720
Mark Kushner: to go

403
00:48:26.270 --> 00:48:31.760
Mark Kushner: into, you know, to be combined. Go into this long tube.

404
00:48:32.630 --> 00:48:34.060
Mark Kushner: and from

405
00:48:34.160 --> 00:48:39.690
Mark Kushner: just 2 games to use the old Livermore High life, 2 concept.

406
00:48:39.860 --> 00:48:41.110
Mark Kushner: And

407
00:48:41.610 --> 00:48:50.890
Mark Kushner: there's very little glass, very little optics if everything works. But even if it doesn't work, if they make Mega dual class lasers

408
00:48:51.140 --> 00:48:52.360
Mark Kushner: that are

409
00:48:53.330 --> 00:49:06.249
Mark Kushner: less, much less expensive than what we have now to me this would be to high energy lasers what Cpa has been to short pulse lasers because it's using a Chi 3

410
00:49:06.400 --> 00:49:09.269
Mark Kushner: nonlinear compression trick.

411
00:49:10.240 --> 00:49:16.410
Mark Kushner: all right, coming near the end. So now here we are at fuse. So those of you that work in

412
00:49:16.420 --> 00:49:26.389
Mark Kushner: in Ryan's lab and and look at the Maglift concept. This should look a lot like what you see there or Z machine and whatnot.

413
00:49:26.660 --> 00:49:28.130
Mark Kushner: And

414
00:49:28.580 --> 00:49:31.269
Mark Kushner: so they're actually

415
00:49:32.660 --> 00:49:34.319
Mark Kushner: building a a

416
00:49:35.760 --> 00:49:47.989
Mark Kushner: their modules right now in San Leandro, California, and we'll we'll talk in a minute. So here's here's their advisory board. For some reason I'm there again, although it's interesting.

417
00:49:48.860 --> 00:49:51.769
Mark Kushner: There's 3 scientists and 3

418
00:49:52.470 --> 00:49:54.070
Mark Kushner: policy people.

419
00:49:55.950 --> 00:50:04.789
Mark Kushner: But what they're working on is their roadmap is developing the so-called Titan module. So this is a terawatt

420
00:50:04.810 --> 00:50:06.600
Mark Kushner: impedance matched

421
00:50:06.760 --> 00:50:20.579
Mark Kushner: Mark's generator, so an img is the acronym for it. So it would be. This is this would be the size. This is a Terawatt in that footprint compared to a standard size person.

422
00:50:20.700 --> 00:50:37.829
Mark Kushner: Right? And to them they're emphasizing manufacturing. You might have just recently seen pacific fusion released a big you know, which is also looking at Imgs, but a different form factor, and whatever I haven't even had a chance to parse that.

423
00:50:38.180 --> 00:50:39.390
Mark Kushner: But they're

424
00:50:39.420 --> 00:50:43.920
Mark Kushner: they're looking at a fast track towards

425
00:50:44.658 --> 00:50:47.209
Mark Kushner: a large scale facility.

426
00:50:47.280 --> 00:50:50.959
Mark Kushner: I like working with fuse because

427
00:50:51.400 --> 00:50:53.670
Mark Kushner: they have a mentality of

428
00:50:54.240 --> 00:51:04.609
Mark Kushner: they're building this. They built this machine in house. Then they're looking at scaling up the manufacturing. Because if you need.

429
00:51:06.110 --> 00:51:12.940
Mark Kushner: you know, multi 100 terawatt machine. So even this one, you need 12 to 15

430
00:51:13.300 --> 00:51:22.499
Mark Kushner: of the modules. And now here you need a hundred or hundreds of them. How do you scale up the manufacturing? They're trying to think more like Spacex

431
00:51:22.510 --> 00:51:32.269
Mark Kushner: about how upfront, how do you make it? So you can build things. And then a lot of it is going to be about, how can you build the machines

432
00:51:32.700 --> 00:51:34.920
Mark Kushner: to minimize debris.

433
00:51:34.980 --> 00:51:40.979
Mark Kushner: maximize shot rate, introduce robotics and OP, you know.

434
00:51:41.560 --> 00:51:49.260
Mark Kushner: automation because you can't operate a fusion power plant, you know, with the single shot mentality of Z.

