David Kirtley: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and the Future of Energy | Lex Fridman Podcast #485

David Kirtley is a nuclear fusion engineer and CEO of Helion Energy, a company working on building the world’s first commercial fusion power plant by 2028.
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*Transcript:*

Transcript for David Kirtley: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and the Future of Energy | Lex Fridman Podcast #485

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*EPISODE LINKS:*
David’s X: https://x.com/dekirtley
David’s LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4qX0KXp
Helion: https://www.helionenergy.com/
Helion’s YouTube: https://youtube.com/HelionEnergy

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*OUTLINE:*
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

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