Nuclear Fusion XV: The Buzzkill Episode
Is nuclear fusion really the perfect energy source that it's sold as and cracked up to be? Even if we can get it working, will it live up to the considerable hype? www.physicspodcast.com @physicspo...
17 Maj 201924min
Nuclear Fusion XIV: Simple Engineering Problems?
What's stopping us from getting magnetic confinement fusion reactors that work? Is it really just... simple engineering problems? www.physicspodcast.com
9 Maj 201922min
Nuclear Fusion XIII: Two-Faced Gods
The second generation of laser fusion (inertial confinement fusion) devices was built in the USA in the 1970s and 1980s - but, unfortunately, those pesky plasma instabilities wouldn't go away. www.ph...
2 Maj 201924min
Nuclear Fusion XII: Frickin' Lasers
The invention of the laser in 1960 opened up an entirely new approach to nuclear fusion - dramatically, and drastically compressing individual pellets of fuel with lasers. www.physicspodcast.com @ph...
24 Apr 201922min
Nuclear Fusion XI: The Tokamak Revolution
In the late 1960s, scientists crossed the Iron Curtain. Their mission was to investigate whether the claims of Russian scientists about their new nuclear fusion device, the tokamak, were really true. ...
12 Apr 201929min
Kate Devlin on Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots
Taking a break from our nuclear fusion odyssey this week, I have a very special episode for you today. This week, our guest is Dr Kate Devlin. She's a senior lecturer in computer science who studies a...
5 Apr 201959min
Nuclear Fusion X: Doldrums and Tokamaks
After the first generation of nuclear fusion reactors had profound instabilities, and couldn't confine the plasma for long enough to achieve their aims, the world began to realise that fusion might no...
22 Mars 201931min
Nuclear Fusion IX: A Sun of Our Own
In 1958, to great fanfare, the ZETA experiment at Harwell announced that they had achieved thermonuclear reactions, controlled in the lab. It was considered a huge breakthrough along the road towards ...
15 Mars 201927min
