00:00:00
a lot of forecasters estimate that energy production and demand on Earth will grow to roughly 2x from where we
00:00:06
sit today by the end of the century and I think that there's other ways to look at the demand forecast which is that you
00:00:12
can look at GDP per capita and energy consumption per capita over time and you always see that for every one percent
00:00:17
increase in GDP per capita you see a 1.2 percent roughly increase in energy consumption per capita and by that
00:00:24
measure based on population and GDP growth through the century we will need to produce five times more
00:00:30
energy than we make on Earth today by the end of the century and you can't do that by just pumping oil and gas out of
00:00:36
the ground we need another technology or we need you know some renewable systems to scale
00:00:40
up more quickly and fusion presents this great kind of sea change opportunity moment for how we
00:00:46
make energy leveraging the technology of the Sun and so I'm really excited today
00:00:52
to invite the two most funded most high profile Fusion technology entrepreneurs uh Bob momgaard
00:01:01
and David kirtley CEOs of um Commonwealth Fusion and helion Bob as the founder of
00:01:09
Commonwealth spun out of MIT where he got his PhD in applied plasma physics and um he's raised more than two billion
00:01:16
dollars from Global Investors you heard vinod talk about his original investment
00:01:20
in Commonwealth yesterday after Bob will hear from David who founded helion after
00:01:24
15 years as a principal investigator and fusion lead at msnw and before that seven years as a scientist for the Air
00:01:31
Force research lab David got his PhD in aerospace engineering from Michigan helion's raised about 2.2 billion
00:01:38
dollars since its founding with a recent massive 500 million dollar funding round LED by Sam Altman who we
00:01:44
all know is the CEO of openai and formerly ran y combinator uh Sam invested 375 million dollars
00:01:51
personally in that round so uh please join me they're each going to give a presentation and then we are going to
00:01:56
come back and have a conversation with both of them at the same time please join me in welcoming Bob to the stage
00:02:02
[Music] oh and it said we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy
00:02:16
[Music] it's a lot of capital for Fusion it's exciting um so I'm setting off you know our
00:02:25
science morning so we're gonna later hear about tiny things and viruses and I'm going to start by talking about the
00:02:31
biggest thing there is which is the universe so this is a picture uh from the James Webb Telescope
00:02:38
and what that is is the oldest galaxies that we can see and really what the James Webb's telescope is is a really
00:02:44
fancy expensive camera to look at fusion power plants because that is everywhere you look it's
00:02:51
fusion power plants fusion power plants are the things that built every single atom that's in all of you that's in all
00:02:58
these buildings everywhere on earth and the reason it works that way is because the fusion reaction the reaction that
00:03:04
happens inside all the stars it's actually the most prevalent reaction in the entire universe that reaction
00:03:10
produces energy that's about 200 million times more energy per Mass used than a chemical reaction
00:03:18
so when you think about anything in your life that's chemical oil gas 50 gigatons
00:03:23
a year CO2 divided by like order 100 million and if you replace that process with a fusion process
00:03:32
that's what you get at the end and that's why we can have billions of years old of a universe and
00:03:39
billions of years old of our own planet and so what these companies are trying to do there's like 70 Fusion companies
00:03:48
it's what we're trying to do is we're trying to take that reaction and put it in a bottle
00:03:53
in a machine that we can build here and that we can build quickly so there's many different ways to build
00:04:00
that type of machine we I would say today don't know what the penultimate Ultimate machine will look like but we
00:04:07
know that we're close enough to actually start building them and if you do this you end up with a new
00:04:12
type of power plant you end up with a power plant that looks like a power plant we already do meaning you can put
00:04:18
it somewhere it generates electricity it generates heat that you can take to electricity you can plug it in the grid
00:04:22
you can Finance it you can use existing Supply chains but now it doesn't have emissions and it
00:04:28
doesn't have basically it doesn't have any fuel and every one of your energy uses for
00:04:32
your entire life could be fulfilled with like a single glass of water and so that's like a sea change in how you
00:04:39
think about relation between our species the planet and energy so question is can you actually build
00:04:46
such machines well right now we're we're building them around the world so this is a picture of combo Fusion
00:04:56
systems site it's in a suburb about an hour outside of Boston and this two years ago was a forest uh old military
00:05:05
base and in the upper uh side of this is a factory a factory to make magnets key pieces of fusion machines
00:05:14
but down in front is a prototype uh fusion power plant it's a machine we call spark and that machine is the
00:05:22
basically the culmination of about 60 years of science uh done around the world we've been working on Fusion since
00:05:31
actually before we split the atom and in that time the scientists at National Labs and universities have gotten better
00:05:38
and better at building successive generations of those machines and in fact the performance of those machines
00:05:43
and the metrics you care about if you're into plasma physics like I am those that
00:05:47
performance has gone up faster than Moore's Law and it's now sitting at the point where
00:05:52
you can almost get more power out from this reaction than it took to make the reaction start
00:05:58
