1.7.26

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome. This is Marsha for Radio I, and today I
will be reading National Geographic magazine dated November twenty twenty five,
which is donated by the publisher. As a reminder. RADIOI
is a reading service intended for people who are blind
or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read
printed material. Please join me now for the continuation of

(00:24):
the article I began last time, entitled Inside the Colossal
Quest for Limitless Energy by Michael Finkel. Specialists in dozens
of fields plasma physics to electromagnetics to cement pouring were
recruited and hired. The eater site has its own bus system,

(00:47):
plying the paved perimeter roads, while dirt lanes in the
middle are a cacophony of forklifts, dump trucks and backos,
with teams of hard headed workers marching around on foot.
In late twenty eight eighteen, the first of the machines,
ten million pieces, was put into place. These pieces are
being manufactured by member nations across the globe, then shipped

(01:09):
to the work site in France. The chief contribution of
the US is the central solenoid, the megamagnet, which is
being built by General Atomics, a family owned business in
San Diego. Russia is contributing additional magnets and superconducting materials.
Europe is creating some of the main Tokamac hardware, and

(01:30):
South Korea the rest. India's supplying cooling system Apparatuses. Japan
is fashioning heating structures. About five thousand companies worldwide have
been involved in the effort. Some parts made abroad are
the size of a basketball court and way more than
a passenger jet. Many are heavily wrapped and encased in
a protective frame before being loaded onto a cargo ship

(01:52):
from Asian countries. The trip to France takes more than
a month. The package is then balanced on a barge
and floated up a canal across a lake. The last
sixty five miles are on roads which were reinforced and widened,
permitting a three hundred and fifty two wheeled transport platform
to creep at three miles an hour all night for

(02:12):
three or four nights to arrive at Eeter. How much
will all of this cost. It's hard to know exactly,
as there is no official global accounting. The Eater Agreement,
signed in twenty two thousand and six, claimed that the
entire project, including the value of items made by members,
would cost around six billion dollars start to finish. That

(02:34):
price has ballooned to sixty five billion dollars, more than
ten times the original estimate, according to the US Department
of Energy. If it alters the course of civilization, fusion
supporters say it'll be seen as a bargain. Even the
new figure represents less than three days of current global
expenditures on energy, but Eater will be by far the

(02:56):
most expensive scientific instrument on Earth. Of Eater's delays and
cost overruns have been self inflicted, and internal assessment of
Eater's management practices detailed pricey design changes and administrative gridlock,
but some have been beyond the project's control. Storms at sea,
pirates in the Suez Canal, the twenty eleven Earth earthquake

(03:21):
and tsunami in Japan interrupted parts production there for a year.
The COVID pandemic slowed the world for two more. Yet
through everything, Eater churned inexorbly on then came an extraordinary accomplishment.
Eater may be the world's largest jigsaw puzzle, but the
most essential construction the tukamac and attached components has been

(03:42):
reduced to nine massive pieces called vacuum vessel modules. These
will fit together like segments of an orange. Each weighs
about fifteen hundred tons. To move one, Eater had to
invent several new lifting machines. Workers rehearsed the sequence of
events that needed to happen, and on May twelve, twenty
twenty two, the first module, made of parts supplied by

(04:05):
almost every Eater member, was tucked perfectly into its spot.
The milestone, decades in the making, was a celebrated Eater triumph.
Now that one module was in place, the other eight
would surely follow. After all the hurdles, the machine was
going to get built and switched on. There was light
at the end of the tunnel, and then the project

(04:25):
nearly self destructed. Eater is entirely dependent on funding from
federal governments, which can be fickle sources of money. Politicians
like to hear about success and momentum, even when the
reality is, according to the internal Eater report, that management
is blundering and the engineering challenges are more formidable than anticipated.