435
00:51:49.720 --> 00:51:52.429
Mark Kushner: So anyway, this Z scale

436
00:51:52.460 --> 00:51:55.899
Mark Kushner: Z star machine, they're actually looking at

437
00:51:56.310 --> 00:52:00.900
Mark Kushner: citing that at or near a university that has

438
00:52:00.920 --> 00:52:03.629
Mark Kushner: plasma and pulse power experience

439
00:52:04.020 --> 00:52:26.924
Mark Kushner: when they're right now, and going around and talking with various people about doing that. And I like also the fact that kind of like commonwealth fusion that published a bunch of articles about their spark machine. So there's a lot of things I don't like about Tokamax, but I like the the Physics space and the publication approach of Cfs.

440
00:52:27.920 --> 00:52:35.920
Mark Kushner: they wrote a paper and got it. Peer reviewed and and published on the 1st few stages of the Img.

441
00:52:35.960 --> 00:52:38.185
Mark Kushner: and as soon as they

442
00:52:38.740 --> 00:52:42.150
Mark Kushner: finished testing the one terawatt system

443
00:52:43.950 --> 00:52:54.719
Mark Kushner: which anyone who understands pulse power, they thought they were going to have fired it some time ago, but supply chain issues the bolts that held the module to the tank.

444
00:52:54.870 --> 00:53:00.060
Mark Kushner: They couldn't get the ones they wanted and the ones that they could get broke. So

445
00:53:01.160 --> 00:53:04.799
Mark Kushner: anyway, pulse power is is not for wimps.

446
00:53:07.320 --> 00:53:13.019
Mark Kushner: so I just wanted to quickly also talk, because I've been talking a little bit with Brian Kudoski

447
00:53:13.490 --> 00:53:15.780
Mark Kushner: Key dial screen. And

448
00:53:15.850 --> 00:53:21.829
Mark Kushner: I'm going to talk with Brandon Katunas tomorrow, and a couple of other people

449
00:53:21.950 --> 00:53:33.129
Mark Kushner: part of what they've also picked up on is this appear on which would be a high scale. Machine is based on a paper.

450
00:53:34.190 --> 00:53:38.739
Mark Kushner: So if you look, there's structure around here. What that is

451
00:53:39.570 --> 00:53:45.819
Mark Kushner: is, they picked up Dan Sinar sold this to them right? So I was part of a paper.

452
00:53:45.860 --> 00:53:47.979
Mark Kushner: and whatever this was

453
00:53:48.060 --> 00:53:49.770
Mark Kushner: 2,008

454
00:53:49.780 --> 00:53:57.790
Mark Kushner: on fission fusion hybrids as a bridge between light water reactors and a fusion technology.

455
00:53:57.900 --> 00:54:07.189
Mark Kushner: Nuclear waste is a big issue, right in at least in public perception. So we were looking at building, burning up actinides.

456
00:54:07.940 --> 00:54:08.960
Mark Kushner: And

457
00:54:09.070 --> 00:54:18.770
Mark Kushner: when the head of the company talks to reactor or utilities, they're very interested. And it's another whole story for

458
00:54:18.920 --> 00:54:37.349
Mark Kushner: maybe an adult beverage that I actually had a discussion with someone from DOE environmental management last week who got wind of this and wants to talk to me about starting up a program to start looking at this kind of waste burn up. And I'd like this department to be

459
00:54:38.490 --> 00:54:39.520
Mark Kushner: because it's

460
00:54:40.060 --> 00:54:41.950
Mark Kushner: fusion meets fission

461
00:54:41.970 --> 00:54:43.660
Mark Kushner: and engineering

462
00:54:43.700 --> 00:54:44.960
Mark Kushner: be part of it.

463
00:54:45.885 --> 00:54:48.310
Mark Kushner: So just a couple more

464
00:54:48.420 --> 00:54:53.140
Mark Kushner: infuse is another program. This was to allow

465
00:54:53.190 --> 00:54:56.330
Mark Kushner: private companies to gain access to

466
00:54:56.730 --> 00:54:59.900
Mark Kushner: national labs. Or.

