#485 – David Kirtley: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and the Future of Energy

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:

https://lexfridman.com/david-kirtley-transcript

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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:

(00:00) – Introduction

(03:00) – Sponsors, Comments, and Reflections

(11:35) – Nuclear fission vs fusion

(21:35) – Physics of E=mc^2

(26:50) – Is nuclear fusion safe?

(32:11) – Chernobyl

(38:38) – Geopolitics

(40:33) – Extreme scenarios

(47:28) – How nuclear fusion works

(1:20:20) – Extreme temperatures

(1:25:21) – Fusion control and simulation

(1:37:15) – Electricity from fusion

(2:11:20) – First fusion power plant in 2028

(2:18:13) – Energy needs of GPU clusters

(2:28:38) – Kardashev scale

(2:36:33) – Fermi Paradox

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