(04:49):
Some cheerleading by the project's leadership is expected. In twenty fifteen,
the US was reportedly considering a second Eater exit, and
in order to stay needed to be convinced that progress
was coming. But what happened at Edar is that showmanship
seemed to have eclipsed honesty, and in a project of
exacting revolutionary science, this was bound to bring disaster. The

(05:12):
placement of the vacuum vessel module in twenty twenty two
generated glowing news reports from major trade publications. The job, however,
was apparently done in a corner cutting rush. Inspections revealed
tiny cracks and pinhole leaks. The Tokamac was compromised. The
module couldn't be repaired where it was wedge tight, and

(05:34):
the installation couldn't be reversed without partially tearing the machine apart.
Workers didn't know what to do, and construction of the
tocamac ground to a halt. At the very moment Eter
needed decisive leadership, there was none. Two days after the
module was hung, the Director General of Eater, Bernard Bigeau,

(05:54):
died of an illness at age seventy two. Begough, a
French scientist, was eating third chief, following two Japanese directors,
Kanami Ikeda and Osamu moto Jima. All three executives seemed
to succumb at least somewhat to the organizational malaisee known
as big projects syndrome. A warehouse that eater is filled

(06:16):
with parts that nobody knows who ordered or why. The
head of Communications before Bego's tenure, Michael Klasen's, later admitted
that Ed's public statements often contained lies, propaganda, and misinformation,
creating an atmosphere that resulted in the reckless installation of
the vacuum vessel module. An Italian electrical engineer named Pietro

(06:40):
Vara Bashki, who has a long history in Fusion, was
appointed by the project's governing body, the Each Council, to
take over approachable, energetic informal. He often comes to work
in genes and running shoes, and everyone calls him Pietro.
He seems comfortable amid chaos. He's fifty nine years old,
blanking and tall, and speaks fluent Italian, English and German,

(07:03):
as well as workable French. Taming Fusion, says Pietro, is
like humans learning to harness fire for the second time
in history. Being burned by mistakes is inevitable, and he
publicly pledged that Eeter would be transparent about them, and
even published an article in the science journal Nature Reviews
Physics titled The Importance of Documenting Failure. Pietro's first major

(07:27):
decision as director was that the vacuum vessel module would
be removed at a normal's expense and multiple years of
hold up. Either the project would be done right, he implied,
or it wouldn't be done at all. The sentiment among
Eeter workers seemed to be that Pietro clearly made the
right choice and might have just killed the project. I

(07:47):
thought that was at the end of Eater, says communications
officer Sabina Griffith, who has worked at the site for
almost two decades. Lola Zedet and each construction coordinator said
that the news of the module removal was both understandable
and shocking. After the insane scrambled to get the vacuum
vessel module in place, the world had been turned upside down.

(08:09):
Shifts of people were looking at each other and doing nothing,
says Zeda. It was almost surreal. But after some time
in mental recalibration, she says, the crews return to work
and the unbuilding of Eater began. Many fusion experts believe
that success is more probable from a nimble private company
motivated by profit, than from an overstuffed public project like Eater.

(08:32):
There are currently more than one hundred private fusion initiatives
worldwide battling for a potentially epic grand prize of an
energy fortune. Eaters of Uncular stands is that there isn't
competition at all. The true dream is fusion energy for
the globe, and the more places attempting it, the better
the chance it will happen. Private firms are welcome to

(08:55):
visit the site to study what's worked and what hasn't,
and to tap into the fount of of hard earned wisdom. Eater,
striving to distribute knowledge rather than produce commercial energy, is
like the public library of fusion. Also, Eater shares the
results of its extensive diagnostics and testing on parts and materials,

(09:15):
allowing others to save time and money and push on.
It appears unlikely that any private firm will make the
public effort obsolete. From the outside, it seemed like Ter
was going backward right through to the end of twenty
twenty four. Each day further from completion, the machine dismantled,
the vacuum vessel module pulled out, and then itself disassembled,

