Physics World. Hello, and welcome to the Physics
World Stories podcast.
I'm Andrew Glester, and nuclear fusion promises
one day to be the power of the
future with relatively clean energy to power the
world. For some, it's always thirty years away.
But last month, a significant step was taken
by the fusion community towards that goal. We'll
hear about that shortly. And later in the
podcast, we'll hear about the role that robotics
is playing in the attempts to make nuclear
fusion energy a reality.
First, though, we'd like to thank Pfeiffer vacuum
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And for many years, Pfeiffer vacuum has been
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One thing all these experiments have in common,
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Here's Leah Morgan. I'm a diagnostic project engineer
at the UK Atomic Energy Authority. At work,
we have two tokamaks.
So we have two
big fusion experiments.
On them are
a bunch of sensors. They're sort of mini
diagnostics,
mini experiments
that sit all over these tokamaks, and they
measure things like temperature and density
and all kinds of fun things. A tokamak
is a doughnut shaped device containing magnets that
are used to control ionized gas known as
plasma. The goal is to create just the
right extreme temperature
for atoms to start fusing together
and releasing energy
in the same process
that occurs
inside the sun.
The two tokamaks that Leah works on are
based at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy
in Oxfordshire.
1 is the joint European Torus or JET
for short. The other has the not quite
so catchy name of the mega ampere spherical
tokamak,
also known as mast underscore
u. So each of these sort of sensors,
these mini experiments,
they have an associated
physicist.
So I kind of work with those physicists
to
make these diagnostics a reality, basically.
So that's the sort of project engineer part
of my job
is taking these
cool ideas for new ways to measure things
inside the tokamaks and
making them real things and then putting them
on the machines. Before we get into the
details of the recent breakthrough, I first asked
Leah if she could remind us what fusion
energy is and how her team is trying
to harness fusion energy at the Cullum Center.
Fusion energy is
the energy source that powers all the stars
in our universe.
It essentially
involves
fusing or combining
two small nuclei,
mashing them together
so they become one
larger nuclei and loads of fusion energy.
So at the UK Atomic Energy Authority,
we're taking two isotopes of hydrogen. We're taking
deuterium
and tritium
or heavy hydrogen and super heavy hydrogen
and heating them up to a 50,000,000
degrees and
forcing them to fuse together to make helium
and a little tiny neutron that goes flying
off with all of our fusion energy. What
would a nuclear fusion power plant actually look
like? Power plants
haven't really changed in design in
decades. I mean,
they are
kind of ridiculous.
So
for those who don't know, most power plants
have,
sort of Victorian technology in them. You heat
up water, big tanker water,
that turns into steam. Steam drives a turbine.
Turbine makes electricity.
And the only thing that's really changed is
what sits inside it and heats up that
water.
So even a a nuclear fission power plant
essentially has nuclear reactions heating up that water
right in its core, which is wild when
you think about it. It's literally sort of
the highest tech and the most basic tech
sitting next to each other and powering the
world.
So I imagine, for the most part,
a fusion energy power plant would look very
similar to any other power plant. It would
have those big cooling towers. It would have,
you know, a big tank of water driving
the turbine.
Although I do know that part of our
research in the fusion community in general is
what would a fusion energy power plant look
like, what would it need,
would it have this big tank of water
in it that we're heating up to drive
a turbine.
So I imagine it would look like a
normal power plant from the outside, although,
you know, can never tell. New tech might
arise. Maybe. But could you tell me about
the recent exciting news for the fusion community?
JET, the joint European torus, is a
massive tokamak, a massive magnetically confined fusion experiment
that UKAEA
runs on behalf of Eurofusion. So Eurofusion is
like,
a big consortium of fusion companies all over
Europe.
And
earlier this year, JET managed to break its
own record,
for the most
for the longest sustained fusion pulse.
So in 1997,
JET ran some
world record breaking campaigns, the sort of first
campaigns of their kind. When I say campaign,
I mean,
a series of scientific experiments.