467
00:55:00.240 --> 00:55:08.657
Mark Kushner: yeah. So you see all this stuff. It's all this private public stuff between labs and certain universities. And

468
00:55:09.360 --> 00:55:13.732
Mark Kushner: we just are finishing up a project with Adam sefcal

469
00:55:14.796 --> 00:55:22.089
Mark Kushner: using triforce to look at the proton boron fusion with a implicit particle in cell

470
00:55:22.210 --> 00:55:24.310
Mark Kushner: type treatment

471
00:55:25.500 --> 00:55:30.890
Mark Kushner: and and DOE, as I say, is interested in this quantitative work.

472
00:55:32.930 --> 00:55:44.019
Mark Kushner: There's also. So this is mostly been about private fusion. Now, this maybe, is already. We're not sure where this is going to go. But Sandia

473
00:55:44.120 --> 00:55:45.560
Mark Kushner: has pushed

474
00:55:45.810 --> 00:55:50.929
Mark Kushner: the idea of Nnsa having the private sector

475
00:55:50.960 --> 00:55:58.259
Mark Kushner: develop and build their next generation machine so that could be their next generation. Z their next generation. Nif.

476
00:55:59.160 --> 00:56:08.409
Mark Kushner: so this is what their next generation z idea might look like, and the main thing running out of time here. But

477
00:56:08.520 --> 00:56:14.150
Mark Kushner: they're they're looking at it as the NASA Cox model right of

478
00:56:14.170 --> 00:56:19.350
Mark Kushner: milestones. Give the private sector money, and then the fact that

479
00:56:19.390 --> 00:56:28.620
Mark Kushner: only Nnsa owns and operates their own large scale facilities. Dod or DOE office of science

480
00:56:28.670 --> 00:56:35.739
Mark Kushner: has other people. You know, the commercial sector build them so we'll see where that goes.

481
00:56:36.920 --> 00:56:39.609
Mark Kushner: and they're basing it on the fact that

482
00:56:39.870 --> 00:56:45.340
Mark Kushner: right now the private investment infusion is dwarfing the public

483
00:56:46.080 --> 00:56:46.990
Mark Kushner: right?

484
00:56:47.120 --> 00:56:49.800
Mark Kushner: So they're trying to say, how do we make

485
00:56:50.000 --> 00:56:51.680
Mark Kushner: something out of this.

486
00:56:52.260 --> 00:56:55.070
Mark Kushner: Yeah. So this is just about the end. So

487
00:56:57.820 --> 00:57:01.579
Mark Kushner: I'm I'm telling you. Obviously, I'm excited about this.

488
00:57:01.830 --> 00:57:04.020
Mark Kushner: The private sector is exploding.

489
00:57:05.380 --> 00:57:10.039
Mark Kushner: One of the discussions we had over lunch with students I was with was.

490
00:57:10.700 --> 00:57:16.759
Mark Kushner: so what happens with some of the companies fail? What's going to happen to the venture capital world!

491
00:57:17.650 --> 00:57:26.589
Mark Kushner: Who knows? We hope some of them are going to succeed. But I was. It was interesting because I was just at Seattle Fusion week

492
00:57:26.750 --> 00:57:31.800
Mark Kushner: in Seattle, in Seattle and Everett, Washington last week had to go.

493
00:57:32.270 --> 00:57:36.949
Mark Kushner: and I found out this guy, Chris or or Gemian

494
00:57:37.180 --> 00:57:43.760
Mark Kushner: here, who was part of the startup of Ct. Fusion off University of Washington.

495
00:57:45.460 --> 00:57:47.230
Mark Kushner: Ct. Fusion

496
00:57:47.920 --> 00:57:57.649
Mark Kushner: got some DOE and Arpa money, but they could never get private funds, so they decided to fold. 3 of the guys, it says, went to Zap.

497
00:57:58.430 --> 00:58:00.769
Mark Kushner: which is also in Seattle.

498
00:58:01.440 --> 00:58:04.780
Mark Kushner: And, by the way, I don't see how sheer float, stabilized

499
00:58:05.200 --> 00:58:17.880
Mark Kushner: pinches scale to energy yield. But that's another story, and Chris has started up a company and a consulting company working with the clean tap. So I say.

500
00:58:19.240 --> 00:58:24.820
Mark Kushner: it's not really buyer. Beware! But part of my my message to you

501
00:58:24.850 --> 00:58:41.809
Mark Kushner: through Mipsi is you. The workforce is going to be a huge issue in the fusion industry, and you're going to have people saying, Oh, you don't need to go get your Phd. Come, work for us now. We'll take you as a master's. We'll take you as a bachelor's.