to do that what you're building is You're Building machines that literally like make Star stuff they're machines
00:06:03
that have plasmas inside them that are 100 million degrees it's like five times hotter than the
00:06:09
center of this the sun you know Fahrenheit Celsius doesn't really matter 100 million huge number
00:06:14
and and they do this um they do this using basically like stuff that we already know how to build
00:06:25
it's kind of a unique situation like this is the size of a Walmart built by companies that build Walmarts
00:06:30
and it's got buildings that house equipment that is like equipment that you use to do electrified natural gas or
00:06:36
solar plants and in the center and that square in the center is a room where you put the fusion machine
00:06:44
and that's what that room looks like and this we just opened this room like three four four or five days ago
00:06:53
um and that Center hole in the middle is where we're going to start assembling a
00:06:57
fusion machine that will make about 100 megawatts of heat at somewhere around there will be more power out than in
00:07:04
maybe even like 10 times more power out than in and that's based on all this science that's been done with a series
00:07:11
of partners that include MIT National Labs around the world all peer-reviewed published and what the predictions are
00:07:18
going to be and we think that this machine will be the first commercial machine to make more power up than in
00:07:24
you can see on the bottom what it will look like when it's installed there and we're about halfway through the
00:07:30
manufacturer and assembly of uh this machine so when you think about two billion dollars raised like tough Tech
00:07:36
and like what it takes to actually you know Bend curves and climb it this is the type of stuff that you have to be
00:07:42
willing to do you have to be willing to take science Cutting Edge wrap it with the ability to execute
00:07:50
things like manufacturing and Construction in a package that you could scale because our climate crisis is
00:07:57
going to require us to build somewhere on the order of ten thousand to a hundred thousand power
00:08:04
plants so today there's about 60 000 power plants in the world and so you're not going to solve this by
00:08:10
like making little things you know solve this by making big bets big changes and
00:08:15
that's even just to replace what we have today we talk about 5xing the amount of energy
00:08:20
we're going to use uh on the planet Earth Humanity like that's one of the largest construction booms in human
00:08:28
history and so we're trying to get it started here and one of the great things that you can see about Fusion is that
00:08:35
once you get the formula figured out once you figure out how to build one of these machines you get a thing that
00:08:40
makes a lot of energy out of a small thing that you manufacture thing that you build a factory to make
00:08:46
more of and it's a factory that kind of looks like an automobile Factory or like a
00:08:51
rocket Factory in fact a lot of the people at this company came exactly from those areas that were trained in new
00:08:58
space and new Automotive which means like once you figure this out you could build lots of these very
00:09:04
quickly and so this is some pictures inside that factory on that site of us building the different pieces that go
00:09:10
inside that Fusion machine and we'll start to assemble that machine uh later this year and turn it on and let's
00:09:21
sort of 2025 time frame and get to Q greater than one more power out than n for the first time uh probably early
00:09:27
2026. and that's part of a long-term plan that we've been on in the last five years
00:09:32
since launching Commonwealth Fusion systems we start with the science that we already know how to do that's today
00:09:38
you can go and see Fusion machines around the world we built out 150 Fusion machines at National Labs and
00:09:44
universities coupled with an entirely new type of technology in our case an extremely strong magnet a magnet is made
00:09:50
out of a new type of superconductor not the one that you read about recently that was all bunk but the uh the one
00:09:57
that was previous Nobel Prize that allows us to go to extremely high magnetic fields which allows us to build
00:10:03
these machines that you could not have built five years ago they're 10 times smaller for the same performance using
00:10:10
the same science that we already know how to do and they set up a power plant like the one on the right that is like a
00:10:17
400 megawatt power plant like the size of a coal plant so you can you can imagine going to a coal site
00:10:23
taking out the boiler and putting in this new kit once it's proven and turning it on
00:10:29
pushing a button and having a whole bunch of Heat come out and a reaction that is the most common reaction in the
00:10:34
universe take your hand off the button stopping it put a string again and going and doing that in a way that you could
00:10:42
then build over and over again that's like the big promise in terms of where people are
00:10:48
is it's the beginning of a race about six billion dollars invested in Fusion which means that one of like the the
00:10:54
most invested of the new energy technology companies so when you think about geothermal or batteries this is
00:11:00
actually an explanation battery this is actually a similar scale and it's going through a history of Technology path
00:11:06
it's like well worn and we can actually Milestone where all these companies are and all these techniques are you know
00:11:12
today you can go and see lots of companies and lots of labs where they make plasmas that sort of like the idea
00:11:18
of an airplane there's some that can get Plasma's pretty hot there's a few including the
00:11:23
companies we're talking about here who can actually get plasmas into the right conditions the 100 million degrees that
00:11:29
are insulated well enough that are in the conditions for that reaction to happen
00:11:33
and now we're at step four which is to make these things make more power out than in Q grade and one and we know
