Wallace Manheimer: Fusion and Fusion Breeding | Tom Nelson Pod #185

Wallace Manheimer is a life fellow of both American Physical Society (APS) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). His career has been at the US Naval Research Laboratory since 1970, and he served in the small group of ST-16 senior scientists for his last 14 years there. Since retiring in 2004, he has served as a consultant at the lab. At NRL he has worked on inertial fusion, magnetic fusion, a nuclear disturbed upper atmosphere, electron and ion beams, high power microwave and millimeter wave systems, advanced radar systems, and plasma processing. He is the author of over 150 refereed scientific papers.

00:00 Introduction

00:15 Guest Introduction: Wally Manheimer

02:13 Energy for the World: Fusion and Fusion Breeding

02:41 The Goal of Energy Production

04:05 The Current State of Energy Consumption

04:40 Understanding Energy Conversion

06:38 The Global Perspective on Energy Use

09:35 Introduction to the Book 'Mass Delusions'

13:36 The Future of Nuclear Power

20:46 The Process of Nuclear Fusion

23:27 The Potential of Fusion Breeding

24:58 The Challenges of Fusion Breeding

25:59 The Role of Fast Neutron Reactors and Thorium Breeders

34:28 The Future of Fusion Reactors

40:01 The ITER Project: A Global Effort

47:58 Introduction to Stellarator and Tokamak

48:44 Size Comparison of Tokamak and Stellarator

49:36 Challenges of Stellarator

49:51 Private Fusion Startups

51:50 Critique of Private Fusion Startups

54:21 Success of Livermore in Laser Fusion

55:39 Challenges of Magnetic Fusion

56:17 Livermore's Scheme for Fusion

56:57 The Concept of Alpha Generated Burn Wave

57:57 The Configuration of Livermore Experiment

01:02:16 The Future of Laser Fusion

01:07:02 The Role of NRL

01:24:23 The Energy Park Concept

01:25:17 The Infrastructure of Energy Park

01:30:03 Q and A

01:31:56 Conclusion and Future Directions

Full bio here: https://co2coalition.org/teammember/wallace-manheimer/

Slides for this presentation: https://open.substack.com/pub/tomn/p/fusion-and-fusion-breeding-the-ugly

Manheimer’s “Mass Delusions” book: https://a.co/d/4r1lZLn

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