502
00:58:42.313 --> 00:58:49.860
Mark Kushner: Whatnot, and those might be the right things to do. But whatever it is, employee, beware right.

503
00:58:49.930 --> 00:58:54.319
Mark Kushner: Choose the companies wisely, because companies are going to fold.

504
00:58:54.670 --> 00:58:57.140
Mark Kushner: merge, consolidate morph.

505
00:58:58.130 --> 00:59:11.330
Mark Kushner: So you want to make certain that the company that you go work for at whatever level or lab is based on sound plasma, physics, infusion principles.

506
00:59:11.730 --> 00:59:18.359
Mark Kushner: and they actually know what they're doing as business people and and can keep their Vcs

507
00:59:18.390 --> 00:59:26.839
Mark Kushner: in in check. And that's something that I don't know much about and don't want to know much about, because it's just another form of Administrivia

508
00:59:28.684 --> 00:59:34.849
Mark Kushner: and Ju just show this was from Fusion Week. So DOE is still

509
00:59:36.160 --> 00:59:42.400
Mark Kushner: DOE and the national Labs and Nnsa are still kind of thinking they're in charge.

510
00:59:42.490 --> 00:59:48.129
Mark Kushner: even though they're rapidly falling behind in their funding, and

511
00:59:48.870 --> 01:00:03.060
Mark Kushner: Jp. Elaine was there at Fusion Week, and they had the Governor of Washington at this fusion week. So people are excited about whether this is going to bring Job to their States. I hear Wisconsin is saying they're going to be the fusion state.

512
01:00:03.100 --> 01:00:04.105
Mark Kushner: whatever

513
01:00:05.970 --> 01:00:15.189
Mark Kushner: they're talking about a lot of ecosystems and whatnot. It's it's basically trying to get people to play nice without giving them

514
01:00:15.430 --> 01:00:17.040
Mark Kushner: much money.

515
01:00:18.430 --> 01:00:19.610
Mark Kushner: But this is

516
01:00:19.690 --> 01:00:22.049
Mark Kushner: just the way the world is working

517
01:00:22.831 --> 01:00:26.200
Mark Kushner: what I haven't been able to talk about

518
01:00:27.600 --> 01:00:36.059
Mark Kushner: is, go back. If you want a little more detail, look at the paper because there's a lot of engineering issues and technical issues.

519
01:00:36.300 --> 01:00:41.850
Mark Kushner: What about international competition? What about simulations? What about

520
01:00:42.010 --> 01:00:44.610
Mark Kushner: the whole system plant design?

521
01:00:45.400 --> 01:00:50.930
Mark Kushner: There's there are a lot of things to go from science to engineering.

522
01:00:51.590 --> 01:00:52.540
Mark Kushner: So

523
01:00:52.750 --> 01:00:58.570
Mark Kushner: if this talk has interested oil, okay, I'm not even going to.

524
01:00:59.040 --> 01:01:06.280
Mark Kushner: This just shows that Euv lithography looks a lot like a miniature fusion power plant.

525
01:01:06.670 --> 01:01:10.800
Mark Kushner: It's a laser tracking a target needing to mitigate debris.

526
01:01:11.320 --> 01:01:13.920
Mark Kushner: but on a much smaller scale.

527
01:01:14.780 --> 01:01:15.670
Mark Kushner: So

528
01:01:16.040 --> 01:01:19.920
Mark Kushner: if this talk is as inspired you.

529
01:01:20.950 --> 01:01:24.110
Mark Kushner: I've been talked into teaching

530
01:01:24.270 --> 01:01:31.519
Mark Kushner: 472, which is called fusion reactor technology. But this won't be your father's

531
01:01:31.580 --> 01:01:41.789
Mark Kushner: fusion reactor technology. If I have the time and energy to do it, because that was mostly focused in the past on eater. And nif

532
01:01:44.150 --> 01:01:46.889
Mark Kushner: I wanna update that to

533
01:01:46.930 --> 01:01:49.570
Mark Kushner: talk about the private companies.

534
01:01:49.650 --> 01:02:05.250
Mark Kushner: the principles behind the different private approaches, rather than spending too much time just talking about tokamak, and then a little bit about nif, because nif doesn't even define the state of the art of where we're going for fusion energy.