00:11:40
that's doable because actually in December a very large laser in California called nif created those
00:11:47
conditions granted in a completely non-commercially relevant way but in a scientifically relevant way created for
00:11:53
an instant picosecond those conditions and now it's a race to build things like spark to do that in a
00:12:01
commercial way and after that there'll be plenty left to do but we'll know that we've taken a
00:12:06
scientific idea and turned it into an engineering project and a scaling project and we don't know what the world will do
00:12:13
with that it's potentially something that could you know really disrupt things and I
00:12:21
think as I think about everyone planning you've got to be able to plan for that kind of be able to build a fast track
00:12:27
on-ramp to these extremely disruptive Technologies and whether it's Fusion or Gene editing
00:12:34
I think that's where the future is and it's an interdisciplinary problem and it's a problem that takes audacity
00:12:41
Capital smart people all working together so thank you that's that's where we're at I'm looking forward to
00:12:47
the discussion thank you and I'm excited to to welcome a colleague here David curtly tell you the
00:12:58
other uh exciting things about Fusion all right perfect thank you very much Bob so my name is David Curley I'm a
00:13:13
founder of helion energy I'm excited to talk about our approach to techno to Fusion that we think rapidly accelerates
00:13:19
the timeline for fusion um Bob I think did a great job of talking about the history of fusion
00:13:24
where we come from and the speed of what we want to get there I'm going to be a little more selfish and talk about
00:13:28
myself today and give you a little bit of the the fusion Journey I've been on and why I've come from being a fusion
00:13:37
skeptic that I think many people in this audience have so I went into school in the academic my
00:13:44
academic part of my career to do something what I thought was important for the world and David did a really
00:13:49
great job of talking about the impact of energy and the cost of electricity on the world so I said great I'm gonna go
00:13:55
solve that problem um and a little naively look to the universe and said great they're fusions
00:14:00
out there it's where most of the mass and the energy in the universe comes from I should do that and we should
00:14:05
bring that here on Earth um got into it I actually became an expert in some of the inertial type
00:14:12
approaches like the laser systems actually my specialty was anti-matter anti-matter is cool but what what I
00:14:18
learned was that actually the Technologies of the time when I was learning that I learned in school those
00:14:24
approach us and we all sort of see that in the world they're going to work but when they do I will have already retired
00:14:31
if not like not actually be alive to turn on the machines I was going to go build and so I pivoted my career went
00:14:37
and built space propulsion systems and Rockets plasma thrusters whole Hall thrusters ion engines that kind of thing
00:14:42
and it wasn't until I met our core founding team that I saw another way to do Fusion uh that potentially rapidly
00:14:50
skips over some of the steps of what others are doing so that's what I want to introduce you to today
00:14:56
um our technology the way we want to do Fusion that we believe gets gets Humanity to Fusion as soon as possible
00:15:03
so um Bob did a great job of talking about magnetic confinements of steady Fusion trying to replicate what happens
00:15:10
in the sun there's inertial confinement which is very high intensity picosecond pulsed fusion and we do something which
00:15:18
takes some some of both of those approaches um we cleverly call it Magneto inertial
00:15:24
Fusion which does the sun in a bottle take a magnetic field to hold that 100 million degrees but rather than trying
00:15:31
to hold on to it it get it hot enough and ignite it we actually then squeeze it as fast as possible with very large
00:15:37
pulsed electric currents and so that's what we've been able to build today one of the key this is a picture of our
00:15:43
sixth generation machine that we have up in the Seattle area and one of the keys to the approach to
00:15:49
this Fusion we're going to dig into the technology a little bit and then talk about the benefits but one of the key is
00:15:54
is that what we focus on is the electricity part and I and I think that for me getting into Fusion wasn't to
00:16:02
explore cool new technology is it was actually to generate electricity and so that's been our focus and so how we do
00:16:09
that is a little unique and we believe that lets us build systems faster and smaller and so let's dig into that
00:16:15
um you've seen some of the tokamex systems with looks like big Donuts uh the laser system is a giant sphere so we
00:16:22
decide we should go and do a cylinder um and so these systems are long elongated cylinders where we have on
00:16:30
either end we have our fuel injector called formation but this is where we put in the fuel put in this mixture of
00:16:36
hydrogen and helium that becomes the Fusion fuel a center acceleration section where we accelerate that to a
00:16:42
core and in that core is where we compress think about a piston in a combustion engine or we we can compress
00:16:48
that Fusion fuel and then also number four on here is electricity recapture for our systems we require big capacitor
00:16:56
Banks it's actually one of the hardest parts of our technology is the electronics the power electronics and so
00:17:01
we have a dedicated system to do that and it's one of the enabling Technologies for this way to do Fusion
00:17:06
is that when this was first theorized in the 1950s we had no idea how to build those pulse Power Systems that could
00:17:14
reliably and repeatedly do this but we can do it today so here's a little animation of how these systems work on
00:17:21
either end we inject our Fusion fuel we heat it at this point it's relatively cold it's about 5 million degrees or so
