大卫·柯特利：核聚变、等离子体物理与能源的未来

The following is a conversation with David Kirtley, a nuclear engineer, expert on nuclear fusion, and the CEO of Helion Energy, a company working on building nuclear fusion reactors and have made incredible progress in a short period of time that make it seem possible, like we could actually get there as a civilization.

以下是与核工程师、核聚变专家、Helion Energy 首席执行官 David Kirtley 的对话，Helion Energy 是一家致力于建造核聚变反应堆的公司，并在短时间内取得了令人难以置信的进展，这让这一切看起来成为可能，就像我们作为一个文明实际上可以实现这一目标一样。

00:00 This is exciting because nuclear fusion, if achieved commercially, will solve most of our energy needs in a clean, safe way, providing virtually unlimited clean electricity.

这是令人兴奋的，因为核聚变如果实现商业化，将以清洁、安全的方式解决我们的大部分能源需求，提供几乎无限的清洁电力。

The problem is that fusion is incredibly difficult to achieve.

问题是融合极其难以实现。

You need to heat hydrogen to over 100 million degrees Celsius and contain it long enough for atoms to fuse.

你需要将氢加热到超过 1 亿摄氏度，并保持足够长的时间以使原子融合。

That’s why the joke in the past has been that fusion is 30 years away, and always will be.

这就是为什么过去有人开玩笑说核聚变还需要 30 年，而且永远如此。

00:51 Just in case you’re not familiar, let me clarify the difference between nuclear fusion and nuclear fission.

为了防止您不熟悉，让我澄清一下核聚变和核裂变之间的区别。

By the way, I believe according to the excellent Sample Size subreddit post by pmgoodbeer on this, the preferred pronunciation of the latter in the U.S. is nuclear fission, like vision.

顺便说一句，我相信根据 pmgoodbeer 的优秀样本大小 subreddit 帖子，后者在美国的首选发音是核裂变，就像视觉一样。

And in the U.K. and other countries is nuclear fission, like mission.

在英国和其他国家，核裂变就像任务一样。

I prefer the nuclear fission pronunciation because America.

我更喜欢核裂变的发音，因为美国。

So today’s nuclear power plants use nuclear fission.

所以今天的核电站使用的是核裂变。

They split apart heavy uranium atoms to release energy.

它们分裂重铀原子以释放能量。

Fusion does the opposite.

融合则相反。

It combines light hydrogen atoms together, the same reaction that powers the sun and the stars.

它将轻氢原子结合在一起，这与为太阳和恒星提供动力的反应相同。

The result is that it’s clean fuel from water, no long-lived radioactive waste, and inherently safe because a fusion reactor can’t melt down.

结果是它是来自水的清洁燃料，没有长寿命的放射性废物，并且本质上是安全的，因为聚变反应堆不会熔化。

01:50 If something goes wrong, the reactor simply stops.

如果出现问题，反应堆就会停止运行。

And there are no carbon emissions.

而且没有碳排放。

On a more technical side, Helion uses a different approach to fusion than has traditionally been done.

在技​​术方面，Helion 使用了与传统方法不同的聚变方法。

Most fusion efforts have used tokamaks, which are these giant donut-shaped magnetic containment chambers.

大多数聚变工作都使用托卡马克，这是一种巨大的甜甜圈形状的磁密封室。

Helion uses pulsed magnetoinertial fusion.

Helion 使用脉冲磁惯性聚变。

David gets into the super technical physics and engineering details in this episode, which was fun and fascinating.

大卫在这一集中深入了解了超级技术物理和工程细节，这既有趣又令人着迷。

I think it’s important to remember that for all of human history, we’ve been limited by energy scarcity.

我认为重要的是要记住，在整个人类历史上，我们一直受到能源短缺的限制。

And every major leap in civilization—agriculture, industrialization, information age—came in part from unlocking new energy sources.

文明的每一次重大飞跃——农业、工业化、信息时代——都部分源于新能源的开发。

02:38 If someone is able to solve commercial fusion, we would enter a new era of energy abundance that fundamentally changes what’s possible for us humans.

如果有人能够解决商业聚变问题，我们将进入一个能源丰富的新时代，从根本上改变我们人类的可能性。

I’m excited for the future, and I’m excited for super technical physics podcast episodes.

我对未来感到兴奋，我对超级技术物理播客节目感到兴奋。

This is the Lex Fridman podcast.

这是莱克斯·弗里德曼播客。

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description where you can also find links to contact me, ask questions, give feedback, and so on.

为了支持它，请在描述中查看我们的赞助商，您还可以在其中找到联系我、提出问题、提供反馈等的链接。

And now, dear friends, here’s David Kirtley.

现在，亲爱的朋友们，这是大卫·科特利。

03:14 Let’s start with the big picture.

让我们从大局开始。

What is nuclear fusion, and maybe what is nuclear fission?

什么是核聚变，也许什么是核裂变？

Let’s lay out the basics.

让我们列出基础知识。

So fusion is what powers the universe.

所以聚变是宇宙的动力。

03:22 Fusion is what happens in stars, and it’s where the vast amount of energy that we even use today here on Earth comes from the process of fusion.

聚变是恒星中发生的事情，我们今天在地球上使用的大量能量也来自聚变过程。

It also is what powers plants.

它也是植物的动力来源。

And those plants become oil, and those become fossil fuels that then power the rest of human civilization for the last 100 years.

这些植物变成了石油，又变成了化石燃料，为人类文明的其他部分提供了过去 100 年的动力。

So fusion really underpins a lot of what has enabled us as humans to go forward.

因此，融合确实支撑了我们人类前进的许多因素。

However, ironically, we don’t do it actively here on Earth to make electricity yet.

然而，具有讽刺意味的是，我们在地球上还没有积极地发电。

And so fundamentally, what fusion is, is taking the most common elements in the universe, hydrogen, and lightweight isotopes of hydrogen and helium, and fusing those together to make heavier elements.

从根本上来说，聚变就是采用宇宙中最常见的元素，氢以及氢和氦的轻同位素，并将它们融合在一起形成更重的元素。

04:14 In that process, as you combine atomic nuclei and form heavier nuclei, those nuclei are slightly lighter than the sum of the parts.

在此过程中，当您结合原子核并形成较重的原子核时，这些原子核比各部分的总和稍轻。

And that comes from a lot of the details of quantum mechanics and how those fundamental particles combine and interact.

这来自量子力学的许多细节以及这些基本粒子如何结合和相互作用。

We also talk about the strong nuclear force that holds the atomic nuclei together as one of the fundamental forces involved in fusion.

我们还讨论将原子核结合在一起的强核力，这是聚变所涉及的基本力之一。

But that mass defect, E=mc², we know from Einstein, is also energy.

但我们从爱因斯坦那里得知，质量缺陷 E=mc² 也是能量。

And so in that process, a tremendous amount of energy is released.

因此，在这个过程中，会释放出大量的能量。

And the actual reactions, I think, are a lot more interesting than simply it’s a little bit lighter, and therefore, energy is released.

我认为，实际的反应比简单地变轻一点更有趣，因此能量被释放。

04:55 But that’s the fundamental process in fusion as you’re bringing those lightweight atomic nuclei, those isotopes, together.

但这是聚变的基本过程，因为你将这些轻质原子核、那些同位素聚集在一起。

Fission is the exact opposite, where you’re taking the heaviest elements in the universe, uranium, plutonium, things that are so heavy and have so many internal protons and neutrons and electrons, that they’re barely held together at all.

裂变则恰恰相反，你使用的是宇宙中最重的元素，铀、钚，这些元素非常重，内部有很多质子、中子和电子，它们几乎无法结合在一起。

They’re fundamentally unstable or radioactive, and those elements are very close to falling apart.

它们从根本上来说不稳定或具有放射性，这些元素非常接近崩溃。

And as they do that, if you take a Uranium-235 or a Plutonium-239 nucleus, and you add something new, usually it’s a neutron, a subatomic particle that’s uncharged, that unstable, that very large nuclei will then break into pieces.

当他们这样做时，如果你拿一个铀235或钚239原子核，然后添加一些新的东西，通常是一个中子，一个不带电的亚原子粒子，不稳定，非常大的原子核然后会分裂成碎片。

Many pieces, a whole spectrum of pieces.

很多作品，各种各样的作品。

05:40 But if you add up all of those pieces, they also have slightly less mass than the initial one did, the initial uranium or plutonium.

但如果你把所有这些碎片加起来，它们的质量也比最初的铀或钚稍小。

And in that process, again, E=mc², a tremendous amount of energy is released.

在这个过程中，E=mc²，再次释放出大量的能量。

There’s a very famous curve in atomic physics, fusion or fission, looking at the periodic table.

原子物理学、聚变或裂变中有一条非常著名的曲线，看看元素周期表。

Going from the lightest elements, hydrogen, to the heaviest elements, those uranium, plutonium, and others.

从最轻的元素氢到最重的元素铀、钚等。

And fusion happens up to iron.

聚变发生在铁上。

Iron is the magical point in between where lighter elements than iron fuse together, and heavier elements fission or are fissile and break apart and release energy.

铁是介于两者之间的神奇点，比铁轻的元素融合在一起，而较重的元素裂变或裂变并分裂并释放能量。

I think about and I look at that process in stars, in that our star is fundamentally an early stage star that’s burning just hydrogens.

我思考并观察了恒星中的这个过程，因为我们的恒星基本上是一颗仅燃烧氢的早期恒星。

06:30 But when it burns and does fusion, those hydrogens combine into heliums, and later stage stars can then burn those heliums and they can fuse those together to form even heavier elements and carbons.

但当它燃烧并发生聚变时，这些氢会结合成氦，后期恒星可以燃烧这些氦，并将它们融合在一起形成更重的元素和碳。

And those carbons can fuse together and form heavier elements.

这些碳可以融合在一起并形成更重的元素。

And that whole stellar process is something that inspires us at Helion to think about what are fusion fuels, not just the simplest ones, but more advanced fusion fuels that we see in stars throughout the universe.

整个恒星过程激励 Helion 的我们思考什么是聚变燃料，不仅仅是最简单的聚变燃料，还有我们在整个宇宙的恒星中看到的更先进的聚变燃料。

Okay, so there’s a million things I want to say.

好吧，我有一百万件事想说。

06:59 So first, maybe zooming out to the biggest possible picture, if you look across hundreds of millions, billions of years, and all the, in my opinion, alien civilizations that are out there, they’re going to be powered likely by fusion.

因此，首先，也许缩小到尽可能大的图景，如果你纵观数亿年、数十亿年，以及我认为存在的所有外星文明，它们很可能会通过核聚变提供动力。

So our advanced intelligent civilization is powered by fusion in that the sun is our power plant.

因此，我们先进的智能文明是由聚变提供动力的，因为太阳是我们的发电厂。

Then the other thing is the physics.

然后另一件事是物理。

Again, very basic, but you said E=mc² a couple times.

再说一次，非常基本，但你说了几次 E=mc² 。

Can you explain this equation?

你能解释一下这个方程吗？

E=mc² is a fundamental relationship that a patent clerk, Einstein, discovered and unlocked an entire new realm of physics and engineering and has shown us atomic physics, what happens inside the nucleus, and unlocked our understanding of the universe and paved the way for many of the physics advancements that came after, that we think about mass as these particles.

E=mc² 是一个基本关系，专利员爱因斯坦发现并开启了一个全新的物理和工程学领域，并向我们展示了原子物理学、原子核内部发生的事情，解锁了我们对宇宙的理解，并为后来的许多物理进步铺平了道路，我们将质量视为这些粒子。

07:30 But in reality also, at the same time, they’re energy, and there’s a direct quantitative relationship between how much energy is in all of that mass.

但实际上，同时它们也是能量，并且所有质量中的能量之间存在直接的定量关系。

And in fact, all of the energy that is released, even by atomic physics, certainly in atomic reactions, is E=mc².

事实上，所有释放的能量，即使是原子物理学，当然是原子反应，也是 E=mc²。

And I think most people have heard of and are used to that.

我想大多数人都听说过并且已经习惯了。

08:19 But also in chemistry and in chemical bonds, in those chemical bonds, there is a change in mass.

但在化学和化学键中，在这些化学键中，质量也会发生变化。

When you take a hydrogen and an oxygen and you burn them and you combine them into water, there’s a change in mass.

当你燃烧氢和氧并将它们结合成水时，质量会发生变化。

Now, that change per atom and per molecule is actually so small that it’s extremely hard to measure, but it’s still there, and that’s the energy that is released, and you can quantify that.

现在，每个原子和每个分子的变化实际上非常小，以至于很难测量，但它仍然存在，这就是释放的能量，你可以量化它。

We use units of electron volts as a unit of what is the energy in atomic processes or chemical processes.

我们使用电子伏特单位作为原子过程或化学过程中能量的单位。

Can you also just speak to the different fuels that you mentioned, both on the fusion and the- …fission side?

您能否谈谈您提到的聚变和……裂变方面的不同燃料？

08:53 So uranium, plutonium for the fission, and then hydrogen isotopes for the fusion?

那么铀、钚用于裂变，然后氢同位素用于聚变？

So for fission, uranium and plutonium, we don’t make those nuclei.

因此，对于裂变、铀和钚，我们不制造这些原子核。

08:58 Those, for humanity, have been made in the primordial universe through supernovae and the Big Bang and the initial formation of the universe where matter was created.

对于人类来说，这些是在原始宇宙中通过超新星和大爆炸以及物质诞生的宇宙的最初形成而形成的。

And so we dig those up.

所以我们把它们挖掘出来。

We dig up uranium and plutonium out of the ground.

我们从地下挖出铀和钚。

And in fact, most plutonium we make from uranium, and we can talk about how to enrich uranium if we want to go down that road.

事实上，我们大多数钚都是由铀制成的，如果我们想走这条路，我们可以讨论如何浓缩铀。

But that’s how we get those molecules and nuclei.

但这就是我们获得这些分子和原子核的方式。

For fusion materials, hydrogenic species or hydrogens are primordial in the universe.

对于聚变材料，氢物质或氢是宇宙中的原始物质。

Also, only the most common things that are in the universe.

而且，只有宇宙中最常见的事物。

Suns and stars are made up of hydrogens and heliums.

太阳和恒星是由氢和氦组成的。

And so the vast majority of atoms in the universe still are hydrogen.

所以宇宙中绝大多数原子仍然是氢。

So the basic fuel for fission is already in the ground, and then the basic fuel for fusion is everywhere?

那么裂变的基本燃料已经在地下了，那么聚变的基本燃料无处不在？

Is everywhere, and we particularly use a type of hydrogen called deuterium, which is a heavier isotope of hydrogen.

无处不在，我们特别使用一种称为氘的氢，它是氢的较重同位素。

Hydrogen is typically one proton and one electron, atomic mass of one.

氢通常由一个质子和一个电子组成，原子质量为一。

Deuterium has an atomic mass of two, which is a proton, which is a charged particle, and it has a neutron in its nucleus, which is an uncharged particle.

氘的原子质量为2，它是一个质子，它是带电粒子，它的原子核中有一个中子，它是不带电粒子。

And so that’s deuterium as the fuel.

这就是氘作为燃料。

Now, deuterium is also found in all water on Earth, in the water I’m drinking right now.

现在，地球上所有的水中都含有氘，我现在喝的水中也含有氘。

It’s in my body.

它在我的身体里。

It’s in Coca-Cola.

它在可口可乐里。

It’s everywhere.

它无处不在。

And safe and clean and one of those fundamental particles that was born in the cosmos, and we estimate that in seawater here on Earth, we have, if we powered all of humanity on fusion at our current use of electricity, somewhere between 100 million years and a billion years of fuel in hydrogen and deuterium here on Earth.

安全、清洁，是宇宙中诞生的基本粒子之一，我们估计，在地球上的海水中，如果我们以目前的电力使用聚变为全人类提供动力，地球上的氢和氘燃料大约需要 1 亿年到 10 亿年。

And how is that stored mostly?

主要是如何存储的？

And mostly that’s just in water.

而且大部分都在水中。

Mostly that it’s a mix of what we call heavy water, where you have normal water that you’re used to and you learn in school is H₂O, where there are two hydrogens and an oxygen in a molecule.

大多数情况下，它是我们所说的重水的混合物，你习惯了普通的水，你在学校学到的是 H2O，其中一个分子中有两个氢和一个氧。

And deuterium, or heavy water, is D₂O, two deuteriums and an oxygen.

氘或重水是 D2O，由两个氘和一个氧组成。

In reality, it’s actually an interesting mix where you have some HDO, so a mix of hydrogen and deuterium.

事实上，它实际上是一种有趣的混合物，其中有一些 HDO，即氢和氘的混合物。

You also have other hydrogen.

你还有其他氢。

that I think most people have heard of and are used to.

我想大多数人都听说过并且习惯了。

But also in chemistry and in chemical bonds, there is a change in mass.

但在化学和化学键中，质量也会发生变化。

When you take a hydrogen and an oxygen and you burn them and combine them into water, there’s a change in mass.

当你燃烧氢气和氧气并将它们结合成水时，质量会发生变化。

Now, that change per atom and per molecule is so small that it’s extremely hard to measure, but it’s still there.

现在，每个原子和每个分子的变化是如此之小，以至于很难测量，但它仍然存在。

That’s the energy that is released, and you can quantify that.

这就是释放的能量，你可以对其进行量化。

We use units of electron volts as a unit of energy in atomic processes or chemical processes.

我们使用电子伏特单位作为原子过程或化学过程中的能量单位。

Can you also just speak to the different fuels that you mentioned, both on the fusion and the- fission side?

您能否谈谈您提到的聚变和裂变方面的不同燃料？

So uranium, plutonium for the fission, and then hydrogen isotopes for the fusion?

那么铀、钚用于裂变，然后氢同位素用于聚变？

So for fission, uranium and plutonium: we don’t make those nuclei.

因此，对于裂变、铀和钚：我们不制造这些原子核。

09:04 For humanity, those were made in the primordial universe through supernovae, the Big Bang, and the initial formation of the universe where matter was created.

对于人类来说，这些是在原始宇宙中通过超新星、大爆炸以及创造物质的宇宙的最初形成而形成的。

And so we dig those up.

所以我们把它们挖掘出来。

We dig up uranium, plutonium out of the ground.

我们从地下开采铀、钚。

In fact, most plutonium we make from uranium, and we can talk about how to enrich uranium if we want to go down that road.

事实上，我们大多数钚都是由铀制成的，如果我们想走这条路，我们可以讨论如何浓缩铀。

But that’s how we get those molecules and nuclei.

但这就是我们获得这些分子和原子核的方式。

For fusion materials, hydrogenic species, or hydrogens, are primordial in the universe and the most common things in the universe.

对于聚变材料来说，氢物质或氢是宇宙中最原始的物质，也是宇宙中最常见的东西。

Suns and stars are made up of hydrogens and heliums, so the vast majority of atoms in the universe are still hydrogen.

太阳和恒星是由氢和氦组成的，所以宇宙中绝大多数原子仍然是氢。

So the basic fuel for fission is already in the ground, and the basic fuel for fusion is everywhere.

所以裂变的基本燃料已经在地下了，聚变的基本燃料无处不在。

Is everywhere, and we particularly use a type of hydrogen called deuterium, which is a heavier isotope of hydrogen.

无处不在，我们特别使用一种称为氘的氢，它是氢的较重同位素。

10:02 Hydrogen is typically one proton and one electron, with an atomic mass of one.

氢通常由一个质子和一个电子组成，原子质量为一。

Deuterium has an atomic mass of two, which is a proton, a charged particle, and it has a neutron in its nucleus, which is an uncharged particle.

氘的原子质量为2，是一个质子，是带电粒子，其原子核中有一个中子，是不带电粒子。

So that’s deuterium.

这就是氘。

As a fuel, deuterium is also found in all water on Earth, in the water I’m drinking right now.

作为一种燃料，氘也存在于地球上所有的水中，在我现在喝的水中。

It’s in my body.

它在我的身体里。

It’s in Coca-Cola.

它在可口可乐里。

10:32 It’s everywhere.

它无处不在。

And it’s safe and clean, one of those fundamental particles that was born in the cosmos.

它安全、清洁，是宇宙中诞生的基本粒子之一。

We estimate that in seawater here on Earth, if we powered all of humanity on fusion at our current use of electricity, we would have somewhere between 100 million years and a billion years of fuel in hydrogen and deuterium here on Earth.

我们估计，在地球上的海水中，如果我们以目前的电力使用量通过核聚变为全人类提供动力，我们将在地球上拥有 1 亿到 10 亿年的氢和氘燃料。

And how is that stored mostly?

主要是如何存储的？

And mostly, that’s just in water.

大多数情况下，那只是在水中。

11:02 Mostly, it’s a mix of what we call heavy water.

大多数情况下，它是我们所说的重水的混合物。

Normal water, which you’re used to and learn about in school, is H2O, where there are two hydrogens and an oxygen in a molecule.

您在学校中熟悉并了解的普通水是 H2O，分子中含有两个氢和一个氧。

Deuterium, or heavy water, is D2O, two deuteriums and an oxygen.

氘或重水是 D2O，由两个氘和一个氧组成。

In reality, it’s an interesting mix where you have some HDO, so a mix of hydrogen and deuterium.

事实上，这是一种有趣的混合物，其中有一些 HDO，即氢和氘的混合物。

You also have other hydrogen

你还有其他氢

that I think most people have heard of and are used to.

我想大多数人都听说过并且习惯了。

11:32 But also in chemistry and in chemical bonds, there is a change in mass.

但在化学和化学键中，质量也会发生变化。

When you take a hydrogen and an oxygen and you burn them and combine them into water, there’s a change in mass.

当你燃烧氢气和氧气并将它们结合成水时，质量会发生变化。

Now, that change per atom and per molecule is so small that it’s extremely hard to measure, but it’s still there.

现在，每个原子和每个分子的变化是如此之小，以至于很难测量，但它仍然存在。

That’s the energy that is released, and you can quantify that.

这就是释放的能量，你可以对其进行量化。

We use units of electron volts as a unit of energy in atomic processes or chemical processes.

我们使用电子伏特单位作为原子过程或化学过程中的能量单位。

Can you also just speak to the different fuels that you mentioned, both on the fusion and the- fission side?

您能否谈谈您提到的聚变和裂变方面的不同燃料？

So uranium, plutonium for the fission, and then hydrogen isotopes for the fusion?

那么铀、钚用于裂变，然后氢同位素用于聚变？

Is that correct to say in terms of fuel?

就燃料而言，这种说法正确吗？

That’s correct to say at today’s power level.

以今天的力量水平来说，这是正确的。

12:19 I think what’s interesting is the idea that as we deploy the same power source that powers the universe here on Earth as humans, can we do more?

我认为有趣的是，当我们在地球上部署与人类相同的为宇宙提供动力的能源时，我们可以做得更多吗？

Can we have access to much more electricity, and much more energy and do really interesting things with that?

我们能否获得更多的电力和能源，并用它们做一些真正有趣的事情？

And still, there are large amounts—millions and millions of years of power—even at much higher output power levels for humanity.

尽管如此，即使在人类输出功率水平高得多的情况下，仍然存在大量的能量——数百万年的能量。

Yeah, so the moment we start running out of hydrogen and helium, that means we’re doing some pretty incredible things with our technology.

是的，所以当我们开始耗尽氢气和氦气时，这意味着我们正在用我们的技术做一些非常令人难以置信的事情。

12:45 And then that technology is probably going to allow us to propagate out into the universe and then discover other sources, because you can also get it on other planets.

然后这项技术可能会让我们传播到宇宙中，然后发现其他来源，因为你也可以在其他行星上找到它。

Whatever planets have water, it looks more and more likely like a lot of them do.

无论什么行星都有水，看起来越来越有可能有很多行星都有水。

What an incredible future, just out into the cosmos, nuclear power plants everywhere.

多么令人难以置信的未来啊，就在宇宙中，到处都有核电站。

Okay, so to linger on some of the technical stuff, you said strong nuclear force.

好吧，让我们继续讨论一些技术问题，你提到了强核力。

So how exactly is the energy created?

那么能量到底是如何产生的呢？

How does the E=MC²—the M—go to the E in fusion?

E=MC²（M）如何在融合中变成 E？

So in fusion, you take these lightweight isotopes like hydrogen and deuterium, and as you combine them and get these molecules closer and closer together, some really interesting fundamental physics happens.

因此，在聚变中，你采用氢和氘等轻质同位素，当你将它们结合起来并使这些分子越来越靠近时，一些非常有趣的基础物理就会发生。

13:31 First, these atomic nuclei are charged.

首先，这些原子核带电。

They have an electric charge, and like charges repel.

它们带有电荷，同种电荷相互排斥。

I think everybody is familiar with that, where you take two positive charges and you try to push them together, and the electromagnetic force between them repels them.

我想每个人都熟悉这一点，当你带两个正电荷并试图将它们推到一起时，它们之间的电磁力会排斥它们。

So you have a force that’s actually pushing against them.

所以你有一股实际上在对抗他们的力量。

In fusion, you work to get your fuel very hot, very, very high temperatures—100 million degree temperatures.

在聚变中，你要努力让燃料变得非常热、非常非常高的温度——一亿度的温度。

And temperature really is kinetic energy; it’s motion, it’s velocity.

温度确实是动能；它是运动，它是速度。

14:14 So these particles are moving so fast that even though they’re coming together and there’s this repulsive electromagnetic force, they can still come close enough that another force comes into play, which is the strong force.

因此，这些粒子移动得如此之快，即使它们聚集在一起并且存在这种排斥电磁力，它们仍然可以足够接近以至于另一种力发挥作用，这就是强力。

Once you get within a very close distance, on the order of the scale of those nuclei themselves—of those atomic nuclei, the tiniest thing you could imagine, and probably way smaller than that—these particles then are attracted to each other, and they combine and fuse together.

一旦你到达非常近的距离，按照这些原子核本身的规模——那些原子核，你能想象到的最小的东西，而且可能比那小得多——这些粒子就会相互吸引，然后结合并融合在一起。

At that point, you create heavier atomic nuclei that have a slightly less mass, slightly less total mass in the system, and that mass equals MC² as energy.

此时，您将创建较重的原子核，其质量稍小，系统中的总质量也稍小，并且该质量等于能量 MC²。

So extremely high temperature, extremely high speed.

所以极高的温度，极高的速度。

14:55 Maybe that’s one of the other differences also with fusion and fission, is just the amount of temperature required for the reactions.

也许这也是聚变和裂变的其他区别之一，就是反应所需的温度。

Is that accurate to say?

这么说准确吗？

Yeah, and I think fundamentally, in a lot of ways, fusion is hard and fission is easy.

是的，我认为从根本上来说，在很多方面，聚变很困难，而裂变很容易。

15:07 Nuclear fission happens at room temperature.

核裂变发生在室温下。

This uranium and plutonium is so likely to break apart already that simply the adding of one of these neutrons, one extra particle, will then break it apart and release energy.

这种铀和钚很可能已经分裂，只需添加其中一个中子，即一个额外的粒子，就会将其分裂并释放能量。

If you have a lot of them together, it will create a chain reaction.

如果很多人在一起，就会产生连锁反应。

Fusion, that doesn’t happen at all.

融合，根本不会发生。

Fusion is actually really hard to do.

融合其实是很难做到的。

You have to overcome those electromagnetic forces to have a single fusion reaction happen.

你必须克服这些电磁力才能发生单一聚变反应。

So it takes things like, in our sun, we have what is called gravitational confinement, where the gravity, literally the mass of the fuel itself, is pulling to the center of the sun and it’s pulling.

因此，在我们的太阳中，我们有所谓的引力限制，其中引力，实际上是燃料本身的质量，正在拉向太阳的中心，并且它正在拉动。

15:55 There’s a large force that’s pulling all that fuel together and holding it and confining it together such that it gets close enough and hot enough for long enough that fusion happens.

有一股巨大的力量将所有燃料拉在一起，将其固定并限制在一起，使其变得足够近、足够热，持续足够长的时间，从而发生聚变。

And then we have to figure out, if we’re building fusion generators, how to do that confinement without the huge size gravity of the sun.

然后我们必须弄清楚，如果我们要建造聚变发电机，如何在没有太阳巨大引力的情况下进行这种限制。

That’s right.

这是正确的。

16:18 Obviously, the sun is vastly larger than Earth, so we can’t do that same process here on Earth.

显然，太阳比地球大得多，所以我们无法在地球上进行同样的过程。

Yet.

然而。

16:25 No, I’m just kidding.

不，我只是开玩笑。

All right.

好的。

But we have other forces we get to use.

但我们还有其他可以利用的力量。

16:27 We can use the electromagnetic force, which the sun doesn’t get to do, to apply those forces.

我们可以利用电磁力（太阳无法做到）来施加这些力。

I actually want to take a pause right there and point out a word.

我实际上想在这里暂停一下并指出一个词。

Historically, we’ve used the word reactor around fusion, but I don’t think that’s right.

从历史上看，我们在聚变周围使用了“反应堆”这个词，但我认为这是不对的。

For me, we’re really careful about this terminology.

对我来说，我们对这个术语非常谨慎。

16:47 When we look to how that word is defined, and we can look to how the experts define it, it doesn’t really apply to fusion.

当我们研究这个词的定义时，我们可以看看专家如何定义它，它并不真正适用于融合。

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the NRC, defines reactor as—I have it right here—”A nuclear reactor is an apparatus, other than an atomic weapon, designed or used to sustain nuclear fission in a self-supporting chain reaction.” There are two big parts to that: one, fission reaction.

核管理委员会 (NRC) 将反应堆定义为——我这里有——“核反应堆是一种装置，而不是原子武器，设计或用于在自给链式反应中维持核裂变。”其中有两个重要部分：一是裂变反应。

Obviously, fusion is not that, and we’ve talked about why, but also the self-sustaining part.

显然，融合不是这样的，我们已经讨论过原因，还有自我维持的部分。

A reactor is self-sustaining; you take your hands off it, and it keeps going.

反应堆是自我维持的；你把手从它身上拿开，它就会继续前进。

In fusion, that doesn’t happen, and we know because we have to do it every day, and it’s really hard to do.

