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Homemade Fusion Reactor
Author: Brett ThomasPublished: 28th March 2007
"That? Aww, just a hunk of junk I built in my basement."
I realize this isn't so much computer or tech industry news as much as it is just something incredibly cool, but I think it deserved some mention. A 17-year-old high school senior in the state of Michigan has developed a homemade nuclear fusion reactor in his basement. No joke - he's even shown the "star in a jar" byproduct to prove it.
Thiago Olsen built the machine using parts that he scrounged off of eBay or in his local hardware store. All in all, it's taken him over 1,000 hours of research and design and over two years to build. But in his basement now sits a machine that is capable of fusing two hydrogen atoms together to create a helium nucleus. His goal for the project? To win a science fair. And just to say he did it, of course.
His mother, oddly, is rather calm and almost unsurprised about the wonder of physics sitting in her suburban basement. She's done the usual "He's so bright" routine, but also joked about Thiago's other "lofty ideas," such as building a hyberbolic chamber (she flatly denied that one). Of course, when he asked about the fusion reactor, she finally said yes. Fortunately, the machine poses little danger aside from the extremely high voltage, small amount of X-rays, and the 200 million degree ball of plasma. That's all...
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could be a interesting PC mod too, anyone want to front mount a star in a jar?
The day nuclear fusion comes a reality on power plant scale is the day our entire energy needs are solved. No more need to create electricity through coal, gas, oil, nuclear fission, wind, water, solar etc. All the benefits of fission (with loads more energy produced) using deuterium and tritium (renewable forms of hydrogen found in the ocean) and creating helium and a spare neucleus, with none of the side effects (radiatioactive waste etc.)
Here's hoping that it's getting close to becoming a reality.
N.B. It's been a few years since my Physics A-Level, so some details in my post may be incorect.
fini
EDIT: Seems someone might be getting close: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20020309/fob1.asp
Or, of course, you can email or PM any of us if you think you have something newsworthy and we'll be more than happy to publish it if it's a worthwhile piece of news.
The holy grail of fusion power is the ability to produce power from a fusion reaction that doesnt take as much energy to setup full stop, be that cold fusion or thermonuclear. But we are getting there, the JET prgramme attained a Q factor or 0.7 which means 70% of the energy put into the system came out as usable energy and that was in 1997. With the ITER programme they'll probably hit a higher target, will they breakeven? Who knows.
KUDOS!!!
Kimbie
IIRC they have produced a fusion reaction with a Q factor greater than 1, but they couldn't sustain it.
This is the kind of thing I want to do for a job. Work for ITER or JET or CERN.
;)
Awesome work though, I wonder how much it cost him to build.
I could have talked about this in more depth a few yrs ago, including the equations and typical energy values the theory behind fusion intail. But I have forgotten almost all of what I learn't at the time.
I do remember my Physics teacher saying at the time, that if he had enough money he would invest it in nuclear fusion. He was convinced that it's only a matter of time (less than 20yrs in his view) untill they cracked it. Can't wait.
Edit.
David_Fitzy
Nah I don't see any problem there. Governments wouldn't let people get in the way over something as stupid as 'It's called nuclear'. It's the opposite of fission and creates no harmfull bi-product. It is the 'perfect' energy source. It's what the entire universe already uses! All energy is derived from nuclear fusion.
Please tell me if anything I have said is incorrect. Wish I could remember what I learn't.
Unless they come up with a complete redesign of fusion reactors (I.E not toroidal or improve toroidal massively) they will still have to put large amounts of energy in, its just the stability part, if they can keep the reaction going they should be fine. But the Helium gets in the way, sapping up the energy, they have to remove it somehow.
Oh and by the way Spiderman 2 is completely infeasible, nothing could withstand those temperatures, and as for doing that reaction in open air, good luck, too much contamination. If it was going to work, it would just be burning the tritium into Helium, then you would need to add more.
Current designs fuse Deuterium and tritium. The deuterium comes from heavy water AKA sea water. The tritium comes from lithium split when Neutron byproducts hit the lithium causing it to split into Helium and tritium. The tritium is then redirected back into the reaction to further fuel it and create more neutrons for more tritium.
Anyways, if you really wanted to know how Fusion reactors work, I'm sure you could find more coherent sources like Wikipedia rather than my ramblings.
lol very true, people are really scared of the word nuclear for some reason, probably got it in their heads that anything thats got nuclear in the name would explode like a nuclear bomb.
They even had to rename NMR to MRI because people would go in them
lol at ignorant public
Heavy water is water that has an extra H atom.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water
I was only using Spiderman 2 as an example of how the reaction itself is or can be a self sustaining one, not the way it was done.
I found nuclear fusion to be one of the most interesting subjects in A-Level physics, but also one of the hardest. Soo many equations and values to learn, revising for that exam (well most physics and maths A-Level exams) was hell. Remember having pages and pages of equations to learn.
I thought heavy water was the same as H20 except the hydrogens have an extra neutron each(they are heavier but still hydrogen - ie an isotope).
Also i'm not convinced about this guy doing fusion. one of the reasons - afaik - that it cannot be sustained is that even if you can heat the core of the reactor to the desired temperatures (hotter than the sun that is) the plasma has to be contained within a very temperamental EM field. The energy is usually lost by the plasma touching the sides of the container (even if only briefly) resulting in huge energy losses. Seeing as how the multimillion pound reactors struggle to do it, i doubt he stands much of a chance.