And these included
the world record for the most fusion power
produced in a single pulse. So when we
run the machine once, we say that is
a pulse.
And this record was
no point one seconds we managed to run
it for,
which is still a massive achievement because,
energy is energy. Power is power.
But for future fusion power plants, we need
sustained fusion. We need fusion that can run
for long periods of time.
And the plasma superheated fuel inside the machine
can basically start to collapse within
less than a second, like, tens of seconds.
So while being able to run it for
no point one seconds was excellent, we need
a long sustained fusion pulse.
And at the time, we did manage to
do that. We ran for about five seconds,
and
our goal here was to reproduce those experiments,
run jet hotter, run it longer,
and essentially prove that our physics models that
we were basing future power plants on were
good, were correct.
Another reason we ran them was we had
recently replaced the inner wall inside JET.
So JET is a big fusion experiment, and
it is
running
experiments, testing things for ITER, which is the
next fusion experiment being built in the South
Of France.
And as part of that, we replaced the
whole inner wall inside JET with the ITER
like inner wall, which is an excellent name.
It's genuinely called ITER like. It's ITER like.
And, we need to know that this wall
worked. We we needed to know that we
could run sustained plasmas just like we had
done in 1997
and that,
we knew what we were doing, basically.
So we
tried to run another one of these sustained
pulses.
It went excellently. We got even more energy
out. We we ran even hotter.
And
we sort of sat down, looked at the
results, and thought, let's go again. Let's run
it even hotter.
So JET managed to produce 59 megajoules of
fusion energy over five seconds, which is extremely
impressive and is more than double
what it managed to produce in 1997,
which is awesome. Yes. But what does it
really mean? JET's whole purpose is to
tell us how to run a fusion reactor
to prepare us to have
fusion power plants in the future.
So,
this directly feeds into those future power plants.
It demonstrates that we are,
able to run these sustained pulses that we
know what we're doing. So while five seconds
might not sound like a massively long time,
in terms of fusion, it's an extremely long
time. So these plasmas that we are running
can,
I would say, collapse? Turbulences can build up
inside them, and they, poof, disappear.
And that can happen in tenths of seconds.
So if you can run for five seconds,
you know you can run a sustained plasma.
So if you can run for five seconds,
you can run for five minutes, and you
can run five hours and so on as
you get more and more advanced machines. So
this sort of directly impacts
our ability to to show we know what
we're doing with these machines, which is extremely
exciting. Can JET do more than five seconds?
Is this some will JET be able to
expand beyond that? Tragically,
JET cannot do more than five seconds.
So JET was built in the nineteen eighties,
and at the time, cutting edge fusion
magnet technology
was copper coil magnets.
So these magnets, I don't believe they have
any direct cooling, so they get hot, like,
really, really hot.
And that limits how long we can actually
run the machine for. So,
we essentially run once. We run a pulse,
and then we wait twenty minutes for the
magnets to cool down. We watch it go
down on these screens.
And then we run another pulse, and that's
basically a a day of scientific campaigns.
Fusion reactors of the future are gonna have
high temperature superconducting
magnets. So companies like Tokamak Energy are working
on those.
I think,
Spark is working on them in America as
well. It's the cutting edge magnet technology of
today. It's what all future Tokamaks will likely
have in them.
So, yeah, tragically, Jet can only run for
five seconds at a time,
but it's still extremely cool. Okay. So it's
ITER like because
what JET's doing is
proving that ITER can work. But ITER has
also been being built for a very long
time. Right? This is this is a big
project, and it's taking a long time. So
ITER is a
sort
of world experiment. You can think of it
as the CERN of fusion energy.
So there are loads of partners involved.
There are am I gonna try and name
them? Yes.
China, the European Union,
India, Russia, America, Korea,
Japan?
I believe there's seven. I'm pretty sure there's
seven.
And when you have all these countries working
together,
things don't necessarily run super fast.
However,
they are certainly on their way. ITER is
being built at the moment. They're uploading these
really cool,
sort of time lapses of it being built.