在融合中，这种情况不会发生，我们知道，因为我们每天都必须这样做，而这确实很难做到。

17:33 So we actually use the word generator because we don’t talk about, for instance, a natural gas reactor.

所以我们实际上使用“发电机”这个词，因为我们不谈论天然气反应堆等。

If you stop putting in fuel, it turns off.

如果您停止加油，它就会关闭。

The same thing happens in fusion.

同样的事情也发生在融合中。

We’re pretty careful about making sure we talk about that as a generator where you’re putting in fuel, you’re getting electricity out.

我们非常谨慎地确保我们将其视为一台发电机，只要输入燃料，就可以输出电力。

When you stop putting in fuel, it just shuts off.

当您停止加油时，它就会关闭。

You can go even one step further and say, “What am I going to do with this fusion that powers the universe?

你甚至可以更进一步说：“我要用这种为宇宙提供动力的聚变做什么？

And what does humanity want out of this?” What we want is electricity.

人类想从中得到什么？”我们想要的是电。

We don’t simply want a set of reactions or even heat and energy.

我们不只是想要一系列反应，甚至是热量和能量。

That’s great, but what I really want is electricity.

太好了，但我真正想要的是电。

And yeah, we’ll talk about the technical details of one of the big benefits of the linear design of the approach that you do, is you get electricity directly as quickly as possible.

是的，我们将讨论您所采用的线性设计方法的一大好处的技术细节，即您可以尽快直接获得电力。

18:12 Some of the other alternatives have an intermediate step, and those, again, are technical details, but let me still linger on the difference between…

其他一些替代方案有一个中间步骤，这些都是技术细节，但让我仍然徘徊在……之间的区别上。

…Fusion and fission.

……融合与裂变。

What are some advantages at a high level of nuclear fusion as a source of energy?

高水平核聚变作为能源有哪些优势？

…fundamentally as a source of energy.

……从根本上来说是一种能源。

18:38 In fusion, you’re taking these lightweight isotopes, you’re bringing them together, you’re releasing energy, and that energy is in the form of charged particles.

在聚变中，你将这些轻同位素聚集在一起，释放能量，而这种能量以带电粒子的形式存在。

It’s already in the form of electricity.

它已经以电力的形式存在。

Fusion itself has electricity built into it without a lot of the steam or thermal system requirements.

聚变本身内置电力，不需要大量蒸汽或热系统。

That’s a really nice fundamental benefit of fusion itself.

这是聚变本身的一个非常好的基本好处。

Also, this reaction that’s really hard to do turns itself off, so you end up with fusion being fundamentally safe, and that’s really a key requirement of any industrial system, is that it turns itself off and is safe.

此外，这种反应很难自行关闭，因此最终聚变基本上是安全的，这确实是任何工业系统的一个关键要求，那就是它会自行关闭并且是安全的。

You turn the key off on your car, you know it’s going to turn off.

你关掉汽车钥匙，你知道它会熄火。

I guess the flip side of that, just stating the obvious, but it’s nice to lay it out.

我想这的另一面是，只是陈述了显而易见的事情，但把它列出来还是很好的。

19:20 For nuclear fission, it’s a chain reaction, so it’s hard to shut off, and it works by boiling water into steam, which spins turbines and produces electricity.

对于核裂变来说，这是一种链式反应，因此很难关闭，它的工作原理是将水煮沸成蒸汽，使涡轮机旋转并产生电力。

Can you talk through this process in a nuclear fission reactor?

你能谈谈核裂变反应堆中的这个过程吗？

In a nuclear fission reactor, you put enough of this fissile material, uranium or plutonium, together such that as these unstable molecules, these unstable atoms, crack open and break apart, they release heat.

在核裂变反应堆中，将足够的这种裂变材料（铀或钚）放在一起，当这些不稳定的分子、这些不稳定的原子裂开并分裂时，它们会释放热量。

19:43 The component parts of those are actually quite hot.

这些部件实际上非常热。

So not only are the component parts that the uranium breaks into—and it’s a whole spectrum of different atoms and atomic nuclei—hot, but it also releases neutrons.

因此，铀分解的组成部分——不同原子和原子核的整个光谱——不仅是热的，而且还释放出中子。

It also releases more of these uncharged particles.

它还释放更多这些不带电粒子。

If you do it right, this fissile material will be next to other fissile material, and so that neutron will then go and bombard another uranium nucleus, again opening that up and releasing more heat and more of these neutrons.

如果做得正确，这种裂变材料将紧邻其他裂变材料，这样中子就会轰击另一个铀核，再次打开它并释放更多的热量和更多的中子。

20:31 That’s how you have those reactions of a self-supporting chain reaction, and that chain reaction then continues.

这就是自支撑连锁反应的反应方式，然后连锁反应继续下去。

People design fission reactors such that you have just the right balance of enough neutrons are made such that the reaction is continuing, but not so many neutrons are made that it speeds up…

人们设计裂变反应堆，使足够的中子达到适当的平衡，从而使反应继续进行，但不会产生太多的中子，从而加速……

…Because you don’t want it to speed up.

......因为你不希望它加速。

And there are some kind of cooling mechanisms also?

还有某种冷却机制吗？

20:50 That’s part of the art and the engineering of it?

这是艺术和工程的一部分吗？

The key is at the same time, you want to make sure that the whole thing is in water, which is typically the cooling fluid.

关键是同时，您要确保整个部件都在水中，通常是冷却液。

20:56 There are some more advanced fission reactors that have different cooling fluids, but water typically, then absorbs both the heat and those extra neutrons.

有一些更先进的裂变反应堆具有不同的冷却液，但通常是水，然后吸收热量和多余的中子。

So you use the water and the fluid to then run a steam turbine to do traditional electricity generation and output electricity through your steam turbine.

因此，您使用水和液体来运行蒸汽涡轮机进行传统发电并通过蒸汽涡轮机输出电力。

You end up with complicated systems of flowing liquids and flowing water, balancing the heat.

最终你会得到由流动液体和流动水组成的复杂系统，以平衡热量。

21:28 A lot of fission reactor design comes from that thermal balance of keeping this reaction going, making sure it doesn’t speed up, because that’s an uncontrolled chain reaction, which you would not want, and balancing the cooling and the output of getting the water out of it.

许多裂变反应堆的设计都来自于保持反应进行的热平衡，确保它不会加速，因为这是一个不受控制的链式反应，这是你不想要的，并平衡冷却和从反应中取出水的输出。

So we should say that for reasons you already laid out—maybe you can speak to it a bit more—nuclear fusion is much safer.

所以我们应该说，出于你已经阐述过的原因——也许你可以多说一点——核聚变要安全得多。

21:48 There’s no chain reaction going on; you can just shut it off.

不会发生连锁反应；你可以把它关掉。

But it should also be said that, as far as I understand, the current fission nuclear reactors are also very safe.

但也应该说，据我了解，目前的裂变核反应堆也是非常安全的。

I think there’s a perception that nuclear fission reactors are unsafe, they’re dangerous, and if you just look empirically at the statistics, that fear is not justified by the actual safety data.

我认为人们认为核裂变反应堆是不安全的，它们是危险的，如果你只是凭经验查看统计数据，那么实际的安全数据并不能证明这种恐惧是合理的。

Can you just speak to that a little bit?

您能简单谈谈吗？

Yeah, we’ve been talking about the reaction processes themselves, but I think fundamentally, let’s take a step back and look a little broader and say, let’s look at what we care about, which is the power plant, making electricity.

是的，我们一直在讨论反应过程本身，但我认为从根本上来说，让我们退后一步，看得更广泛一点，然后说，让我们看看我们关心的是什么，那就是发电的发电厂。

22:22 I look at this from a nuclear engineer’s point of view.

我从核工程师的角度看待这个问题。

I spent a lot of years studying these systems.

我花了很多年的时间研究这些系统。

Modern fission reactors, I believe, are engineered to be safe.

我相信，现代裂变反应堆的设计是安全的。

They’re engineered in ways where as those reactions maybe speed up and those systems get hotter, they actually are built to expand and cool down passively and natively.

它们的设计方式是，随着这些反应可能加速，这些系统变得更热，它们实际上是为了被动地、本机地膨胀和冷却而设计的。

There are protection systems in place that modern systems are quite safe from an engineering perspective.

从工程角度来看，现代系统具有相当安全的保护系统。

23:03 So I believe that we have figured out how to build nuclear fission reactors in a way where the engineering of the power plant is safe.

因此，我相信我们已经找到了如何以安全的方式建造核裂变反应堆的方法。

I would say that I look back at the history of what we’ve built over time, and the challenge hasn’t come to the engineering, actually.

我想说的是，当我回顾我们随着时间的推移所建造的历史时，实际上，挑战并不是来自于工程。

I believe the engineers have solved these problems.

我相信工程师们已经解决了这些问题。

The problem comes from humans, and the problem comes from other things around nuclear power.

问题来自人类，问题来自核电周围的其他事物。

You have to enrich that uranium to put it in a plant, and the plant’s safe, but you had to enrich that uranium, and that is some of the problem.

你必须浓缩铀才能将其放入工厂，工厂是安全的，但你必须浓缩铀，这就是问题所在。

Or a plant is designed to run for a certain number of decades safely, but do we run it longer than that?

或者，一座工厂的设计目标是安全运行一定的几十年，但我们的运行时间是否会比这更长？

23:42 And so those are where I think the real challenges happen, is more with the humans around these systems than the engineering of the power plants themselves.

因此，我认为真正的挑战发生在这些地方，更多的是这些系统周围的人类，而不是发电厂本身的工程。

Well, I have to ask then, what do you think happened in Chernobyl?

好吧，那么我必须问，你认为切尔诺贝利发生了什么？

23:50 What lessons do we learn from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and maybe also Three Mile Island and Fukushima accidents?

我们从切尔诺贝利核灾难以及三哩岛和福岛事故中吸取了哪些教训？

I think you’re suggesting that it has to do with the humans a bit.

我认为你的意思是这与人类有些关系。

So with Chernobyl and Fukushima, I actually put Three Mile Island in a different category.

因此，对于切尔诺贝利和福岛，我实际上将三哩岛归为不同的类别。

24:02 In fact, some of the recent news in the last year is that we’re going to be restarting Three Mile Island, because there’s such a need for clean base load power.

事实上，去年的一些最新消息是我们将重新启动三哩岛，因为对清洁基本负载电力的需求如此之大。

So that’s actually a very interesting other topic we should talk about is, is why and how we’re doing that.

所以这实际上是我们应该讨论的一个非常有趣的另一个话题，那就是我们为什么以及如何这样做。

But more than that, going back to the accidents that did happen in both of those systems, you can point to the human failure rather than the engineering failures of those systems.

但更重要的是，回到这两个系统中确实发生的事故，您可以指出这些系统的人为故障而不是工程故障。

That in Fukushima specifically, there were multiple nuclear fission reactors on the same site that successfully kept running through the tsunami, totally successfully, and were only later shut down for more political reasons.

具体来说，在福岛，同一地点有多个核裂变反应堆，它们成功地度过了海啸，完全成功，但后来由于更多的政治原因而被关闭。

24:48 But the old one, the oldest of them that had been on site for long periods, and maybe too long, I think some experts have looked at this in the past was where some of the problems actually happened.

但是旧的，其中最古老的，已经在现场很长时间了，也许太久了，我认为一些专家过去已经研究过这个问题，这就是一些问题实际发生的地方。

And so, I look to that less as a failure of the engineering of the power plants, and more of the humans around those systems.

因此，我认为这不是发电厂工程的失败，而是这些系统周围人类的失败。

That we should be operating these plants as designed, and then I believe they’re safe.

我们应该按照设计运行这些工厂，然后我相信它们是安全的。

And that gets to some of the atomic weapons questions that I think are the other part around nuclear reactors and fission reactors that are concerning for me.

这涉及到一些原子武器问题，我认为这些问题是我关心的核反应堆和裂变反应堆的另一部分。

Can you speak to those?

你能和那些人谈谈吗？

25:30 So, maybe this is a good place to also lay out the difference between nuclear fission power plants and nuclear fission weapons, and maybe also nuclear fusion power plants and nuclear fusion weapons.

因此，也许这是一个很好的地方来阐述核裂变电站和核裂变武器之间的区别，也许也是核聚变电站和核聚变武器之间的区别。

What are the differences here?

这里有什么区别？

Fusion power plants can’t be used to make nuclear weapons.

聚变发电厂不能用于制造核武器。

25:53 Fundamentally, the processes in fusion aren’t the same processes that happen in nuclear bombs and nuclear weapons.

从根本上说，聚变过程与核弹和核武器中发生的过程不同。

And so it’s actually one reason I started in fusion, and most of our team thinks about the mission of fusion, of delivering clean, safe electricity, is it also can’t be used to make weapons.

所以这实际上是我开始聚变的原因之一，我们团队的大多数人都在思考聚变的使命，即提供清洁、安全的电力，它是否也不能用来制造武器。

And I think that’s a little bit of a distinction from traditional nuclear fission reactors, is that while I totally believe as a nuclear engineer we can build power plants now that are safe, that aren’t going to have reactions.

我认为这与传统核裂变反应堆有一点区别，虽然我完全相信作为一名核工程师，我们现在可以建造安全的、不会发生反应的发电厂。

They use a fuel, uranium and plutonium, that can be used to make nuclear weapons.

他们使用可用于制造核武器的燃料铀和钚。

26:40 We know that if you take enough fissile material together, enough uranium and plutonium, put it in a small volume, that it will not just create a reaction, but it will create a supercritical reaction that will then continue and grow and release a tremendous amount of energy all at once.

我们知道，如果将足够的裂变材料、足够的铀和钚放在一起，放在一个小体积中，它不仅会产生反应，而且会产生超临界反应，然后该反应会持续、增长并立即释放出大量能量。

And that is a bomb.

那是一颗炸弹。

That is a bad situation, and that is what we want to avoid.

这是一种糟糕的情况，也是我们想要避免的。

A lot of the key is recognizing that even though there are things called fusion bombs, the H-bomb, the hydrogen bomb, the hydrogen bomb has uranium in it.

很多关键是认识到即使有所谓聚变弹、氢弹、氢弹的东西，氢弹里面也含有铀。

It’s still a fission bomb.

它仍然是裂变炸弹。

And so how this fundamentally works is that you have a fission reaction, a primary, and that creates radiation that induces a fusion reaction with a small amount of fusion fuel that then boosts that uranium reaction again.

因此，其基本原理是发生裂变反应，即初级反应，并产生辐射，用少量聚变燃料引发聚变反应，然后再次促进铀反应。

27:29 And so most of the energy, in fact 90% of the energy in an H-bomb, is all still from the uranium reactions themselves.

因此，大部分能量，事实上氢弹中 90% 的能量，仍然来自铀反应本身。

Yeah, I think people call it sort of the nuclear fusion bomb, hydrogen bomb, but really it’s still a nuclear fission bomb.

是的，我认为人们称之为核聚变炸弹、氢弹，但实际上它仍然是核裂变炸弹。

27:37 It’s just that fusion is a part of the process to make it more powerful, but you still need, like you said, the uranium fuel.

只是聚变是使其更强大的过程的一部分，但正如你所说，你仍然需要铀燃料。

So it’s not accurate to sort of think of it as a fusion bomb really.

因此，将其视为聚变炸弹是不准确的。

And if you take away that fissile material, that nuclear fission reaction, the fusion reaction doesn’t happen at all.

如果你拿走裂变材料，即核裂变反应，聚变反应就根本不会发生。

27:53 In fact, there have been researchers that have over the decades tried to make an all-fusion bomb and been very unsuccessful at it.

事实上，几十年来一直有研究人员尝试制造全聚变炸弹，但非常不成功。

The physics and the engineering don’t support it can ever happen with our understanding today.

物理学和工程学并不支持以我们今天的理解能够发生这种情况。

The topic we’re talking about is more broadly called proliferation, and this is the creation of nuclear weapons in the world and the distribution of those weapons.

我们谈论的话题更广泛地称为扩散，即在世界上制造核武器以及这些武器的分布。

And something we know as physicists and engineers is that fusion can’t be used to make nuclear weapons.

作为物理学家和工程师，我们知道聚变不能用来制造核武器。

We know that.

我们知道这一点。

But that is not widely known.

但这并不广为人知。

28:38 And part of what we went out to do is work with the proliferation experts in the world, the people who work to prevent nuclear weapons from being made, being created, being shared throughout the world, because we know the challenges, the geopolitical challenges that happen.

我们出去做的部分工作就是与世界上的防扩散专家合作，这些专家致力于防止核武器在全世界制造、制造和共享，因为我们知道所发生的挑战和地缘政治挑战。

And we went to those proliferation experts, and we were worried they would have sort of the same historical question of, like, “Well, the word nuclear is in fusion, so therefore it must be related.” And in fact, the total opposite happened.

我们去找了那些核扩散专家，我们担心他们会有同样的历史问题，比如，“嗯，核这个词是聚变的，所以它一定是相关的。”事实上，完全相反的情况发生了。

What they told us is, “Please, please go develop fusion power plants absolutely as fast as possible.

他们告诉我们的是，“请尽快开发聚变发电厂。

29:15 The world needs this.” And the proliferation experts were telling us that otherwise people would start enriching uranium throughout the world, and we’d be building enriched uranium power plants because we need the electricity that’s clean and base load.

世界需要这个。”核扩散专家告诉我们，否则人们将开始在世界各地进行铀浓缩，而我们将建造浓缩铀发电厂，因为我们需要清洁和基本负荷的电力。

But in those processes, they’ll be making fuel that could be one day used for atomic weapons, for nuclear weapons, and they were worried that the growth of this enriched uranium, think about the centrifuges, that having a lot more centrifuges happening all over the world would lead to more weapons, at least the possibility of it.

但在这些过程中，他们将制造有一天可以用于原子武器、核武器的燃料，他们担心这种浓缩铀的增长，想想离心机，世界各地安装更多的离心机会导致更多的武器，至少有可能产生更多的武器。

And so they are pushing us as fast as possible, go build fusion generators and get them deployed everywhere.

因此，他们正在敦促我们尽快建造聚变发电机并将其部署到各处。

29:55 Not that’s just in the United States, but all over the world so that we’re building fusion power and that’s meeting humanity’s needs, not this other thing.

不仅仅是在美国，而是在世界各地，因此我们正在建设核聚变能力，这满足了人类的需求，而不是其他事情。

And so I was really pleasantly surprised.

所以我真的很惊喜。

We’ve written a number of papers and worked with those communities on this of what does it mean, how is fusion power safe and can’t be used for nuclear weapons.

我们已经撰写了许多论文，并与这些社区合作，探讨这意味着什么、聚变能如何安全以及不能用于核武器。

So, this might be interesting to ask on the geopolitics side of things.

因此，从地缘政治角度来问这个问题可能很有趣。

30:18 I have the chance to interview a few world leaders coming up.

我有机会采访即将到来的几位世界领导人。

By way of advice, what questions should I ask world leaders to figure out the geopolitics of nuclear proliferation?

作为建议，我应该向世界领导人提出哪些问题来弄清楚核扩散的地缘政治？

nuclear weapons, nuclear fission power plants, and nuclear fusion power plants?

核武器、核裂变发电厂、核聚变发电厂？

What’s the interesting intricate complexity there that you could maybe speak to?

您可以谈论其中有趣、复杂的因素是什么？

The question I would want to ask is, “What would you do?” If we could deliver for you low-cost, clean, industrial scale, tens or hundreds of megawatts of fusion power that’s low-cost, clean, base load and doesn’t have the geopolitical consequences of uranium and plutonium, of fissile material, what would you do there?

我想问的问题是：“你会做什么？”如果我们能够为您提供低成本、清洁、工业规模、数十或数百兆瓦的聚变发电，这种发电是低成本、清洁、基本负荷，并且不会产生铀、钚和裂变材料的地缘政治后果，您会做什么？

30:47 How would that change your view of the next 30 years?

这将如何改变您对未来 30 年的看法？

But also, there’s a lot of geopolitics connected to oil, natural gas…

而且，还有很多地缘政治与石油、天然气有关……

31:17 …And other sources of energy which I think are important in Saudi Arabia, in the Middle East, in Russia, I mean, all across the world.

......以及我认为在沙特阿拉伯、中东、俄罗斯，我的意思是全世界都很重要的其他能源。

And that’s interesting too.

这也很有趣。

So do you think actually if everybody has nuclear fusion power plants, that alleviates some of the geopolitical tension that have to do with energy, other energy sources?

那么，您是否认为，如果每个人都拥有核聚变发电厂，这是否会缓解一些与能源和其他能源有关的地缘政治紧张局势？

I certainly do, that the fuel is in seawater all over Earth.

我当然知道，燃料存在于地球各地的海水中。

31:42 Everybody has deuterium, and everybody has it.

每个人都有氘，每个人都有它。

And so you can’t have a monopoly on the fuel.

所以你不能垄断燃料。

And no one can control the fuel and no one can turn off the fuel, no one can cut a pipeline.

没有人可以控制燃料，没有人可以关闭燃料，没有人可以切断管道。

That just cannot happen with fusion.

融合是不可能发生这种情况的。

And so if we can deploy those plants and we can deploy them quickly, then it decouples the ability of any one or any few countries to control energy.

因此，如果我们能够部署这些工厂并且能够快速部署它们，那么它就会使任何一个或任何几个国家控制能源的能力脱钩。

Okay, so let’s return to the basic question.

好吧，让我们回到基本问题。

32:12 We already mentioned it a little bit, but is nuclear fusion safe?

我们已经提到过一点，但核聚变安全吗？

So, are the fusion power plants we’re talking about safe?

那么，我们所说的聚变发电厂安全吗？

Yes, fusion power is fundamentally safe.

是的，聚变能源从根本上来说是安全的。

32:26 The physics and the reactions of the fusion system itself mean you don’t have runaways.

聚变系统本身的物理原理和反应意味着你不会发生失控。

We’ve talked about some of the human factors around power plants, power systems, and industrial scale systems, and that’s something that we build into the design of these from today.

我们已经讨论了围绕发电厂、电力系统和工业规模系统的一些人为因素，这是我们从今天开始将其纳入这些设计的内容。

We look at how these systems might fail.

我们研究这些系统可能如何失败。

In fact, some of the analysis we do, we did this analysis for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over the last few years, looking at how to regulate fusion power.

事实上，我们所做的一些分析，我们在过去几年中为核管理委员会做了这样的分析，研究如何监管聚变能。

As we’re building the first fusion power plant, we need to make sure we’re regulated safely.

当我们建造第一座聚变发电厂时，我们需要确保受到安全监管。

So we spent a lot of time doing the technical and political case in the United States of how to regulate fusion.

因此，我们花了很多时间在美国研究如何监管核聚变的技术和政治案例。

33:18 The analysis we did assumes you have a fusion power plant that’s operating and then, at any one time, a meteor strikes it.

我们所做的分析假设您有一个正在运行的聚变发电厂，然后在任何时候都有一颗流星撞击它。

The whole thing is vaporized.

整个东西都蒸发了。

What is the impact of that?

这有什么影响？

This is worse than you could ever imagine an actual physical scenario, but let’s start there.

这比你想象的实际物理场景更糟糕，但让我们从这里开始。

The answer is, you don’t need to evacuate the populace nearby the fusion power plant.

答案是，你不需要疏散聚变发电厂附近的民众。

One of the keys, I think, that I come to when I think about this is the fuel.

我认为，当我想到这个问题时，我想到的关键之一就是燃料。

In a fusion generator, you are continuously feeding in this hydrogen, these deuterium fuels.

在聚变发生器中，您不断地供给这些氢，这些氘燃料。

At any one time, in a Helion fusion system and most fusion systems, you have one second of fuel in that system.

在任何时候，在 Helion 聚变系统和大多数聚变系统中，该系统中都会有一秒钟的燃料。

So what that means is if you stop turning on…

所以这意味着如果你停止开机......

34:08 If you stop putting fuel into that system, fusion just stops.

如果你停止向该系统添加燃料，聚变就会停止。

But what it also means is that if something really catastrophic happened and for whatever reason you have all that fuel that’s not in the system, and fusion is so hard to make happen, you hit it with a meteor, you do anything of that nature, and fusion doesn’t happen.

但这也意味着，如果发生了真正灾难性的事情，并且无论出于何种原因，你拥有了系统中没有的所有燃料，并且聚变很难发生，那么你用流星击中它，你做了任何这种性质的事情，聚变就不会发生。

That hydrogen, that heavy water, that deuterium, just goes back into the environment safely and cleanly without issue.

氢、重水、氘都会安全、干净地回到环境中，不会出现任何问题。

That’s the fundamental safety mechanism of fusion.

这就是聚变的基本安全机制。

You can compare that with other types of power plants like an oil or a coal power plant.

您可以将其与其他类型的发电厂（例如石油发电厂或燃煤发电厂）进行比较。

You might have a large pile of coal that then catches fire and burns.

您可能有一大堆煤，然后会着火并燃烧。

34:47 It’s not catastrophic, but you have a large coal fire for a long time releasing toxic fumes that you may have to deal with.

这不是灾难性的，但你的煤火长时间燃烧，释放出有毒烟雾，你可能需要处理这些烟雾。

In nuclear power, in a fission power plant, you may have several years of fuel sitting in the core.

在核能中，在裂变发电厂中，核心中可能有数年的燃料。

In that case, if something bad happened, you have all that potential energy for things to happen.

在这种情况下，如果发生了不好的事情，你就有足够的潜在能量让事情发生。

But in fusion, you have literally one second of fuel at any time in the system.

但在核聚变中，系统中任何时候实际上都只有一秒钟的燃料。

Having a tank of deuterium, which we have around all the time, can’t do fusion by itself.

我们一直都有一个氘罐，但它本身并不能进行核聚变。

It needs that complex system.

它需要那个复杂的系统。

I love that there’s like a PowerPoint going on in a secret meeting about what happens if a meteor hits a fusion power plant.

我喜欢这就像秘密会议上的 PowerPoint 一样，讲述流星撞击聚变发电厂会发生什么。

35:17 Okay, so that’s really interesting.

好吧，这真的很有趣。

What about the waste?

那废物呢？

What kind of waste is there for fusion power plants?

聚变发电厂会产生哪些废物？

The fusion reaction itself is still fundamentally an atomic reaction.

聚变反应本身从根本上来说仍然是一种原子反应。

35:31 So during this reaction, you do create ionizing radiation.

因此，在这个反应过程中，确实会产生电离辐射。

You create X-rays, you create neutrons, and you create all these charged particles.

你创造了 X 射线，你创造了中子，你创造了所有这些带电粒子。

The charged particles themselves for a fusion reaction are all contained in the fusion system.

用于聚变反应的带电粒子本身都包含在聚变系统中。

The X-rays, similar to a dentist office, although a lot more than that, but that same type of X-ray and X-ray energy is absorbed by the fusion system.

X射线，类似于牙医诊所，虽然比那个多很多，但是X射线和X射线能量是同类型的，被融合系统吸收。

But the thing we do care about is those neutrons.

但我们真正关心的是那些中子。

So we do have, in a fusion system, activation.

因此，在融合系统中，我们确实具有激活功能。

During its operation, neutrons are made and leave, so we have to shield these fusion systems during their operation.

在其运行过程中，中子会产生并离开，因此我们必须在这些聚变系统运行期间对其进行屏蔽。

36:13 This is very similar, in fact, this is a lot of the work we did with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over the last number of years.

这非常相似，事实上，这是我们过去几年与核监管委员会所做的很多工作。

There was a landmark agreement that happened for the NRC that was then codified into law last year called the ADVANCE Act, which is really powerful because it says, for the very first time—how the U.S. government, leading the way on this, which I’m really proud of, will regulate fusion.

NRC 达成了一项具有里程碑意义的协议，该协议于去年被编入法律，称为《先进法案》，该法案非常强大，因为它第一次规定了美国政府将如何在这方面发挥带头作用，我对此感到非常自豪，将如何监管核聚变。

This gets into a little bit of the details, but the way the Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulates nuclear things in the United States is in these different sets of statutes.

这涉及到一些细节，但核管理委员会监管美国核事务的方式是在这些不同的法规中。

Nuclear reactors are regulated under something called Part 50.

核反应堆受第 50 部分的监管。

36:54 And there’s a lot of variety in the regulatory language around that, but most of it is to handle special nuclear materials, uranium and plutonium.

与之相关的监管语言多种多样，但其中大部分是针对特殊核材料、铀和钚的。

But fusion is not.

但融合则不然。

Fusion is regulated under something called Part 30.

融合受到第 30 部分的监管。

Part 30 is how hospitals are regulated, particle accelerators, other types of irradiators where, as they’re operating, you have very high energy particles, ionizing radiation, and you have to protect operators from it.

第 30 部分是如何监管医院、粒子加速器和其他类型的辐照器，这些设备在运行时会产生非常高能的粒子、电离辐射，因此必须保护操作员免受其影响。

You have to shield them, so we build concrete shields.

你必须屏蔽它们，所以我们建造了混凝土屏蔽。

If you came and visited Helion, you would see plastic, borated polyethylene, and concrete shielding to protect operators and equipment from the fusion reactions while they’re happening.

如果您来参观 Helion，您会看到塑料、硼酸聚乙烯和混凝土屏蔽层，以保护操作员和设备免受聚变反应的影响。

But again, you turn them off, and those fusion reactions stop.

但再一次，你把它们关掉，那些聚变反应就会停止。

And that’s really the key.

这确实是关键。

37:38 There’s a funny story related to that.

有一个与此相关的有趣故事。

We’ve been building fusion systems that do fusion for a long time, and at some level, they got powerful enough, doing enough fusion, we started building these shields and shielding them like a particle accelerator.

我们长期以来一直在建造进行聚变的聚变系统，在某种程度上，它们变得足够强大，进行了足够的聚变，我们开始建造这些护盾并像粒子加速器一样保护它们。

I went to the regulatory bodies that regulate Part 30.

我去了监管第 30 部分的监管机构。

This is in Washington state, it’s the Department of Health.

