Dennis whyte wisconsin

Superconductors are just as cool as they sound. As a result, we could theoretically be harvesting all of the energy fusion has to offer, making it the ultimate power source. What does this mean? The only cost of the electricity generated would come from building the device. It is, however, scientifically strong. It could be done. Whyte hopes that the next step is to build a tabletop fusion reactor simply to show that net energy from fusion is possible.

He believes there are psychological barriers in the scientific community and general population alike. Fusion to go green. If for nothing more, both Whyte and Sorbom want people to open up to the possibility of fusion as a means to renewable energy and sustainability. In fact, the main reason for Sorbom to go into the fusion field is climate change.

Image via Olivia Vanni. Follow the Beat. Whyte and Sorbom of MIT compare superconductor to monstrous copper conductor. By Olivia Vanni. Micromobility is back in the menu in Boston with a UMass trial run News. The power density is the most attractive part of fusion.

The relative environmental footprint is reduced and in the end becomes a challenge of low power density sources, like renewables. Within a week of being in a research lab, Dennis Whyte knew it was what he was going to do for the rest of his life. Whyte received a national grant from the Canadian government as a post-doc which encouraged him to go outside Canada to gain experience. Canada then cancelled their fusion program, so Whyte stayed in the United States.

Becoming a teacher made Whyte a better researcher. The exercise of explaining the fundamentals to students led to ideas and turned into big projects. Whyte spent four years at the University of Wisconsin, but he missed being in a bigger team and working on the applied part of research. Whyte has been at MIT for 12 years. Because of the expertise present, they had the ability to make magnetic fields that were much stronger than other laboratories were considering.

By some basic arguments, they made the device smaller, which became Alcator. The focus of the program was education and training. It was solely funded through the Department of Energy and the program stopped a couple years ago. On the last day of its operation, it set a world record for fusion performance by surpassing 2 atmospheres of pressure in a plasma that was significantly hotter than the center of the sun.

Doubling the pressure seen in other devices quadruples the energy density, making it more economical. Magnetic fields exert a magnetostatic pressure that is counteracting or containing the plasma. Nothing physically contacts the plasma, otherwise the plasma would become cold. Dennis Whyte. Head of Nuclear Department. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Nov 20,