And I believe it's on track for being
finished in 2025
with first plasma, I think, in 2030,
which is gonna be amazing because it's in
the South Of France, so I will get
to visit and go to the South Of
France at the same time. Yeah. No. I
was gonna ask if that was that was
a plan. But wait. What does that mean,
first plasma? I mean, assume that doesn't mean,
okay, now we're now we're in the world
of nuclear fusion.
So, turning ITER on is gonna be a
really massive endeavor.
It is
significantly
larger than jets. You can think of it
as a big blown up jet, even larger.
And as part of that, there's gonna be,
inevitably,
all kinds of things that come up. So
the plan is to finish building, start running
all the checks, checking qualities, everything as we
expected,
and then to be running the first experiments,
I believe, in 2030.
And then once we know that it's operating
as expected, it's doing what we think, we
can start running,
big d t experiments. So that's deuterium and
tritium, which are considered
the fusion fuels of the future, which future
power plants will end up using.
Deuterium and tritium
produce
a large amount of fusion energy for the
amount of heat it takes to fuse them.
To put that in a way that makes
sense,
when you do fuse it fusion, you have
to take your fusion fuels and you have
to get them
to overcome the Coulomb barrier between them. So
you've got these nuclei,
and, obviously,
they don't wanna hang out together. They're repelling
each other.
So you've got to get them
super hot and super dense and super high
pressure. That's easy to do inside of a
star. In the heart of a star, you
can imagine. It is hot and dense and
high pressure.
But on Earth,
pressure and density are difficult to achieve. So
inside these fusion experiments,
we just go straight for temperature.
So while the inside of the sun is
about 15,000,000 degrees,
the inside of something like jet is a
50,000,000
degrees. So that's the kind of temperature you
have to work with to get these,
hydrogen nuclei close enough to actually force them
to combine and
become helium and release loads of fusion energy.
And
when you compare different fusion fuels
and sort of the cross sections of those
nuclei,
they have a sort of curve on their
cross sections that varies across temperature.
So for each of these, there's a perfect
temperature to get the perfect cross section to
force a reaction,
and deuterium and tritium just have
the sort of
perfect heat. It's like the maximum heat we
can achieve,
and it's a super efficient reaction. So in
terms of things you'd want inside of a
power plant, they are kinda perfect.
As you say, when a lot
a lot of different countries are working together
to to make something like this, it it
it takes a long time.
How does how does it follow then
that nuclear fusion's gonna be the power of
the future? If it takes this many to
do it, how is it gonna power the
world? When we say fusion is the energy
of the future, we are talking about
a future where we have
removed fossil fuels, and we're now doing something
called baseloading the grid. So we've taken out
everything that's producing loads of carbon, loads of
nasty things.
And in the ideal future, we've replaced those
all with fusion, which, as a reaction, doesn't
produce any carbon at all. There's still room
for nuclear fission in that energy mix. There's
still room for
our renewables, obviously, solar and wind.
But,
obviously, it's not an immediate fix to the
climate crisis. Climate crisis is immediate and now
slightly urgent.
We, yeah, like I say, like to think
of it as the fuel of the future.
So rather than an immediate solution to the
climate crisis, it is what we'll be using
years from now when our energy demand is
extremely high and we need
a
efficient,
low cost,
carbon free energy source. So is it sort
of altruistic?
You're sort of working on it for other
people, or are you hoping for it in
your lifetime?
I would hope for it in my lifetime.
I would I would at least hope for
the first demonstration power plants in my lifetime.
After ITER, we have things like Demo, which
is the first demonstration power plant, another greatly
named thing,
which
Jet has fed into ITER. ITER will feed
into Demo, and that's planned for the twenty
forties. So I would hope to see them
soon. Selfishly, I would like to see them
and work in one. That would be awesome.
When did it come into your life? I
I did a master's degree in physics, and
I
got to
the end of my degree. I'd always been
under the impression that I was gonna do
a PhD
as is often the case for physics students
who have masters.
And I just I I couldn't I I
couldn't settle on anything. I I was interested
in too many things.