这是华盛顿州的卫生部。

So I went to the Department of Health and said, “Here’s an application for a fusion generator shielding permit as a particle accelerator.” The very first question I got asked was, “Great, where do the patients go?” Because the standard form had a patient as a hospital, the patient dose for the particle accelerator, and then the shielding.

所以我去了卫生部并说：“这是一份聚变发生器屏蔽许可证作为粒子加速器的申请。”我被问到的第一个问题是：“太好了，病人去哪里了？”因为标准形式有一个病人作为医院，病人剂量用于粒子加速器，然后是屏蔽。

38:26 We talked all about the shielding and the operators, which is very similar for a Helion system.

我们讨论了屏蔽和操作员，这与 Helion 系统非常相似。

We said, “No, no patients at all.

我们说：“不，根本没有病人。

No one’s inside this thing.

没有人在这东西里面。

Our goal is to generate electricity one day.” This was a lot of years ago.

我们的目标是有一天能够发电。”这是很多年前的事了。

We were able to go through and work with the state agencies to license these fusion particle accelerators.

我们能够通过并与国家机构合作来获得这些聚变粒子加速器的许可。

We were, as far as we know, the first licensed fusion system ever as a particle accelerator for those first systems.

据我们所知，我们是第一个获得许可的聚变系统，作为第一批系统的粒子加速器。

The first license we had was in 2020.

我们获得的第一个许可证是在 2020 年。

We then have gone on and now licensed several of our fusion systems that we’ve built that do fusion, both the shielding as well as some of the fuel processes.

然后我们继续进行，现在已经获得了我们建造的几个聚变系统的许可，这些系统可以进行聚变，包括屏蔽和一些燃料过程。

So high level, what are the different ways to build a nuclear fusion power plant?

这么高的水平，建造核聚变电站有哪些不同的方式呢？

39:08 Can you explain what a tokamak is, what a stellarator is, and what’s the linear approach that Helion is using?

您能解释一下什么是托卡马克、什么是仿星器以及 Helion 使用的线性方法是什么？

There are a number of ways to do fusion.

有多种方法可以进行融合。

39:25 Fundamentally, in all fusion approaches, you’re trying to do the same physical process, which is take these lightweight isotopes, heat them up so that they can move at high velocity—over 100 million degrees—bring enough of them together.

从根本上来说，在所有聚变方法中，你都在尝试进行相同的物理过程，即将这些轻质同位素加热，以便它们能够高速移动（超过 1 亿度），将足够多的同位素聚集在一起。

We call it density.

我们称之为密度。

Enough of them together in a certain volume so that you have reactions happening at a higher rate, and keep them together long enough that they are able to collide into each other and do fusion and release energy.

它们在一定体积内足够多，以便反应以更高的速率发生，并使它们保持足够长的时间，以便它们能够相互碰撞并发生聚变并释放能量。

That’s the fundamental core.

这就是根本核心。

Now, how you do that, how you bring those particles together, how you hold them together long enough, there’s a wide range of technologies that, as humans, we’ve been exploring since the 1950s.

现在，如何做到这一点，如何将这些粒子聚集在一起，如何将它们保持足够长的时间，作为人类，我们自 20 世纪 50 年代以来一直在探索各种各样的技术。

40:12 And I think about several main categories.

我想到了几个主要类别。

If you look at the fusion funding out there, government funding in the world, private funding actually has quite a different profile, which is an interesting thing to talk about.

如果你看看那里的核聚变资金，世界上的政府资金，私人资金实际上有相当不同的概况，这是一件有趣的事情。

But in public funding, in federal funding in the United States, there are two mainline programs called inertial fusion and magnetic fusion.

但在公共资助中，在美国的联邦资助中，有两个主线项目，称为惯性聚变和磁聚变。

In inertial fusion, what you’re trying to do is bring together and push together by a variety of physical means, those particles.

在惯性聚变中，你要做的就是通过各种物理手段将这些粒子聚集在一起并推动在一起。

You push them together.

你把它们推到一起。

The most common is called laser inertial fusion.

最常见的是激光惯性聚变。

Our colleagues at the National Ignition Facility did this really well and made world records in the last few years for being able to demonstrate you can do this and do it at scale.

我们国家点火装置的同事在这方面做得非常好，并在过去几年中创造了世界纪录，因为他们能够证明你可以做到这一点并且可以大规模地做到这一点。

40:58 Where you take very high power lasers and pulse them together to combine them to do fusion for a pulse, for a very short period of time: nanoseconds, billionths of a second.

您使用非常高功率的激光并将它们脉冲在一起，以将它们组合在一起以在非常短的时间内进行脉冲聚变：纳秒，十亿分之一秒。

The other extreme, and you mentioned tokamaks and stellarators.

另一个极端，你提到了托卡马克和仿星器。

Stellarators are actually my favorite, so we’ll talk about those.

仿星器实际上是我最喜欢的，所以我们将讨论这些。

As a graduate student in fusion, the stellarator is the first thing you learn about.

作为聚变领域的研究生，仿星器是您学习的第一件事。

Because there’s a mathematical solution for a stellarator that solves perfectly.

因为仿星器有一个完美的数学解。

And you can write it out and you can solve it, and analytically, it’s very simple.

而且你可以写出来，你可以解决它，分析起来，非常简单。

Building one is very hard.

建造一个是非常困难的。

It’s taken humanity a number of decades to be able to build stellarators, and we can do it now with the Wendelstein 7-X that came online in the last few years, being the premier stellarator in the world.

人类花了几十年的时间才能够建造仿星器，而我们现在可以通过过去几年上线的 Wendelstein 7-X 来做到这一点，它是世界上首屈一指的仿星器。

I should say, all the different ways to do fusion all just look so badass in terms of engineering.

我应该说，所有不同的融合方法在工程方面看起来都很糟糕。

41:49 Creating this containment, extremely high temperature, high density.

造就这个收容所，温度极高，密度极高。

Everything’s moving super fast.

一切都进展得超级快。

Everything is happening super fast.

一切都发生得超级快。

It’s just fascinating that humans are able to do it.

人类能够做到这一点真是令人着迷。

Like, there are certain things, accelerators are that a little bit, but this is even cooler because you’re generating energy that can power humanity with this machine.

就像，有些东西，加速器就是一点点，但这更酷，因为你正在用这台机器产生可以为人类提供动力的能量。

Anyway, can you just speak a little bit more to the inertial and the magnetic fusion systems?

不管怎样，你能多谈谈惯性和磁聚变系统吗？

In a magnetic system, your goal is not to push together those particles as fast as possible.

在磁性系统中，您的目标不是尽快将这些粒子推到一起。

42:23 Your goal is to hold onto them for as long as possible.

您的目标是尽可能长时间地保留它们。

To do that, we use magnetic fields.

为此，我们使用磁场。

So let’s take a step back.

那么让我们退后一步。

What is a magnetic field?

什么是磁场？

In an electromagnet, there are a variety of ways to make a magnetic field.

在电磁体中，有多种产生磁场的方法。

One of the most famous, I think everyone is familiar with, is Earth itself.

我想每个人都熟悉，最著名的之一就是地球本身。

Earth has what we call the magnetosphere, which is the magnetic protection that’s generated by the core of the Earth.

地球有我们所说的磁层，它是由地球核心产生的磁保护。

We have a magnetic field around the Earth, and that magnetic field protects us from particles coming from the galaxy, galactic cosmic rays, and solar particles that would come to Earth.

地球周围有一个磁场，该磁场保护我们免受来自银河系的粒子、银河宇宙射线和到达地球的太阳粒子的影响。

43:11 That magnetic field, when you run a compass, you see the magnetic field from the Earth.

那个磁场，当你运行指南针时，你会看到来自地球的磁场。

So we know it’s happening.

所以我们知道它正在发生。

It’s all over.

一切都结束了。

But how we generate it with electric currents is a little bit different.

但我们用电流产生它的方式有点不同。

What we do is that we have a loop of wire, and the simplest way to think about it is literally a round loop.

我们所做的就是有一个线圈，最简单的思考方式就是实际上是一个圆形线圈。

In that loop, you have electrons; you have electrical current that’s running.

在那个环路中，有电子；你有电流在运行。

And when electrical current, this is some of Maxwell’s equations that we discovered in the 1800s, when you have an electrical current in a wire, it generates a magnetic field inside that wire.

当有电流时，这是我们在 1800 年代发现的一些麦克斯韦方程，当电线中有电流时，它会在电线内产生磁场。

And so when you look at fusion systems, you always have these big magnetic coils with large amounts of current.

因此，当您查看聚变系统时，您总是会看到这些带有大量电流的大型磁性线圈。

We don’t run a little bit of current.

我们不运行一点电流。

43:52 In our systems, we have hundreds of mega amps of current.

在我们的系统中，我们有数百兆安的电流。

If you think about your house, you have your breaker box with 200 amps or maybe a 400-amp breaker box, and we run 100 million amps of electrical current.

如果你考虑一下你的房子，你的断路器箱有 200 安培或可能是 400 安培的断路器箱，而我们运行的电流为 1 亿安培。

So massive amounts of electrical current to be able to do this.

需要如此巨大的电流才能做到这一点。

That magnetic field that’s generated inside that magnetic coil has some really special properties, and we take advantage of those properties to do fusion.

磁线圈内部产生的磁场具有一些非常特殊的特性，我们利用这些特性进行聚变。

Some of those properties are not intuitive.

其中一些属性并不直观。

So here’s one of my favorites: when you have an electromagnetic field, you have this coil with electricity going around it and you have a magnetic field inside of it, and then you have a test particle, a charged particle, an electron or an ion.

这是我最喜欢的之一：当你有一个电磁场时，你有一个线圈，周围有电流，里面有一个磁场，然后你就有一个测试粒子、一个带电粒子、一个电子或一个离子。

44:39 If you imagine to generate this, I have a coil with electrons moving around it.

如果你想产生这个，我有一个线圈，电子在其周围移动。

But if I put one in the middle of it, in this magnetic field, some really interesting things happen.

但如果我把一个放在它的中间，在这个磁场中，一些非常有趣的事情就会发生。

That electron or that ion, that charged particle, is what’s called magnetized.

那个电子或那个离子，那个带电粒子，就是所谓的磁化。

And what magnetized means is that it’s trapped on that field line.

磁化意味着它被困在磁力线上。

In fact, even more interesting is that it oscillates around that field line.

事实上，更有趣的是它围绕该场线振荡。

So the way I think about this is if you think about the Earth’s magnetosphere again, and you think about the charged particles, the aurora, the Northern Lights, is a charged particle trapped in the Earth’s magnetic field going around the Earth’s magnetic field.

所以我思考这个问题的方式是，如果你再想想地球的磁层，再想想带电粒子，极光、北极光，是一种被困在地球磁场中的带电粒子，绕着地球磁场旋转。

45:18 In the same way, in fusion, we do the same thing here on Earth, but in a smaller direction where we trap these particles on magnetic fields, and they can go around and stay trapped to that magnetic field line.

同样，在聚变中，我们在地球上做同样的事情，但在一个较小的方向上，我们将这些粒子捕获在磁场中，它们可以绕行并保持被捕获在磁场线上。

How much of the physics at this scale is understood here?

这里理解了多少这种规模的物理学？

45:29 Like, how these systems behave when you attract a magnetic field in this way.

就像，当你以这种方式吸引磁场时，这些系统会如何表现。

Is this fundamentally now an engineering problem, or is there new physics to be discovered about how the system is behaving?

这从根本上来说是一个工程问题，还是有关于系统行为的新物理学有待发现？

In fusion, the physics we’re using is actually quite old.

在聚变中，我们使用的物理原理实际上相当古老。

45:48 The fundamental electromagnetic physics is 1800s physics.

基础电磁物理学是 1800 年代的物理学。

The fundamental atomic physics is early 1900s.

基础原子物理学是 20 世纪 00 年代初。

So the fundamental physics of how these work is very well understood.

因此，这些工作原理的基本物理原理是很好理解的。

Putting them all together into a power plant, that’s hard.

将它们全部组装成一座发电厂，这很困难。

So you can do the math, every introductory grad student does the math on a stellarator and says, “This is all I need to do.

所以你可以做数学，每个入门研究生都会在仿星器上做数学，然后说：“这就是我需要做的。

I just need to make a magnetic coil in this very complicated shape, and then fusion will happen.” However, doing that in practice is actually quite challenging.

我只需要制作一个形状非常复杂的磁线圈，然后融合就会发生。”然而，在实践中做到这一点实际上是相当具有挑战性的。

So maybe you could speak a little bit more.

所以也许你可以多说一点。

46:27 So the stellarator and the tokamak, what’s the difference between those two?

那么仿星器和托卡马克，这两者有什么区别呢？

They’re both magnetic fusion systems.

它们都是磁聚变系统。

And then what does Helion do?

那么 Helion 会做什么呢？

The tokamak and the stellarator are both magnetic systems.

托卡马克和仿星器都是磁系统。

46:38 Their goal is to generate this magnetic field and hold onto the fusion fuel long enough.

他们的目标是产生这种磁场并保留聚变燃料足够长的时间。

Like I mentioned, these charged particles are trapped on the magnetic field.

正如我提到的，这些带电粒子被捕获在磁场中。

In fact, they’re oscillating.

事实上，它们正在振荡。

We call that a gyro orbit; it’s the radius that they oscillate around this magnetic field.

我们称之为陀螺轨道；这是它们围绕该磁场振荡的半径。

We’ve been talking about atomic physics, where everything is at this nanoscale.

我们一直在谈论原子物理学，一切事物都在纳米尺度上。

But gyro orbits are not.

但陀螺仪轨道则不然。

Gyro orbits for these fusion particles are measured in inches.

这些聚变粒子的陀螺轨道以英寸为单位测量。

So they’re on a scale that we can see and measure and understand really intuitively.

因此，它们的规模是我们可以直观地看到、测量和理解的。

47:16 In a magnetic system, your goal is to simply trap as many of these particles as you can for long enough and heat them so they’re hot enough so that they bang into each other.

在磁系统中，你的目标是简单地在足够长的时间内捕获尽可能多的这些粒子，并加热它们，使它们足够热，以便它们相互碰撞。

They collide enough that you’re doing fusion, and you’re doing enough fusion to overcome as fast as you’re losing those particles.

它们碰撞得足够多，以至于你正在进行融合，并且你正在进行足够的融合，以克服失去这些粒子的速度。

And so that’s what happens when you put particles in a magnetic field and you try to hold onto it.

这就是当你将粒子放入磁场中并试图抓住它时会发生的情况。

The challenge is that’s really hard to hold onto them long enough.

挑战在于，要坚持足够长的时间真的很难。

These particles are moving around.

这些粒子四处移动。

They’re moving at very high velocity, millions of miles per hour.

它们以非常高的速度移动，每小时数百万英里。

They’re colliding with each other, and they’re getting knocked off and getting knocked away.

他们互相碰撞，被撞倒，被撞飞。

47:51 So we’ve talked about inertial fusion, where you try to confine a fusion plasma by crushing it as fast as possible.

所以我们讨论了惯性聚变，你试图通过尽可能快地粉碎聚变等离子体来限制它。

And magnetic fusion, where you just simply have a magnetic field and your goal is to hold onto it for as long as possible.

还有磁聚变，你只需拥有一个磁场，你的目标就是尽可能长时间地保持它。

But there’s another way to do fusion, and in some ways, it’s one of the earliest approaches for fusion that was successful.

但还有另一种进行融合的方法，从某些方面来说，它是最早成功的融合方法之一。

As scientists and engineers, maybe we’re not too creative with the terminology.

作为科学家和工程师，也许我们对这些术语不太有创意。

We call the technique that Helion uses magneto-inertial fusion because it does a little bit of both.

我们将 Helion 使用磁惯性聚变的技术称为磁惯性聚变技术，因为它兼具了两者的功能。

48:25 To understand that, we can actually go back in history a little bit and think about the evolution of some of these approaches to fusion.

为了理解这一点，我们实际上可以回顾一下历史，思考其中一些融合方法的演变。

From our perspective, we look at the technology that we use as built on physics experiments that were very successful in the 1950s.

从我们的角度来看，我们所使用的技术是建立在 20 世纪 50 年代非常成功的物理实验基础上的。

In those systems, the earliest pioneers of fusion said, “I know, we understand the physics.

在这些系统中，最早的聚变先驱说：“我知道，我们了解物理学。

We have to take these gases, heat them to 100 million degrees, and then confine them, push them together so that fusion happens.” So, what is the best way to do that?

我们必须将这些气体加热到一亿度，然后限制它们，将它们推到一起，以便发生聚变。”那么，最好的方法是什么？

Some of the earliest programs, we call them theta pinch.

一些最早的程序，我们称之为“theta捏”。

And what those programs were, were a linear topology, because we knew how to build these magnets.

这些程序是线性拓扑，因为我们知道如何构建这些磁铁。

49:08 It’s called a solenoid, where you take a series of electric coils, you run electrical current through them, that generates a magnetic field.

它被称为螺线管，其中有一系列电线圈，电流通过它们，从而产生磁场。

Great, so you have a magnetic field.

太好了，你就有了磁场。

Now you add your fusion particles.

现在添加融合粒子。

Okay?

好的？

So you’ve added fusion particles to this solenoid.

所以你已经在这个螺线管中添加了聚变粒子。

Here’s the challenge.

这就是挑战。

Those particles, as they’re sitting in that magnetic field in this nice magnet, escape.

这些粒子，当它们位于这个漂亮磁铁的磁场中时，就会逃逸。

They leave out the ends because there’s nothing holding them in.

他们省略了末端，因为没有任何东西可以限制它们。

Great.

太棒了。

So that makes sense.

所以这是有道理的。

And so that doesn’t work, okay?

所以这是行不通的，好吗？

So then the next approach is to say, well, one branch of fusion said, “Okay, well, to solve that, why don’t we take the solenoid and bend it around?

那么下一个方法就是说，好吧，融合的一个分支说，“好吧，好吧，为了解决这个问题，我们为什么不把螺线管弯曲一下呢？

Let’s just make it a big donut.

让我们把它做成一个大甜甜圈。

So as they’re escaping, they go around and around in a circle.” Great.

所以当他们逃跑时，他们会围成一圈。”伟大的。

That’s a great approach.

这是一个很好的方法。

49:49 One branch of fusion went down that direction, and that became, that evolved into the stellarator and the tokamak.

聚变的一个分支沿着这个方向发展，最终演变成仿星器和托卡马克装置。

Different ways of taking those solenoids and wrapping them around so that the plasmas go around and around in that magnetic field, and those charged particles are held long enough that fusion happens.

以不同的方式获取这些螺线管并将它们包裹起来，以便等离子体在磁场中绕来绕去，并且这些带电粒子被保持足够长的时间以发生聚变。

But there’s a different way to do it.

但有一种不同的方法可以做到这一点。

And so the theta pinch was what was born in the 1950s of, “Take this magnetic field, and oh, they’re trying to escape.

因此，θ 夹点诞生于 20 世纪 50 年代，“在这个磁场中，哦，它们正试图逃跑。

Great.

太棒了。

Let’s not let them escape.

我们不要让他们逃跑。

Let’s close the bottle, let’s close the ends.” And so we make the magnetic field much stronger at the ends.

让我们把瓶子盖上，把两端盖上。”因此我们使末端的磁场变得更强。

This one was called the mirror.

这一个被称为镜子。

And so the idea was that the particles would bounce in between.

所以我们的想法是粒子会在两者之间反弹。

50:30 And that worked, and they got hotter and hotter and hotter.

这奏效了，他们变得越来越热。

But guess what?

但你猜怎么着？

As you would imagine, as this mirror topology, this linear topology, the pressure increased inside, the particle pressure, the particles tried to push back on the magnetic field.

正如你所想象的那样，由于这种镜像拓扑，这种线性拓扑，内部压力增加，粒子压力，粒子试图向后推磁场。

They were trying to escape now.

他们现在正试图逃跑。

They’re getting hotter and hotter.

他们变得越来越热。

And just as you imagine, hot gas in a balloon tries to get out the ends, you could not hold it tight enough at the ends to keep those particles in.

正如你想象的那样，气球中的热气体试图从两端逸出，但你无法将其两端保持得足够紧以将这些颗粒保留在里面。

In fact, the problem is the hottest ones were the ones that would escape.

事实上，问题在于最热门的那些会逃脱。

So you do a good job of heating it, and they’d all leave out the ends.

所以你把它加热得很好，他们都会省掉末端。

So then the next iteration said, “Okay, well, why don’t we just not try to hold on to it very long?”

那么下一次迭代就会说：“好吧，我们为什么不试着坚持很长时间呢？”

51:07 Why don’t we squeeze it?” So rather than just holding it constantly, let’s now crush it.

我们为什么不挤它呢？”因此，与其一直持有它，不如现在就粉碎它。

So we built this solenoid, we pinched the ends, and then we crushed it.

所以我们建造了这个螺线管，我们捏住两端，然后压碎它。

And what I mean by crushing it is not actually crushing any magnets or changing the topology or moving any parts, but just rapidly increasing the magnetic field.

我所说的压碎它实际上并不是压碎任何磁铁或改变拓扑或移动任何部件，而只是迅速增加磁场。

So going from a magnetic field that’s just holding it to now taking all those particles, if you imagine they were streaming around together, and then rapidly increasing the magnetic field so that those particles get closer and closer and closer together.

因此，从一个仅仅固定它的磁场到现在带走所有这些粒子，如果你想象它们一起流动，然后迅速增加磁场，使这些粒子变得越来越近。

So you increase the density.

所以你增加了密度。

And now fusion starts to really happen.

现在融合开始真正发生。

But they ended up hitting a technological limit.

但他们最终达到了技术极限。

51:53 So this is the part that I look back and I look at the pioneers.

所以这是我回顾和审视先驱者的部分。

In 1958, there was some pioneering work done.

1958年，做了一些开创性的工作。

And this was in California, what later became Livermore Labs.

这是在加利福尼亚州，后来成为利弗莫尔实验室。

There was also some work done at other national labs too.

其他国家实验室也完成了一些工作。

These were all federally funded programs to explore this theta pinch topology.

这些都是联邦政府资助的项目，旨在探索这种 θ 箍缩拓扑结构。

Can you just squeeze the plasma down fast enough, hard enough?

你能足够快、足够用力地挤压血浆吗？

This was 1958.

那是 1958 年。

The transistor was sitting in the laboratory, and they were turning on millions of amps of electrical current.

晶体管位于实验室中，他们正在打开数百万安培的电流。

And they were doing it, we haven’t talked about the time scales, but they were doing it in millionths of a second.

他们正在这样做，我们还没有讨论时间尺度，但他们是在百万分之一秒内完成的。

Microseconds, megahertz speeds.

微秒、兆赫的速度。

And this was in 1958.

那是在 1958 年。

52:39 No transistor, no CPUs, and no electrical switches, none of the things that I take for granted every day.

没有晶体管，没有CPU，没有电气开关，没有我每天认为理所当然的事情。

And so they were able to show at that time the highest performing fusion systems.

因此他们能够展示当时性能最高的融合系统。

They got to temperatures…

他们达到了温度……

They didn’t get to 100 million degrees, not quite then, but they got to 50 million degrees.

他们没有达到 1 亿度，当时还没有达到，但他们达到了 5000 万度。

They were outperforming everything else in fusion, but they reached the technical limit where they just could not build it anymore.

他们在融合方面胜过其他一切，但他们达到了技术极限，无法再建造它。

And so those pioneers went in a different direction, and they started down the laser inertial path, saying, “Okay, well, we can’t do these electromagnetic pinches, but we now have this new thing invented: the laser,” which turns on in nanoseconds.

因此，这些先驱者走向了不同的方向，他们开始沿着激光惯性路径前进，说：“好吧，好吧，我们无法实现这些电磁收缩，但我们现在发明了这个新东西：激光，”它在纳秒内开启。

It’s fast.

速度很快。

It’s interesting.

这很有趣。

Let’s go down that path.

让我们沿着这条路走下去。

53:25 And it’s not…

这不是……

You have to fast-forward a couple of decades to researchers who found that with some of these theta pinches when they’re operated in a very specific way, something else happened, something new happened, and that these plasmas, where before they squeezed them very hard, and just like squeezing a tube of toothpaste, they squirted out the ends.

你必须快进到几十年前，研究人员发现，当以一种非常特定的方式操作时，一些θ收缩会发生一些其他的事情，一些新的事情发生，而这些等离子体，在它们被用力挤压之前，就像挤压一管牙膏一样，它们会从末端喷出。

Now it didn’t squirt out the ends.

现在它没有喷出末端。

It actually pushed back.

它实际上被推迟了。

It stayed confined.

它仍然受到限制。

It stayed trapped inside that linear topology.

它一直被困在线性拓扑中。

Even though the ends were open, the plasma didn’t leave.

尽管两端是开放的，等离子体并没有离开。

And so there was a large amount of programs asking, “What is happening here?” This is an accidental discovery in plasma physics that something new is happening.

因此，有大量程序询问“这里发生了什么？”这是等离子体物理学中的一个偶然发现，新的事情正在发生。

And what we discovered is what we now call the field-reversed configuration.

我们发现的就是我们现在所说的场反转配置。

54:09 There are numerous FRC (field-reversed configuration) programs, both at national labs.

国家实验室有许多 FRC（场反转配置）项目。

There are actually a number of private companies now building field-reversed configurations.

实际上，现在有许多私营公司正在构建现场反转配置。

And they have some really unique properties, but fundamentally, talking about the main difference, I describe the solenoid with magnetic fields throughout the center of that volume, and plasma trapped, going back and forth.

它们具有一些真正独特的特性，但从根本上讲，谈到主要区别，我描述了螺线管，其磁场遍布整个体积的中心，并且等离子体被捕获，来回移动。

But some other things can happen, which is really interesting.

但其他一些事情可能会发生，这真的很有趣。

54:37 And what they discovered early is if they have field going in one direction, so the plasma, the electrical current is going around the loop and the plasma is going back and forth along this magnetic field line inside that solenoid, inside that theta pinch, but then they change the direction of the magnetic field.

他们早期发现，如果磁场朝一个方向移动，那么等离子体、电流就会绕着环路流动，等离子体就会沿着螺线管内部、θ 箍缩内部的磁场线来回移动，但随后它们会改变磁场的方向。

And this is what we call field reversal, and this is really the key: that you start with the plasma going in one direction, and then very rapidly, you change the direction.

这就是我们所说的场反转，这确实是关键：一开始等离子体朝一个方向移动，然后非常迅速地改变方向。

You change the direction and reverse the direction of that field.

您可以更改方向并反转该场的方向。

And something really interesting happens, which is the plasma, this fusion fuel, these charged particles which are trapped on the magnetic field lines that are moving back and forth, you change the direction.

一些非常有趣的事情发生了，那就是等离子体，这种聚变燃料，这些带电粒子被困在来回移动的磁场线上，你改变了方向。

55:20 What that means is that you’re trying to take that electrical current and that magnetic field and reverse its direction, flip it, but it can’t flip fast enough.

这意味着你试图获取电流和磁场并反转其方向，翻转它，但它翻转的速度不够快。

The plasma is sitting there and you can’t move the particles.

等离子体就在那里，你无法移动粒子。

So what’s really interesting is what happens is that because the particles can’t move, but you’ve now flipped the direction of the magnetic field, you’ve inverted it, something really, really unique happens, which is that the plasma itself reconnects internally.

所以真正有趣的是发生的事情是，因为粒子不能移动，但你现在翻转了磁场的方向，你已经颠倒了它，发生了一些非常非常独特的事情，那就是等离子体本身在内部重新连接。

So now what you’re left with is an outside magnetic field, an electrical coil, and inside, the plasma, where before it was moving along, it’s now moving internally.

所以现在剩下的是外部磁场、电线圈和内部等离子体，以前它是沿着等离子体移动的，现在它在内部移动。

Rapidly reversing the magnetic field, plasma self-organizes into a closed field.

快速反转磁场，等离子体自组织成闭合场。

56:06 What?

什么？

So how…

那么如何...

It sounds wild.

听起来很疯狂。

It’s…

这是……

56:17 Yeah.

是的。

So first of all, there are a million questions I have.

首先，我有一百万个问题。

So one of them, what’s “rapidly”?

那么其中之一，什么是“快速”？

What time scale are we talking about here?

我们在这里谈论什么时间尺度？

You have to reverse the electrical current faster than a millionth of a degree, which is a very hot gas particle, can move.

你必须以比百万分之一度更快的速度反转电流，这是一种非常热的气体粒子，可以移动。

Okay.

好的。

And so that means we have to do it on the order of a millionth of a second.

这意味着我们必须以百万分之一秒的速度完成这件事。

Wow.

哇。

We have to do it in a millionth of a second.

我们必须在百万分之一秒内完成。

Wow.

哇。

And in practice, this is hard.

而在实践中，这很难。

56:43 And we can only do it now because of semiconductor switching.

由于半导体开关的存在，我们现在只能做到这一点。

Because we can move things, we can switch things.

因为我们可以移动事物，我们可以改变事物。

Like the transistor in every CPU in a computer switches at a gigahertz; that means in a nanosecond, it’s switching in a billionth of a second.

就像计算机中每个 CPU 中的晶体管以千兆赫兹进行开关一样；这意味着在一纳秒内，它的切换时间为十亿分之一秒。

And so now, which we didn’t in the 1950s when these theta pinches were invented, but now we have the semiconductors to be able to do that.

所以现在，我们在 20 世纪 50 年代发明这些 θ 收缩时还没有做到这一点，但现在我们有了能够做到这一点的半导体。

The self-organizing plasma.

自组织等离子体。

57:10 Can you just speak to that?

你能简单谈谈吗？

What the heck is it doing?

它到底在做什么？

How do we discover?

我们如何发现？

How do we understand the self-organizing mechanism, the dynamics of the plasma that’s able to contain itself?

我们如何理解自组织机制，即能够容纳自身的等离子体的动力学？

So what I like to do is use an analogy here.

所以我喜欢在这里使用一个类比。

57:23 Once you’ve made it, it’s actually somewhat straightforward to understand.

一旦你做到了，它实际上就很容易理解。

Getting to it is tricky, and how they discovered it the first time is absolutely amazing.