00:17:28
we accelerate to the center compression area where we didn't squeeze it increasing pressure and density and
00:17:34
temperature until we get to Fusion conditions over 100 million degrees these helions and deuterons fuse to form
00:17:41
helium or alpha particles and protons those are trapped in that magnetic field and as that that heat that that hot
00:17:48
plasma expands we pull that energy out directly directly recapturing that electricity sounds pretty Fantastical
00:17:55
I'm showing you a lot of um you know 3D drawings and all that stuff the the fact
00:18:00
is though we built this um and this was the key for me this is when I went from I was a skeptic and then I
00:18:07
we had this cool idea and we went out to try to build it but we actually had to build the thing we had to build it turn
00:18:12
it on prove that technology and so we did that in 2008 we built a machine that did thermonuclear for Fusion for the
00:18:19
first time uh that machine was about a million and a half bucks and it and it set records for
00:18:24
temperature density pressure I personally helped build that thing a little bit they don't let me touch
00:18:30
wrenches too much um and actually produced Fusion reactions with it and measured those
00:18:36
reactions and at that point I said look holy [ __ ] we may have the answer to this
00:18:40
let's go try to figure out how to build a business around it and as I think we'll probably talk today that turns out
00:18:45
that's hard too um but in the process of doing that we've now built six machines that do
00:18:50
Fusion um the light latest one we call Trenta that one exceeded 100 million degrees
00:18:55
we're the first private company to do that um we did a DD Fusion we actually did D
00:19:01
helium-3 Fusion where we actually took rare helium-3 infused it with deuterium that again we think we're the first
00:19:06
company to ever do that maybe even the first group to ever do that and then the most important thing I think is we need
00:19:12
to recapture this electricity and so that's the first machine we built with private funding in 2014 was a machine
00:19:19
that took energy from those capacitors and those pulse power and then very quickly in microseconds put that energy
00:19:25
into a magnetic core and then and then we then recovered that magnetic energy back to the capacitors the key there is
00:19:31
we did that at 95 efficiency and if you can do that that means the fusion only has to do the five percent
00:19:37
and so we believe that means that you can build Fusion systems orders of magnitude smaller and faster and skip
00:19:43
over some of the big steps of cooling towers and steam turbines and inefficient systems you have to do and a
00:19:48
lot of that comes from looking at Fusion not from just looking at the science which is really critical but also
00:19:54
looking at the engineering I want to build power plants that make electricity and if that's your singular Focus if
00:20:00
that's your goal if that's where you're you're targeted you make design engineering decisions to get there
00:20:05
faster so that's what we were able to do I think that a lot of the private Fusion
00:20:09
companies in the world are also now targeting electricity how do we get there and how do we get there fast
00:20:15
um so that's what we're doing now we're building actually uh so in the pictures you see here on the top right that's our
00:20:20
seventh generation machine we call this one Polaris we're building that system today up in Everett Washington outside
00:20:25
of Seattle uh and installing it in our generator building um we actually have an operational
00:20:30
plasma injector machine I love saying plasma injector machine um to actually do the fusion to start
00:20:36
that Fusion process to try to get to even higher temperatures than that 100 million degrees that we did before and
00:20:42
we started manufacturing Mass manufacturing those key components that we can't get anywhere else in the world
00:20:47
of capacitors um and so we're we believe the first U.S manufacturer in decades to start
00:20:52
manufacturing capacitors here in the US maybe we'll sell them one day but right now we're using everything we can make
00:20:57
for Polaris for that next system um and the exciting announcement announcing thing uh it's exciting thing
00:21:05
we announced last earlier this year is that we had our first customer it's kind of a good thing for a fusion business
00:21:11
um and so uh we have our first customers Microsoft we have a power purchase agreement to build a power plant with
00:21:17
them to come online in 2028. uh This Is 50 megawatts 50 megawatts is about 40 000 homes
00:21:24
um and to do that in Washington state it's pretty audacious goal uh five years it's five very short years to go build a
00:21:30
system that makes commercial electricity uh we believe we can do that because we've built all these Fusion systems we
00:21:35
have an approach that actually radically shrinks the amount of capital and the timeline to build these and more
00:21:41
importantly we have that singular goal of making electricity and getting it on the grid is absolutely as fast as
00:21:46
possible so that's a picture of the new generator building we just built you can't see all
00:21:52
the manufacturing on the side there um but I'm excited to be able to talk today about the fusion business the
00:21:58
fusion industry and how we get from being a fusion skeptic like I was to be using a fusion Optimist and really an
00:22:06
Optimus for the future we need clean power and we need it now thank you very much
00:22:10
[Applause] thank you [Music] the fourth seat [Music] thank you guys for being here
00:22:37
um this is obviously an exciting challenge a technically difficult one an important
00:22:44
one and an expensive one I just want to talk a little bit about the end state for each of you your point
00:22:50
of view we think about energy prices there's a lot of ways think about it but dollars
00:22:55