535
01:02:05.430 --> 01:02:18.220
Mark Kushner: right with the idea. So, as I say, it'll have some of these things. But I want to put in a lot more about the physics and engineering of the hottest private fusion ideas

536
01:02:18.630 --> 01:02:20.179
Mark Kushner: such as this.

537
01:02:21.130 --> 01:02:24.769
Mark Kushner: with the idea that I want to equip you

538
01:02:24.990 --> 01:02:36.779
Mark Kushner: to be a knowledgeable consumer of jobs with these companies to be able to look at it and say, Nope, that's just being target reactions. It's not going to work. No, that's

539
01:02:36.830 --> 01:02:49.450
Mark Kushner: yeah. This one looks really interesting, right? Just so that you understand these how the plasma physics couples to the reactor engineering and where it might go. So, and

540
01:02:50.080 --> 01:02:56.039
Mark Kushner: I know I've run long. But the last bottle of wine I bought in

541
01:02:56.730 --> 01:02:58.900
Mark Kushner: Washington, DC.

542
01:02:59.160 --> 01:03:03.649
Mark Kushner: As I was retiring. It was a Washington Surah.

543
01:03:04.750 --> 01:03:06.940
Mark Kushner: and it was called.

544
01:03:07.080 --> 01:03:13.769
Mark Kushner: It turned out. When I got the bottle. I just got a Washington Syrah. It was called the pundit.

545
01:03:16.000 --> 01:03:35.929
Mark Kushner: And I said, Wow, this is the universe speaking to me. This is like Douglas Adams, right? The universe is speaking to me because this is what I aspire to be on my retirement, a pundit pontificating and giving people ideas. So I had that bottle on my on my bookshelf in my home office.

546
01:03:35.950 --> 01:03:37.030
Mark Kushner: So

547
01:03:37.720 --> 01:03:39.890
Mark Kushner: thanks and any questions

548
01:03:46.408 --> 01:03:54.790
Mark Kushner: was in the laser department at Ms fusion through the 19 eighties.

549
01:03:55.050 --> 01:03:57.290
Mark Kushner: and at that time

550
01:03:57.673 --> 01:04:06.399
Mark Kushner: to talk about the public private partnership. At that time the National apps did not want somebody like him as a private company working in laser fuming.

551
01:04:06.920 --> 01:04:09.449
Mark Kushner: How's that change? Is that everything changed?

552
01:04:11.210 --> 01:04:13.590
Mark Kushner: I think so.

553
01:04:14.520 --> 01:04:16.300
Mark Kushner: Although.

554
01:04:16.620 --> 01:04:21.099
Mark Kushner: yeah. So I actually for that perspectives paper.

555
01:04:22.320 --> 01:04:36.120
Mark Kushner: I really delved in. And there's a little bit in the paper about the Kms. But I actually went through and and looked for a lot of documents about how Kms. Grew out of out of Willow Run.

556
01:04:36.310 --> 01:04:50.080
Mark Kushner: and you know the various people and whatnot, and at that time, because of classification, part of it right? The Aec didn't want Kms doing this. But you guys were pushing on at least

557
01:04:50.530 --> 01:04:51.936
Mark Kushner: right now.

558
01:04:53.800 --> 01:05:07.130
Mark Kushner: there, there is acceptance. And because the most of the people are pursuing things that don't fall under national security classification, it's okay for them to do it. And

559
01:05:07.500 --> 01:05:11.690
Mark Kushner: they have the money and the you know, and they're just going ahead and building that.

560
01:05:12.180 --> 01:05:13.140
Mark Kushner: So

561
01:05:14.740 --> 01:05:26.439
Mark Kushner: I'll just say somewhat pejoratively. I see some people at Livermore who still think, because they got ignition, that they should lead the Ife program. The companies are saying, Well, you're gonna

562
01:05:26.460 --> 01:05:32.010
Mark Kushner: lead it with, you know, watching my taillights as I go way beyond you.

563
01:05:32.680 --> 01:05:57.109
Mark Kushner: Actually. Oh, no laser fusion actually goes back 1963. I had Peter Franken for optics. He was doing experiments using ruby laser right right the very first.st Well, the 1st ruby they were doing ruby masers at Willow Run, and then they did what the 3rd ruby laser in the country

564
01:05:57.230 --> 01:06:03.079
Mark Kushner: at at that lab at that time, they're very optimistic. Right? Right? Yeah. Yeah.