获得它是很棘手的，他们第一次发现它的方式绝对令人惊奇。

But once you’ve made it, it’s a lot more straightforward to understand.

但一旦你做到了，它就更容易理解了。

So in a magnetic coil, when you have a round electrical coil, you have electrical current flowing in that coil.

因此，在磁线圈中，当您有一个圆形电线圈时，就会有电流在该线圈中流动。

And if you have a conductor, if you have another metal inside that coil—and this is called Lenz’s Law in one of the Maxwell equations—is that as you have electrons and you have current flowing in that coil, an equal and opposite electrical current is induced in a piece of metal nearby.

如果你有一个导体，如果你在线圈内有另一种金属——这在麦克斯韦方程之一中被称为楞次定律——就是当你有电子并且有电流在该线圈中流动时，附近的一块金属中会感应出相等且相反的电流。

58:11 This is the same thing that happens in a transformer where you have a primary on a transformer and you have electricity flowing in it, and you have a secondary where electricity flows exactly the opposite direction.

这与变压器中发生的情况相同，变压器上有初级，电流在其中流动，次级有电流以完全相反的方向流动。

We use this every day in our lives.

我们在生活中每天都会用到它。

And so in this condition, you have a conductor, an electrical conductor where current can flow, and you have an electrical current flowing on the outside, electrical current flows on the inside.

所以在这种情况下，你有一个导体，一个电流可以流动的电导体，并且你有电流在外部流动，电流在内部流动。

And in that case, now you…

在这种情况下，现在你……

I’ve described two pieces of metal.

我描述了两块金属。

Now let’s go one step further, and that inner conductor is not a piece of metal anymore.

现在让我们更进一步，内导体不再是一块金属了。

It’s one of these high-temperature gases, this plasma, these charged particles.

它是一种高温气体、等离子体、带电粒子。

So now you have current, electrical current flowing in the plasma.

所以现在你有了电流，电流在等离子体中流动。

58:54 This is really, really interesting.

这真的非常非常有趣。

We talked about these charges moving back and forth.

我们来回讨论了这些费用。

Well, moving electrical charges is current.

好吧，移动电荷就是电流。

So in every plasma condition we’ve talked about—the tokamak, the theta pinch, the stellarator—there’s electrical current flowing in the plasma.

因此，在我们讨论过的每一种等离子体条件下——托卡马克、θ收缩、仿星器——等离子体中都有电流流动。

But in the field-reversed configuration, you have a lot of electrical current flowing in the plasma, massive amounts of it.

但在场反转配置中，等离子体中有大量电流流动。

And that’s the key.

这就是关键。

So you have the center core where electrical current is flowing in this transformer, if you want to think about it, primary and secondary.

因此，如果您想考虑一下，变压器的中心核心就是电流流动的地方，初级和次级。

And here’s the craziest part of it: this electrical current…

这是其中最疯狂的部分：电流……

Well, how did I describe a magnet?

好吧，我是如何描述磁铁的？

An electromagnet is a loop that has electrical current flowing in it that generates a magnetic field.

电磁体是一个有电流流动并产生磁场的回路。

59:37 And for a theta pinch, and for a mirror, and for a tokamak, in that magnetic field, the plasma gets trapped.

对于θ箍缩、镜子和托卡马克来说，等离子体会被困在磁场中。

But in an FRC, this electrical current is the plasma.

但在 FRC 中，这种电流是等离子体。

And that plasma then generates its own magnetic field, and it’s then trapped in its own magnetic field.

然后等离子体会产生自己的磁场，然后被困在自己的磁场中。

That’s fascinating.

这很有趣。

And that’s the key.

这就是关键。

1:00:00 And so in your tokamak, in your donut, in your funky donut, your stellarator— you make the magnets and you trap your plasma in it.

因此，在你的托卡马克、你的甜甜圈、你时髦的甜甜圈、你的仿星器中——你制造了磁铁，然后将等离子体捕获在其中。

In an FRC, you make the plasma which makes the magnets, and it traps itself.

在 FRC 中，你制造等离子体来制造磁铁，它会捕获自己。

And the craziest part of this, in my mind, is that we actually see this in nature all the time.

在我看来，最疯狂的部分是我们实际上一直在自然界中看到这种情况。

If you look at the sun, we see solar flares.

如果你看太阳，我们会看到太阳耀斑。

And in a solar flare, we’ve all seen the pictures of the photosphere of the sun and this large arc of plasma coming out.

在太阳耀斑中，我们都看到过太阳光球层的照片和出现的大弧形等离子体。

That plasma has electrical current flowing in it, and then we see this solar flare rip off of the sun.

等离子体中有电流流动，然后我们看到太阳耀斑从太阳上脱落。

1:00:41 And that solar flare then can flow throughout and continue into the solar system, and for a little while anyway, it makes something called a plasmoid.

然后，太阳耀斑可以流过整个太阳系并继续进入太阳系，无论如何，在一段时间内，它会产生一种称为等离子团的东西。

That plasmoid is, in fact, electrical current flowing in the plasma, generating a magnetic field and holding it for longer than it would otherwise.

事实上，等离子体团是在等离子体中流动的电流，产生磁场并比其他情况下保持更长时间。

And so we’ve observed these for 100 years, and we’ve known about these plasmoids for a long time, and there are researchers that have tried intentionally to make them.

我们观察这些等离子体团已经有 100 年了，我们很早就知道这些等离子体团，并且有研究人员有意尝试制造它们。

But fundamentally, that’s what we do every day: we make one of these self-organized closed-field plasmas.

但从根本上来说，这就是我们每天所做的事情：我们制造一种自组织的闭场等离子体。

In a more controlled way at this rapid rate of one-millionth of a second, and being able to make sure it’s reliable, stable, and all that kind of stuff.

以一种更受控的方式，以百万分之一秒的速度，并能够确保它的可靠、稳定以及诸如此类的东西。

1:01:15 So, by the way, how do you keep the thing stable?

那么，顺便问一下，如何保持事物稳定？

And there’s the hard part, because I just described a solar flare.

这就是最困难的部分，因为我刚刚描述了太阳耀斑。

1:01:26 But, yes, we’ve seen the pictures of them, but we’ve also watched them, and they appear.

但是，是的，我们看过他们的照片，但我们也看过他们，他们就出现了。

They fly away from the sun and then they go away, and that’s not what we want in fusion, right?

它们飞离太阳，然后消失，这不是我们想要的融合，对吗？

We want to be able to control this.

我们希望能够控制这一点。

And so that’s the hard part of the job.

这就是工作中最困难的部分。

And so that’s what we’ve spent the last number of years learning how to do, ourselves and others, on these pulsed, closed-field FRC systems.

这就是我们自己和他人在过去几年中学习如何在这些脉冲闭场 FRC 系统上进行操作的内容。

1:01:53 Let’s first talk about how to make them, and then we’ll talk about how to make them stable, because they’re two different things and we spend a lot of time on both.

我们首先讨论如何制作它们，然后我们将讨论如何使它们稳定，因为它们是两个不同的东西，我们在两者上花费了大量时间。

So, we talked about timescales.

所以，我们讨论了时间尺度。

You have to reverse the field.

你必须扭转场。

You have to change the electrical current in a millionth of a second.

你必须在百万分之一秒内改变电流。

And so how do you do that?

那么你如何做到这一点呢？

So I’ve described this system as you have a series of magnets.

所以我将这个系统描述为有一系列磁铁。

You have a magnetic field on the outside, and then on the inside of this, you have this donut, this FRC that has its own electrical current.

外部有一个磁场，然后在内部有一个甜甜圈，这个 FRC 有自己的电流。

And we didn’t talk about this yet, but it’s generated a magnetic field and that magnetic field has pressure, and this is the other thing that’s really interesting.

我们还没有讨论这个，但它产生了一个磁场，并且该磁场具有压力，这是另一件真正有趣的事情。

So we talked about how this theta pinch compresses a magnetic field.

所以我们讨论了 θ 箍缩如何压缩磁场。

1:02:34 It applies a pressure on the outside.

它对外部施加压力。

But the plasma itself has a pressure on the inside, and it has both a particle pressure, literally the particles bouncing.

但等离子体本身内部有压力，并且有粒子压力，即粒子弹跳。

Think about hot gas in a balloon, the particles expanding, the ideal gas law expanding and contracting inside a balloon.

想象一下气球中的热气体，粒子膨胀，理想气体定律在气球内膨胀和收缩。

But they also have a magnetic pressure.

但它们也有磁压力。

They have the electromagnetism pushing back, and so I like to think about this as the motor in a Tesla.

它们具有电磁力，因此我喜欢将其视为特斯拉的电机。

In your electric car, you have an electric motor, and what that motor has is a series of windings.

在您的电动汽车中，您有一个电动机，该电动机具有一系列绕组。

Those windings, you flow electrical current, in this case, from a battery.

这些绕组流过电流，在这种情况下，电流来自电池。

Hit the gas, electricity flows from the battery into the motor, into those windings, and it generates an electromagnetic force, a Lorentz force is what it’s technically called.

按下气体，电流从电池流入电机，流入那些绕组，并产生电磁力，技术上称之为洛伦兹力。

1:03:20 This electromagnetic force induces an electrical current on the armature, on the shaft.

该电磁力在电枢和轴上感应出电流。

And this is getting into the details, but in the armature of an electrical motor, that actually is what spins.

这是进入细节，但在电动机的电枢中，它实际上是旋转的。

And so the outside of a motor doesn’t spin.

所以电机的外部不会旋转。

You flow electrical current through it, and the inside does spin.

当电流流过它时，内部就会旋转。

That electromagnetic force is what is spinning that armature.

电磁力使电枢旋转。

In our case, we’re inducing an electrical force in that electromagnet, and that’s putting an electrical current, just like in the armature, into that plasma.

在我们的例子中，我们在电磁体中感应出电力，然后将电流（就像在电枢中一样）放入等离子体中。

And we can use that force to do interesting things.

我们可以利用这种力量来做有趣的事情。

So that electromagnetic force can compress the fusion plasma.

从而电磁力可以压缩聚变等离子体。

It can expand the fusion plasma.

它可以使聚变等离子体膨胀。

But here’s the problem: it’s unstable.

但问题是：它不稳定。

1:04:02 And so this is something you learn very early in your graduate work as a student in fusion, is you learn about plasmas that are called high beta plasmas.

因此，作为聚变专业的学生，您在研究生工作中很早就学到了这一点，即您了解称为高β等离子体的等离子体。

So I keep seeing this plasma beta thing everywhere.

所以我到处都能看到这种等离子贝塔的东西。

1:04:13 What is this ratio of plasma field energy to confining magnetic field energy?

等离子体场能量与约束磁场能量的比率是多少？

Please explain.

请解释一下。

Plasma beta is the ratio of the magnetic pressure to the particle pressure.

等离子体β是磁压力与粒子压力的比值。

1:04:23 And so what that fundamentally means is I talked about how you have a magnetic field, and in that magnetic field, plasma is trapped in, on that magnetic field.

所以这从根本上意味着我谈到了如何拥有磁场，在该磁场中，等离子体被困在该磁场中。

But it’s not very well trapped.

但它并没有被很好地困住。

It can escape.

它可以逃脱。

It can leave either down the ends, it can freely travel, or it can also travel across the magnetic field.

它可以离开末端，可以自由行进，也可以穿过磁场行进。

And so we have a term called plasma beta which gives us an understanding of how well trapped that plasma is.

所以我们有一个叫做血浆β的术语，它让我们了解血浆被捕获的程度。

So, as you apply a magnetic pressure, a magnetic field to this plasma, it pushes back, and does it push back a little or does it push back a lot?

那么，当你向等离子体施加磁压力、磁场时，它会向后推，是向后推一点还是向后推很多？

And for a field-reversed configuration in one of our plasmas, beta is very close to one.

对于我们的等离子体中的场反转配置，β 非常接近 1。

1:05:09 In fact, usually by definition, one at any point in the system, which means that every time I apply a magnetic force on this donut to compress it, the plasma particles on the inside push back.

事实上，通常根据定义，系统中的任何一点都有一个，这意味着每次我在这个甜甜圈上施加磁力来压缩它时，内部的等离子体粒子都会向后推。

1:05:23 And what’s really interesting is you have an equation for magnetic pressure, which is B squared over two mu naught.

真正有趣的是你有一个磁压力方程，它是 B 的平方超过 2 μ 零。

The magnetic field squared is the external magnetic pressure.

磁场的平方就是外磁压力。

Any magnetic field anywhere generates this pressure.

任何地方的任何磁场都会产生这种压力。

But the plasma particles themselves also have a pressure.

但等离子体粒子本身也有压力。

This is the ideal gas law, and we use the definition NKT, density, Boltzmann constant, and temperature for pressure.

这是理想气体定律，我们使用 NKT、密度、玻尔兹曼常数和压力温度的定义。

And in high beta, they’re the same.

在高测试版中，它们是相同的。

B squared over two mu naught is NKT.

两亩的 B 平方为零就是 NKT。

So for a known magnetic field, I know what the density and the temperature of the plasma is.

因此，对于已知的磁场，我知道等离子体的密度和温度是多少。

And just to circle back to it, when we talked about fusion, we talked about it had to be hot enough and it had to be dense enough.

回到它，当我们谈论聚变时，我们谈论它必须足够热并且必须足够致密。

And that’s N and that’s T.

那是 N，那是 T。

1:06:09 And so now I have a very clear equation between magnetic field and density and temperature of the fusion fuel, and that’s really critical.

现在我在磁场与聚变燃料的密度和温度之间有了一个非常清晰的方程，这非常关键。

All plasmas have some…

所有等离子体都有一些……

All fusion plasmas have some beta, some number.

所有聚变等离子体都有一些β，一些数字。

The FRC has one of the highest betas, beta equal one.

FRC 具有最高的贝塔系数之一，贝塔系数等于 1。

However, what you also learn in school when you learn about beta the first time, is you learn that high beta plasmas are typically unstable.

然而，当你第一次了解β时，你在学校也学到的是，高β等离子体通常是不稳定的。

And so the good way to think about this is a tokamak is a accelerator are stable, because those plasmas that are going around in the donut, there’s a force on that donut.

因此，考虑这个问题的好方法是托卡马克是一个稳定的加速器，因为那些在甜甜圈中旋转的等离子体，在甜甜圈上有一个力。

But that plasma donut is very well held by all those magnetic fields, by all those magnetic coils.

但是那个等离子甜甜圈被所有这些磁场、所有这些磁线圈很好地固定住了。

If it tried to move, it would be confined by that magnetic coil.

如果它试图移动，就会受到磁力线圈的限制。

But in an FRC, it’s unconfined.

但在 FRC 中，它是不受限制的。

1:06:59 So the plasma is confined, but the whole topology can do something what is called tilt, is that this whole plasma donut, because it’s under pressure, can just turn over.

因此，等离子体受到限制，但整个拓扑结构可以做一些所谓的倾斜，即整个等离子体甜甜圈，因为它在压力下，可以翻转。

The way I think about this is think about the a motor’s a good example.

我思考这个问题的方式是考虑电机就是一个很好的例子。

An armature in the center of your motor, you have a spinning armature.

电机中心的电枢是一个旋转的电枢。

You have this spinning magnet on the inside, and it is held by the main axis of the magnet.

内部有一个旋转磁铁，它由磁铁的主轴固定。

It can’t go anywhere.

它哪儿也去不了。

We don’t have that axis.

我们没有那个轴。

We don’t have any mechanical things inside these fusion systems.

我们这些融合系统内没有任何机械装置。

They’re 100 million degrees.

它们是一亿度。

You can’t put any mechanical things inside them, and so we have nothing to hold onto it, and so it’s unstable.

你不能把任何机械的东西放进去，所以我们没有什么东西可以抓住它，所以它是不稳定的。

1:07:41 So when you learn about the FRC, that’s the first thing you learn, and it took us a number of years to learn about a parameter of how to make them stable.

所以当你了解 FRC 时，这是你学到的第一件事，我们花了很多年的时间才了解如何使它们稳定的参数。

And that’s pretty fundamental, but most people who’ve heard of an FRC haven’t understood this really key fact.

这是非常基本的，但大多数听说过 FRC 的人并不理解这个真正关键的事实。

And so we have a parameter we call S star over E.

所以我们有一个参数，我们称之为 S star over E。

And we’re getting really into the physics weeds here, but…

我们正在真正进入物理杂草，但是......

Let’s go.

我们走吧。

But it’s really important, and the good analogy here is a top.

但这确实很重要，这里最好的比喻是陀螺。

1:08:05 Literally a top, a spinning top, and so you have a top spinning on your desk.

字面意思是陀螺，旋转的陀螺，所以你的桌子上有一个旋转的陀螺。

You know that it’ll spin for a little while and then it will fall over.

你知道它会旋转一会儿然后就会倒下。

It is unstable.

它不稳定。

However, if you spin it fast enough, if you take a top and you spin it fast enough, put enough angular momentum, enough angular inertia into that system, it’ll stay upright even though it wants to just fall over, even though it’s unstable.

然而，如果你把它旋转得足够快，如果你拿一个陀螺，把它旋转得足够快，给这个系统施加足够的角动量、足够的角惯性，它就会保持直立，即使它想摔倒，即使它不稳定。

And we do the same thing in an FRC, is if you can drive it fast enough, if you can add enough kinetic energy and inertia to the particles, it will stay stable.

我们在 FRC 中做同样的事情，如果你能足够快地驱动它，如果你能为粒子添加足够的动能和惯性，它就会保持稳定。

However, you can do another really key thing.

但是，您可以做另一件非常关键的事情。

We are not limited now to having a very skinny top.

我们现在不再局限于拥有非常紧身的上衣。

1:08:51 We can actually make it much bigger, so the good analogy here is if you have a coin and you know you’re spinning that coin, if you spin it faster and faster, it’ll stay spinning longer.

我们实际上可以把它做得更大，所以这里的一个很好的类比是，如果你有一枚硬币，并且你知道你正在旋转这枚硬币，如果你旋转它越来越快，它会保持旋转更长时间。

However, eventually it’ll slow down and fall over, but if you had a roll of duct tape, if you had something thicker and heavier and longer, and it’s spinning around that same axis, it’ll stay spinning even longer both because of the inertia and because of the geometry.

然而，最终它会减慢速度并摔倒，但如果你有一卷胶带，如果你有更厚、更重、更长的东西，并且它绕着同一个轴旋转，由于惯性和几何形状，它会保持旋转更长时间。

And so we have this parameter called S star over E.

所以我们有这个参数，称为 S star over E。

S star is the hybrid kinetic parameter which tells you how stable it is from that top point of view, and the E, which is the elongation of how long it is.

S 星是混合动力学参数，它告诉您从顶部角度来看它的稳定性，而 E 是它的长度的伸长率。

1:09:31 And so, maybe fortuitously, thank you nature gave us a win here, which is that how we make these in these long solenoids is naturally very, very long.

所以，也许是偶然的，谢谢大自然给了我们一个胜利，那就是我们如何在这些长螺线管中制造这些东西自然是非常非常长的。

And so we can build these with very long lengths, and if we can drive them fast enough and hard enough and drive the ions to move at very high velocities, we can stabilize against those instabilities and hold them stable.

因此，我们可以构建长度非常长的离子，如果我们能够足够快、足够强地驱动它们并驱动离子以非常高的速度移动，我们就可以稳定这些不稳定性并保持它们稳定。

And so we now know we can design with a given S star over E parameter, we can design these for very long lives.

所以我们现在知道我们可以使用给定的 S 星而不是 E 参数进行设计，我们可以设计出非常长的寿命。

The theory of the systems we make say that they should last for a few microseconds at most.

我们制造的系统的理论表明它们最多应该持续几微秒。

Us and others in the field have been able to make them last for thousands of microseconds, thousands of times what the basic criteria would tell you.

我们和该领域的其他人已经能够使它们持续数千微秒，是基本标准告诉您的数千倍。

1:10:21 And so we know now how to do this, and we just design them with this built into them.

所以我们现在知道如何做到这一点，我们只是将其内置到设计中。

Can you explain a little bit more of the S star over E?

您能多解释一下 S 星比 E 星的情况吗？

1:10:26 Are you given that, or is that an emergent thing?

你是被赋予了这一点，还是这是一个新出现的事情？

So like at which stage…

那么就像在哪个阶段...

Is that the result or the- the requirement?

这是结果还是——要求？

It’s a great question.

这是一个很好的问题。

1:10:39 So it is a requirement of the system, is that you must design it with this parameter in mind.

所以这是系统的一个要求，就是你必须在设计时考虑到这个参数。

Got it.

明白了。

The hard part is you have to design it with S star over E being satisfied the whole time.

困难的部分是你必须在设计时始终满足 S 星而不是 E 星的要求。

Right.

对。

And here’s the extra trick here.

这是额外的技巧。

1:10:54 S star over E is also a measure of temperature.

S 星高于 E 也是温度的衡量标准。

Oh boy.

噢，孩子。

And, and, yup, this, it all comes back to temperature.

而且，而且，是的，这一切都回到了温度。

1:11:02 The hotter you make them is the same thing, temperature as kinetic energy, is the faster you’re spinning.

你让它们越热也是一样的，温度作为动能，你旋转的速度就越快。

So if you take your top and you spin it faster, it’s more stable.

因此，如果你拿起陀螺并旋转得更快，它就会更稳定。

But you’ve got to make it hot.

但你必须让它变得热起来。

And so here’s the trick: How do you make something hot that’s starting cold?

诀窍是：如何制作出刚开始变冷的热东西？

And it has to be hot by definition.

根据定义，它必须是热的。

And so that’s part of the challenge of what we do day-to-day, is getting to these hot plasmas.

因此，这就是我们日常工作面临的挑战的一部分，就是获取这些热等离子体。

And where other people have tried to make FRCs and not been very successful is because they couldn’t get it hot enough fast enough.

其他人尝试制造 FRC 但不太成功的原因是他们无法足够快地加热它。

It fell over, it tilted, before it got hot.

还没等热起来，它就翻倒了，倾斜了。

And so we spend a lot of our electrical engineering…

所以我们花费了大量的电气工程......

1:11:45 In some ways, Helion is more of an electrical engineering company than a fusion company some days, focusing on how to make the electronics fast enough to be able to get it hot enough soon enough that you can keep it stable the whole time.

在某些方面，Helion 更像是一家电气工程公司，而不是一家聚变公司，专注于如何使电子设备足够快，以便能够足够快地升温，以便始终保持稳定。

So you’re trying to reach 100 million degrees.

所以你正在努力达到 1 亿度。

1:12:00 How do you get to that temperature fast?

怎样才能快速达到那个温度呢？

And by the way, what can you say to help somebody like me understand what 100 million degrees is like?

顺便问一下，你能说什么来帮助像我这样的人理解一亿度是什么样的？

It seems insane.

看起来很疯狂。

What does that world look like?

那个世界是什么样子的？

I guess just everything is moving really fast.

我想一切都进展得很快。

Like you said, you can’t put anything mechanical in there.

就像你说的，你不能在里面放任何机械的东西。

Yeah, so a couple of key things happened.

是的，发生了一些关键的事情。

1:12:21 When gas is that hot, there’s…

当气体那么热时，就会有……

We talk about the states of matter.

我们谈论物质的状态。

You have solids, where ice, it’s cold.

你有固体，有冰，很冷。

The atoms are now bound in a lattice structure together.

原子现在以晶格结构结合在一起。

They’re held together.

他们被束缚在一起。

And then liquid, you’ve broken a lot of that lattice structure.

然后是液体，你已经破坏了很多晶格结构。

They can move around.

他们可以四处走动。

They have some kinetic energy, but they’re still pretty contained, they stay in the bowl.

它们有一些动能，但它们仍然被控制住，留在碗里。

Keep heating it, now you’re in gas.

继续加热，现在你已经在煤气里了。

And now these particles are free to move around.

现在这些粒子可以自由移动。

They’re moving around, they’re bouncing off of each other all the time, and you can keep heating it from there, and that’s where we talk about some more phases of matter.

它们在移动，它们一直在彼此弹跳，你可以从那里继续加热它，这就是我们谈论物质的更多阶段的地方。

We can add a little bit more physics here.

我们可以在这里添加更多的物理知识。

We talk about rarefied gasses.

我们谈论稀薄气体。

1:13:02 So when we think about most gasses that humans interact with, they act like a fluid.

因此，当我们考虑人类与之相互作用的大多数气体时，它们的行为就像液体一样。

And what I mean by that is that they’re colliding with each other so often that the particles at any one place, here the air is roughly the same temperature as the air here.

我的意思是，它们彼此碰撞的频率如此之高，以至于任何一个地方的颗粒，这里的空气温度都与这里的空气温度大致相同。

That these particles are bouncing off of each other as if you’ve put a really hot one right here, it would then cool enough that all the air is roughly on the same temperature.

这些粒子相互弹开，就好像你把一个非常热的粒子放在这里一样，然后它就会足够冷却，使所有空气的温度大致相同。

But you can be what is called rarefied, and this is like space.

但你可以成为所谓的稀薄，这就像空间一样。

This is where now you have particles moving around, but they don’t collide with each other very often.

现在粒子在这里移动，但它们不会经常相互碰撞。

1:13:34 And so you can have one very, very high energy particle and very cold energy particle, and they may not even touch each other, but maybe occasionally they bang into each other, they collide, and then they transfer energy.

因此，你可以拥有一个非常非常高的能量粒子和非常冷的能量粒子，它们甚至可能不会互相接触，但也许它们偶尔会互相撞击、碰撞，然后转移能量。

And that’s what we call rarefied.

这就是我们所说的稀有。

And then you can go even hotter than that, and that’s where now the actual atomic states, which has the nucleus, which is a proton and a neutron, and an electron gets so hot, that electron gets energized and then escapes, leaves the system.

然后你可以变得比这更热，这就是现在实际的原子状态，它有原子核，一个质子和一个中子，电子变得如此之热，电子被激发然后逃逸，离开系统。

And now they’re charged.

现在他们被指控了。

You have a positive nucleus and a negative electron floating out, and that happens on the order of 10,000 degrees.

有一个正核和一个负电子浮出，这发生在 10,000 度的量级上。

So way hotter than what we’re used to.

比我们习惯的要热得多。

But now, we’re going to go hotter.

但现在，我们要变得更热了。

We’re going to take this plasma and go even hotter.

我们将把这种等离子体变得更热。

What does that mean?

这意味着什么？

1:14:14 At that point, a lot of the way we think about temperature doesn’t really apply.

到那时，我们对温度的很多看法就不再适用了。

The idea that you have these random motion of particles, because now they’re all individual particles moving at very high velocities.

粒子的随机运动的想法，因为现在它们都是以非常高的速度移动的单个粒子。

So there really is a measurement of its velocity.

所以确实有对其速度的测量。

It’s really a measurement of how fast is that particle moving.

它实际上是对粒子移动速度的测量。

And that’s how I really think about temperature when you get to that 100,000,000 degrees.

当温度达到 100,000,000 度时，这就是我对温度的真正看法。

And so it does more complex things.

所以它可以做更复杂的事情。

If you have this high energy particle, this is why we like fusion.

如果你有这种高能粒子，这就是我们喜欢聚变的原因。

It’s moving at a high velocity and there’s another one moving at high velocity.

它正在高速移动，还有另一个也在高速移动。

They will come together, they will collide, and they will fuse.

它们会聚集、碰撞、融合。

1:14:54 But other things will happen.

但还会发生其他事情。

You don’t want to touch that high velocity particle with any kind of material, because it will collide with that material, damage that material, and usually blow off some chunks of that material.

您不想让高速粒子接触任何类型的材料，因为它会与该材料碰撞，损坏该材料，并且通常会吹掉该材料的一些块。

So we don’t do that.

所以我们不这样做。

We keep those charged particles in a magnetic field.

我们将这些带电粒子保持在磁场中。

So they just bounce around and they don’t ever touch anything.

所以他们只是弹来弹去，从来不碰任何东西。

And that’s really important.

这真的很重要。

And so it’s less thinking about it from the way we normally think about hot and cold, and more thinking about it from a velocity point of view.

因此，它不再像我们通常思考热和冷的方式来思考它，而是更多地从速度的角度来思考它。

So what we should be imagining is extremely fast moving, what is it?

那么我们应该想象的是极快的移动，它是什么？

1:15:20 1,000,000 miles per hour?

每小时 1,000,000 英里？

Is that accurate?

准确吗？

That’s the right kind of order for these systems.

对于这些系统来说，这是正确的顺序。

Crazy.

疯狂的。

1:15:32 And so you’re looking for them to collide.

所以你正在寻找它们的碰撞。

Well, first of all, to get back, is there some interesting insights, tricks, anything you could say to the complexity of the problem of getting it to that high temperature quickly?

好吧，首先，回过头来，对于快速达到这么高温度的问题的复杂性，是否有一些有趣的见解、技巧或任何你可以说的？

So, if temperature is velocity, that means they’re moving quickly over a given amount of space.

因此，如果温度就是速度，那就意味着它们在给定的空间内快速移动。

1:15:46 Speed is distance divided by time.

速度是距离除以时间。

And so if you have a machine of a certain size and it’s moving very fast, that tells you the time that that particle is moving from place to place in that machine.

因此，如果你有一台特定尺寸的机器，并且它移动得非常快，那就可以告诉你该粒子在该机器中从一个地方移动到另一个地方的时间。

And, in fact, if it’s a million miles per hour, these are on the order of 100 kilometers per second, which you can flip that around and you can say you’re moving at meters per microsecond.

事实上，如果是每小时 100 万英里，则速度约为每秒 100 公里，你可以翻转它，你可以说你正在以每微秒米的速度移动。

1:16:19 So feet per millionth of a second.

所以百万分之一秒英尺。

That fundamentally tells you, and we’ve known this, as soon as you say, “I want to do fusion,” you know you need to react to the universe in microseconds and be able to understand the system at that speed.

这从根本上告诉你，我们都知道这一点，一旦你说“我想做聚变”，你就知道你需要在微秒内对宇宙做出反应，并能够以这种速度理解系统。

If you get it hotter, it goes even faster, and you have to go faster.