per kilowatt hours or pennies per kilowatt hour right we buy power off the grid in the U.S for 12 to 15 cents a
00:23:02
kilowatt hour where do you guys think these systems end up when you kind of think about the the amortization cost
00:23:10
and what you're going to have to charge to build these systems once you're at scale once you're rolling these systems
00:23:15
out at scale what's your end goal for price per kilowatt hour I think that I think that's exactly the perfect
00:23:21
question to lead in um that if you're doing a new technology like this and your goal is electricity
00:23:27
it has to be competitive and it has to be competitive at scale at large scale and fusion has a nice opportunity to do
00:23:33
that you talk about what's the cost of electricity it comes from op-x and capex and Opex right our fuel for a 50
00:23:41
megawatt system you can uh with a pickup truck worth of fuel you can actually power that system for a decade and it's
00:23:48
clean and it's safe and it's it's low cost we don't even include it in the Opex budget the fuel cost is so low and
00:23:55
if we can get to a state where we have less of phds in the control room the actual operating cost then becomes
00:24:00
pretty negligible for those systems and so then you're left with the capital and
00:24:03
so I think that's been our Focus is how do we minimize the capital of those systems and so we can get to a point
00:24:10
where we can be really cost competitive and I'll give you straight answers is that our goal with these with our
00:24:15
approach to Fusion where we directly recapture the energy is to get to a cent a kilowatt hour or less and you can do
00:24:21
that with Opex I think an important point about this is uh you build these things they're capex you
00:24:30
eventually get very good at building them and so when you look at the probability curve uh you have very very
00:24:35
low numbers eventually like a system like this is basically what the interest rate is
00:24:41
is what the price power is because you're just building capital and there's no operating cost there's no
00:24:47
fuel and the capital you're building is an order of magnitude less stuff than say renewable so it allows you to get to
00:24:54
these very low numbers so you guys have ever been on stage together before like this
00:25:01
yeah I think so that's sitting next to each other yeah right put a little extra so I'm trying to yeah I'm trying to set
00:25:07
up a little Tesla Edison rivalry here AC DC but no no seriously there there is a
00:25:16
a different architectural approaches you each have fairly distinct approaches to
00:25:21
getting these plasma to a dense enough high enough energy State condition so that they fuse and produce energy very
00:25:29
different approaches and there are other approaches I think there's by my track roughly six general
00:25:35
architectures for Fusion technology and you guys are the experts tell me if I'm wrong
00:25:40
how do we know you guys win why does Tesla win why does Edison win and isn't it the case that ultimately the price of
00:25:47
power is going to win and so whatever architecture gets to the lowest price of power is going to take the whole Market
00:25:52
yeah it's a really good question um first you have to make it work right like there's a lot of architectures and
00:26:00
like the odds that they all work are low so we've taken the tact of like find the
00:26:06
architectures that you know are going to work what's the lowest science risk that
00:26:09
you can do because that price of power it's not so much architecture dependent it's learning rate dependent right at
00:26:15
the end of the day the amount of stuff in these things is all about the same and So the faster you get there the
00:26:22
better your Cycles are the lower you're going to drive that cost and there's a Time component to that too we don't have
00:26:28
the time to wait so if Fusion was available today we're buying it like we you know no no shortage of customer
00:26:34
interest but the real energy transition is in the next decade and so we need something
00:26:41
that we can get there like now as soon as possible so it's not so much like that in state it might be interesting
00:26:47
from a futurist standpoint of what that end state is it's the path to get there that's going to really determine it
00:26:52
yeah I think our Focus has been Bobs is mine as well is how do we move as fast as possible how do we iterate how do we
00:26:58
test how do we build these because it's that time that's that's driving and and there's a huge Market you know 3 000
00:27:04
gigawatts of fossil power it's not necessarily the case that one of you is going to win and one of you is going to
00:27:09
lose no it's a huge Market it's one out of every 12 like so it's absolutely huge
00:27:15
you think about the what's in front of us to redo all the infrastructure like we're there's no way a single company is
00:27:20
going to address that entire thing uh and also it's not the case that like the absolute ultimate you know optimized
00:27:27
thing is going to win it's going to be a package thing like you know the car you
00:27:30
buy today the way you control the way you drive it looks like the car that Henry Ford built it's not optimized it's
00:27:36
not how you got there I have a two-part question for you I think we all as you know lay people not uh in the industry
00:27:44
and in the trenches in the arena with you doing this our question is just and just
00:27:50
very brief on this answer from each of you because the second part is more important I think what are the chances
00:27:56
uh that collectively the you know half dozen startups actually get this done in our lifetimes what do you put that at
00:28:04
you know let's say in the next 20 30 years what are the chances we actually are this is a meaningful part of our
00:28:10
energy mixture in the next 20 or 30 years yeah 100 yeah that's 10 years if you had to
00:28:16
scaling in the next 10. yep like because 3 000 gigawatts of replacement is going
00:28:20
to be hard okay well that that's the need for it but okay you you're both convinced it's going to happen