(09:37):
then tests to determine the course of repairs. But on
the vast campus, the culture had shifted toward progress. In
Pietro's view, so many elements of the project were pioneering,
entering the realm of the unknown. That ter was like
a scientific Lewis and Clerk. They'd gotten lost for a
while in the wilderness, but had recognized and streamlined the

(09:58):
management structure and soon would be navigating smoothly again. For
every problem that may be encountered, Pietro believes there exists
a reasonable solution. Government funding during this reset did not
dry up. In April twenty twenty five, just shy of
three years since the vacuum vessel module had first been installed,

(10:19):
it was put in again and the project was back
to zero. Two months later, the second segment was mounted.
The remaining seven are all in various stages of completion.
The job site is buzzing, welding, sparks flying from the
construction zones, cranes swinging through the sky, physicists scribbling on whiteboards.
Pietro putting in twelve hour days, bounces from meeting to meeting,

(10:40):
often taking a total of six minutes for lunch, enough
to wolf down a sandwich or salein. It's both a
sprint and a marathon, he says, a eater with surprises
around every corner. But no matter how crammed his schedule,
Pietro tries to observe two traditions a couple of times
a week. He puts on a hard hat and protective
gear and go alone to observe the Tucamac construction, climbing

(11:03):
up the scaffolding to get to his favorite spot at
the very top, with a bird's eye view of the machine,
all of the ambition and folly and genius of it.
He just takes it in for a while, the sound
of hammering echoing continuously, a metallic smell in the air.
Then he gets back to work. The other tradition is
his first meeting of the morning, usually at six o'clock

(11:25):
in the distinctly unfancy office of the head of construction,
Sergio Orlandi, a longtime colleague of Pietro's and a fellow Italian.
Orlandi is sixty nine years old and has worked on
nuclear projects for forty five years. As the sun rises
over the southern French hills outside or Londie's window, they
have coffee and discuss the plans for the day. Pietro

(11:47):
calls this his movement of calm, but before he's halfway
through his coffee, you can see his energy building, his
left foot tapping, clicking his retractable pen faster and faster
until the visit is done and he's out the door.
Orlandi says that he often doesn't interact with Pietro again
for the rest of the day, but thirty minutes is
all it takes for them to stay synchronized. The project

(12:09):
has stuck to the schedule without fail for more than
a year, which is an all time Eater record, and
Orlandi expects this progress to continue for the foreseeable future.
He seems to feel that Eater has achieved unstoppable momentum.
Perhaps this boost will be enough to follow the plans
right up to the day of Eater's first energy positive fusion,

(12:31):
slated for twenty thirty nine, a historic moment that could
shape the planet's destiny so long as nothing goes wrong.
The race for fusion Eater is by far the largest
nuclear fusion endeavour, but it is by no means the
only one. Government facilities like those at the Max playing
Institute and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, as well as

(12:52):
private companies like Zapp Energy and Tae Technologies, are testing
different methods to achieve fusion. Over the past four years,
funding for the private industry has nearly quadrupled. Stellarator, invented
in nineteen fifty one. Stellarators use a magnetic confinement method
similar to that of Eater's Tokomac. Their torque design, as

(13:16):
seen with this Wettelstein, requires absolute precision, but potentially yields
more stable plasma. Z Pinch, inspired by lightning strikes, The
z print pinch process uses electric currents to generate magnetic
fields that rapidly compress and confine plasma, producing fusion reactions
that release energy. Zapp Energy hopes its device's compact, modular

(13:41):
design will make it relatively simple to commercialize inertial confinement.
Inside a spherical chamber, high energy lasers compress a tiny
fuel capsule filled with deuterium and tritium, creating a fusion reaction.
The publicly funded National Ignition Facility was the first fusion

(14:02):
experiment to generate surplus energy and is the basis for
future inertial confinement designs. Field reversed configuration neutral beams that
heat plasm plasma in a smoke ring like formation and
drive electric currents that generate internal magnetic fields, largely replacing