如果你让它变得更热，它就会跑得更快，你就必须跑得更快。

So we look at those, and that’s how we think about the systems.

所以我们会关注这些，这就是我们对系统的看法。

We measure everything in microseconds, not in seconds.

我们以微秒而不是秒来衡量一切。

So when you do fusion, it’s pretty wild.

所以当你进行融合时，它是非常疯狂的。

It’s literally a flash.

这实际上是一个闪光。

Fusion happens.

融合发生了。

And it’s over.

一切都结束了。

You start it, you do a lot of fusion, you recover energy from it, and then you turn it off before the human eye can really respond.

你启动它，进行大量的融合，从中恢复能量，然后在人眼真正做出反应之前将其关闭。

And there’s a computer managing all this.

有一台计算机管理这一切。

1:17:00 How do you even program these kinds of systems to do the switching?

您如何对这些类型的系统进行编程来进行切换？

Is there some innovation required there?

那里需要一些创新吗？

I’m continuously amazed by what the pioneers in fusion were able to do before the computer existed, because they had to control things at this scale.

在计算机出现之前，核聚变先驱们能够做到的事情一直让我感到惊讶，因为他们必须控制这种规模的事物。

1:17:09 But maybe it was pretty hard, and why we’ve been able to take what they did and build on it, is because now we use modern gigahertz-scale computing to be able to do this.

但也许这相当困难，而我们之所以能够采用他们所做的事情并在此基础上进行构建，是因为现在我们使用现代千兆赫级计算来做到这一点。

Even when I started my career, we talked about megahertz processors.

甚至在我开始职业生涯时，我们就谈论兆赫处理器。

Megahertz is microseconds.

兆赫是微秒。

That’s great.

那太棒了。

You’re kind of at the border of fast enough, but you can’t do computation at that speed if all it can do is respond in one microsecond.

你已经处于足够快的边缘，但如果它只能在一微秒内响应，你就无法以那样的速度进行计算。

But now gigahertz means I can do a thousand operations in that one microsecond, so I can do more useful things.

但现在千兆赫意味着我可以在一微秒内执行一千次操作，因此我可以做更多有用的事情。

So we use mostly…

所以我们主要使用...

1:17:55 This is way too fast for any human to respond to, so we use what’s called programmable logic.

这对于任何人来说都太快了，无法做出反应，所以我们使用所谓的可编程逻辑。

We program in sequences to the fusion system to be able to do this reversal.

我们按顺序对融合系统进行编程，以便能够进行这种逆转。

We pre-program it and then we run a sequence, and then fusion happens.

我们对其进行预编程，然后运行一个序列，然后发生融合。

In this sequence programming language, we use a variety of them.

在这种顺序编程语言中，我们使用了多种它们。

Some of the fusion codes are actually written in Fortran still.

一些融合代码实际上仍然是用 Fortran 编写的。

Nice.

好的。

A lot is now, more and more, run in Python.

现在越来越多的东西是用 Python 运行的。

1:18:18 So we do a lot of Python.

所以我们做了很多Python。

We do some Java, and because of the speed of this, it’s a lot of assembly language programming.

我们做了一些 Java，由于它的速度，所以很多都是汇编语言编程。

So we go right to the assembly level of the programmable logic FPGAs and we program those.

因此，我们直接进入可编程逻辑 FPGA 的组装级别并对其进行编程。

To be able to run one of these systems, we typically have a series of electrical switches that turn on this electrical current.

为了能够运行其中一个系统，我们通常有一系列打开该电流的电气开关。

Those are controlled via fiber optic because the wires are just too slow.

这些是通过光纤控制的，因为电线太慢了。

Fiber optic can respond, I can send photons at the speed of light.

光纤可以响应，我可以以光速发送光子。

So those fiber optics can respond in nanoseconds.

因此这些光纤可以在纳秒内做出响应。

Then I trigger those fiber optics with programmable logic that we programmed in the hardware assembly language.

然后，我用我们用硬件汇编语言编程的可编程逻辑触发这些光纤。

As a small tangent, let me do a call to action out there.

作为一个小切线，让我呼吁大家采取行动。

1:19:00 I’m still looking for the best Fortran programmer in the world if people want to talk to them, because so many of the essential systems the world runs on are still programmed in Fortran.

如果人们想与他们交谈，我仍在寻找世界上最好的 Fortran 程序员，因为世界上运行的许多基本系统仍然是用 Fortran 编程的。

I think it’s a fascinating programming language.

我认为这是一种令人着迷的编程语言。

COBOL too, but Fortran even more so.

COBOL 也是如此，但 Fortran 更是如此。

It’s one of the great computational numerical programming languages.

它是伟大的计算数值编程语言之一。

Anyway, in terms of the sensors that are giving you some kind of information about the system, in terms of the diagnostics, what kind of, at this time scale, …what can you collect about the system such that you can respond at a similar time scale?

无论如何，就传感器而言，它们为您提供了有关系统的某种信息，就诊断而言，在这个时间尺度上，……您可以收集有关系统的哪些信息，以便您可以在相似的时间尺度上做出响应？

So I’m also calling out for Fortran programmers, for different reasons.

因此，出于不同的原因，我也呼吁 Fortran 程序员。

Yes, great.

是的，太好了。

The diagnostic systems are really one of the keys to how we do this effectively, because you need to be able to tell the system, “We’re going to trigger electrical current, and we’re going to do it in a microsecond, and we need to know if it’s working right.” In one of these FRC or these pulsed magnetic systems, you won’t have just one electrical switch.

诊断系统确实是我们如何有效地做到这一点的关键之一，因为你需要能够告诉系统，“我们将触发电流，我们将在一微秒内完成，我们需要知道它是否正常工作。”在这些 FRC 或脉冲磁系统之一中，您不会只有一个电气开关。

1:19:55 I’ve mentioned 100 mega amps, 100 million amps of electrical current.

我提到过 100 兆安、1 亿安培的电流。

Even the big transistors we use can only run at 30,000 amps, so you’ll end up with tens of thousands.

即使我们使用的大型晶体管也只能在 30,000 安培的电流下运行，因此最终您将需要数万安培。

In fact, the systems we build now, tens of thousands of parallel electrical switches all operating in harmony together.

事实上，我们现在构建的系统有数以万计的并行电气开关，它们都协调一致地运行。

So you need to be able to build a system, and this is what we spend a lot of time with.

所以你需要能够构建一个系统，这就是我们花费大量时间的地方。

1:20:38 And I made the joke that in a lot of ways, Helion is an electrical engineering company.

我开玩笑说，从很多方面来说，Helion 都是一家电气工程公司。

To be able to both program, control, and then detect how they’re operating, and do it all very fast.

能够编程、控制，然后检测它们的运行方式，而且这一切都非常快。

In a typical sequence, we will pre-program.

按照典型的顺序，我们将进行预编程。

The operators will pre-program a sequence usually fed from a numerical simulation of expecting how the fusion system will perform.

操作员将预先编程一个序列，该序列通常来自数值模拟，以预期融合系统将如何执行。

We start with a set of calculations.

我们从一组计算开始。

We then pre-program all of these electrical switches to a certain sequence to be able to inject the fuel, reverse it, and then compress it up to fusion conditions.

然后，我们将所有这些电气开关预先编程为一定的顺序，以便能够喷射燃料、反转燃料，然后将其压缩至聚变条件。

Then we trigger that, and then let it go, and measure fusion happening.

然后我们触发它，然后放开它，并测量融合的发生。

1:21:22 But during that process, we have to be real-time recording and measuring all of the semiconductors and all of the switching in the system.

但在此过程中，我们必须实时记录和测量系统中的所有半导体和所有开关。

I’m not going to talk about measuring fusion diagnostics.

我不会谈论测量融合诊断。

That’s a whole other thing, which we can talk about.

这是另一回事，我们可以讨论。

This is just on the electrical control side.

这只是在电气控制方面。

Some of the pioneering things we’ve been able to do is that real-time you’re monitoring all of these switches.

我们能够做的一些开创性的事情是实时监控所有这些交换机。

You’re watching who is triggering correctly, who is not triggering correctly.

您正在观察谁触发正确，谁触发不正确。

And if systems aren’t working, you’re shutting this down because you want to make sure that all the sequences are operating correctly.

如果系统无法工作，您将关闭它，因为您想确保所有序列都正常运行。

1:21:56 Some of the key diagnostics, it’s actually pretty amazing that even early in my career, we didn’t have a lot of fiber optics built into the system.

对于一些关键的诊断，令人惊讶的是，即使在我职业生涯的早期，我们也没有在系统中内置大量光纤。

Now it’s absolutely essential.

现在这是绝对必要的。

So every one of these electrical switches has fiber optic signals going into it and fiber optic signals coming out, understanding how it’s actually operating.

因此，每一个电气开关都有光纤信号进入并输出光纤信号，了解其实际运行情况。

And real-time, all of these systems are being monitored by more fiber optics.

所有这些系统都受到更多光纤的实时监控。

We call these Rogowski coils, but they’re electromagnetic coils that are powered by the electrical current themselves.

我们称这些为罗戈夫斯基线圈，但它们是由电流本身供电的电磁线圈。

So as the switches are conducting, they broadcast an optical signal that says, “Yes, I’m electrically conducting,” fiber optics that come back to a central repository where we detect those signals.

因此，当开关导通时，它们会广播一个光信号，表示“是的，我正在导电”，光纤会返回到我们检测这些信号的中央存储库。

1:22:40 So real-time, we’re monitoring all of this so that we know that these systems are behaving and operating at their optimal performance.

我们实时监控所有这一切，以便我们知道这些系统正在以最佳性能运行。

What’s the role of numerical simulation in all of this?

数值模拟在这一切中扮演什么角色？

1:22:48 I guess, ahead of time, how much numerical simulation are you doing to understand how the system is going to behave, how the different parameters all come together?

我想，您提前做了多少数值模拟来了解系统将如何运行，不同的参数如何组合在一起？

The electrical system and how that all maps to the fusion that’s actually generated?

电力系统以及如何将其映射到实际产生的聚变？

Yeah.

是的。

1:23:12 The operation of a fusion system is pretty fascinating because all of this happens on a time scale where human operators cannot be involved.

融合系统的运行非常令人着迷，因为所有这一切都发生在人类操作员无法参与的时间范围内。

1:23:19 …cannot really be involved.

……无法真正参与其中。

So you have to have pre-programmed the majority, we call them shots.

所以你必须对大多数进行预先编程，我们称之为镜头。

You’re going to do a shot, and when you’re operating them repetitively and you’re running long periods of time, you still have all computers doing both the triggering and the measuring of how they’re performing, real-time the whole time.

你要做一个镜头，当你重复操作它们并且运行很长一段时间时，你仍然让所有计算机始终实时地进行触发和测量它们的表现。

So how this typically works, at least in our systems, is that we will design a system with a combination of numerical simulation tools that we’ve developed based off of decades and decades of amazing government programs.

因此，至少在我们的系统中，通常的工作方式是，我们将设计一个结合了数值模拟工具的系统，这些工具是我们根据数十年令人惊叹的政府项目开发的。

National programs developed these numerical codes.

国家计划开发了这些数字代码。

We use a code called an MHD, magnetohydrodynamic code.

我们使用一种称为 MHD（磁流体动力学代码）的代码。

1:24:07 And that’s for people, for the engineers out there who are used to CFD, computational fluid dynamics.

这适用于人们，适用于习惯 CFD、计算流体动力学的工程师。

This is very similar where you take the same sets of equations actually and add electromagnetic equations on top of those.

这非常相似，您实际上采用相同的方程组并在其上添加电磁方程。

And so you get magnetohydrodynamic.

这样你就得到了磁流体动力学。

Are you simulating at the level of a particle?

您是在粒子水平上进行模拟吗？

1:24:23 Is there some quantum mechanical aspects to this also?

这也有一些量子力学方面的内容吗？

How low does it go?

到底有多低？

We have multiple codes at different levels, because one of the main computational challenges is…

我们有不同级别的多个代码，因为主要的计算挑战之一是……

1:24:30 amazingly, even given all that we have been building for fusion systems, computers are still not fast enough to simulate everything.

令人惊讶的是，即使考虑到我们为融合系统构建的一切，计算机仍然不够快来模拟一切。

And so, we have a number of codes that we use.

因此，我们有许多使用的代码。

One we call fluid codes, where you treat the ions, the electrons, all these fusion particles.

一种我们称之为流体代码，你可以在其中处理离子、电子和所有这些聚变粒子。

You treat them as fluids, as gases, ideal gas law, with electromagnetic forces.

你把它们当作流体、气体、理想气体定律和电磁力。

In those, we can simulate not just the fusion fuel, which is important, but all of the electrical circuitry.

在这些中，我们不仅可以模拟重要的聚变燃料，还可以模拟所有电路。

We talked about capacitors, and magnetic coils and the electrical current and the switches.

我们讨论了电容器、电磁线圈、电流和开关。

Well, we actually simulate the full thing, starting literally with a SPICE model.

好吧，我们实际上是从 SPICE 模型开始模拟整个事情。

1:25:21 More of that electrical engineering.

更多的是电气工程。

We start with the SPICE model and use that to drive the plasma physics model, and that’s one level of simulation.

我们从 SPICE 模型开始，用它来驱动等离子体物理模型，这是模拟的一个级别。

We use that to do design work, and then also to try to understand how we think the machine will run.

我们用它来进行设计工作，然后尝试了解我们认为机器将如何运行。

But then we go one level deeper and we start thinking about particles, and we think about the ions, and we treat the ions as particles, and we look at the ion behavior.

但随后我们更深入一层，我们开始思考粒子，我们思考离子，我们将离子视为粒子，我们观察离子的行为。

For that one, the computational resources are several orders of magnitude larger.

对于这一点，计算资源要大几个数量级。

Luckily, a lot of the work in GPUs, the AI data center work is directly applicable to those simulations.

幸运的是，GPU 中的很多工作、AI 数据中心的工作都可以直接适用于这些模拟。

It’s been able to speed up our work, which is pretty fascinating.

它能够加快我们的工作速度，这非常令人着迷。

That’s a whole another tangent we can go down.

这是我们可以继续下去的另一个切线。

1:26:00 Those hybrid codes we call them, particle and cell codes now treat the ions as particles, and that lets us measure and simulate the behavior.

我们称之为粒子和细胞代码的混合代码现在将离子视为粒子，这让我们可以测量和模拟行为。

I mentioned the stability criteria, S star over E, the top behavior.

我提到了稳定性标准，S 星高于 E，顶级行为。

That behavior, we now need these more advanced codes to be able to simulate, and those are more modern.

我们现在需要这些更高级的代码才能模拟这种行为，而且这些代码更现代。

We’ve only been able to apply those in practice for the last few years, actually, which is pretty fascinating that the old stability rules were built off of testing, empirical tests, where now we can simulate that, and we know why they work and how they work and we can do some predictions on them.

实际上，我们最近几年才能够将这些应用到实践中，这非常有趣，旧的稳定性规则是建立在测试和经验测试的基础上的，现在我们可以模拟它，我们知道它们为什么起作用以及它们如何起作用，我们可以对它们做一些预测。

And so that’s really fascinating that we’ve been able to push those boundaries.

因此，我们能够突破这些界限，这真的很令人着迷。

And what are the different variables you’re playing with?

您正在使用哪些不同的变量？

1:26:40 Are you still playing with topology?

你还在玩拓扑吗？

What are the different variables in play here?

这里有哪些不同的变量？

Each of the different simulations we analyze and use to design different parts of the machine.

我们分析并使用每个不同的模拟来设计机器的不同部分。

1:26:47 So, at the MHD level where we have the SPICE, where we actually have the circuit model, now our design team uses this to design the circuitry, where we’re designing which capacitor to use, which switch to use, how many cables to use, literally to that level, how big of a cable to use.

因此，在 MHD 级别，我们有 SPICE，实际上有电路模型，现在我们的设计团队使用它来设计电路，我们正在设计要使用哪个电容器、要使用哪个开关、要使用多少根电缆，从字面上看，要使用多大的电缆。

So as we’re doing power plant designs right now, those are the tools we’re using today, every day, the team is using.

因此，当我们现在正在进行发电厂设计时，这些就是我们团队今天、每天都在使用的工具。

Then you can go one level deeper and say, “Okay, let’s use these more advanced computational tools about stability,” to say, “Okay, great, but I now know the circuitry, but let’s look at the magnetic field topology.”

然后你可以更深入地说，“好吧，让我们使用这些关于稳定性的更先进的计算工具”，或者说，“好吧，太好了，但我现在知道电路了，但让我们看看磁场拓扑。”

1:27:30 How do I design the magnet, the shape of the magnet exactly, the timing of the magnet exactly?

如何设计磁铁、磁铁的精确形状、磁铁的精确定时？

I have to trigger one magnet and the next magnet next to it and the next magnet next to it.

我必须触发一个磁铁和它旁边的下一个磁铁以及它旁边的下一个磁铁。

How do I have that shape and that design?” And so that’s where you’re using those more advanced tools.

我怎样才能拥有那样的形状和设计呢？”这就是您使用这些更高级工具的地方。

Now, unfortunately, those are still too slow.

不幸的是，现在这些仍然太慢。

And so those simulations may take a day or two to run.

因此这些模拟可能需要一两天的时间才能运行。

And so an operator right now does a lot of simulations ahead of time, then collects data through their operations of the machines, making these field-reversed configurations, going through parameter sweeps.

因此，操作员现在提前进行大量模拟，然后通过机器操作收集数据，进行这些现场反转配置，并进行参数扫描。

And then the simulation team then goes back and looks at that data and compares it with simulations.

然后模拟团队返回查看这些数据并将其与模拟进行比较。

1:28:12 I’m really excited about some of the things we’re seeing in artificial intelligence and reinforced learning to be able to speed up that process.

我对我们在人工智能和强化学习中看到的一些东西感到非常兴奋，因为它们能够加速这一过程。

So we’re watching and starting to work on that now, of can we now, rather than using it where we use it today, where we do a simulation to design a machine or a test, run the test, and then over the next couple of days compare the testing with the simulation and use that to inform what we’re going to run for the next set of tests.

因此，我们现在正在观察并开始研究这一点，我们现在可以吗？而不是在今天使用它的地方使用它，我们进行模拟来设计机器或测试，运行测试，然后在接下来的几天内将测试与模拟进行比较，并使用它来告知我们将要运行下一组测试。

But in fact do it more real time, where an operator can pull up what the AI or what the machine learning would have predicted it should have done.

但事实上，它做得更实时，操作员可以提取人工智能或机器学习预测它应该做的事情。

And then use that to understand what’s happening in the actual programs, in the actual generators themselves.

然后用它来理解实际程序、实际生成器本身发生的情况。

All right.

好吧。

1:28:54 So there’s a million questions there.

所以那里有一百万个问题。

So first of all, how much understanding do we have about how many collisions happen?

首先，我们对发生多少次碰撞有多少了解？

Can we go to the fusion?

我们可以去融合吗？

How many collisions are there and how does that map to the electricity?

发生了多少次碰撞？这与电力有何关系？

And maybe can you just even speak to the directly mapping to the electricity, which is one of the differences between this approach and the tokamak approach?

也许您甚至可以谈谈直接映射到电力，这是这种方法与托卡马克方法之间的区别之一？

So how much fusion do you get out from these systems?

那么你从这些系统中得到了多少融合呢？

1:29:20 And that’s really the key question.

这确实是关键问题。

So we already talked about beta, that B squared, the magnetic pressure is equal to NKT, N being the density, T being temperature.

所以我们已经讨论过 beta，即 B 平方，磁压等于 NKT，N 是密度，T 是温度。

And then we talked about fusion, where your goal for fusion is to get particles hot, high temperature, get enough of them together, density.

然后我们讨论了聚变，聚变的目标是使粒子变热，达到高温，将足够的粒子聚集在一起，提高密度。

And then you want to get them together long enough.

然后你想让他们在一起足够长的时间。

We call that tau.

我们称之为 tau。

So N, T, and tau, long enough that fusion happens and a lot of fusion happens, more than any of the loss rates that are happening, NTT.

因此，N、T 和 tau 足够长，足以发生融合，并且发生大量融合，超过任何正在发生的丢失率，NTT。

And in beta with B squared, you know already two of those parameters, NNT, are equal.

在 B 平方的 beta 中，您已经知道其中两个参数 NNT 是相等的。

And so that tells you right away the goal is to maximize magnetic field, absolutely maximize magnetic field.

因此，这立即告诉您目标是最大化磁场，绝对最大化磁场。

1:30:10 And most folks in magnetic fusion, whether it’s a tokamak or it’s Theta Pinch or it’s an FRC, are attempting to do that, maximize the magnetic field.

大多数磁聚变研究人员，无论是托卡马克、Theta Pinch 还是 FRC，都在尝试做到这一点，即最大化磁场。

So we’re all pushing to that.

所以我们都在努力做到这一点。

What’s really nice in pulsed systems is that we know how to do that.

脉冲系统的真正优点在于我们知道如何做到这一点。

In fact, in a pulsed system, researchers in pulsed magnetic fields have demonstrated over 100 tesla magnetic fields in pulsed magnets.

事实上，在脉冲系统中，脉冲磁场研究人员已经在脉冲磁体中演示了超过 100 特斯拉的磁场。

That’s much higher than you can get in a steady magnet, or what’s been demonstrated so far.

这比你在稳定的磁铁中所能得到的要高得多，或者比迄今为止所证明的要高得多。

Just a clarification question.

只是一个澄清问题。

1:30:40 So maximizing magnetic field is about the N and the T, the beta?

那么最大化磁场与 N 和 T（β）有关吗？

So we’re not talking about tau yet.

所以我们现在还不是在谈论 tau。

Not yet, but we need to, because that’s really important.

还没有，但我们需要这样做，因为这非常重要。

Okay.

好的。

We can even talk a little bit further about how fusion scales.

我们甚至可以进一步讨论融合如何扩展。

1:30:53 In fusion, the hotter you get the fuel, the more fusion you get.

在聚变中，燃料越热，聚变就越多。

And we know that by increasing the magnetic field, B squared as NT, you increase density and temperature together.

我们知道，通过增加磁场（B 平方为 NT），可以同时增加密度和温度。

More density, more temperature is more fusion, plus more temperature is even more fusion.

密度越大，温度越高，融合越多，再加上温度越高，融合就更多。

And so what we see is that in these types of systems, a scaling very clearly of magnetic field to the 3.75 power, or even in a lot of demonstrations, 3.77.

所以我们看到的是，在这些类型的系统中，磁场非常明显地缩放到 3.75 次方，甚至在很多演示中，甚至是 3.77 次方。

That specific scaling.

那个特定的缩放比例。

Wow.

哇。

That’s a very strong scaling of fusion power output and fusion reactions.

这是聚变功率输出和聚变反应的非常强大的扩展。

1:31:29 And so that tells you you want to go to a maximum magnetic field as you can.

这告诉你你想要尽可能达到最大的磁场。

Pulsed systems are really powerful.

脉冲系统确实非常强大。

Pulsed systems have showed when you do pulsed magnetic fields compared to a steady magnetic field, researchers have shown over 100 Tesla magnetic fields, where in a steady system, people have showed in the 20, maybe high 20 Tesla systems.

脉冲系统已经表明，与稳定磁场相比，当你进行脉冲磁场时，研究人员已经显示了超过 100 个特斯拉磁场，而在稳定系统中，人们已经显示了 20 个，甚至可能高达 20 个特斯拉系统。

And if it’s B to the 3.77 power, already you can see massive fusion power outputs by doing a pulsed system.

如果是 B 的 3.77 次方，那么您已经可以通过脉冲系统看到巨大的聚变功率输出。

Okay, got it.

好的，明白了。

1:32:02 So we’re maximizing the magnetic field.

所以我们正在最大化磁场。

So that’s a number going up, super up.

所以这个数字正在上升，超级上升。

How do you get the duration, the tau?

你如何获得持续时间，tau？

But then I said pulsed.

但后来我说脉冲。

Oh, I see.

哦，我明白了。

And pulsed already implies shorter tau.

脉冲已经意味着 tau 蛋白更短。

Yes.

是的。

And so that is in the fusion field, the name of the game.

这就是融合领域的游戏名称。

1:32:15 Folks will have inertial fusion, with a nanosecond tau.

人们将进行纳秒级 tau 惯性聚变。

Very short, but then very high pressure.

很短，但压力很大。

They don’t have magnetic fields, but very high pressure.

它们没有磁场，但压力非常高。

And then in stellarators and tokamaks, your goal is very long tau, but you’ll have much lower density, and you can’t really go too much in temperature, but they’ll have much lower density.

然后在仿星器和托卡马克中，你的目标是很长的tau，但你的密度会低得多，而且你不能在温度上改变太多，但它们的密度会低得多。

And so where we live in the pulsed magnetic or the magneto-inertial fusion is in the middle, in extremely high magnetic fields, increasing pressure as much as you can, and then keeping them around long enough.

因此，我们生活的脉冲磁场或磁惯性聚变处于中间，在极高的磁场中，尽可能增加压力，然后将它们保持足够长的时间。

And so that gets to the tau.

这就是 tau 的问题。

That gets to that energy confinement lifetime, and also, it gets to stability.

这就达到了能量限制寿命，而且也达到了稳定性。

1:33:03 And so this is the thing that this field-reversed configuration has shown that we can build.

这就是这个场反转配置表明我们可以构建的东西。

These plasmas can last for hundreds or thousands of times the basic theory has shown that now you can have long enough lifetimes.

这些等离子体可以持续数百或数千次，基本理论表明，现在你可以拥有足够长的寿命。

So what that means is in a practical fusion system, there are lifetimes of these high beta pulse systems between 100 microseconds and a few milliseconds, thousandths of a second.

这意味着在实际的聚变系统中，这些高 β 脉冲系统的寿命在 100 微秒到几毫秒（千分之一秒）之间。

And you hold onto it for a few thousandths of a second.

然后你坚持了千分之几秒。

You do fusion, and then you exhaust it.

你进行融合，然后耗尽它。

And so the whole process in this is we start with a magnetic field that fills the full chamber.

因此，整个过程是我们从充满整个腔室的磁场开始。

You then inject fusion fuel.

然后注入聚变燃料。

You ionize it.

你将它电离。

Superheating it now to a nice, cold one million degrees.

现在将其过热到又好又冷的一百万度。

But hot enough that you have charged particles.

但足够热，足以产生带电粒子。

1:33:57 You have plasmas.

你有血浆。

You can then start increasing the magnetic field.

然后您可以开始增加磁场。

You form a field-reversed configuration, and then rapidly increase the magnetic field further.

您形成磁场反转配置，然后进一步快速增加磁场。

Increasing from one to five to 10, 20, to even higher magnetic fields.

从 1 个增加到 5 个，再到 10 个、20 个，甚至更高的磁场。

And as you do that, the plasma heats.

当你这样做时，等离子体就会加热。

You compress it, increasing the field and pressure.

你压缩它，增加场和压力。

Fusion is now happening.

融合正在发生。

New charged particles are being born inside this system with a tremendous amount of heat and energy, but in charged particles.

新的带电粒子正在这个系统中诞生，并带有大量的热量和能量，但是是带电粒子。

And this is where the beta really works to your advantage, is that just like magnetic pressure on the outside, magnetic pressure, NKT, compresses the fuel, increasing pressure and temperature.

这就是 beta 真正发挥作用的地方，就像外部的磁压力一样，磁压力 NKT 会压缩燃料，增加压力和温度。

When the pressure and temperature of the plasma increase, NKT increases.

当等离子体的压力和温度增加时，NKT 增加。

1:34:55 It pushes back on the magnetic field, increasing the magnetic field on the outside of the plasma, and what that does is magnetic field is electromagnetic current, and current running in a wire.

它会向后推磁场，增加等离子体外部的磁场，而磁场的作用就是电磁电流，以及在电线中流动的电流。

And what that does is push current back in the wire.

其作用是将电流推回到电线中。

And so the plasma itself now pushes back on the magnetic field, pushing electrical current out of the system and recharging the capacitors where we started this whole process.

因此，等离子体本身现在会向后推磁场，将电流推出系统，并对我们开始整个过程的电容器进行充电。

All in a self-organizing way.

一切都以自组织的方式进行。

1:35:21 So I think it’s good to clarify how fusion usually generates energy, where this intermediate step of heating up water, then the steam is the thing that leads to electricity.

所以我认为澄清聚变通常如何产生能量是很好的，其中加热水的中间步骤，然后蒸汽就是产生电力的东西。

And then, of course, the FRC method that you use leads directly to electricity.

当然，您使用的 FRC 方法会直接产生电力。

I was wondering if you could describe the difference between those two.

我想知道你是否能描述一下这两者之间的区别。

Yeah, I like the analogy of the match and the campfire, and I hear that a lot in fusion.

是的，我喜欢火柴和篝火的类比，我经常听到这样的融合。

1:35:44 Where a lot of what steady fusion, think a stellarator or a Tokamak, is attempting to do is take a little bit of fuel, that match, and then add heat to ignite that match, and then put it with enough fuel and in the right conditions and hold onto it for a long time that it grows into a campfire.

很多稳定聚变，比如仿星器或托卡马克，试图做的就是使用一点燃料，火柴，然后添加热量来点燃火柴，然后在适当的条件下放入足够的燃料，并保持很长一段时间，直到它变成篝火。

Even if they do a good job, a bonfire.

即使他们做得很好，篝火。

1:36:15 It’s creating a tremendous amount of energy in that steady system.

它在那个稳定的系统中产生巨大的能量。

Burning fuel in the same place, generating some ash, generating a lot of heat in that reaction.

在同一个地方燃烧燃料，产生一些灰烬，在该反应中产生大量热量。

And in a traditional Tokamak or a stellarator, that’s a lot of what you’re doing, is you’re holding onto the heat as much as possible to keep that reaction going.

在传统的托卡马克装置或仿星器中，你所做的很多事情就是尽可能地保持热量以保持反应的进行。

And the optimal fuel is called deuterium and tritium, where you have deuterium, which is a heavy isotope of hydrogen where you have an extra neutron, and tritium is a very rare form of hydrogen that’s an unstable form.

