Fusion Energy Episodes

At 2:13 AM in Waynesboro, Georgia, crews were already deep into a process they couldn’t stop. For 41 continuous hours, concrete flowed into the basemat of Vogtle Unit 4, the foundation that would anchor one of the newest nuclear reactors in the United States. This episode breaks down: What a nuclear basemat actually is Why concrete is part of the safety system The physics of heat, cracking, and radiation shielding The choreography required to keep a 41-hour pour alive And w...

A crossover episode with Phil Zeringue of Nuclearn exploring nuclear workforce, culture, and innovation.

What exactly is plasma, and why are some of the world's brightest minds betting on fusion energy to power our future? In this episode of Naked Nuclear, host Danielle sits down with Dr. Arturo Dominguez — Head of Science Education at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) — to break it all down in plain language. From his own journey into plasma physics to PPPL's groundbreaking research, Dr. Dominguez shares how fusion works, why it matters, and how students everywhere can get invol...

Inside the Z Machine: The Most Powerful Pulse on Earth Following up on the Ryan Zerpa episode, Danielle breaks down the Z Machine at Sandia National Laboratories — a device that for billionths of a second unleashes more power than every electrical grid on Earth combined. Key topics: – What the Z Machine is and why it was built – How it works: capacitor banks, pulsed power, Z-pinch implosion – 80 terawatts vs Earth's 25 terawatts – Applications: nuclear stockpile stewardship, fusion researc...

In this Student Spotlight, we trace how childhood curiosity—sparked by Nikola Tesla and MythBusters—led Ryan Zerpa from building a Tesla coil in grade school to pursuing fusion research. Ryan shares how he reframed a mostly-fission undergrad at Purdue Nuclear Engineering into a launchpad for fusion, what he learned working around pulsed-power experiments like Sandia's Z Machine, and how Division I swimming forged the time-management and grit research demands. We unpack his plain-language w...

Nuclear-powered cargo ships might sound like science fiction—but CORE Power is making them a science reality. In this episode of Naked Nuclear, Danielle sits down with Tobi Menzies and Dr. Rory Megginson from CORE Power to explore how molten chloride fast reactors (MCFRs) and floating nuclear power plants (FNPPs) could transform global shipping. We dive into the engineering, the policy, the people—and the programs—needed to build a clean maritime future. From international emissions policy to...