Wallace Manheimer: Fusion and Fusion Breeding | Tom Nelson Pod #185

Wallace Manheimer is a life fellow of both American Physical Society (APS) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). His career has been at the US Naval Research Laboratory since 1970, and he served in the small group of ST-16 senior scientists for his last 14 years there. Since retiring in 2004, he has served as a consultant at the lab. At NRL he has worked on inertial fusion, magnetic fusion, a nuclear disturbed upper atmosphere, electron and ion beams, high power microwave and millimeter wave systems, advanced radar systems, and plasma processing. He is the author of over 150 refereed scientific papers.

00:00 Introduction
00:15 Guest Introduction: Wally Manheimer
02:13 Energy for the World: Fusion and Fusion Breeding
02:41 The Goal of Energy Production
04:05 The Current State of Energy Consumption
04:40 Understanding Energy Conversion
06:38 The Global Perspective on Energy Use
09:35 Introduction to the Book 'Mass Delusions'
13:36 The Future of Nuclear Power
20:46 The Process of Nuclear Fusion
23:27 The Potential of Fusion Breeding
24:58 The Challenges of Fusion Breeding
25:59 The Role of Fast Neutron Reactors and Thorium Breeders
34:28 The Future of Fusion Reactors
40:01 The ITER Project: A Global Effort
47:58 Introduction to Stellarator and Tokamak
48:44 Size Comparison of Tokamak and Stellarator
49:36 Challenges of Stellarator
49:51 Private Fusion Startups
51:50 Critique of Private Fusion Startups
54:21 Success of Livermore in Laser Fusion
55:39 Challenges of Magnetic Fusion
56:17 Livermore's Scheme for Fusion
56:57 The Concept of Alpha Generated Burn Wave
57:57 The Configuration of Livermore Experiment
01:02:16 The Future of Laser Fusion
01:07:02 The Role of NRL
01:24:23 The Energy Park Concept
01:25:17 The Infrastructure of Energy Park
01:30:03 Q and A
01:31:56 Conclusion and Future Directions

Full bio here: https://co2coalition.org/teammember/wallace-manheimer/
Slides for this presentation: https://open.substack.com/pub/tomn/p/fusion-and-fusion-breeding-the-ugly
Manheimer’s “Mass Delusions” book: https://a.co/d/4r1lZLn
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