What if there was a source of energy that was virtually inexhaustible, produced no greenhouse gasses, and generated minimal waste? Well, it already exists – almost. Reid and Aria sit down with Dr. Kim Budil, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, to talk about the future of fusion energy. Last December, Dr. Budil’s lab achieved fusion ignition. She explains what that historic breakthrough means, and what levers need to be pulled to go from that experiment to powering nations. Dr. Budil responds to stories, generated by GPT-4, about scaling fusion energy, plus another about how a country can transition to fusion energy in 2053. Read the AI-generated stories for this episode here. Read the transcript of this episode here. Topics: 01:45 - Hellos and intros 05:09 - Explaining fusion breakthrough and the scale of opportunity 13:09 - Responding to GPT-4 “Fusion leading the way” story 22:10 - How to get to “Manhattan Project-level” of investment 25:50 - The geopolitics of fusion 29:06 -