最佳燃料称为氘和氚，其中氘是氢的重同位素，其中有一个额外的中子，而氚是一种非常罕见的氢形式，是一种不稳定的形式。

It’s so rare it’s hard to get.

它是如此稀有，很难得到。

1:36:53 Where it has two neutrons and a proton, and when you fuse those together at very high temperatures, at very high densities or high enough densities and very high temperatures, they make helium, which is a charged particle, which stays inside the campfire, inside the Tokamak, continuing to heat it and stoke the flames, and it makes a neutron which leaves the system because it’s uncharged.

它有两个中子和一个质子，当你在非常高的温度、非常高的密度或足够高的密度和非常高的温度下将它们融合在一起时，它们会产生氦，这是一种带电粒子，它留在托卡马克内部的篝火内，继续加热它并点燃火焰，它会产生一个中子，因为它不带电而离开系统。

It has no charge, and in that system, it’s actually ideal.

它不收费，在那个系统中，它实际上是理想的。

It’s really great because in a campfire, you have this reaction going and you want to get the energy out of it.

这真的很棒，因为在篝火中，你会发生这种反应，并且你想从中获取能量。

You want to use it, and you don’t want to just burn up all the fuel and do nothing.

你想要使用它，并且你不想只是烧掉所有燃料而不采取任何行动。

That’s not really valuable.

这并不是真正有价值的。

What’s really valuable is to stand next to the campfire and get the heat, get what comes off of it.

真正有价值的是站在篝火旁，获取热量，获取从中得到的东西。

1:37:38 And then use that in a traditional fusion system to boil water, to heat the water, and then at 30, 35% efficiency, then convert that through a steam turbine into a cooling tower, and cool off the fuel and extract electricity.

然后在传统的聚变系统中使用它来煮水，加热水，然后以 30%、35% 的效率，然后通过蒸汽轮机将其转换为冷却塔，冷却燃料并提取电力。

1:37:53 And we know steam turbines.

我们知道蒸汽轮机。

Coal plants do this.

燃煤电厂就是这样做的。

Nuclear fission reactors do this.

核裂变反应堆就是这样做的。

And so we know how to do that, and that’s the traditional way of doing it.

所以我们知道如何做到这一点，这就是传统的做法。

But I think there are other ways to do it with a pulsed magnetic system.

但我认为还有其他方法可以用脉冲磁系统来做到这一点。

There’s one more thing you get to do, because you have this high beta where there’s an electric field and an electromagnetic force that’s now compressing the fusion fuel.

你还要做一件事，因为你有这么高的贝塔值，其中有电场和电磁力正在压缩聚变燃料。

It’s increasing in temperature.

温度正在升高。

It’s getting hotter.

天气越来越热了。

It’s increasing in temperature.

温度正在升高。

Density fusion is happening.

密度融合正在发生。

New fusion particles are being born, and those particles are not just stoking the flame.

新的聚变粒子正在诞生，而这些粒子不仅仅是火上浇油。

They’re not just holding on to the campfire like in the Tokamak, but they’re doing another thing which is really powerful, which is they’re pushing back on the magnetic field.

他们不仅像托卡马克装置那样抓住篝火，而且还在做另一件非常强大的事情，那就是他们正在向后推磁场。

1:38:40 They’re applying a pressure.

他们正在施加压力。

That pressure induces a current.

该压力会产生电流。

We can extract that electrical current.

我们可以提取电流。

But it takes you into another direction, so your analogy of the campfire now breaks down, because now the campfire is expanding.

但它带你进入另一个方向，所以你对篝火的类比现在不成立了，因为现在篝火正在扩大。

It’s pushing back on something, and so now it’s the analogy of the piston engine…

它正在推回某些东西，所以现在这是活塞发动机的类比......

…As you move from the match, the campfire, to now pistons.

……当你从比赛、篝火，到现在的活塞队。

And so in a piston engine, you use the motion of the piston, the pressure on it, and the motion of it to do something useful.

因此，在活塞发动机中，您可以利用活塞的运动、活塞上的压力以及活塞的运动来做一些有用的事情。

And in a piston engine, it’s to turn a crankshaft and run wheels, or maybe even a piston engine to turn a crankshaft and run a generator and make electricity.

在活塞发动机中，它可以转动曲轴并驱动车轮，甚至可以是活塞发动机来转动曲轴并运行发电机并发电。

And in fact, you can do it pretty high efficiency.

事实上，您可以非常高效地做到这一点。

1:39:24 …and a generator using that method, using the expansion of that piston.

......以及使用该方法的发电机，利用活塞的膨胀。

What we do is use the expansion of the magnetic field to extract that electricity, and we believe you can do it with much, much higher efficiencies.

我们所做的就是利用磁场的扩展来提取电力，我们相信您可以以更高的效率来做到这一点。

In fact, there’s been theoretical papers that show not 30% to 35% efficiency, like a steam turbine can do, but 80% efficiency, 85% efficiency, extracting much more of the energy of the fuel in that process.

事实上，有理论论文表明效率不是像蒸汽轮机那样 30% 到 35%，而是 80%、85%，在这个过程中提取了更多的燃料能量。

Can you actually just take a tiny tangent…

你真的可以只做一个微小的切线吗？

1:39:52 …On the word “efficiency” here?

……这里的“效率”这个词？

So, you said 30%, so it’s inefficient.

所以你说30%，所以效率很低。

Is that efficiency measure how much of the energy is actually converted to electricity?

该效率衡量的是有多少能量实际转化为电能吗？

That measure is how much of the thermal energy that gets outside of the system is then converted into electricity, which is the thing we care about.

这个衡量标准是有多少离开系统的热能被转化为电能，这是我们关心的事情。

1:40:06 We’re not in this to make fusion.

我们不是为了融合。

We’re in this to make electricity.

我们这样做是为了发电。

And we’re using fusion to make electricity.

我们正在利用聚变来发电。

So from my point of view, that should be the focus: how do we get to that?

因此，从我的角度来看，这应该是焦点：我们如何实现这一目标？

So that’s the efficiency of that thermal energy that makes it out to electricity.

这就是热能转化为电能的效率。

What it is not a measure of is how much energy you put into the system and what happens to that.

它衡量的不是你向系统投入了多少能量以及发生了什么。

In terms of, you started this campfire with a blowtorch, what about all that blowtorch energy?

就而言，你用喷灯点燃了篝火，所有喷灯能量怎么样？

What are you getting for that?

你为此得到什么？

1:40:42 And so I think that’s something that high beta is one more side benefit that it turns out is actually maybe the tail that wags the dog.

所以我认为高贝塔值是另一个附带好处，事实证明它实际上可能是摇狗的尾巴。

Not only do you, at high efficiency, get out any of the new fusion energy, which is great, because that’s what you want: make electricity from fusion, but you also get to recover all of that magnetic energy you put back into it.

你不仅可以高效率地获得任何新的聚变能量，这很棒，因为这就是你想要的：通过聚变发电，而且你还可以回收所有放回其中的磁能。

1:41:02 And that’s the really powerful one, and that’s something that folks have demonstrated: over 95% efficiency, that you can put electricity into fusion and then get that electricity back out at 95% efficiency, plus some very high efficiency, maybe 80%, maybe higher, of all the fusion product electricity too.

这才是真正强大的，人们已经证明了这一点：超过 95% 的效率，你可以将电力投入聚变，然后以 95% 的效率将电力取出，再加上一些非常高的效率，也许是所有聚变产品电力的 80%，也许更高。

So now you’re just making a tremendous amount of electricity in one of these systems, and that has all kinds of performance and engineering benefits that are really powerful, but it also pushes you to other fuels.

所以现在你只是在这些系统之一中产生大量的电力，这具有各种非常强大的性能和工程优势，但它也促使你转向其他燃料。

So we talked about how deuterium and tritium fuels make this neutron…

所以我们讨论了氘和氚燃料如何产生这种中子……

1:41:38 …which leaves the system to boil water to run steam turbines, but it doesn’t push back on the magnetic field.

...这使得系统将水煮沸来运行蒸汽涡轮机，但它不会推回磁场。

So in one of these high beta systems, it’s actually not a great fuel at all.

因此，在这些高贝塔系统之一中，它实际上根本不是一种很好的燃料。

So the other fuels that are out there are even more interesting, and one of the candidate fuels that’s really interesting is called deuterium and helium-3.

因此，其他燃料更加有趣，其中一种真正有趣的候选燃料是氘和氦 3。

And we talked about deuterium, heavy, heavy hydrogen.

我们还讨论了氘、重氢。

Well, helium-3’s nucleus is also called a helion.

氦 3 的原子核也称为日离子。

That’s why we named the company that.

这就是我们给公司命名的原因。

1:42:05 It is light helium, which is…

它是轻氦气，它是……

In normal helium, which is what you find in a balloon, there are two protons, two neutrons.

在普通的氦气中，也就是你在气球中发现的，有两个质子，两个中子。

It’s very stable and found commonly.

它非常稳定并且很常见。

Helium-3 is also stable, but it’s not found commonly.

Helium-3 也很稳定，但并不常见。

Fortunately, it’s lightweight, so it leaves.

幸运的是，它很轻，所以它就离开了。

It literally leaves the atmosphere and goes into space, so we don’t have a lot of it here on Earth, and so you have to make it, or you have to go into space.

它确实离开大气层进入太空，所以我们在地球上没有很多这样的东西，所以你必须制造它，或者你必须进入太空。

There’s a whole other thing about where do you get it?

还有一件事是关于你从哪里得到它的？

Do you get it from the moon?

你从月球上得到它吗？

Jupiter, it turns out, has massive amounts of helium-3.

事实证明，木星含有大量的氦 3。

So when you take deuterium and helium-3 and you fuse those together, you also get that helium particle, that alpha particle, as we call it in fusion.

因此，当你将氘和氦 3 融合在一起时，你也会得到氦粒子，即 α 粒子，正如我们在聚变中所说的那样。

1:42:50 But instead of the neutron, you get a proton, and that proton is a charged particle.

但你得到的不是中子，而是质子，而该质子是带电粒子。

It’s a hydrogen nucleus.

它是一个氢原子核。

That proton is now trapped in the magnetic field, pushes back, and you can extract that electricity.

质子现在被困在磁场中，向后推，你可以提取电力。

Now, there are some prices to be paid for this helium-3 fuel, but for a high-beta system like a pulsed magnetic fusion system, that’s really the ideal fuel.

现在，这种氦 3 燃料需要支付一些价格，但对于像脉冲磁聚变系统这样的高贝塔系统来说，这确实是理想的燃料。

When you say “prices,” what is the…

当你说“价格”时，什么是......

1:43:14 Is there like technical costs, or what are the prices?

有类似的技术成本吗，或者价格是多少？

What shape do the prices take?

价格呈什么形状？

All kinds of shapes: physics, engineering, technical, and business costs.

各种形状：物理、工程、技术和商业成本。

Okay.

好的。

And so, let’s dive in.

那么，让我们深入了解一下。

1:43:28 So, yeah, we talked about how helium-3 is…

所以，是的，我们讨论了 helium-3 是如何......

From the fusion physics point of view, we talked about 100 million degrees.

从聚变物理的角度来看，我们谈到了一亿度。

That’s the temperature that deuterium and tritium fusion works really well.

这是氘和氚聚变效果非常好的温度。

And that’s the temperature that traditional fusion folks have really focused on getting to.

这就是传统融合人们真正关注的温度。

That’s the threshold.

这就是门槛。

When you get to 100 million degrees, you’re at the operating point of fusion, and you know it works, colloquially anyway.

当你达到一亿度时，你就处于聚变的工作点，并且你知道它是有效的，无论如何通俗地说。

Helium-3 requires higher temperatures.

Hel-3 需要更高的温度。

That’s not enough.

这还不够。

Yes, fusion happens for deuterium and helium-3 at 100 million degrees, but it’s not its optimal temperature.

是的，氘和氦 3 会在 1 亿度的温度下发生聚变，但这并不是其最佳温度。

And in fact, in a high-beta system, the optimal temperature is higher, 200, even sometimes 300 million degrees.

事实上，在高β系统中，最佳温度更高，200度，有时甚至3亿度。

So you have to get to even higher temperatures.

所以你必须达到更高的温度。

1:44:16 Temperature’s hard, and so you have to push to even higher temperatures than you had before.

温度很难，所以你必须把温度推到比以前更高的温度。

And so that’s one of the downsides.

这就是缺点之一。

The other downside can be as you get to those higher temperatures, we talked about B squared is NT.

另一个缺点可能是当你达到更高的温度时，我们谈到 B 平方是 NT。

B squared is density times temperature.

B 平方是密度乘以温度。

Well, for a given magnetic field, density and temperature are now inverse.

那么，对于给定的磁场，密度和温度现在是相反的。

So as I increase temperature, density decreases.

因此，当我升高温度时，密度就会降低。

And so now you have an issue of you may have fewer particles to do fusion, which means your fusion system has to get bigger than it was before.

所以现在你有一个问题，你可能有更少的粒子进行融合，这意味着你的融合系统必须比以前更大。

1:44:52 So for the same reaction rates, a helium-3 system compared to deuterium-tritium has to operate at a higher temperature and be bigger.

因此，对于相同的反应速率，与氘氚系统相比，氦 3 系统必须在更高的温度下运行并且尺寸更大。

However, the flip side is, if you can now recover energy at three times the energy efficiency, at 80-some percent versus 30-some percent, and recover all your input energy, then now it’s actually about the same size.

然而，另一面是，如果你现在能够以三倍的能源效率（80% 与 30%）回收能量，并回收所有输入能量，那么现在它实际上大约是相同的大小。

Because it’s the same electricity output.

因为输出的电量是一样的。

Not energy; it’s electricity we’re worried about.

不是能量；我们担心的是电力。

Electricity output, now you can actually build systems of similar size and similar energy.

电力输出，现在您实际上可以构建类似尺寸和类似能量的系统。

Only they’re now at this much higher efficiency.

只是他们现在的效率要高得多。

Got it.

知道了。

1:45:31 Can you say more about size?

你能详细说一下尺寸吗？

What are we talking about here?

我们在这里谈论什么？

Why is size an important constraint?

为什么尺寸是一个重要的限制因素？

And that gets to one of the other prices.

这就是其他价格之一。

1:45:37 That gets to money.

这就涉及到钱了。

So—

所以——

Yeah

是啊

Our goal is we want to build clean, low-cost electricity and get it out in the world, but that means it needs to be low cost.

我们的目标是建设清洁、低成本的电力并将其输送到世界各地，但这意味着它需要低成本。

1:45:40 That’s fundamental.

这是根本性的。

If it’s really expensive, no one’s going to buy it.

如果真的很贵，就没人会买。

And while it can be clean, it’s not going to be deployed.

虽然它可以是干净的，但它不会被部署。

And so that always has to be a part of why the promise of fusion is that it can be low cost.

因此，这始终是核聚变承诺低成本的部分原因。

So how do we know how much fusion systems cost?

那么我们如何知道聚变系统的成本是多少呢？

That’s a really great question.

这是一个非常好的问题。

And a lot of it comes down to fundamental size, that you have to just build things.

其中很多都归结为基本尺寸，你必须只建造东西。

And so there’s some really first principles cost engineering you can do around power plants for fundamentally what do they cost?

因此，您可以围绕发电厂进行一些真正的成本工程首要原则，从根本上了解它们的成本是多少？

How much concrete went into it?

里面加了多少混凝土？

Fundamentally, how big is it?

从根本上来说，它有多大？

1:46:26 And if you’re doing a good job of manufacturing, your goal is to manufacture a product for as low of a cost as you can so you can sell it for as low a price as you can.

如果你的制造做得很好，你的目标就是以尽可能低的成本制造产品，这样你就可以以尽可能低的价格出售它。

It asymptotes to the material cost.

它渐近于材料成本。

Ah.

啊。

Because you never get cheaper than that.

因为你永远不会比这更便宜。

So this literally, in some sense, some sort of first-principle sense, is how much concrete—

所以，从字面上看，在某种意义上，某种第一性原则的意义，就是具体程度——

How- how-

怎么样——怎么样——

goes into building the power plant.

开始建设发电厂。

How much concrete, how much steel, how much copper and aluminum.

多少混凝土，多少钢材，多少铜和铝。

1:46:54 Different materials cost different amounts, but at the end of the day, the cheapest function is the least amount of materials.

不同的材料成本不同，但归根结底，最便宜的功能就是材料用量最少。

Wow.

哇。

1:47:06 Okay.

好的。

And so that’s, we think a lot about that and how we can make these systems smaller so they can be developed at lower cost.

因此，我们对此进行了很多思考，以及如何使这些系统更小，以便以更低的成本开发它们。

1:47:08 Now, there’s a flip side: you still need to produce electricity.

现在，还有另一面：你仍然需要发电。

So if you make them really small and they don’t produce electricity, there is some minimum size to fusion, and that’s really important.

因此，如果你把它们做得非常小并且它们不发电，那么聚变就有一些最小尺寸，这非常重要。

Fusion scientists and engineers don’t think you’d ever have a fusion generator on the back of your DeLorean, for instance.

例如，聚变科学家和工程师认为您的德洛宁汽车后面不会有聚变发生器。

The physics doesn’t let that happen, at least physics as we’ve understood for the last, you know, 100 or 200 years.

物理学不允许这种情况发生，至少是我们过去 100 或 200 年来所理解的物理学。

Well, there’s a lot of really interesting business questions here, because you’re basically at the cutting edge of science, of technology, of physics, of engineering, trying to basically innovate into the future rapidly.

嗯，这里有很多非常有趣的商业问题，因为你基本上处于科学、技术、物理、工程的最前沿，试图快速创新未来。

1:47:37 How do you do that?

你是怎么做到的？

Because the R&D here, the research alone, is a lot of money.

因为这里的研发，仅研究一项，就需要大量资金。

So what, well, I mean, what can you say about that?

那么，我的意思是，对此你能说些什么呢？

Like, how to be bold and fearless in pushing this technology into the future when so much is unknown and it costs so much to just do the research?

比如，当未知数如此之多且仅进行研究的成本如此之高时，如何大胆无畏地将这项技术推向未来？

So I think about this in a couple of ways.

所以我从几个方面思考这个问题。

1:48:14 One, the need.

一、需要。

We look to the world and we know the world needs clean, low-cost, safe electricity.

我们放眼世界，我们知道世界需要清洁、低成本、安全的电力。

And just to meet our needs today, and not to even talk about the needs of tomorrow or the needs of AI or any of the growth that’s probably coming.

只是为了满足我们今天的需求，甚至不谈论明天的需求或人工智能的需求或任何可能即将到来的增长。

Just to meet today.

只为今天见面。

But fundamental to that is it has to be a product that people will buy.

但最根本的是它必须是人们愿意购买的产品。

It has to be a generator that is making that electricity at low cost.

它必须是一台能够以低成本发电的发电机。

And it’s got to be soon.

而且一定会很快。

So a lot of what I think about is how do we do those two things together?

所以我思考的很多问题是我们如何一起做这两件事？

And a lot of that is scale, and a lot of that is thinking about…

其中很多是规模，很多是在考虑……

And not big scale.

而且规模不大。

In fact, it’s the opposite of that.

事实上，事实恰恰相反。

It’s small scale.

规模很小。

It’s how do you build a product that’s mass-producible, that you can build quickly and learn quickly?

问题是如何构建可大规模生产、可以快速构建和快速学习的产品？

1:49:18 And what I’ve found in my career is that they’re actually the same thing.

我在职业生涯中发现它们实际上是同一件事。

And that the faster you can build a thing, the faster you can learn if that thing works, the faster you can now iterate on that and build the next thing.

你构建一个东西的速度越快，你就能越快地了解该东西是否有效，你现在可以更快地迭代它并构建下一个东西。

And so what I have spent my career building is teams of humans and a company that are builders, that can build high-technology things quickly.

因此，我的职业生涯所建立的是由人类组成的团队和一家作为建设者的公司，可以快速构建高科技产品。

If you want to do R&D, you don’t want large-scale, multinational, complex, huge systems.

如果你想做研发，你不需要大规模的、跨国的、复杂的、庞大的系统。

1:49:58 You want to actually take the smallest thing you can build that accomplishes the mission—and in fusion, there is a minimum size—but accomplishes the mission, and then build it quickly and build whole teams around building it quickly and incentivize folks to move quickly, iterate and learn.

你想要真正利用你能构建的最小的东西来完成任务——在融合中，有一个最小的尺寸——但是完成任务，然后快速构建它，并围绕快速构建它建立整个团队，并激励人们快速行动、迭代和学习。

And the irony I think of one of the things that I’ve discovered is that by focusing on manufacturing, by focusing on low-cost, very rapid manufacturing, you actually get to do science faster.

讽刺的是，我认为我发现的一件事是，通过专注于制造，通过专注于低成本、非常快速的制造，你实际上可以更快地进行科学研究。

And at the beginning of my career, I would never have guessed that.

在我职业生涯的初期，我绝对不会想到这一点。

I would have thought the way to do science is to make a giant demonstration particle accelerator somewhere.

我本以为做科学的方法就是在某个地方建造一个巨大的演示粒子加速器。

1:50:37 Like to make a large complex science experiment is the best way to do science.

喜欢做一个大型复杂的科学实验是做科学的最好方式。

And what I’ve found is actually small, iterative, just building as fast as possible gets you there faster, because you can learn, you can build, you can iterate.

我发现实际上很小，迭代，只要尽可能快地构建就能让你更快地到达目标，因为你可以学习，你可以构建，你可以迭代。

You can solve the problems, and then you can learn the fundamental physics, learn the scaling, learn the FRC, and the B to the 3.77 power and learn those things way sooner than if you would have just started on one mega project and then waited decades to get to the answer.

你可以解决这些问题，然后你可以学习基础物理、学习缩放、学习 FRC 和 B 的 3.77 次方，并且比你刚开始一个大型项目然后等待几十年才能得到答案更快地学习这些东西。

There’s a profound truth in that, something about the constraints of pushing for the simple, for the low cost, for the manufacturable.

这是一个深刻的事实，即追求简单、低成本和可制造性的局限性。

1:51:11 That pushes everything, pushes the science, pushes the innovation.

这推动了一切，推动了科学，推动了创新。

In fact, you should maybe explain that you’re, I believe, on the seventh prototype.

事实上，你也许应该解释一下，我相信你正在开发第七个原型机。

The rate of innovation here is insane.

这里的创新速度是疯狂的。

Can you maybe speak to all the different prototypes you went through, what it took to just iterate rapidly?

您能否谈谈您经历过的所有不同原型，以及如何快速迭代？

And maybe it would be really interesting for people, like what can you say about the teams that’s required to make that happen?

也许这对人们来说真的很有趣，比如你对实现这一目标所需的团队有何看法？

Like what kind of people are required to make that happen at that fast rate?

比如需要什么样的人才能以如此快的速度实现这一目标？

And we’re not talking about software here.

我们这里讨论的不是软件。

We’re talking about everything, the full stack.

我们正在谈论一切，整个堆栈。

1:51:58 All the way down to the physics at 100 million degrees, at speeds of 1 million miles per hour.

一直到物理温度为 1 亿度，速度为每小时 100 万英里。

I mean, it’s insane.

我的意思是，这太疯狂了。

Anyway, so how do you iterate the prototypes, and what kind of teams make it happen?

不管怎样，那么如何迭代原型，什么样的团队才能实现呢？

So at Helion, we’ve built seven systems.

因此，在 Helion，我们构建了七个系统。

1:52:13 The first six were a series of prototypes that we built end to end that were focused on scaling the process of making these field-reversed configurations, compressing them to thermonuclear fusion conditions, and demonstrating that you can do fusion and then increasing the scale, increasing the temperature and the energy.

前六个是我们端到端构建的一系列原型，重点是扩展制造这些场反转配置的过程，将它们压缩到热核聚变条件，并证明您可以进行聚变，然后增加规模，增加温度和能量。

The very first ones were named after beer.

第一个以啤酒命名。

Actually, the most successful was the Inductive Plasmoid Accelerator, the IPA.

事实上，最成功的是感应等离子体加速器（IPA）。

And it was the first system that showed that the team could make these FRCs and hold onto them and understand some of the stability criteria, the heating criteria.

这是第一个系统，表明该团队可以制造这些 FRC 并保留它们并了解一些稳定性标准、加热标准。

And then we started increasing the field.

然后我们开始扩大领域。

Now, okay, great, we can hold onto one of these FRCs.

现在，好吧，太好了，我们可以保留这些 FRC 之一。

1:53:03 We know how long and how to make them, but now can we squeeze on them and start doing fusion?

我们知道制造它们需要多长时间以及如何制造，但现在我们可以挤压它们并开始进行融合吗？

Increasing in pressure and temperature.

压力和温度增加。

What we noticed is, you know, machine after machine, we always used Starbucks.

我们注意到，你知道，一台又一台机器，我们总是使用星巴克。

We were in Redmond at the time, Redmond, Washington, and Starbucks cups sitting on top of the machine as the, this is the scale.

我们当时在雷德蒙德，雷德蒙德、华盛顿和星巴克的杯子坐在机器的顶部，这就是规模。

They were too small to have a human really in the picture all the time, so the Starbucks cup was enough.

它们太小了，画面中不可能一直有一个人，所以星巴克的杯子就足够了。

And so then we switched to Tall, Grande, Venti.

然后我们改用 Tall、Grande、Venti。

And then the biggest, Trenta, was the biggest system that came online in 2020.

然后最大的 Trenta 是 2020 年上线的最大系统。

1:53:41 That was a system that showed 100 million degrees and was the first system that did deuterium and helium-3 fusion.

那是一个显示 1 亿度的系统，也是第一个进行氘和氦 3 聚变的系统。

In fact, as far as we know, the only bulk deuterium-helium-3 fusion that has been done and also showed the 100-million-degree fusion temperatures from an FRC.

事实上，据我们所知，这是唯一一次完成的氘-氦-3 聚变，并且 FRC 也显示出 1 亿度的聚变温度。

And throughout that time, the earliest work was government funded, government grants, SBIRs and other types of government grants.

在那段时间里，最早的工作是政府资助、政府补助、SBIR 和其他类型的政府补助。

And actually the team involved, myself and the rest of the founding team, were really good at winning government programs, doing fundamental science, but moving very quickly.

事实上，参与的团队，我自己和创始团队的其他成员，非常擅长赢得政府项目，从事基础科学，但进展非常快。

And there’s a lot of ways to think about how to iterate and how to build quickly.

有很多方法可以思考如何迭代和如何快速构建。

I want to talk about the teams first, and then we can talk about some of the technology.

我想先谈谈团队，然后我们可以谈谈一些技术。

1:54:25 It uses to do that, but a lot of it is thinking about if your goal is to get the product, electricity, out to the world as soon as possible, then you should be looking at everything you do through that lens.

它过去常常这样做，但很多时候都在考虑，如果你的目标是尽快将产品、电力推向世界，那么你应该通过这个镜头来看待你所做的一切。

And so that’s thinking about the materials you choose.

所以这就是考虑你选择的材料。

You want to, at every turn, choose commonly available materials.

您每次都想选择常用的材料。

If you have to wait for a supply chain for an ultra-rare material, it’s going to take you a lot more time.

如果您必须等待超稀有材料的供应链，那么您将花费更多时间。

And so do everything you can to engineer a system that uses simple aluminum alloys, simple copper alloys.

因此，尽你所能来设计一个使用简单铝合金、简单铜合金的系统。

And if you have to use tungsten, and maybe you have to use tungsten in some of your systems, which is a hard-to-find alloy, make sure you’re using commonly available thicknesses of tungsten sheet.

如果您必须使用钨，也许您必须在某些系统中使用钨（这是一种很难找到的合金），请确保您使用的是常用厚度的钨片。

1:55:07 You know, those kinds of engineering analyses and thought processes at every step.

你知道，每一步都有这种工程分析和思维过程。

And that’s how we built these systems, from IPA to Venti up to Trenta, was always looking at how do we build systems that are easy to build and mass-produced?

这就是我们构建这些系统的方式，从 IPA 到 Venti，再到 Trenta，我们一直在研究如何构建易于构建和批量生产的系统？

Because this is the other thing that I don’t know that early in my career I’d have predicted, is that by making a hundred of a thing, you can actually make it faster than if you go make one of a thing.

因为这是我在职业生涯早期所预测的另一件事，那就是通过制作一百件东西，你实际上可以比制作一件东西更快。

1:55:36 And that’s because when you look at our fusion systems, we talked about these big magnets, and you could build one giant, big, complex, hard-to-make magnet that’s heavy and you have to move it around with a crane and requires very complex machining by ultra-rare CNCs, or you could then make that out of a composite of 100 smaller magnets.

那是因为当你看我们的聚变系统时，我们谈到了这些大磁铁，你可以建造一个巨大的、大的、复杂的、难以制造的重磁铁，你必须用起重机移动它，并且需要通过超罕见的 CNC 进行非常复杂的加工，或者你可以用 100 个较小磁铁的复合材料来制造它。

Each of those magnets now can be made on a simple machine.

现在，这些磁铁中的每一个都可以在简单的机器上制造。

Each of these magnets can be picked up by a human, they’re light enough.

这些磁铁中的每一个都可以被人拿起，它们足够轻。

They can be made and manufactured and mass-produced, and that’s what we did.

它们可以被制造、制造和批量生产，这就是我们所做的。

And that was our whole design philosophy on these machines is, at every turn, how do we go faster?

这就是我们对这些机器的整体设计理念，即在每一个转折点，我们如何走得更快？

A classic one that still to this day I push the team on is, again, thinking about how do you move fast, eBay.

直到今天我仍然推动团队继续前进的一个经典问题是，再次思考如何快速行动，eBay。

1:56:31 We buy, and I don’t know that I’ve ever said this publicly…

我们购买，我不知道我是否曾公开说过这样的话……

Oh boy, here we go.

哦，孩子，我们开始吧。

1:56:35 This is great.

这太棒了。

We spend a lot of time on eBay.