565
01:06:03.160 --> 01:06:10.029
Mark Kushner: So it's always like. So online and 79. So I'm as I'm waiting for someone to ask me

566
01:06:10.170 --> 01:06:12.559
Mark Kushner: the most important question

567
01:06:14.100 --> 01:06:16.100
Mark Kushner: that I haven't answered

568
01:06:16.550 --> 01:06:19.550
Mark Kushner: in this talk at all, and the one I've been asked

569
01:06:19.590 --> 01:06:25.630
Mark Kushner: for multiple decades every time I come and give a talk at at this department.

570
01:06:26.280 --> 01:06:28.360
Mark Kushner: What's your favorite private fusion company?

571
01:06:28.750 --> 01:06:32.029
Mark Kushner: No, that's nothing. Because until recently.

572
01:06:32.230 --> 01:06:37.700
Mark Kushner: so 60 years ago, the concept of inertial confinement, fusion

573
01:06:37.850 --> 01:06:49.630
Mark Kushner: proposed so 60 more years to go right. How many more years. Is it going to take 30? Right? I mean, that's that's still. That's still the question.

574
01:06:49.770 --> 01:06:51.720
Mark Kushner: Right? So

575
01:06:52.665 --> 01:06:54.600
Mark Kushner: I would say

576
01:06:54.660 --> 01:06:59.099
Mark Kushner: optimistically, it'll be 1520

577
01:06:59.330 --> 01:07:03.670
Mark Kushner: years. I mean, these are there are huge challenges.

578
01:07:05.630 --> 01:07:14.760
Mark Kushner: could even be 30. I. The thing we don't know is what the power of people actually being able to build things and not need to ask

579
01:07:14.780 --> 01:07:21.110
Mark Kushner: DOE, or whatever mother may I, every time they do something, and they actually

580
01:07:21.520 --> 01:07:27.669
Mark Kushner: can make mistakes as long as they're going along. Sound ideas. Right?

581
01:07:27.890 --> 01:07:32.080
Mark Kushner: So my my part of my answer is, I go back to that paper

582
01:07:32.915 --> 01:07:33.700
Mark Kushner: and

583
01:07:33.720 --> 01:07:37.680
Mark Kushner: my buddy, Mike Campbell that that Ryan knows. Well.

584
01:07:39.510 --> 01:07:41.319
Mark Kushner: if someone asks me

585
01:07:41.380 --> 01:07:54.560
Mark Kushner: when fusion is going to put power on, I still I'll say that 1520, 30 years, realistically, before you can actually put beneficial power. I can put a nuclear reactor at your

586
01:07:54.780 --> 01:07:56.100
Mark Kushner: AI

587
01:07:56.210 --> 01:07:58.962
Mark Kushner: side or your your

588
01:08:00.020 --> 01:08:03.910
Mark Kushner: cloud facility, or by your city

589
01:08:03.980 --> 01:08:05.340
Mark Kushner: tomorrow.

590
01:08:05.740 --> 01:08:06.854
Mark Kushner: And

591
01:08:08.010 --> 01:08:14.240
Mark Kushner: you know this, you could consider a fission fusion hybrid, either driven by a laser

592
01:08:14.330 --> 01:08:20.349
Mark Kushner: or by a pulse power machine, or even by some form of magnetic combined machine

593
01:08:20.479 --> 01:08:26.560
Mark Kushner: as like a Gen. 5 reactor that bridges between burning up

594
01:08:26.689 --> 01:08:39.289
Mark Kushner: the waste. So the main message here is, if you want to burn up the actonize, which are the big things that limit what you can put in a repository like Yucca Mountain, you need

595
01:08:39.600 --> 01:08:47.879
Mark Kushner: tens of fast reactors, and no one wants to build a fast reactor because they're concerned about the safety. But you can build

596
01:08:48.140 --> 01:08:51.920
Mark Kushner: a small number of fission fusion hybrids

597
01:08:52.399 --> 01:08:57.280
Mark Kushner: that will have subcritical blankets that can be made

598
01:08:57.970 --> 01:08:59.300
Mark Kushner: very safe.