(14:23):
the need for external magnetic confinement. Alternative fuels like hydrogen
boron used by TIE will produce no neutrons or radioactive waste,
only helium. How nuclear fusion works. Nuclear fusion holds the
promise of nearly limitless emission free energy. The catch figuring

(14:44):
out how to create and then harness the power of
a star here on Earth, which requires temperatures of at
least two hundred seventy million degrees fahrenheit. When fully operational,
EATER could very well provide a template for producing the
fuel of the future. The basics of fusing atoms. To
capture the energy released during fusion, a reactor must confine plasma,

(15:06):
an ionized gas that occurs when atoms have been stripped
of their electrons. Fusion facilities are designed to channel and
control that reaction for as long as possible, beginning with
a multi step process. To generate self sustaining power magnetic confinement,
EATER will rely on a large doughnut shaped machine called

(15:27):
a p toocomac to induce fusion, a central electromagnet creates
an electric current that changes the deuterium and tritium gas
into an ionized plasma. Then the electromagnet, working together with
twenty four other magnets, shapes and holds the plasma in
place as it is bombarded with high energy beams that

(15:48):
raise its temperature to two hundred seventy million degrees fahrenheit.
Next article At work in the World's Deadliest Garden by
Tom Lamont, hemlack, hogweed and as matte suits. What it
takes to tend to over a hundred plants that could
kill you. The keepers of a poisoned garden on the
grounds next to Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, England, anticipate a

(16:11):
great many fainters every year. The garden, the largest of
its kind, sits behind steately iron gates embellished with skulls,
and is packed with more than a hundred varieties of
plants so deadly that you can't enter without supervision. As
tourists set off guid's worn visitors not to touch, lick,
or pick. As they learn about poisoners from history and

(16:32):
see the brews and cuttings that served as their weapons
of choice. There's the teacup poisoner who kicked off his
infamous murders, bree by dosing his sister with Atropa belladonna,
and doctor Death, a physician convicted of murdering fifteen of
his patients with a drug derived from the opium poppy.
Every so often Crunch, another guest hits the gravel Gardeners

(16:55):
attribute the uptick in faintings to all the macabre stories.
It also will be possible that some blended emanation from
the plants. The heady perfume of oleander, yew and nightshade
combines to sweep the more susceptible off their feet. The
poison Garden, which opened twenty years ago as a ghoulish attraction,
has taken on new life moonlighting as a destination for

(17:18):
researchers of all kinds, from scientists curious about exotic toxins
to crime writers looking for inspiration. One summer day, when
the annual faint count was at about seventy, Mikey Leech,
the thirty nine year old had gardener, cracked open a
glossy laurel leaf protruding across a path. This is one

(17:39):
of the most common hedging plants in this country, he said,
cut it open cyanide. Almuckcastle has belonged to one English
family for over seven hundred years. Traditionally the seat of
the region's highest ranking of aristocrat, the castle and the
adjacent gardens forty two acres have been passed down through
various earls and dukes to the current owner, Ralph Percy,

(18:02):
the twelfth Duke of Northumberland, who moved in in the
mid nineteen nineties with his wife Jane. The Duchess set
about improving the dilapidated property, adding fountains, mazes and sweeping lawns,
and creating a charitable entity called the Olmwick Garden, which
includes the Poison Garden. While some of the most destructive
plants here are also sources of medicinal cures and antidotes,

(18:26):
like Madagascar periwinkle, which can cause libertoxicity when ingested, but
is also used in leukemia treatment, the benefits neither inspire
nor impress the Duchess, who once said, the story of
how plants can cure I find pretty boring. Really much
better to know how a plant kills. The ubiquity of
poisoned in our own backyards motivated a group of forensic