00:28:26
so then knowing that you know that how do you advise the world to look at global warming fossil fuels because
00:28:34
we're having this very vibrant debate what does happen mean happen means net positive energy no no like buy Power
00:28:41
into your refrigerator from Fusion got it so then how would that inform how we should look at fossil fuels because
00:28:50
you have a group of people who are debating fossil fuels and it's become quite religious with global warming Etc
00:28:57
you guys are you know scientists who understand global warming and everything do we need
00:29:02
to even worry about the energy mixture today if you're going to get this done and should we be sweating global warming
00:29:08
as much as we are fossil fuel use if the solution is here you know like and you guys are so confident it's going to be
00:29:14
there it's a good question yeah good question 50 gigatons a year for 10 years is a lot of carbon into the atmosphere
00:29:21
in a place where we are already at our limits so like we need to do this transition and we need to be ready to
00:29:26
build out at a very large scale every zero carbon energy source that you have because the energy needs that you we
00:29:34
talked about earlier they're terrifying like if we need this solution for Fusion
00:29:39
but we also need the other things got it so it's not even going to be enough to solve that problem and then
00:29:44
two of the biggest problems the world faces getting this carbon out of the atmosphere and I guess water and both of
00:29:53
those a lot of the taking carbon out of the atmosphere is an energy question and desalinization is obviously an
00:30:00
energy question because you're going to push water through screens so maybe just
00:30:05
briefly from each of you your optimism for the world knowing what you know from being in the
00:30:12
trenches every day you know food insecurity Energy Water all of these things you
00:30:19
know are seem to be really tied so so should we be as pessimistic as I think people in the world right now are now
00:30:26
how do you look at the world when you go to bed at night so long term I mean I think we should be very optimistic but
00:30:31
those problems exist today and we need to be moving as fast as we can to get there so where there's sun is shining we
00:30:36
should have solar panels where the wind is blowing we should have wind power and
00:30:39
that's still not enough I believe anyway and David mentioned the power uses doubling over the over this decade I
00:30:46
think that that doesn't include electrification carbon uh removal hey I think it way underestimates what
00:30:54
we actually can do and what we can do if the power the cost of powers is low enough and it sidesteps the geopolitics
00:31:00
and some of the other challenges of other low-cost sources of carbon-free power so on the the question about how
00:31:06
it all ties together I look at it as in the end there are only two fundamental markets energy and creativity and like
00:31:14
with those two things notice they didn't say human creativity right like with those two things like you can do all
00:31:19
these other stuff right right and and so like the faster we get to the things that have massive scale in those two
00:31:26
things the better off we're going to be are we investing enough confusion right now because you guys are working with
00:31:32
the Venture Community I think largely I don't understand why we're you know spending all this money on Renewables
00:31:38
debating fossil fuels all this stuff and and not really going for this I don't want to call you what you're doing a
00:31:44
Hail Mary but it's a long ball and why are we not just pushing a lot more Government funding into this project if
00:31:51
it even had we talked about implied odds yesterday over and over if this does have a you know let's say they're
00:31:56
delusional and they're it's going to happen is because they're Founders what do you put it at the chances that they
00:32:01
succeed in the next 10 to 20. well I've told investors that I've spoken with that I think there's a hundred percent
00:32:06
chance that the portfolio of 70 Fusion companies that exist today that are pursuing this technology will succeed
00:32:12
and that we will get in the next 20 viewers at scale right so um I don't know which architecture wins
00:32:20
I don't know which company wins I don't know who gets there first I don't know how quickly they each of them can scale
00:32:23
it's hard for me to handicap that and I don't have you know a sovereign wealth funds capacity to build a portfolio of
00:32:30
these Investments but that would be the right strategy I've told folks I think that the index on where things are
00:32:35
valued today if you took all the fusion companies and their total market value today I would 100 buy that [ __ ] index
00:32:40
yeah so that would argue for one of the things I thought was inspiring chamoth about yesterday's discussion was you
00:32:47
were talking about you know how do we allocate resources and then we were being challenged by some of the speakers
00:32:51
well what can you do and I think this framing where you're talking about Capital allocation
00:32:57
you guys are convinced you're going to do it if it feels like there's a disconnect between the politicians and
00:33:02
how they're spending the resources that we are all giving them can we hear how the IRA
00:33:07
serves this opportunity yeah um so I want to make sure that just throwing money at a problem unlimited
00:33:14
money at a problem uh I was actually just having a conversation with Sam Altman about this
00:33:19
um doesn't actually always speed it up you actually have to do it in the right way with the right targets right uh
00:33:24
delivering fusion power and it costs 10 cents a kilowatt hour doesn't actually solve the problem it's got to be that
00:33:30
low-cost solution so we need to make sure we're focused on how do we do that for the IRA I mean a lot of its focus is
00:33:35