我们在 eBay 上花了很多时间。

You got to find a way, yeah.

你必须找到一个方法，是的。

You got to move, and here’s an example: we use a vacuum pump because in these systems you got to pull out all the air.

你必须移动，这是一个例子：我们使用真空泵，因为在这些系统中你必须抽出所有空气。

1:56:41 So we use a vacuum pump called a turbomolecular vacuum pump.

所以我们使用一种称为涡轮分子真空泵的真空泵。

This is a commodity.

这是一种商品。

This is used in a variety of particle accelerators, scientific applications.

这用于各种粒子加速器和科学应用。

There are many of them.

其中有很多。

They’re robust.

它们很坚固。

They last a long time.

它们持续很长时间。

They also have a very small supply chain.

他们的供应链也非常小。

So if you want to buy a brand new turbomolecular pump, you can, and you might wait nine months from the manufacturer…

因此，如果您想购买全新的涡轮分子泵，您可以，而且您可能需要从制造商处等待九个月……

1:57:09 …to go make one for you and deliver it to you.

...去为您制作一个并将其交付给您。

But I can go today and get the same model that was made 10 years ago and get it on eBay today, right now.

但我今天就可以去买 10 年前生产的同一个模型，今天就可以在 eBay 上买到。

However, it might not work.

然而，这可能行不通。

You don’t know yet how well it works or how clean it is or any of those things.

你还不知道它的工作效果如何，或者它有多干净，或者任何这些事情。

And so what we do is you don’t go to eBay to save money.

所以我们所做的就是你不要去 eBay 来省钱。

It does, it’s cheaper, and that’s great.

确实如此，而且更便宜，这很棒。

But you can also go and get three of those turbo pumps that are sitting on eBay right now, bring those in-house, test them.

但您也可以去 eBay 上购买三个涡轮泵，将其带入内部进行测试。

Maybe only one of them meets the specifications you need, but guess what?

也许只有其中之一符合您需要的规格，但你猜怎么着？

You just got a pump in two weeks instead of nine months.

您只需两周而不是九个月就得到了泵。

And you got it, and it’s in the door and it’s operational and it’s running, and you’re moving.

你明白了，它就在门里，它可以运行，而且你正在移动。

See, I love this.

看，我喜欢这个。

1:57:50 I love that kind of stuff.

我喜欢那种东西。

One of the only people I’ve really seen do that is Elon.

我见过的唯一真正这样做的人之一是埃隆。

He put together that cluster in Memphis in a matter of weeks, which is nothing like that has ever been done before.

他在几周内就在孟菲斯组建了这个集群，这是以前从未做过的事情。

And this eBay way is really the kind of thing that’s required to make that happen, as you shortcut the supply chain.

eBay 的这种方式确实是实现这一目标所必需的，因为你可以缩短供应链。

And everywhere you can, you still have to deliver the working product, right?

无论在哪里，您仍然必须交付可用的产品，对吗？

Right.

正确的。

That is, cannot sacrifice the quality.

也就是说，不能牺牲质量。

1:58:19 But do you really need the shiny brand-new one when the used one is going to do the job?

但是，当旧的可以完成这项工作时，您真的需要闪亮的全新吗？

And we think about that across the board.

我们全面考虑这一点。

Do we take the best plasma diagnostic, the most sophisticated plasma diagnostic in the world that has an accuracy of within 3%?

我们是否采用世界上最好的血浆诊断、最先进的血浆诊断，其准确度在 3% 以内？

And it’s going to take me three years and maybe a few million dollars to go build.

我需要三年的时间，也许还要花费几百万美元来建造。

Or do I take a technology from 10 years ago that’s 5% accurate, that’s good enough that I can go build in a month?

或者我是否采用 10 年前的准确率 5% 的技术，这足以让我在一个月内构建出来？

And the answer for us, for Helion and for the team that we’ve put together, is that scrappy, “I want to just solve the problem.

对于我们、Helion 以及我们组建的团队来说，答案就是斗志旺盛：“我只想解决问题。

I don’t need necessarily the best solution, but let’s go make it happen.” And so that’s something that we routinely do.

我不一定需要最好的解决方案，但让我们去实现它。”这就是我们经常做的事情。

1:59:09 I think sometimes I have challenges with my academic colleagues on this, is that we have a difference of opinion.

我想有时我和我的学术同事在这方面遇到的挑战是我们有不同的意见。

Because that 3%, well, that’s way better than 5%.

因为 3% 比 5% 好得多。

So shouldn’t you do that?

那么你不应该这样做吗？

You’ll know your data better.

您会更好地了解您的数据。

But 5% is good enough.

但 5% 就足够了。

Now, 50% would not be good enough.

现在，50% 还不够好。

And so that technology wouldn’t have been applicable.

因此该技术将不适用。

And so finding that middle ground is a hard thing to do, and never compromising on the quality and the safety.

因此，找到中间立场是一件很难做的事情，而且决不能在质量和安全上妥协。

Like it’s got to work and it’s got to be safe, but can you still go fast?

就像它必须工作并且必须安全一样，但你还能走得快吗？

But in general, just having a culture of pushing the rate of iterations here.

但总的来说，只是有一种提高迭代速度的文化。

And building the team that wants to go build things.

并建立一支想要去建造东西的团队。

1:59:45 Everyone at Helion, or at least the vast majority of Helion, we hire engineers, scientists, technicians, and machinists, are hands-on builders.

Helion 的每个人，或者至少是 Helion 的绝大多数人，我们雇佣的工程师、科学家、技术人员和机械师，都是亲力亲为的建造者。

The company at Helion is very weird for a fusion company.

对于一家聚变公司来说，Helion 公司非常奇怪。

Today, we are 50% technicians, not scientists.

今天，我们50%是技术人员，而不是科学家。

Nice.

好的。

And we have a ton of scientists, because the science is critically important too, but they’re supported by a huge manufacturing company.

我们有大量的科学家，因为科学也至关重要，但他们得到了一家大型制造公司的支持。

2:00:06 Our goal is to build as fast as possible.

我们的目标是尽快构建。

Some of the other things we try to do there, vertically integrate.

我们尝试在那里做的其他一些事情是垂直整合。

This is to your point on Elon Musk.

这就是你对埃隆·马斯克的看法。

This is one of the things he’s focused on at his companies, has been how do you bring inside the critical things that are going to drive timelines, the things you can’t just go buy as a commodity product and get it here soon, and make sure that you can go build those fast.

这是他在公司关注的事情之一，就是如何将那些将推动时间线的关键事情纳入其中，这些事情你不能只是作为商品购买并很快到达这里，并确保你可以快速构建这些东西。

We’ve done a number of key vertical integrated manufacturing lines at Helion.

我们在 Helion 建造了许多关键的垂直集成生产线。

I think we may be the only fusion company with a conveyor belt.

我想我们可能是唯一一家拥有传送带的融合公司。

2:00:49 Actually, our second one just came online now, where we literally have our production line manufacturing power supplies at Helion so that we can move at maximum velocity, rather than finding an external consultant or an external supplier to go do those.

事实上，我们的第二个现在刚刚上线，我们的生产线确实在 Helion 制造电源，这样我们就可以以最大速度前进，而不是寻找外部顾问或外部供应商来做这些事情。

Well, I love it.

嗯，我喜欢它。

2:01:06 Builder-first company, and you’re also thinking about manufacturing…

建筑商优先的公司，而且您也在考虑制造……

…Throughout all of this.

……贯穿这一切。

I’m looking at the photo of Trenta.

我正在看特伦塔的照片。

It’s beautiful.

很美丽。

And you can actually, I can point out on this picture one perfect example of what I’m talking about.

事实上，你可以，我可以在这张图片上指出我正在谈论的一个完美的例子。

2:01:16 So on the end is a green structure, green fiberglass.

所以最后是一个绿色结构，绿色玻璃纤维。

This is called G10.

这就是所谓的G10。

Actually, ironically, one of the main structural elements we use is this G10 fiberglass material.

事实上，讽刺的是，我们使用的主要结构元素之一就是这种 G10 玻璃纤维材料。

It’s the same thing that’s in PCB boards.

PCB 板中的情况是一样的。

It’s the same substrate that’s in every circuit board.

每个电路板中的基板都是相同的。

We know it’s strong, it’s good with electricity only we get big pieces of it and machine it.

我们知道它很坚固，用电很好，只有我们得到大块并加工它。

But even in the end, you can see the bolts halfway through.

但即使到了最后，你也能看到一半的螺栓。

There’s nine bolts in the middle there.

中间有九个螺栓。

2:01:52 The standard piece of G10 was not big enough to fit the end of the machine, so we could have had one custom manufacturer manufacture a brand-new piece of a custom size, build a new mold and a new machine.

G10 的标准件不够大，无法安装到机器的末端，因此我们可以让一家定制制造商制造定制尺寸的全新件，建造新模具和新机器。

It would’ve taken, I don’t remember anymore now, but probably on the order of usually these are about six to 12 months, or I could go to a supplier off the shelf, have that delivered in a week, and now machine it with all the bolts in between.

我现在不记得了，但可能需要大约六到十二个月的时间，或者我可以去找一家现成的供应商，一周内交货，然后用所有螺栓进行加工。

2:02:18 And then in-house, have the G10 machine shop that can now machine the bolt holes to actually bolt those pieces together.

然后在内部，拥有 G10 机械车间，现在可以加工螺栓孔，将这些部件实际用螺栓固定在一起。

That took extra engineering and having really clever and brilliant mechanical and structural engineers to figure out how to do that and still meet the needs of the fusion system.

这需要额外的工程设计，并需要非常聪明和出色的机械和结构工程师来弄清楚如何做到这一点，同时仍然满足融合系统的需求。

That’s what we try.

这就是我们尝试的。

That’s the kinds of teams we try to build at Helion, is folks that want to really get their hands dirty, get hands on, build things, move quickly.

这就是我们在 Helion 试图建立的团队，他们想要真正亲自动手、亲自动手、构建东西、快速行动。

And everywhere you can, without sacrificing quality or safety, take shortcuts.

在不牺牲质量或安全的情况下，您可以在任何地方走捷径。

That’s the name of the game.

这就是游戏的名称。

We’ve got to get fusion online as soon as possible.

我们必须尽快实现在线融合。

Yeah, this is really exciting and really inspiring.

是的，这确实令人兴奋且鼓舞人心。

2:02:57 So I have to ask then, what timeline do you think, like first working, out there, nuclear fusion power plant?

所以我不得不问，你认为什么时间表，比如首先在外面建造核聚变发电厂？

When do you think?

你什么时候想？

Yeah, so what we’ve been able to do is rapidly build, every few years, bring a new fusion system online.

是的，所以我们能够做的就是快速构建，每隔几年，上线一个新的融合系统。

2:03:10 In 2023, we signed a deal with Microsoft to build a power plant for Microsoft for one of their data centers.

2023 年，我们与微软签署了一项协议，为微软的一个数据中心建造一座发电厂。

This is a power plant that is plugged into the grid, generating electricity from fusion, with a very tough, ambitious timeline of 2028 for the first electrons from that power plant.

这是一座接入电网的发电厂，通过聚变发电，该发电厂的第一批电子发电的时间表非常艰巨且雄心勃勃，计划在 2028 年完成。

And that power plant will be powering a data center.

该发电厂将为数据中心供电。

That power plant will be powering the grid that the data center is plugged into.

该发电厂将为数据中心接入的电网供电。

2:03:43 We can get into the details of how the power grid works and such, but yes, Microsoft will be buying the power from that power plant.

我们可以了解电网如何工作等细节，但是，微软将从该发电厂购买电力。

Props to Microsoft for creating a hard deadline.

支持微软设定硬性截止日期。

2:03:55 I love it.

我喜欢它。

They are.

他们是。

2:03:58 They are.

他们是。

It is daily that we think about that deadline.

我们每天都会考虑这个最后期限。

We had been working with them on and off through all of those machines, through Grande, Venti, Trenta, so they had seen us build, hit milestones, show that we can do fusion, scale up by orders of magnitude, and then access these advanced fusion fuels.

我们一直在通过 Grande、Venti、Trenta 等所有这些机器与他们断断续续地合作，所以他们看到我们建造、达到里程碑、表明我们可以进行聚变、按数量级扩大规模，然后获得这些先进的聚变燃料。

So they had seen all of those things and seen the manufacturing we built.

所以他们已经看到了所有这些东西并看到了我们建造的制造业。

We’re already, right now, building the manufacturing to support that power plant.

我们现在已经在建设制造工厂来支持该发电厂。

We’re doing that today.

我们今天正在这样做。

We started two years ago on doing the work around siting, around the interconnects.

两年前，我们开始围绕选址、互连进行工作。

How do you plug fusion in?

如何插入融合？

What does it look like?

它看起来像什么？

How do you site it?

你如何定位它？

What are the environmental consequences?

环境后果是什么？

Who’s going to regulate it?

谁来监管它？

All of those things.

所有这些事情。

2:04:45 So we’ve spent a lot of time already and we’re on our way, and it’s going to be hard.

所以我们已经花了很多时间，我们已经上路了，这会很困难。

No joke about it.

这不是开玩笑。

This is tough, and it’s something that I think about every day.

这很难，也是我每天都在思考的事情。

I’m sure you’ve had a bunch of people probably still tell you that this is a pipe dream, that this is impossible.

我相信很多人可能仍然告诉你这是一个白日梦，这是不可能的。

2:04:55 Are there days that you and the team think that this is indeed impossible, then you wake up the next day and you’re like, “All right, we’re going to do it anyway.”

是否有那么几天，你和团队认为这确实是不可能的，然后你第二天醒来就会想，“好吧，无论如何我们都会这么做。”

I mean, that’s the thought process.

我的意思是，这就是思考过程。

2:05:08 That’s the mentality.

这就是心态。

We’re going to do it anyway, let’s go do it.

无论如何我们都会这么做，让我们去做吧。

The world needs it.

世界需要它。

There’s no physics reason this can’t be done.

没有任何物理原因无法做到这一点。

Now it’s a question of how fast can you build it?

现在的问题是你能以多快的速度构建它？

And can you engineer it to be as efficient as it needs to be?

您能否将其设计得尽可能高效？

And those are…

这些是……

engineering and manufacturing are ridiculously hard challenges.

工程和制造是极其艰巨的挑战。

So do not short sell that.

所以不要卖空它。

But that’s the goal, and that’s what we get up every day thinking about.

但这就是目标，也是我们每天起床思考的问题。

This is something I was actually just thinking about and talking with some of my team in the last few days.

实际上，这是我过去几天一直在思考并与我的团队中的一些成员讨论的事情。

We certainly have people that say like, “No, this can never be done,” and we had that before.

当然有人会说，“不，这永远不可能完成”，我们以前也有过这样的经历。

2:05:46 We had that at the very beginning of, “I want to go merge these plasmas together,” and folks said, “Nope, that can never happen,” and we went off and did it.

我们一开始就有这样的想法，“我想将这些等离子体合并在一起，”人们说，“不，这永远不会发生，”然后我们就开始这么做了。

And, “You can’t compress an FRC because it’s unstable.” In fact, I actually still hear that.

而且，“你不能压缩 FRC，因为它不稳定。”事实上，我现在仍然听到这样的说法。

“FRCs are unstable.” And I say, “Yes, I know.

“FRC 不稳定。”我说：“是的，我知道。

Now let me introduce you to S* over E, and 20 years of studies on what we know about that and how we can combat that.” And so we’ve been able to show, through lots of skepticism, that we can still build and iterate.

现在让我向您介绍 S* 而非 E，以及 20 年来我们对此的了解以及我们如何应对这一问题的研究。”因此，尽管有很多怀疑，我们仍然能够证明我们仍然可以构建和迭代。

And there are things I don’t know.

还有一些我不知道的事情。

Let’s just be totally honest.

让我们完全诚实吧。

As we’re going to go build these things, we’re going to discover new hard problems.

当我们要建造这些东西时，我们会发现新的难题。

If we’re not doing our job, if we’re not discovering new hard problems, we probably didn’t push hard enough.

如果我们没有做好我们的工作，如果我们没有发现新的难题，那么我们可能没有付出足够的努力。

2:06:30 We probably didn’t push fast enough.

我们可能推进得不够快。

And I think that’s really critical: that we build the team and we do the hiring to make sure that everybody is doing their problem.

我认为这非常重要：我们建立团队并进行招聘，以确保每个人都在解决他们的问题。

Now that doesn’t mean it’s not a hard challenge, and to keep folks motivated.

但这并不意味着这不是一个艰巨的挑战，并且要保持人们的积极性。

Helion now is over 500 people, but when we built Trenta, we were 50 people.

Helion 现在有 500 多人，但当我们建立 Trenta 时，我们有 50 人。

Okay.

好的。

So now there are over 300 humans working at Helion that didn’t see us build a system from a computer model, bring it online, and do fusion with it.

现在，Helion 有 300 多名员工，他们没有看到我们根据计算机模型构建系统、将其上线并与其进行融合。

2:06:56 But even already for Polaris, there are lots of humans that started for our seventh-generation system.

但即使已经有了北极星，也有很多人开始了我们的第七代系统。

When we were running Trenta, doing fusion, they were able to see that, see the measurements, know we were doing fusion.

当我们运行 Trenta 进行融合时，他们能够看到这一点，看到测量结果，知道我们正在进行融合。

But yet, this next machine was just a simulation.

但是，下一台机器只是一个模拟。

And so, seeing that get built, seeing that, it’s just awe-inspiring for folks.

因此，看到它建成，看到它，对人们来说真是令人敬畏。

And I’ll tell you, the first time that it comes online and flashes pink and you see that fusion glow, it’s awe-inspiring.

我会告诉你，当它第一次上线并闪烁粉红色时，你会看到融合的光芒，这是令人惊叹的。

It’s awe-inspiring.

这是令人敬畏的。

I love that.

我喜欢那个。

I’ve, uh-

我已经，呃-

The fu- the fusion glow, yeah.

fu-融合辉光，是的。

2:07:42 Yeah.

是的。

Everybody changes their Windows desktop backgrounds to now the fusion background, the plasma glow.

每个人都将 Windows 桌面背景更改为现在的融合背景，即等离子辉光。

So how can you actually see it?

那么如何才能真正看到它呢？

A couple of things.

有几件事。

2:07:53 So one, to get access to it, we have windows.

因此，为了访问它，我们有窗口。

We have small windows all the way around, that we look into it with cameras, spectroscopy, lasers, other kinds of scientific diagnostics that we use to measure.

我们周围都有小窗户，我们用相机、光谱仪、激光和其他用于测量的科学诊断手段来观察它。

And so you see the light emission through that.

所以你可以看到它发出的光。

But also, it’s very bright.

而且，它非常明亮。

2:08:11 And so, the actual vacuum vessels themselves that we use are ceramic.

因此，我们实际使用的真空容器本身是陶瓷的。

There are some versions of silicon and oxygen, typically quartz, but there’s also some other sintered materials.

有一些硅和氧的版本，通常是石英，但也有一些其他烧结材料。

And it’s so bright that they can shine through those materials, and so what you see is you see the light of not fusion.

而且它是如此明亮，以至于它们可以透过这些材料发光，所以你看到的是不是融合的光。

When fusion’s happening, thermonuclear fusion is so hot that the light is in the X-ray spectrum, and the human eye can’t see that.

当核聚变发生时，热核聚变温度非常高，发出的光位于 X 射线光谱中，而人眼无法看到。

But as your ice-cold, one-million-degree plasma, when you’re just getting started, it’s emitting photons in a range and light in a range that humans can see.

但作为冰冷、百万度的等离子体，当你刚刚开始时，它会发射人类可见范围内的光子和光。

And so you see that bright, purple, fuchsia color.

所以你会看到明亮的紫色紫红色。

And this would be, if you’re doing actual cameras, this would be, like, extremely high-speed cameras, that kinda thing?

如果你正在制作实际的相机，这将是，就像极高​​速相机之类的东西？

We have high-speed ones and low-speed ones.

我们有高速的和低速的。

2:08:56 The traditional SLR cameras, which are the ones that represent the right color, all they catch is the light, the integrated light, the flash.

传统的单反相机，它们代表正确的颜色，它们捕捉到的只是光线，集成光，闪光灯。

They don’t know, they can’t see the plasma forming, accelerating, compressing.

他们不知道，他们看不到等离子体的形成、加速、压缩。

They can’t see any of those things.

他们看不到任何这些东西。

They just see all of it integrated into one bright flash.

他们只是看到所有这些都融入到一道明亮的闪光中。

But the high-speed cameras, they can see that.

但是高速摄像机，他们可以看到这一点。

And so the high-speed cameras we can use to actually measure that.

因此我们可以使用高速摄像机来实际测量它。

In fact, we put special filters on them to measure different wavelengths of light, so we can tell is it the hydrogen, is it the helium, is it the helium-3?

事实上，我们在它们上面放了特殊的滤光片来测量不同波长的光，这样我们就可以分辨出它是氢、氦还是氦3？

Who’s emitting the light?

谁在发出光？

When are they emitting?

他们什么时候发射？

What particles are emitting the light and when?

什么粒子在何时发光？

2:09:38 And so by using those advanced diagnostics we can now take movies of that, though it’s not as great as just seeing that flash.

因此，通过使用这些先进的诊断技术，我们现在可以拍摄视频，尽管它不如仅仅看到闪光那么好。

Yeah, I mean, it’s beautiful, right, that human beings are able to create something like that.

是的，我的意思是，人类能够创造出这样的东西，这真是太美了，对吧。

2:09:46 It’s truly beautiful.

真的很漂亮。

Just out of curiosity, are there some interesting intricacies connecting a nuclear fusion power plant to the power grid?

出于好奇，将核聚变发电厂连接到电网是否有一些有趣的复杂之处？

Like, are there some constraints to the old-school nature of the power grid in, let’s say, in the United States?

例如，在美国，老式电网是否存在一些限制？

Like, how do you get that Microsoft thing you mentioned, how do you get from the nuclear fusion power plant to a computer with some GPUs?

比如，你如何获得你提到的微软的东西，如何从核聚变发电厂获得带有 GPU 的计算机？

How do we make that connection?

我们如何建立这种联系？

Or is that a trivial thing?

或者说这是一件微不足道的事情？

None of this is trivial, but there are, I think, simple ways, and there are some really interesting engineering ways to do this.

这些都不是微不足道的，但我认为有一些简单的方法，并且有一些非常有趣的工程方法可以做到这一点。

2:10:20 So just from the fundamental basics as we’re doing fusion, we push back on the magnetic field.

因此，从我们进行聚变的基本原理出发，我们会向后推磁场。

We recharge these capacitors that start where the electricity started from.

我们对这些电容器进行充电，这些电容器从电力的来源开始。

And that electricity then sits on a capacitor at high voltage, DC voltage, that’s steady.

然后，电力以高压、直流电压储存在电容器上，这是稳定的。

At that point, it’s reasonably easy to make 60 hertz power, make traditional AC power.

到那时，制造 60 赫兹电源、制造传统交流电源就相当容易了。

It’s the same way as you can take electricity in a battery and use an inverter and just invert that to AC power.

这与您可以将电池中的电力并使用逆变器并将其逆变为交流电的方式相同。

And large-scale grid inverters, we know how to do pretty well.

而大型并网逆变器，我们知道如何做得相当好。

2:11:04 One of the unique things about a pulsed version of this, because it’s pulsed at a repetition rate between one and ten times a second, we can adjust the power output.

脉冲版本的独特之处之一是，因为它以每秒一到十次的重复频率产生脉冲，所以我们可以调整功率输出。

And so as the grid needs more power, we can actually dial it up and down.

因此，当电网需要更多电力时，我们实际上可以调高或调低它。

And we’ve been able to demonstrate that with our fusion systems.

我们已经能够通过我们的融合系统证明这一点。

The smaller ones, the smaller plasma systems, we’ve gone from zero, from off, to all the way to 100 times a second, and shown we can do 100 hertz operation.

较小的系统、较小的等离子系统，我们从零到关闭，一直到每秒 100 次，并证明我们可以进行 100 赫兹的操作。

In fact, that system we ran for over a billion operations, and just ran it steady all day long.

事实上，我们运行的该系统已经运行了超过十亿次操作，而且一整天都稳定运行。

So each individual pulse is independent in some sense.

因此，每个单独的脉冲在某种意义上都是独立的。

Each individual pulse is different.

每个个体的脉搏都是不同的。

2:11:39 Where you put in your fuel, you do fusion, you exhaust it…

在你放入燃料的地方，你进行聚变，然后耗尽它......

Cool

酷

…through those pumps from eBay, and then power output and electricity output.

……通过 eBay 上的那些泵，然后输出功率和电力。

Oh, wow.

哦，哇。

But there’s probably some more clever ways to do this, and when we founded Helion, the goal was to build low-cost baseload electricity.

但可能有一些更聪明的方法可以做到这一点，当我们创立 Helion 时，目标是建设低成本的基本负载电力。

2:11:51 And what we started to see working with Microsoft and others now, is that data centers are going to be one of the biggest power needs in the future.

我们现在开始与微软和其他公司合作，看到数据中心将成为未来最大的电力需求之一。

And we know that’s coming up.

我们知道这即将发生。

And what’s really unique is that power in this form is direct recovery, not the steam turbine part, but direct electricity.

而真正独特的是，这种形式的电力是直接回收的，不是汽轮机部分，而是直接发电。

Electricity is already DC, which is steady, which is what computers really want anyway.

电力已经是直流电，稳定，这正是计算机真正想要的。

And so are there really unique ways to take DC power sitting on this capacitor, and rather than going AC to the grid and having all these transmission losses, just going direct DC to the data center?

那么，是否真的有独特的方法可以将直流电传输到该电容器上，而不是将交流电输送到电网并产生所有这些传输损耗，而是直接将直流电输送到数据中心呢？

Can you plug right in?

可以直接插上吗？

2:12:38 And so that’s some of the things that my team is looking at now, is, can you do that direct DC conversion at super high efficiencies and run those GPUs directly?

这就是我的团队现在正在研究的一些事情，就是，你能以超高效率进行直接直流转换并直接运行这些 GPU 吗？

That would be really powerful if we could figure out how to do it.

如果我们能弄清楚如何做到这一点，那将非常强大。

But those are some of the things that I think there might be some unique ways that fusion and data centers can really couple together.

但我认为融合和数据中心可能有一些独特的方式可以真正结合在一起。

There’s a whole cooling part to it too.

它还有一个完整的冷却部分。

Most of my cooling is cooling semiconductors and cooling power switching, just like a data center.

我的大部分冷却是冷却半导体和冷却电源开关，就像数据中心一样。

So there’s a lot of interesting engineering ways that we can bring those two together.

因此，我们可以通过很多有趣的工程方法将这两者结合在一起。

So a deeper integration between the power plant and the thing that it’s powering.

因此，发电厂和它所供电的物体之间进行了更深入的集成。

2:13:11 And it does seem like in the future, quite possibly, a lot of the energy that’s needed will be for compute, for AI-related applications.

看起来，未来，很有可能，所需的大量能源将用于计算、人工智能相关的应用程序。

So if you just look out into the future 10, 20, 50 years from now, do you see nuclear fusion as a thing that powers these gigantic data centers of millions of GPUs?

因此，如果您展望 10、20、50 年后的未来，您是否认为核聚变会为这些拥有数百万个 GPU 的巨大数据中心提供动力？

Just basically, the surface of the Earth covered in compute and nuclear fusion power plants.

基本上，地球表面覆盖着计算和核聚变发电厂。

Maybe that’s 100 years out.

也许那是100年后的事了。

So when I talk to AI experts, they talk pretty routinely about the power needs for AI.

因此，当我与人工智能专家交谈时，他们经常谈论人工智能的电力需求。

2:13:55 And in fact, in the same way in manufacturing that the cost of any one thing asymptotes to the raw material, for AI, the cost of computation asymptotes to the power…

事实上，就像在制造业中任何一件东西的成本都渐近于原材料一样，对于人工智能来说，计算成本也渐近于幂......

…To the cost of the electricity.

……电费。

And even more, that electricity’s concentrated.

更重要的是，电力是集中的。

It’s in that AI data center, that brain where all the power is, and you really want a lot of high-energy density.

人工智能数据中心是所有能量所在的大脑，你确实需要大量的高能量密度。

You want power generation right there…

您想要就地发电……

2:14:32 …on-site.

…现场。

So it seems like, just take those two facts, a really nice match between fusion, which is baseload, high energy density, can be sited most places, and a data center, which is going to be high energy requirements in a local location, and large amounts of it.

因此，看起来，只要考虑这两个事实，融合（基本负载，高能量密度，可以位于大多数地方）和数据中心（本地位置的能源需求很高，并且需要大量能源）之间非常匹配。

There’s been predictions recently from energy institutes that suggest we will have growth that, rather than a 2% growth per year in electricity, may be a 4 or a 6% growth in electricity due to data center use.

能源机构最近预测，由于数据中心的使用，我们的电力增长将不是每年 2%，而是可能增长 4% 或 6%。

I think that is probably wildly underestimating where we’re moving.

我认为这可能大大低估了我们的发展方向。

And, and so-

还有，还有这样的——

Oh, man.

哦，伙计。

And so the idea that AI can grow human cognition, and our ability to solve problems, we can’t let it be limited by power.

因此，人工智能可以提高人类认知以及我们解决问题的能力的想法，我们不能让它受到权力的限制。

2:15:14 And so I’m going to push as hard as I can so that that’s not the limit.

所以我会尽我所能地努力，这样就不会达到极限。

Do you ever think about like 2050 or something like that?

你有没有想过2050年之类的事情？

2:15:30 I know you’re focused on a few years out, just getting…

我知道你专注于几年后，只是......

A fusion power plant working.

正在运行的聚变发电厂。

But do you ever think about a longer-term future?

但你有没有想过更长远的未来？

By what year do you think there’ll be over 1000 nuclear fusion power plants?

您认为到哪一年将会有超过 1000 座核聚变发电厂？

So I tell the team that if we demonstrate fusion one time and that’s it, then we failed.

所以我告诉团队，如果我们只展示了一次融合，那么我们就失败了。

2:15:50 But that’s not enough.