(18:49):
chemists to conduct a year long experiment in the garden
quantifying toxins in twenty five different plants that have been
accidentally ingested by children. A trope of Beledon used by
the teacup poisoner was one of the most hazardous kids,
the scientists determined, and better public awareness was needed to
prevent further fatal consequences. Back in the gardener's break room,

(19:12):
a whiteboard listed that day's jobs cut the grass along
and access road ten to twenty lethal mandrakes. Mandragora so
entwined in human histories, said Leech, who went on to
explain that Pharaohs used mandragora as and intoxicant, and romans
as a battlefield and esthetic. More recently, the Harry Potter

(19:33):
books made squealing sentient mandrakes a source of color, with
magical roots resembling crying human babies. Leech only started reading
up on mandragora this spring, he confessed, after receiving an
e mail from a mandrake enthusiast who wanted to give
Alnwick her collection, which included a rare varietal native to

(19:54):
the mountains of Central Asia. The twenty inherited mandrakes now
live in a covered facility by the break room. It's
the roots that are super poisonous, Leech said, we're going
to have to cage them. Caged plants being the most vicious,
draw the greatest interest. Some Ricinus communis, producer of the
poisoned rhisin are kept caged. But an innocuous looking green

(20:17):
and purple plant must be by law, Salvia divinorum, Leech said,
you smoke it and you go on an acid like
high for thirty seconds. It's clear why mystery writers like
coming to Olmwick. The first time British novelist Jill Johnson visited,
she explored the nettled blaanes, her hands tucked nervously in
her pockets. Then the initial stirrings of an idea a

(20:40):
botanist detective who uses her garden as a crime solving tool,
similar to Agatha Christie's Beloved Miss Marble. Johnson's first book
and the Professor Eustacia Rose Mysteries. Devil's Breath came out
in twenty twenty three, and since then she's returned to
Olmwick for inspiration. It's an incredibly good bag full of

(21:01):
poisonous wonder. She said that will keep me inspired to
murder more people using more lethal plants for a very
long time to come. According to staff at the Elmic Garden,
at least one real life police force has inquired about
visiting to discuss the use of plants and poisons that
might be appearing on a watch list ones to keep
their eye out for in the future. The police force

(21:22):
in question declined to comment, but there have been several
high profile poisoning cases in the United Kingdom, famous among
them the two thousand and nine murder of a man
whose curry dinner was laced with wolf spain. Leach pointed
out that it would take just a nail clipping sized
piece of bandrake root to put somebody in the ground.
Better for everyone, it seemed if detectives knew their marsh

(21:45):
marigold from their mistletoe. The garden constantly incorporates new plants
put but up until recently it was missing one of
the world's most painful species. The Dendrosnide moroides or gimpy gimby,
is an incredibly dangerous Australian stinging nettle, and even a

(22:06):
slight brush with it can make you vomit. After watching
you tube videos of the plant's victims had tour guide
John Knox tried growing one from a seed he bought online.
When that failed, he contacted a man he'd read about
who kept one the size of a garden gnome inside
a bird cage in his living room. Knox transported it
to Almwick in a dog cage covered with trash bags

(22:28):
to avoid coming in contact with the spindles, which could
create an effect he described as like being set on
fire and being electrocuted and having hot acid poured on
you all at the same time. The gimpy gimpy, now
several feet larger, lives lecter like in a clear locked
box at the far end of the garden. We don't

(22:49):
open it without a hazmat suit, Leech explained. Imagine if
a gust of wind blew in like Knox. Leech had
done his research, three or four weeks of sheer pain
flare ups for the next few years. He reported, it's
a thing of nightmares, and how do you manage a
collection that contains nightmares. He had started gardening when he
was a small boy. Drawn to it, he said, because

(23:10):
it was just about the least scary thing he could
imagine doing and look where he ended up. Next article
A Shurpa's steepest climb by Gloria Lieu. Last year, at
age eighteen, Nima Regi Sirpa became the youngest climber to
summit the world's fourteen tallest peaks. His next challenge is