manufacturing a lot of its focus is scaling Manufacturing in the United States and so I think that is really
00:33:41
valuable and more things like that that are less focused on demonstrating are you going to get some of those dollars
00:33:46
we'll see yeah you have to prove some stuff before you can access them right um so on the manufacturing side there's
00:33:52
lots of opportunities to actually bring manufacturing so capacitors are a good example right um our current system 90
00:33:58
of the capacitors that we are going to put into it were purchased overseas because we weren't able to scale our
00:34:03
manufacturing internally fast enough to build them all ourselves and Bob you have your own magnet Factory do you get
00:34:08
funding is there funding opportunity for you to support that effort yeah there is
00:34:12
but it's not nearly what you need and that's just you know overall like the energy transition needs somewhere
00:34:16
various estimates put about nine trillion dollars a year globally and we are at a tenth of that and so I often
00:34:22
get frustrated with the capital allocation about like how we're splitting the small numbers that we're
00:34:26
splitting now it's like no they just need to be bigger numbers right and it's not a question of do you invest in Next
00:34:30
Generation technology versus stuff that you can like literally go today take a smoke stack down and put a solar panel
00:34:37
solar farm there it's not it's not either or here the whole pie has to go bigger Bob when you when you hear
00:34:43
freeburg's theoretical proposal is there a way to manifest that into an actual Financial device of hey here's 70
00:34:51
private companies I'm going to get five percent of each and put it into a private company index no no it's not
00:34:57
possible um the problem is that the amount of capex that we will need to make this a reality
00:35:06
is so gigantic and I think you guys are honest about that that unfortunately you
00:35:11
eventually replace the Venture capitalists with tens or hundreds or even a few billion dollars
00:35:17
with the Sovereign wealth funds that you need with hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars and what happens
00:35:23
when you get there is that you replace technical people with non-technical people who have to then determine which
00:35:30
is going to win and the way that they do that and this is sort of my question for
00:35:34
you guys because you'll have to get prepared for this so you might as well take a shot at it today
00:35:39
they'll hire consultants and they'll hire other people and they'll say red team the alternative right they'll look
00:35:44
at you and they'll say it's tritium breeding rates they'll look at you and they'll say well it's a probabilistic
00:35:48
generation of protons and who the [ __ ] knows all this stuff is what they'll say
00:35:52
some will be right some will be wrong it would be great whatever you're comfortable doing you can either red
00:35:57
team hin or you can red team yourself but I would love to understand the rate limiting technical thing that you're the
00:36:03
most worried about whether it's his solution or your own and vice versa okay I'll I'll start off so I look at it
00:36:10
as a portfolio approach this approach right very interesting from a what's the final State look like
00:36:16
it's a simpler machine right more interest but the like question is can you make it work from a plasma
00:36:22
physics standpoint so that says what's the data look like on the plasma right how's that going that's the type of data
00:36:27
I'd ask for on our approach on a red team is like can we get to the cost right can we simplify it plasma looks
00:36:33
pretty good it's at the right right parameters already well how simple can you make that machine so you look at our
00:36:39
receipts you look at our Factory right because that's where the risks are you concerned about breeding time for you
00:36:43
like no no it's like we know the breeding works because that's the way the the weapons work
00:36:49
and that breeding is at like 1.1 times roughly enough yeah so it's 20 years then to get basically no you you start
00:36:55
it's like a you have enough to start now that you go on an exponential okay and that's your first couple systems you
00:37:02
said right yeah yeah enough to do the first 10 systems at least and David how would you yeah so um you know I would
00:37:08
agree I appreciate the intellectual honesty thank you for that like it's it's hard to do that but thank you
00:37:13
um and and um and and I actually kind of agree with Bob's assessment that our approach to Fusion uh the FRC
00:37:19
compression was invented in the 80s not in the 60s and so like yes there's been lots of scientists and lots of published
00:37:25
papers including by us a decade ago on this but there's still work to be done as we're going to push those boundaries
00:37:30
and prove in our system the thing I worry most about is okay great we have these beautiful energy recovery systems
00:37:37
operating at 95 efficiency that cut the cap-backs in half or or more but they have to work at that high efficiency and
00:37:44
if if we fail if it's operating at five percent less efficiency that means I have to do more Fusion now they get
00:37:49
bigger they get more expensive enough and so of these specific helium Isotopes on
00:37:55
planet Earth that you can actually like generate yeah so um both I think both both of us
00:38:00
will think about the fuel system in terms of a tritium or the helions and where does that come from
00:38:05
um for us we make it deuterium plus deuterium fusing yeah and you make helium that that presupposes you have a
00:38:11
very efficient way to do Fusion exactly and so that's that again comes back to just to connect for everyone deuterium
00:38:17
is a hydrogen atom with a an extra Neutron in the nucleus and some percentage of water has deuterium in it
00:38:26
so it's a It's relatively abundant is that fair to say and yeah tritium is less abundant so we need to
00:38:33
make tritium uh in order for systems that rely on tritium for their technology Fusion to work all the water