And as part of our nuclear module, we
did a very small bit on fusion energy,
and there was all this talk of, you
know,
doesn't release any carbon, and it's the energy
of the future. It powers stars, and I
was like, that sounds awesome.
So I started looking up,
how do I do that? How do I
put that in my life?
And
the UK Atomic Energy Authority had a graduate
scheme, but they were only hiring engineers,
and I thought they probably won't want me,
a lonely physicist.
So, yeah, I applied to their graduate scheme
having decided, yes, I'm doing fusion energy now
and was very lucky to get on. So,
yeah, I'd say sort of
fourth year was when I first discovered it,
and now it's a big part of what
I do. Tell me about the process of
physics to engineering. Has it been okay? I've
been made fun of, if I'm being honest.
Yeah. It was it's been
extremely fun, actually.
There's
I've I've so enjoyed sort of the practical
application of physics.
I
never really got on with the theoretical side
of things,
although I did very enjoy particle physics. But
even then, it was the
the detectors and the actual experiments.
So it's been really fun sort of developing
those practical skills and,
all the sort of day to day communication,
you know, speaking to physicists, working with experts
in various fields.
So, yeah, it's been it's been a journey,
but it's been a a really fun one.
I mean, are you gonna stick with the
engineering? Do you think you'll go back to
the physics side of things, or do you
feel like you're
meeting them nicely in the middle?
To be honest, I do feel like I
am in that sweet spot between
physics and engineering because I have the
physics background.
I
understand all the weird physics that's going on
inside these diagnostics,
At the same time, I'm gaining those engineering
skills. So,
how do you actually get something on the
machine?
Although I'd never say no to going back
to physics. I think if I found the
right thing, I might I might come back.
But at the minute, I'm I'm a big
fan of the sweet spot that I'm in
that feels like a really good balance of,
I was gonna say reading books and doing
things.
Where where do you think it's gonna take
you? I I like everything. I'm keen in
the next thing that I see.
So I'm really interested in
gaining more knowledge over these different diagnostics. I'd
love to put some diagnostics in
at ITA, which is hopefully something I'll be
able to do in the near future.
But I'm also interested
in
getting into the,
jet control room and the MASU control room,
which is out of the Tokamak on-site.
They there are many scientists and engineers actually
that work in the control room to
operate the devices during experiments,
and it's extremely cool.
Unfortunately,
so that we could look after JET actually
during,
during The UK lockdown,
I was kicked out.
My training was canceled,
in the Jet Control Room to protect operations.
Totally understandable. A little hurtful.
So I'm hoping at some point to get
back in and,
be able to finish my training because that
is
a sort of one off opportunity that you
don't get to do anywhere else. So I
would love to,
sit in the control room and and mess
with things.
Yeah. But you say you might have a
chance to do diagnostics at METO. Is that
sort of you hope to or that's in
the pipeline? So UK is involved with ITA,
and my department that I work in is
diagnostics and fusion engineering. So we are hoping
at some point to take on some ITA
contracts
contracts,
ITA contracts out there work various different things,
and hopefully,
yeah, get to get to do a diagnostic
in the near future, which is extremely fun.
One of the main concerns,
obviously, of nuclear fission
is the
radioactive waste.
I believe that's certainly not the case with
nuclear fusion.
We are essentially doing the opposite of nuclear
fission when we do, fusion energy, when we
do nuclear fusion.
Instead of taking something large and splitting it
into two, we are literally takes two things
small and making them into one larger thing.
So when you do,
a fusion experiment, when you have fusion reactions,
you don't produce any,
radioactive waste during the experiment.
So,
you you produce helium and a neutron, so
there's nothing particularly strange coming out of the
machine.
The only,
I suppose, radioactive waste you end up with
is the actual
shell, the actual vacuum chamber of your fusion
reactor once you've done with it. So
over the years being bombarded by neutrons,
the vacuum chamber itself gets a little hot,
a little spicy.