I have previously heard how people believed they were carrying out cold fusion by causing air bubbles in water to expand and contract extremely rapidly by vibrating them at a particular frequency. they thought fusion was occuring due to the number of neutrons that were being given off, but after 5yrs of testing it turned out these were just neutrons given off by the sun, so im sceptical about the reliance of his experiment.
Anyway! i certainly couldnt do what he's done so im not knocking it!!!
Canada is the largest "manufacturer" of Deuterium.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o267/r4tch3t/0672c49f202e8d3c632e027101b0bbf0.png
This is the reaction taking place in the large reactors like ITER and JET, The type of fusion this Guy would be using is most likely D-D which releases less once fused 12.5MeV compared to 17.6 for D-T reactions. Thats only 70% of D-T reactions.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o267/r4tch3t/reactivity2.jpg
This shows why the D-T reaction is favoured.
Tritium is produced in the reactor with Lithium around the inside of the toroid.
For thermal neutrons: n + 6Li -> 4He + T + 4.78 MeV
For neutrons above 2.5 MeV: n + 7Li -> 4He + T + n
Thus producing some of its own fuel.
Also note that all reactions taking place do not involve Electrons, it is all positive charges so they can confine them using magnetic fields.
The reaction also has to constantly be heated, there are several ways they can do this and they use them all, Ohmic heating (inducing a current into the plasma), neutral particle beams (firing tritium backwards opposite to the flow of the plasma so they collied and create heat, also puts the fuel in there) and electromagnetic heating (sort of like a microwave)
Anyway, that's pretty cool stuff.
And Mankz, a private school doesn't make you smart (trust me on that one).
always thought of building one my self ....
dude going to eton makes you rich, not automatically clever
As for the "years of design and planning" Uh... There's a couple of dozen places where the plans are freely available.
It's not too hard to make either. You just need a high vacuum system, a source of high voltage, and some deturium.
Now, if he had invented a new method of producing fusion, that would be cool. Copying plans off the web? Boring.
If you find this boring don't know what will make you excited :|
You can find plans for almost anything on the internet, but that doesn't mean you don't have to plan for it or that it is simple.
And remember this kid was only 15 when he started building this, how many kids are there that can build a fusion reactor?
I find it very impresive.
Touché.
What's mom making for dinner?"
As Nexxo so kindly put before me, when YOU do it, I'll be happy to hear how easy it was. ;)
"Eh, the Sistene chapel was just a painting. All you need is some scaffolding, paint and a bursh. Now if he did it with a monkey, THEN it would be special..."
;)
Fission has no place here :p
P.s. I wonder what social services think of parents who let their kids make reactors... Especially one with the big scary 'nuclear' word.
Yeah I remember seeing this a while ago. But I can't remember if I found the link here or somewhere else. Honestly until someone else mentioned it, I wasn't sure if I was just experiencing deja vu or what. :o
I would assign the lack of other examples more to a lack of knowledge or interest, rather than difficulty. Sure, it's interesting, but people who know a lot more about it than me have decided it's not a viable area of research.
Incidentally , there are a lot of them about(way more than 18), but they're commonly just used as neutron sources in other experiments.
Really, If you have a high vacuum setup (though you can gt some interesting effects, but no fusion at lower vacuum levels), all you need is a bit of wire, a high voltage power supply, and some deuterium.
This isn't so much a case of incredible engineering, but a case of having a lot of spare money. If I could afford a vacuum setup with a diffusion/turbomolecular pump, I'd probably make one too. Unfortunately, I havn't several thousand dollars to spare.
Its the same thing as with "Clean fuel" cars. There has been a guy who started by making a blow torch that was powered by average everyday water and he then converted his car engine to run off the same type of fuel (Though he kept it as a "hybrid" provided he ran into any problems) Yet we still are paying an A**LOAD for gas.
It all comes down to politics and the "economy. The technology is already known, it just can't be "shown" due to the chaos it would cause.
Yes its rambling but I hope you see my point.
ITER will not generate power though, as it is just on big 10 billion experiment.
Cold fusion on the other hand has been done, but not in the useful sense. There are exotic particles called Muon's, these temporarily disable the electric force surrounding the proton so that they can come close enough for the strong nuclear force to take hold. This is no feasible for production of electricity as muon's are hard to come by and only last for 2.2μs. They can be produced by particle accelerators, but this is hardly an economical way of producing them for energy production due to the large amounts of energy required by the particle accelerator.
Its a well known fact that almost everything we use that has some sort of technological value is basically a "hand-me-down" of somthing that was supassed by better technology we havn't seen yet.
I don't think you realise how difficult it is to suppress technology, particularly in this modern age. Besides, If th government had something that gave them an overwhelming technilogical advantage, don't you think it would have been exploited for wartime purposes already? Particularly given how trigger-happy america has been as of late.
Anyways, I'll believe it when I see it, or see physics equations that adaquately explain it, not before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_budget
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/09/05/wow.tech.black.world/
http://www.keelynet.com/energy/waterfuel.htm
Just a few.
Conspiricy Theorist? No.
Realist? Yes.