Can nuclear fusion ever be practical? We explore tokamaks, plasma confinement, energy balance, and the real engineering challenges behind building a working fusion reactor—and whether fusion power will ever scale.
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Credits: The Tokamak Problem: Can We Ever Make Fusion Practical?
Written, Produced & Narrated by: Isaac Arthur
Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images
Chapters
0:00 Intro
4:00 Why Fusion Is So Appealing
8:36 What Fusion Actually Is (and Isn’t)
10:49 The Sun Is Hot… and Also a Terrible Reactor
13:59 Quantum Tunneling: Winning by Statistics, Not Strength
17:59 Holding the Fire: The Plasma Problem
22:30 What Tokamaks Actually Solved
25:10 The Tokamak Problem, Precisely Stated
27:28 ITER and the Limits of Scaling
29:44 Tech Altar
30:44 What About Other Approaches?