So, eventually, you have to
find a way of dealing with that. Although
I would say that the vacuum chamber remains
hot, remains slightly radioactive
for
decades
compared to,
waste produced by a fishing plant that is
extremely long lived, talking hundreds of thousands of
years.
So, yeah, it's a
while it sounds very similar at its core,
they are two very different energy sources. But
anybody who's been following the news recently might
have seen
the concerns around Chernobyl
and what can happen if
a hostile
power of some sort takes control of a
nuclear fission plant. Is that something we would
need to worry about with fusion? So one
of the,
I mean, main concerns
around nuclear fission
is the fact that it produces
fissile material. It produces material that could hypothetically
be turned into a nuclear weapon of some
kind.
One of the positives of fusion energy, nuclear
fusion,
is that it doesn't produce this. There is
nothing that you could run on to site
and take and use for ill will. So
I would say that is a benefit of
nuclear fusion is it just doesn't have that
same worry.
Well, that's certainly a good thing, but inside
a tokamak
is not the kind of place that a
human being would like to go, and that's
where the robotics comes in. And here's Helena
Livesey. I am a mechanical design engineer
in our remote applications for challenging environments, also
known as RACE, at UKAEA.
RACE in general is looking at
how we can utilize robotics
to maintain
well, we started looking at how we can
maintain fusion reactors,
and we've kind of gone from there into
other challenging environments as well. So we've got,
you know, over thirty years experience,
of
maintaining jet at UKAA.
And
with doing that, we've had to use remote
means to do it, robotics,
because it's challenging environment to send humans into.
So to keep
our operators safe, we use these robotics.
And with all that experience, we're able to
then
use that in other areas like,
decommissioning nuclear reactors,
and, you know, space, oil and gas,
looking at how we can use the experience
we've gained from fusion,
in other areas.
The plasmas at JET are generated inside the
machine's inner vacuum chamber, which is lined with
beryllium and tungsten. The plasmataurus has a radius
of three meters and a volume of almost
80 cubic meters. I asked Helena to describe
the robots that are sent into this chamber.
What we use in JET,
is we call it mascot,
and it's not quite a robot. It's what
we would call a manipulator.
But for all intents and purposes, it's it's
a robot.
What what
happens is so we have mascot on we
put it on a robotic boom that goes
into the vessel,
and,
we have a copy of what we send
into
our machine
in our control room, which is, you know,
behind concrete walls about 30 meters away.
And there's an operator in our control room
who moves the arms of the copy that
we have. And when they move those arms,
the the machine that we have,
in vessel copies exactly what what they've done,
in the control room.
So it's a really intuitive way
of performing these tasks.
But it does take quite a few years
to
kind of to train to be able to
use this system because it's,
it's kind of like computer games. I mean,
you only have two d views,
so it it makes it that bit more
difficult to figure out what you're doing. You
know, if you're bolting up something and it's
in front of you, you can turn your
head to see where the hole is and
it's that bit easier to put something
in where you want to put it.
And it it's just
that little bit harder when you've only got
camera views to go off. Jet on the
inside is
sort of a doughnut shape.
And
we've got some very small
holes, sort of we've got two on either
side of the, of the machine.
And through that small hole, we have to
get something it looks a little bit like
a person when you so we've got, like,
a a box for the body. It's got
two arms,
and there's a camera for a head kind
of thing.
So it it does look quite like a
person,
and we have to sort of fold that
up quite small to be able to get
inside.
And how we get inside is basically,
something we call a boom. And it it's
it's just sort of like a a robot
arm, so it's got lots of links,
a bit
like if you ever had one of those
toy snakes as a child that, yeah, so
that that kind of thing.
And, yeah, we send that in so that
we're able to get round
the full,
full way round to every area of this
donut,
that we're going into. What sort of thing
is this
person shaped thing that's not a robot? Person
shaped
robotics thing that isn't a robot called mascot.
What's it doing?
All kinds of things. So,
I mean, one of the first things it
has to do when it go goes in
there is put lights in because it it's
we don't have them in there usually when
we're doing fusion.