599
01:08:59.580 --> 01:09:13.390
Mark Kushner: and they not only get rid of the waste, but, by the way, if you're a nuclear engineer, you know, it's not really waste. It's just only partially burnt fuel, and even the the Actinides that aren't

600
01:09:14.167 --> 01:09:19.719
Mark Kushner: fissile can be burned with a fast spectrum, so you can turn out

601
01:09:20.800 --> 01:09:22.649
Mark Kushner: from 10.

602
01:09:22.760 --> 01:09:32.659
Mark Kushner: You know the calculations in that paper I mentioned to you 20 megawatts of fusion power driving a subcritical nuclear blanket makes

603
01:09:32.729 --> 01:09:34.649
Mark Kushner: 3 gigawatts

604
01:09:35.800 --> 01:09:36.790
Mark Kushner: thermal.

605
01:09:37.380 --> 01:09:40.150
Mark Kushner: which is at least a gigawatt electric

606
01:09:40.830 --> 01:09:43.420
Mark Kushner: as opposed to an accelerator.

607
01:09:43.680 --> 01:09:47.209
Mark Kushner: If you try to do accelerator destruction of waste.

608
01:09:47.359 --> 01:09:52.809
Mark Kushner: it takes hundreds of megawatts to less efficiently burn it up, or you build

609
01:09:54.189 --> 01:09:57.810
Mark Kushner: Dicey fast reactor. So anyway.

610
01:09:58.550 --> 01:10:08.309
Mark Kushner: it's it's still not around the corner. And being a real nuke, I still think we should be building more Smrs or

611
01:10:08.320 --> 01:10:11.519
Mark Kushner: water, where I think, opening 3 Mile Island

612
01:10:12.020 --> 01:10:16.289
Mark Kushner: building the plants in Georgia, Southern power and whatnot.

613
01:10:16.420 --> 01:10:21.369
Mark Kushner: That's what we need to do more of, and that's an that's an interesting thing. We talked about.

614
01:10:23.010 --> 01:10:24.090
Mark Kushner: The

615
01:10:24.900 --> 01:10:36.150
Mark Kushner: economics of electrical power in the Us. Has been dominated by the you know, by the lowest costs in a deregulated market. But the sudden increase.

616
01:10:36.750 --> 01:10:46.019
Mark Kushner: now that the companies, like Microsoft and Amazon whatnot whatnot, they may well be buying their own power plants right.

617
01:10:46.250 --> 01:10:57.330
Mark Kushner: and the whole economics of the electrical power. Industry may change and and change. What is an acceptable cost for greenhouse gas, free electricity?

618
01:10:58.070 --> 01:11:00.000
Mark Kushner: It's a. It's a really

619
01:11:00.100 --> 01:11:02.320
Mark Kushner: interesting and exciting time.

620
01:11:03.580 --> 01:11:08.789
Mark Kushner: Alright, Tom! Well, thank you so much for all this perspective. It's been great.

621
01:11:11.060 --> 01:11:16.469
Mark Kushner: So thanks, guys, for 72 people take your class. I also actually, you reminded me that

622
01:11:16.980 --> 01:11:36.010
Mark Kushner: we've talked 590 at pulp power for fusion. And Tom actually contributed several lectures. That course. We've run it twice now. So Tom's been teaching here for a little while now, and looking forward to 472 next next semester. So thank you again and see you and anyone has any other questions.

623
01:11:37.090 --> 01:11:43.899
Mark Kushner: or I also offered. If anyone ever wants, you know, says, Hey, what do you think of this company. I got an offer.

624
01:11:44.080 --> 01:11:46.769
Mark Kushner: They know how to get in touch with me, and I'll give you

625
01:11:47.090 --> 01:11:51.930
Mark Kushner: an honest personal opinion. It comes on our nurse website. So you know.

626
01:12:00.750 --> 01:12:01.810
Mark Kushner: Sure

627
01:12:08.312 --> 01:12:24.640
Mark Kushner: there are. No.

628
01:12:24.830 --> 01:12:33.620
Mark Kushner: there are no bad or irrevocable answers. There are people going. All I'll say is, there are people going from the national labs

629
01:12:33.730 --> 01:12:37.010
Mark Kushner: that are going to the private companies

630
01:12:37.580 --> 01:12:41.310
Mark Kushner: right now because they're they're looking for.