00:38:39
you drank out there it's got deuterium in it and my final question um you wouldn't work without it actually
00:38:49
yeah that's great but pretty I'm a little different but how how do you guys think assuming that the technical
00:38:55
um issues are sort of packaged in a way where now we have this repeatable thing how do you get the local politician
00:39:03
to approve what they will look at is a nuclear reactor and what unfortunately The Blob will have their own viewpoint
00:39:12
on from being installed all around the country how does that how does that part work which has nothing to do with
00:39:19
science unfortunately and is very emotional and it's it's very you know there's a lot of regulatory capture
00:39:24
there when we broke ground on that facility I showed that's a bedroom community of Boston we had had no
00:39:29
agreement of who would even regulate it because it's totally open field right entirely new technology right and so you
00:39:35
have a social acceptance angle you also have just a pure like legally who's going to be the person who's going to
00:39:41
tell you to shut it down right and you have to solve both of those and they're different they're related but they're
00:39:45
different and so it's been an interesting experience to do that at that site something that just happened
00:39:51
is that the nuclear Regulatory Commission in the United States just made a ruling after two years of review
00:39:55
that all fusion power plants will be regulated like particle accelerators not like fission plants that goes from a
00:40:02
billion dollar regulatory overhead to 10 million dollar regulatory overhead so that machine I just showed that's
00:40:08
regularly by the state of Massachusetts the same way that a Hospital Cancer Treatment Center is so boom legal piece
00:40:14
way down right public acceptance we've done we've done polls as an industry Association that showed that the public
00:40:20
acceptance of fusion if message the right way so avoiding trigger words and things like that the people
00:40:27
is the trigger word they become pretty excited about it right you have this like moment of
00:40:36
conversion right where people go from Curious to like yes we need that now and that's been a broadly scene phenomenon
00:40:44
we got to get it right right and like the chattering classes and you know the opposition is going to eventually come
00:40:49
when these things are more real we have time today to like set the momentum and lay the groundwork
00:40:56
and I can add two more details on that in that our goal is not just the cost of the regulatory path for instance it's
00:41:02
speed we went from 10 or 20 years for a you know a nuclear reactor in Georgia where like helion's been regulated by
00:41:09
the state since 2018 and our permits take six or nine months we are licensed we're inspected whole nine yards and it
00:41:15
all exists it's not new regulation it totally exists just for hospitals and then the public acceptance piece is
00:41:22
again speed and so what we do is try not to do what the nuclear industry did as hide away and say don't worry about
00:41:28
what's happening here like what we try to do is we show Hardware we tweet about it social media is here now and that
00:41:33
helps and so we're out there showing Hardware what we're building how we're building it what the dangers are let's
00:41:38
be honest about it so that we can actually address those intellectually honestly with everyone
00:41:43
um let me ask one more question which I think I have a final one but good okay um that I think everyone's asked
00:41:50
which is why now we've talked about this for 70 80 years um this has been theorized this has been
00:41:59
part of an experimentation program somewhere so everywhere for a long time can you talk a little bit about what's
00:42:06
changed in technology all the underlying technologies that allow us to do this today is it Electronics photonics
00:42:15
software and AI low-cost electronic components we talked about this back in March David but Bob why don't you kick
00:42:23
it off and just help us understand why this isn't just BS because it's always been 20 years away from having free
00:42:29
abundant energy what's changed yeah so one the science the science has advanced tremendously we have predictive
00:42:35
capability of these machines the same way that we have predicted capability of like how to build a plane right
00:42:40
to the adjacent Technologies it's like and those adjacent Technologies whether it's magnets or high power Electronics
00:42:48
they've all benefited from huge investments in the last 30 years so basically been Warehouse are now being
00:42:53
applied and three the idea that like software's eating the world well it didn't really like you need the mouth
00:42:58
and like that mouth is Advanced manufacturing that mouth is how to turn a software business into the ability to
00:43:04
manifest Hardware like that works those are all combining here with this very big poll
00:43:10
and and I would just just I love all the technology answer but also there's a various uh famous quote in the 1980s of
00:43:18
what it would take to get fusion and they put budgets forward and nobody wanted to do it there was no investment
00:43:24
um and the quote is the world will have Fusion when it needs it and look at the capital investment infusion into
00:43:30
companies it is pretty striking I've talked to a lot of investors who are throwing whatever they can at it because
00:43:35
the world needs it yeah we're doing the prep call for this you know we're having
00:43:40
an interesting discussion amongst the besties of you know obviously applications on Earth for energy but you
00:43:46
know when we get out into the stars and you know the mission that elon's working
00:43:49
on to get to Mars um Freeburg was wondering and sax particularly well this technology help us get to Mars or
00:43:56
perhaps even Uranus please join me in thanking Bob and David [Applause] we'll let your winner slide
00:44:25
Rain Man [Music] Kim [Music]