They're not needed, but we do need them
to be able to see what we're doing
when we do maintenance.
So that's one of its first tasks.
Other things it's doing is, kind of picking
and placing, removing components. So
something we did,
a few years ago was change all of
the tiles on the inside of Jet.
Part of the experiments it's doing at the
minute is proving that the next stage machine
called ITER,
will,
you know, that that that's going in the
right direction for the science. So we changed
the tiles inside so they were more like
the design that Ita was gonna do,
and that was a huge, huge task.
Took sort of several months to change all
of these tiles, and it seems quite a
simple task. You know, it's,
bolting and unbolting something, picking it up and
and moving it, and it's very easy for
a human. But when you're putting that extra
complexity
in of using a manipulator,
it it makes it,
a bit more challenging, and you've gotta do
more planning.
So that that that was an example of
a of a task we did, but there's
all kinds of things like cutting and welding.
We have a hoover,
that we send in there as well,
to kinda tidy up the dust from the
bottom.
Yeah. Lots of of of different tasks, everything
you would need to do to be able
to maintain it, basically.
So people don't go in there at all?
We try to avoid it. There are some
cases, and and it depends.
So
when we haven't used,
tritium, like we have used in these most
recent experiments,
it's it's a pretty safe environment to be
sending somebody in.
So we can send them in for for
short periods. But now we've used tritium, that's
harder,
because it's not it's not as safe anymore
to be inside the vessel.
So now we have to do pretty much
everything,
with our remote systems.
Do you feel attached to Mascot? Is it
you know, because it's person shaped, does it
affect the way you feel?
I guess a little bit. Yeah. I we
all quite like Mascot.
And it it's been around for a while,
so there's, yeah, there's lots of people,
attached to it. And it's been through quite
a few different iterations.
We're on Mascot six now,
and there have been a few point fives
in in between.
So yeah. Because it's
I can't remember exactly
when we first used it, but it it's
at least 20 years old, if not 30.
So some of the bits inside there have
had
to change,
because we just can't get hold of them
or or they weren't they're not the best
technology anymore. So,
yeah,
it I guess we are all quite attached.
And when did you start thinking, do you
know what I'm gonna do?
To send
manipulators
into things
sort of recreating what happens at the heart
of stars.
In terms of getting into the robotics side,
it was kind of an accident. I mean,
I was so I'd done mechanical engineering at
university,
and,
I was kinda coming to the end of
it thinking, what what am I gonna do
next? What's my what's my job gonna be?
And I was looking at my options, you
know, quite a lot of engineers going to
cars and planes and,
trains,
and I just it didn't inspire me. I
wanted to be able to do something, you
know, that would have big
positive global impact.
And I'd heard about Jet,
and thought, yeah, that would actually kinda fit
the bill.
So applied and then discovered that they had
this robotics department.
That that definitely sounds really cool. So, yeah,
I just it was kind of by accident.
It's not something you hear about at school.
No. No. It's not, is it?
It's really, really, really exciting. So when,
these other applications that you go into, is
it is that mascot
seven, eight, 10? Or is or is that
a complete are they completely different designs that
go off into Completely different. We do lots
of so if you came to visit us,
you'd see lots of different robots in our,
in our building. So we've got something like
mascot, which is kind of human size, but
we've also got something called TARM. But TARM
is a sort of as tall as the
building. So it's massive. It's this big boom,
and we're using that to look at a
step even beyond ITER,
and,
looking at how we can manipulate really big,
components,
because when they get to that size, it's
very difficult,
to control.
But then we're also doing things much smaller.
We have one of Boston Dynamics' spot,
robots, spot spot the dog, if you've come
across those before.
And we've sent that, to Chernobyl to look
at,
sort of mapping the radiation,
what how that is around that area.
And we've got a few other robots in
between as well.
So we're kind of using
with some of the other applications, we're looking
at how we can use industrial robots. Mascot
is a very bespoke machine for for exactly
what we're doing.