(23:32):
even trickier, overcoming the conceptions of what Roll's surpas play
within the industry and how pro climbers are anointed. Last October,
a slender, eighteen year old Shirpa climber stood atop a
snowy peak in Tibet and recorded a selfie video in
the dark. It was six oh five am, and with
this summit of a mountain called Shisha Pangma, Nima Regi

(23:56):
Chirpa had topped all fourteen of the world's eight thousand
meter peceeks, becoming the youngest person ever to do so.
Like several international climbers who reached the peak that morning,
he also had support. Nima had been led by a
Sherpa guide. Breathless in the thin air and wearing a
puffy down suit, Nima thanked his mom for praying for
him and his dad for funding his expeditions. He alluded

(24:19):
to the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza and asked for
an end to war, hate and racism. As a teenager,
this is my message to each and every one of you,
he panted, then shouted ooohoo. Once he descended, Nima texted
the video to his manager in Mumbai, who spliced it
into an Instagram reel with inspirational music and blasted it

(24:39):
to Nima's then twenty thousand followers. Reporters called for interviews
and shared the feel good story of the teenager climbing
under the banner hashtag Sherpa Power to spread the message
that his people weren't just supporters of Western climbers, but
athletes in their own right. Much of this scenario would
have been improbable even one generation ago. For nearly one

(25:02):
hundred twenty years, Sherpas have served as porters and guides
for foreign climbers seeking glory on the world's highest peaks,
becoming so synonymous with this work that many Westerners don't
know the word. Sherpa is an ethnicity, not a profession,
but in the past fifteen years, Sherpas have founded industry
leading guide guiding outfits and pursued their own world records

(25:26):
and first ascents. Nima sits on the cusp of the
next evolution, a sherpa, looking to ensue the business of
guiding altogether and become a professional climbing star. Two months
after setting his record, Nima was already preparing for his
next project, alongside famed Italian alpinist Simone Moro, who was
attempting a winter ascent of eight thousand, one hundred sixty

(25:50):
three meter Manaslu. If they succeeded, the duol claimed it
would be the first winter climb of an eight thousand
meter peak in pure alpine style, meaning in a single push,
with none of the established camps, fixed ropes, bottled oxygen,
or sherpa support that Niema enjoyed on the fourteen peaks.

(26:10):
Even Morrow, who at fifty seven had summitted more eight
thousand ers in the winter than anyone else, had never
done so in pure alpine air. Expeditions like this are
out of reach for most climbers from one of South
Asia's poorest countries, but Nima's uniquely set up for them.
His father, Tashi Lachpa Shrpa and uncles are the founders

(26:31):
of one of Nepal's largest guiding companies seven Summit Tracks.
The brothers also owned an outfitter named fourteen Peaks Expeditions,
which Tashi oversees, a helicopter company called hell Everest, and
steaks in various other businesses. Thanks to his dad's wealth,
Nima never had to grind on the mountain guiding or

(26:51):
schlepping westerner's gear as other sherpas do. Even Morrow's mentorship
came through family connections. The alpinist works for the brothers
as a helicopter pilot. A few days before Nina departed,
we met for breakfast at the Aloft Hotel in Catmandeu,
where his father puts up clients and which serves as

(27:12):
seven Summits de facto headquarters. Bearing the hall marks of adolescence,
a light mustache, clean air, Jordans, and earnest enthusiasm, Nima
sipped a cappuccino while dishing sound bites at double speed.
Eloquent and private school educated, Nima Knuah's lines. I only
want to do projects that are meaningful, he said, because

(27:33):
we're going to pass away some day. We have a
very limited time. The Winter expedition would be a major
step up from what he'd done involving breath taking cold,
and hurricane level winds that could pin climbers in their
tents for days, but Nina was undaunted. This concludes readings
from National Geographic Magazine for to day. Your reader has

(27:53):
been Barsha. Thank you for listening, Keep on listening, and
have a great day.