但这还不够。

The universe is powered by fusion.

宇宙是由聚变提供动力的。

Humans need to be harnessing this, and can harness this for our society, for the good of society, for the good of technology.

人类需要利用它，并且可以利用它来造福我们的社会、造福社会、造福技术。

And so that’s something that we push towards.

这就是我们推动的目标。

And in fact, it’s baked into how we design these machines.

事实上，它已融入我们设计这些机器的方式中。

2:16:23 Coils are mass produced.

线圈已批量生产。

Capacitors are mass produced, and we make them.

电容器是批量生产的，我们制造。

All across the board is thinking about not what the next system’s going to be, but making sure we’re building the manufacturing and the infrastructure to build all of those systems.

全面考虑的不是下一个系统将会是什么，而是确保我们正在构建制造和基础设施来构建所有这些系统。

So we had a call from the White House a number of years ago for the Bold Decadal Study in Fusion of how do we get fusion.

因此，几年前，我们接到白宫的电话，要求我们进行大胆的十年核聚变研究，研究如何实现核聚变。

And it was Helion and a variety of other companies from the fusion industry.

这是 Helion 和来自聚变行业的其他各种公司。

And it’s pretty awesome to be able to say there’s a fusion industry now.

现在能够说存在一个融合产业真是太棒了。

That it’s not, it’s not-

事实并非如此——

Nice

尼斯

just a one-off thing, or there’s a fusion experiment or somebody has a prototype.

只是一次性的事情，或者有一个聚变实验，或者有人有一个原型。

2:16:55 But, like, there’s an industry.

但是，就像，有一个行业。

That Helion has competitors.

Helion 有竞争对手。

That’s, that’s great.

就是这样，太好了。

I’ve never heard anyone so excited to have competitors.

我从来没有听说过有人对竞争对手如此兴奋。

2:17:04 But yes, that’s like a serious thing.

但是，是的，这就像一件严肃的事情。

That’s a real possibility.

这是一个真正的可能性。

Yeah.

是的。

And the goal was, how do we not just demonstrate fusion in the next decade, but meaningfully deploy it and start to answer?

我们的目标是，我们如何在未来十年不仅展示核聚变，而且有意义地部署它并开始回答？

2:17:12 We have 4000 gigawatts of installed fossil fuel capacity.

我们拥有 4000 吉瓦的化石燃料装机容量。

2:17:25 How do we, how do we start replacing that with fusion in a meaningful way?

我们如何、如何开始以有意义的方式用融合取代它？

And how do we get to not just making a generator every few years?

我们怎样才能不只是每隔几年制造一台发电机呢？

But we want a factory, a Gigafactory of these fusion generators rolling off the line, one a month, one a week, one a day.

但我们想要一座工厂，一座将这些核聚变发电机投入生产的超级工厂，每月一台、每周一台、每天一台。

That, that’s the kind of plans that I task my supply chain team with.

这就是我给我的供应链团队分配的计划。

Like, how do you do this?

就像，你怎么做到这一点？

How do we actually go build this?

我们实际上如何构建这个？

How do we go build a Gigafactory so we can have 50 megawatt generators coming off the line, being deployed on a truck, and then driving off the factory every day?

我们如何建造一个超级工厂，以便我们可以将 50 兆瓦的发电机下线，部署在卡车上，然后每天从工厂开出？

And it’s a tough challenge.

这是一个艰巨的挑战。

I see what we’ve, what others have been able to do in rockets, in electric vehicles, turning around huge factories.

我看到了我们以及其他人在火箭、电动汽车、扭转大型工厂方面所取得的成就。

2:18:12 We know this can be done, and so for fusion, the call is there, and the market is there too.

我们知道这是可以做到的，因此对于融合来说，呼声就在那里，市场也在那里。

If you can get electricity generators cheap enough, then it’s worth doing.

如果你能买到足够便宜的发电机，那么这是值得的。

Yeah.

是的。

2:18:23 I mean, all of this is really exciting and inspiring what you’re doing.

我的意思是，所有这一切都非常令人兴奋和鼓舞你所做的事情。

And obviously the world needs it, and the more cheap energy we have of this kind, that we described, clean, and it’s not constrained to geographical locations and so on, first of all, that alleviates a lot of the tension in geopolitics.

显然，世界需要它，我们所拥有的这种更便宜的能源，我们所描述的，清洁的，而且不受地理位置等的限制，首先，这减轻了地缘政治的紧张局势。

But second of all, it enables a lot of the technological breakthroughs on the AI side.

但其次，它实现了人工智能方面的许多技术突破。

On all the different things that we use compute for.

关于我们使用计算的所有不同事物。

It’s really, really exciting.

这真的非常非常令人兴奋。

So yeah, I hope there’s like millions of them in the coming decades.

所以，是的，我希望在未来几十年里会有数百万这样的人。

And so if we can get to that, if we can get to making a generator a day, you’re not- Now talking about hundreds a year, and you’re deploying them.

因此，如果我们能够做到这一点，如果我们能够每天制造一台发电机，那么您就不会——现在谈论的是每年数百台，并且您正在部署它们。

2:19:08 And deploying them is also hard at this scale.

在这种规模下部署它们也很困难。

How do you go and deploy power plants and deploy generators at this scale and do it quickly?

如何快速部署如此规模的发电厂和发电机？

Interestingly, data centers are a little bit of a nicer challenge in that way, because we wouldn’t build one 50-megawatt system and have to go build a site for it.

有趣的是，数据中心在这方面是一个更好的挑战，因为我们不会构建一个 50 兆瓦的系统，并且必须为其构建一个站点。

We’d build a site and put 100 of them on that site and have large amounts of power for that large data center.

我们会建立一个站点，并在该站点上放置 100 个数据中心，并为该大型数据中心提供大量电力。

So that in some ways is actually the chicken and egg problem of how do you go deploy hundreds or thousands of fusion generators.

因此，在某些方面，这实际上是如何部署数百或数千个聚变发电机的先有鸡还是先有蛋的问题。

Data centers are an interesting application where very immediately you need a lot of power in a very small area.

数据中心是一个有趣的应用，您立即需要在很小的区域内提供大量电力。

And you can go, you can go do that.

你可以去，你可以去做那件事。

Now, what does that mean?

现在，这意味着什么？

That means I’m going to need more than two conveyor belts, that’s for sure.

这意味着我将需要两个以上的传送带，这是肯定的。

Yeah, manufacturing is really hard.

是的，制造业真的很难。

2:19:52 But like you said, the fascinating thing is it’s hard, but as you’re doing it, you figure out all the other things: the science, the physics, and everything.

但就像你说的，令人着迷的是它很难，但当你这样做时，你会弄清楚所有其他的事情：科学、物理和一切。

The innovation is accelerated when you have to manufacture at scale.

当您必须大规模制造时，创新就会加速。

It’s actually fascinating to watch.

观看起来确实很有趣。

You see that in the space industry as well.

在航天工业中也能看到这一点。

When do we humans get to Kardashev Type One civilization status?

我们人类什么时候才能达到卡尔达肖夫一类文明状态？

And when do we get to a Kardashev Type Two?

我们什么时候会出现卡尔达肖夫二型？

So the Kardashev scale: a Kardashev Type One civilization is when humans are either catching or generating as much power as what’s incident on the Earth from the sun.

因此，卡尔达肖夫等级：卡尔达肖夫一型文明是指人类捕获或产生的能量与地球上从太阳发出的能量一样多。

2:20:25 Type Two is the next big one, where you’re catching as much energy from all the way around the sun, so massive amounts of energy.

第二类是下一个重要的类型，你可以从太阳周围捕获尽可能多的能量，如此大量的能量。

A lot of times, people talk about it as incident, as in you had solar panels the size of the entire planet blocking all of the sun.

很多时候，人们将其视为事件，就像整个星球大小的太阳能电池板挡住了所有太阳一样。

But I think really, you should be thinking about it as what can we generate?

但我认为，你真的应该考虑一下我们能产生什么？

What can we make here on Earth?

我们在地球上能做什么？

And what we know is that, you know, we’re only a fraction right now of Kardashev Type One, and we’ve got some work to do.

我们所知道的是，你知道，我们现在只是卡尔达肖夫一型的一小部分，我们还有一些工作要做。

And there are not a lot of technologies that can get there, just from the point of view of the fuel.

仅从燃料的角度来看，能够实现这一目标的技术并不多。

Right.

正确的。

But if, as some research says, that there’s 100 million to a billion years of fusion fuel on the Earth, we have room to go, and that’s at today’s use.

但如果像一些研究所说的那样，地球上有 1 亿到 10 亿年的聚变燃料，那么我们还有空间，而且这就是今天的使用量。

2:21:14 So 100 times today’s use, we still have tons of fuel.

所以今天使用 100 次，我们仍然有大量燃料。

Let’s go do it.

我们去做吧。

And what does that unlock?

这能解锁什么？

What does it unlock to have power 100 times the output that we actually do here on Earth right now?

拥有比我们现在在地球上实际输出功率 100 倍的功率，它能解锁什么？

And I think that’s pretty transformational.

我认为这是非常具有变革性的。

Do we have those huge AI data centers?

我们有那些巨大的人工智能数据中心吗？

Do we have brains that can now think at rapid speeds and now innovate?

我们的大脑现在可以快速思考并创新吗？

I think that’s a pretty powerful future.

我认为这是一个非常强大的未来。

Yeah, I can just imagine a giant AI brain and rockets just constantly shipping more and more humans out into space, into colonizing space, and we’re expanding out into the universe.

是的，我可以想象一个巨大的人工智能大脑和火箭不断地将越来越多的人类送入太空，进入太空殖民，而我们正在向宇宙扩张。

2:21:48 I mean, it’s a beautiful…

我的意思是，这是一个美丽的……

obviously there’s a lot to be concerned about.

显然有很多事情需要担心。

Technology in itself is always a double-edged sword.

技术本身始终是一把双刃剑。

There’s always a concern that we humans, in the power we create, will also destroy ourselves in obvious ways and less than obvious ways.

人们总是担心，我们人类在我们创造的力量中，也会以明显和不明显的方式毁灭我们自己。

I’ve been spending a lot of time in nature.

我花了很多时间在大自然中。

2:22:25 And you become distinctly aware that there’s something truly special about the simplicity, the balance that is achieved by nature.

你会清楚地意识到，简单和自然实现的平衡确实很特别。

In some sense, we disturb that balance by creating sophisticated technologies.

从某种意义上说，我们通过创造复杂的技术来破坏这种平衡。

But in another sense, we’re building something in the spirit of nature that’s more and more beautiful and allows us humans to flourish in a richer and richer way.

但从另一种意义上说，我们正在本着自然精神建造一些越来越美丽的东西，让我们人类以越来越丰富的方式蓬勃发展。

So, a double-edged sword.

所以，一把双刃剑。

I think a lot about what vast amounts of low-cost energy, low-cost electricity enable, and how that works with nature.

我思考了很多关于大量低成本能源、低成本电力的作用，以及它们如何与自然相互作用。

2:22:52 If you have power—and this is why, one of the reasons we love fusion—it’s energy-dense.

如果你有力量——这就是为什么，我们喜欢聚变的原因之一——它是能量密集的。

So a 50-megawatt facility, we believe, fits in a 27,000-square-foot building, on the order of an acre, for 50 megawatts.

因此，我们认为，一座 27,000 平方英尺的建筑（大约一英亩）可容纳 50 兆瓦的设施。

Compare that to solar, which would be 2,000 acres, at least in Seattle.

与太阳能相比，至少在西雅图，太阳能占地 2,000 英亩。

And what you can do there is transformational.

你可以在那里做的事情是变革性的。

And a lot of folks talk about desalination and clean water so that we can be in places where there’s not a lot of water and those things.

很多人都在谈论海水淡化和清洁水，这样我们就可以去那些没有太多水和这些东西的地方。

I actually think about food, ironically, is that how much of the Earth’s surface that used to be nature is now farmland.

具有讽刺意味的是，我实际上想到的是食物，地球表面曾经是自然的地方现在有多少是农田。

2:23:45 And we need it.

我们需要它。

We’re going to grow food because humans need to eat, and that’s really critical, but it’s about five feet tall all over the Earth.

我们要种植粮食，因为人类需要吃饭，这非常重要，但地球上的粮食大约有五英尺高。

Why can’t you do it at 500 feet?

为什么不能在 500 英尺的高度上做到这一点？

Why can’t you build a building where you’re actually growing plants inside?

为什么你不能建造一座在里面真正种植植物的建筑物呢？

I spend a lot of time thinking about growing plants, ironically, at high densities of food, so that we can eat and we can exist and we can coexist in a way that’s energy-dense and rich.

讽刺的是，我花了很多时间思考在高食物密度下种植植物，这样我们就可以吃东西，我们可以存在，我们可以以一种能量密集和丰富的方式共存。

You mentioned actually going to space.

你提到实际上去太空。

How do we go to space now?

我们现在如何去太空？

We take methane fuels or hydrogen fuels and we burn them and we launch a rocket.

我们使用甲烷燃料或氢燃料，燃烧它们，然后发射火箭。

2:24:24 There are all kinds of cool beamed rocket technologies that I looked at early in my career, where you can beam microwaves, and so you have a microwave craft that doesn’t have to burn any fuel.

我在职业生涯早期研究过各种冷光束火箭技术，可以发射微波，因此您拥有不需要燃烧任何燃料的微波飞船。

And so if you have really dense, really good power on Earth, you can beam it to that microwave craft.

因此，如果地球上有非常密集、非常好的能量，您可以将其发射到微波飞船上。

It can now use electricity as its rocket fuel.

它现在可以使用电力作为火箭燃料。

And so there are some really powerful, interesting things you can do.

因此，您可以做一些非常强大、有趣的事情。

Even deep space, it gets also more enabling, but even just launching from Earth.

即使是深空，它也变得更加可行，但即使只是从地球发射。

2:24:55 And so I think it opens up things we don’t really even think about, but it’s just been theorized, “Wow, if I had massive amounts of power in a small place that is low cost, this is what it could do.” But I’m excited by what it can unlock that we can even think about now, but even what we can’t think about or we don’t know yet.

所以我认为它开启了我们甚至没有真正考虑过的事情，但它只是被理论化了，“哇，如果我在一个低成本的小地方拥有大量的电力，这就是它可以做的事情。”但我对它能够解开的东西感到兴奋，这些东西我们现在甚至可以思考，但甚至我们无法思考或我们还不知道。

Since you mentioned propulsion, is there some interesting use, possible use of nuclear fusion in propulsion, whether it’s getting off of Earth or in going into deep space?

既然你提到了推进，那么核聚变在推进中是否有一些有趣的用途，可能的用途，无论是离开地球还是进入深空？

I mean, that’s …

我的意思是，那是……

2:25:26 Honestly, in a lot of ways, that’s how I got into fusion, is thinking about that intersection of energy and space travel.

老实说，在很多方面，这就是我进入聚变的方式，思考能源和太空旅行的交叉点。

2:25:35 When you are in the solar system around Earth’s orbit, collecting the sun’s energy makes a lot of sense.

当你处于绕地球轨道运行的太阳系时，收集太阳的能量很有意义。

It’s there, it’s free.

它就在那里，而且是免费的。

When you’re in space, you get a lot more of it because the atmosphere’s not blocking it.

当你在太空中时，你会得到更多的能量，因为大气层没有阻挡它。

That’s why spacecraft run on solar panels.

这就是航天器依靠太阳能电池板运行的原因。

But if you want to go further out, the sun’s irradiance falls off as R-squared, radius squared, and it’s a long way out there.

但如果你想走得更远，太阳的辐照度会以 R 平方、半径平方的形式衰减，而且距离很远。

It doesn’t take very long before there is not a lot of energy anywhere from the sun.

用不了多久，太阳的任何地方就不再有大量的能量了。

So you have to bring it with you, and in space, mass is expensive.

所以你必须随身携带它，而在太空中，质量是昂贵的。

Mass is hard.

弥撒很难。

That’s the rocket equation.

这就是火箭方程。

Being able to bring high energy density fuel is really exciting and that’s what fusion enables.

能够带来高能量密度燃料确实令人兴奋，这就是核聚变所实现的。

But here’s one of the challenges.

但这是挑战之一。

2:26:22 If you make electricity from fusion using a steam cycle, you need something cool.

如果您使用蒸汽循环通过聚变发电，则需要一些凉爽的东西。

You get hot water, you now have to be able to cool it.

你得到热水，现在必须能够冷却它。

In space, there’s nothing to cool.

在太空中，没有什么可以冷却的。

There’s no working fluid to cool off of.

没有工作流体可以冷却。

So, a lot of the steam-based systems in fusion don’t make sense for space.

因此，许多基于蒸汽的聚变系统对于太空来说没有意义。

That’s where some of this direct energy, this energy efficiency, matters.

这就是一些直接能源、能源效率的重要性。

It actually comes to some of the origin story of the team that founded Helion.

它实际上涉及创建 Helion 团队的一些起源故事。

Before spinning off Helion to focus only on fusion, we worked on a mix of things: advanced materials, rocket propulsion, fusion rockets, fusion materials, all of those things.

在剥离 Helion 并只专注于聚变之前，我们研究了多种事物：先进材料、火箭推进、聚变火箭、聚变材料，所有这些。

Nice.

好的。

One thing that people in the aerospace field know, especially if you’re in deep space, is you can’t waste anything.

航空航天领域的人们都知道一件事，特别是当你在外太空时，你不能浪费任何东西。

2:27:08 Every watt of electricity you make, you better use, because it was expensive to get it, or the solar panel.

你产生的每一瓦电，你最好使用，因为获得它或太阳能电池板的成本很高。

Every ounce of every joule of heat, every watt of heat you make, you have to reject with a radiator, and it’s super expensive and heavy.

你产生的每一盎司的每一焦耳的热量、每一瓦的热量，你都必须用散热器来拒绝，而且它非常昂贵和沉重。

So you build in space as efficient as possible.

因此，您可以尽可能高效地在空间中进行建造。

You recirculate your water and your air, and all of those things, you’re efficient.

你循环你的水和空气，所有这些，你都是高效的。

It’s something we brought into thinking about fusion energy efficiency, is that you want to…

这是我们考虑聚变能源效率的一个因素，你想要……

If my goal is to make the product, what’s the product?

如果我的目标是制造产品，那么产品是什么？

The product is electricity.

产品是电。

Don’t waste any of it.

不要浪费任何一个。

2:27:53 Recover every watt you can by recovering electricity directly.

通过直接回收电力来回收尽可能多的瓦特。

Recover every watt of electricity from the fusion process as efficiently as you can and you end up with, just like in space, systems that are smaller, have higher performance, and can deliver more, whatever the mission is.

尽可能高效地从聚变过程中回收每一瓦的电力，最终就像在太空中一样，系统更小、性能更高，并且无论任务是什么，都可以提供更多电力。

In our case, the mission is electricity.

就我们而言，使命是电力。

When you look out there at the stars, I’m really confused by what’s going on, because I think there is for sure thousands, if not millions, of advanced alien civilizations out there.

当你仰望星空时，我真的对正在发生的事情感到困惑，因为我认为那里肯定有数千甚至数百万先进的外星文明。

2:28:13 I’m really confused why we have not, in a definitive way, met any of them.

我真的很困惑为什么我们没有以明确的方式遇到他们中的任何一个。

So again, continuing the pothead questions, what energy source do you think they’re using?

再次，继续提问，你认为他们正在使用什么能源？

If what I’m saying is true, that there is alien civilizations out there, do you think it’s, like, pretty certain that they, in order to expand out into the cosmos, they would be using nuclear fusion?

如果我说的是真的，那里有外星文明，你认为他们为了扩张到宇宙中，会使用核聚变吗？

It’s hard to imagine anything else.

很难想象还有什么。

2:28:50 Right now, where does energy in the universe come from?

那么，宇宙中的能量从哪里来呢？

It comes from fusion.

它来自融合。

It comes from stars, and we know that that’s the process.

它来自星星，我们知道这就是这个过程。

So whether they’re harnessing the star itself, Kardashev Type II, or are they bringing fusion along because they want to go somewhere and they’re bringing it with them to go visit, I think that’s pretty likely.

因此，无论他们是利用卡尔达肖夫 II 型恒星本身，还是因为他们想去某个地方并带着它去参观而带来聚变，我认为这很有可能。

You bring up the Fermi paradox.

你提出了费米悖论。

2:29:20 How come we don’t see alien civilizations?

为什么我们没有看到外星文明？

Even if there’s an infinitesimally small chance that there is life on any one planet, and infinitesimally small that life grows into intelligent life, there are, however, almost infinite planets around infinite stars in our galaxy that have been around for vastly longer than we’ve been around.

即使任何一颗行星上存在生命的可能性极小，生命成长为智慧生命的可能性也极小，然而，在我们的银河系中，无数恒星周围存在着几乎无限的行星，它们的存在时间比我们存在的时间要长得多。

But we don’t see it, and I think that’s a question that many scientists and everyone has wrestled with over the years.

但我们没有看到它，我认为这是许多科学家和每个人多年来一直在努力解决的一个问题。

I mean, I’m very scared by the implications of that.

我的意思是，我对此的影响感到非常害怕。

2:29:50 The scary thing is that, to the point that we made earlier, as we become more and more technologically advanced, we end up destroying ourselves.

可怕的是，正如我们之前所指出的那样，随着我们的技术变得越来越先进，我们最终会毁灭自己。

Like, there could be things we unlock, like nuclear weapons, but plus plus.

就像，我们可能会解锁一些东西，比如核武器，但还有加号。

New things happen as you develop super advanced systems that have close to 100% probability to destroy ourselves, destroy any intelligent being.

当你开发超级先进的系统时，新的事情就会发生，这些系统有接近 100% 的可能性摧毁我们自己，摧毁任何智慧生物。

The kind of intelligent being that’s ambitious enough to keep innovating will eventually destroy itself, will be one explanation.

一种解释是，那种雄心勃勃、不断创新的智能生物最终会毁灭自己。

And that’s scary.

这很可怕。

That should be a sobering…

这应该是一个发人深省的……

that’s at least an inspiring, sobering thought to be careful with the stuff we create.

这至少是一个鼓舞人心、发人深省的想法，要谨慎对待我们创造的东西。

But I also just look at humans.

但我也只关注人类。

We create dangerous stuff.

我们制造危险的东西。

2:30:44 And then figure out, sometimes almost last minute, how to not destroy ourselves.

然后，有时几乎是在最后一刻，弄清楚如何不毁灭自己。

We’re good with deadlines.

我们很擅长遵守最后期限。

We’re good with deadlines.

我们很擅长遵守最后期限。

2:30:53 We…

我们…

And we’re good at surviving.

我们很擅长生存。

2:30:55 Life as we know it on Earth seems to find a way, and intelligent life as we know it, human life, seems to find a way.

我们所知道的地球上的生命似乎找到了出路，而我们所知的智慧生命，人类生命，似乎也找到了出路。

We do a lot of painful things along the way, but in the end, we somehow survive.

一路上我们做了很多痛苦的事情，但最终我们还是活了下来。

It’s interesting.

这很有趣。

There’s something in the human spirit…

人类精神中有一些东西……

…That allows us to survive.

……这让我们能够生存。

So I have a lot of optimism that the super powerful technologies that we create will eventually lead to us still surviving for thousands of years.

因此，我非常乐观地认为，我们创造的超强大技术最终将使我们仍然生存数千年。

But then, why are the aliens not here, though?

但是，为什么外星人不在这里呢？

So maybe it’s also possible that it’s really difficult to traverse space.

所以也许穿越太空真的很困难。

Maybe it really is that difficult.

也许真的有那么难。

The physics makes it not easy.

物理学使得这并不容易。

There’s a lot of space, and it’s just hard to travel.

空间很大，但出行很困难。

I think as I have gone further and further in building fusion systems that work, I’ve become more optimistic around the Fermi paradox specifically.

我认为，随着我在构建有效的聚变系统方面走得越来越远，我对费米悖论变得更加乐观。

2:31:45 And there are several of them.

其中有好几个。

I think you’re referring to something called the great filter.

我认为你指的是所谓的“伟大的过滤器”。

Something happens that filters out life.

某些事情的发生过滤掉了生命。

The dark forest is another philosophy around, “Sure, it’s out there, but everybody’s hiding ’cause they don’t want to be noticed.” But I think about something else, actually.

黑暗森林是另一种哲学，“当然，它就在那里，但每个人都躲起来，因为他们不想被注意到。”但实际上我在想别的事情。

The philosophy that I’ve always loved, and I’m going to pronounce this wrong, so I apologize, Matrioshka brains…

我一直喜欢的哲学，但我会发音错误，所以我道歉，Matrioshka 大脑......

2:32:22 …is that, and that’s Kardashev level two, that civilizations get so advanced, and they focus not on expanding physically and expanding in space and expanding their reach by planting flags in new places, but grow their cognition, grow their ability to think.

……这就是卡尔达舍夫的第二级，文明变得如此先进，他们不再关注物理扩张和空间扩张，也不是通过在新地方插旗来扩大影响范围，而是发展他们的认知，发展他们的思考能力。

They grow their brain.

他们的大脑得到了发展。

They grow their intellect.

他们增长智力。

And I feel like in the last few years, we’ve seen a massive trend that maybe this is the thing that happens, and that we do grow our intellect, and we grow the intellect of the species by AI and advanced tools.

我觉得在过去的几年里，我们看到了一个巨大的趋势，也许这就是正在发生的事情，我们确实增长了我们的智力，我们通过人工智能和先进的工具增长了物种的智力。

And as a society, we can just get smart enough that we don’t need to go plant those flags everywhere.

作为一个社会，我们可以变得足够聪明，我们不需要到处插这些旗帜。

2:33:10 And so the Matryoshka brain is a Dyson sphere where a civilization has covered the entire sun in essentially solar panels or collects its light in some way and uses all of that power to power intelligence, to power computers, and to power brains.

因此，俄罗斯套娃的大脑是一个戴森球，一个文明用太阳能电池板覆盖了整个太阳，或者以某种方式收集太阳的光，并利用所有这些能量来为智能、计算机和大脑提供动力。

And I think we’re a ways away from that, but maybe AI and fusion together gets you actually along that path sooner.

我认为我们离这个目标还有很长的路要走，但也许人工智能和融合在一起可以让你更快地走上这条道路。

And I’m excited by that outcome of the Fermi paradox.

我对费米悖论的结果感到兴奋。

And then at that point, those civilizations have a star that you can’t find anymore ’cause it’s all covered and are there thinking and growing their intellects rather than actually having to physically expand.

然后到那时，这些文明就有了一颗你再也找不到的恒星，因为它都被覆盖了，并且在那里思考和发展他们的智力，而不是实际上必须在物理上扩张。

Yeah.

是的。

2:33:52 Exploring and expanding in the realm of cognition and consciousness versus in the realm of space and time as we 21st-century colonizer humans think like.

正如我们 21 世纪的殖民者所思考的那样，在认知和意识领域探索和扩展，而不是在空间和时间领域探索和扩展。

Maybe 22nd-century humans will be thinking fundamentally differently.

也许22世纪的人类会有根本不同的思考方式。

Yeah, that’s a beautiful, beautiful vision of the future.

是的，这是对未来的美好愿景。

Speaking of beauty, you’ve been doing a lot of really interesting things in a lot of interesting disciplines.

说到美，你在很多有趣的学科中做了很多非常有趣的事情。

What to you is…

对你来说是什么……

ridiculous question, is the most beautiful idea in physics and nuclear engineering, in nuclear fusion and power plants?

可笑的问题，是物理学和核工程、核聚变和发电厂中最美丽的想法吗？

What ideas do you just step back and are in awe of?

哪些想法让您退后一步并感到敬畏？

I’m continuously in awe that it works.

我一直对它的功效感到敬畏。

2:34:45 And I know that sounds a little silly to say.

我知道这听起来有点傻。

But the more that I learned in my career around the balance of exactly the right temperatures where life works, exactly the right balance between the electromagnetic force and the strong force.

但我在职业生涯中学到的越多，关于生命运作的正确温度的平衡，电磁力和强力之间的正确平衡。

Those are things that it’s hard to imagine are accidental.

这些都是很难想象是偶然的事情。

And so we talk about how beautiful nature is, but then you look at what each of the leaves on the tree really is, and each of the cells and each of the atoms and each of the quantum substructure of that atom, and I’m just amazed that all the pieces come together.

所以我们谈论大自然是多么美丽，但你看看树上的每一片叶子到底是什么，每个细胞、每个原子以及该原子的每个量子子结构，我很惊讶所有这些碎片都聚集在一起。

We humans are somehow able to find that perfect balance where it just works.

我们人类能够以某种方式找到它发挥作用的完美平衡。

Just works.

就可以了。

2:35:49 Last minute sometimes, but it does work.

有时会在最后一刻，但它确实有效。

The kind of deadlines you’re operating, the group of brilliant people that you’re working with or operating under, it just stresses me out.

你所面临的截止日期、与你一起工作或在你的领导下工作的一群才华横溢的人，这些都让我感到压力很大。

2:35:53 But it excites me, so I’m deeply grateful that you’re doing this work.

但这让我很兴奋，所以我非常感谢你所做的这项工作。

You’re one of the people building an exciting future.

您是建设令人兴奋的未来的人之一。

So thank you for doing that.

所以谢谢你这么做。

And thank you so much for talking today.

非常感谢您今天的发言。

Thank you very much.

非常感谢。

2:36:14 It’s been fun.

这很有趣。

Thanks for listening to this conversation with David Kirtley.

感谢您收听与 David Kirtley 的对话。

2:36:17 To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description where you can also find links to contact me, ask questions, give feedback and so on.

为了支持这个播客，请在描述中查看我们的赞助商，您还可以在其中找到联系我、提出问题、提供反馈等的链接。

And now, let me leave you with some words from the great John F.

现在，让我向你们传达伟大的约翰·肯尼迪的一些话。

Kennedy.

肯尼迪.

“We choose to do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.

“我们选择做这些事情，不是因为它们容易，而是因为它们很难。”感谢您的收听，希望下次再见。