Whereas,
you know, if we're looking at trying
to make systems like this more efficiently,
if we can use industrial robots with all
the experience they have, you know, kind of
robots you'd see in a car factory,
then it makes that development,
a bit quicker, and we can use that
experience rather than reinventing the wheel. So with
your role in jet and looking back to
the recent news, what does that mean for
you? It proves The UK's role as a
a global leader in fusion energy.
And for me personally,
the results
showed
that ITER is going in in the right
direction, and and most of my work is
actually on ITER.
So I look at,
mostly
how we do pipe joining in ITER, which
sounds like it should be really easy. You
know, cutting and welding pipes must be done
everywhere all the time, but when you put
it in a a fusion machine,
it, yeah, it it becomes quite a bit
more difficult. So for me, the jet results
proving that ITER is going in the right
direction when that's what I've been doing for
the last four, five years,
is is nice to hear.
Yeah. Yeah. No. I imagine it is. So
is that Tom isn't presumably doing that
that kind of pipe joining. Tom's moving bigger
stuff than that. Right?
Yes. So Tom is looking at,
you know, we've got this doughnut shaped,
machine,
and
we don't make it as one big doughnut.
We've got sectors, so it's kinda like a
chocolate orange. We've got about eight sectors,
in jet and more for eater and demo
after that.
When maintaining
demo, those sectors might have to be changed,
and it's it's gonna be a huge, huge
piece of metal
with potentially some, liquids
in there for from the blankets.
And when you have metal that's that big,
it becomes wobbly.
And we've gotta take this thing out of
a very small hole,
because, you know, it's got, like, millimeters of
tolerance in it. And controlling that is really
difficult. And currently
well,
before we did started doing the research we
are doing with TAM, we wouldn't know how
to be able to control something accurately enough
to con to make sure that we can
get it out that hole without damaging.
So the work they're doing with TAM is
looking at
perfecting a control system that can deal with
basically a wobbly load.
Cool. And and who's joining the pipes? I
was I say who. What what's joining the
pipes?
The pipes I'm looking at are in the
diverter. So the diverter is kind of where
all the exhaust goes from,
the fusion reaction.
So it's it's where it gets really hot,
and these pipes are for cooling.
And they're right at the bottom of the
machine.
So,
we have a robot that will come in
and take the first one out,
and then there's another robot that will come
in where it's been,
and can move around where the diverter should
be.
And yeah. So that we've got a a
small arm on this mover that will then
go in and cut the pipes so that
we're able to take these diverter
cassettes out.
And then when we're putting them back in,
it will also weld
the them back together because we have to
be able to cut the pipe to be
able to get this cassette out. So I'm
looking at the the actual tool that does
the the welding
bits. I I mean, it's a vital
role, isn't it? I mean, it's a really
important role in in something that's just a
huge undertaking.
There's there's a few areas, but and this
is what and robotics is one of them.
It's one of the main areas that will
make fusion economically viable. So by that, I
mean,
you know, currently, we can do fusion, and
we're doing research. But when we get to
making power plants, it's gotta be run by
a business. You know? It's somebody has gotta
want to
invest in mill building this machine,
and they're not gonna do that
if they can't maintain it. If, you know,
they do a few,
few months of operation, and then they're stuck.
Like, they can't maintain it, or they're gonna
have to turn it off for twelve months.
This research in robotics, making the maintenance as
fast and as efficient as possible
is what makes fusion
power a reality.
Thanks again to Pfeiffer vacuum for sponsoring this
episode of the podcast. Pfeiffer vacuum provides all
types of vacuum equipment, including hybrid and magnetically
levitated turbo pumps, leak detectors, and analysis equipment,
as well as vacuum chambers and systems.
You can explore all of its products at
Pfeiffer-vacuum.com.
Thank you to Helena Livesey and Leah Morgan
for talking to me. If you'd like to
hear more from Leah, I can recommend her
YouTube channel, Leah Love Science. We'll be back
next month with something else from this wonderful
world of physics, And thank you very much
for listening.
Physics world.