Well to be precise - A high school student built a inertial electrostatic confinement fusion reactor in a garage.
Exactly what has this kid built? Can it run safely over an extended time and be used for anything?
What would it take to actually use this for something? Could this kid build a small electrical generator for the house? Or hook up a fan?
How do you refuel it? Does he have control rods like a power plant?
I recall that the heat from the reactor is the useful energy source.
You can use it to generate neutrons, and to further your understanding of these types of reactors, but they currently (and likely forever) consume way more power then they generate.
Farnsworth…ha.
Hopefully he won’t be another Radioactive Boy Scout.
Yep, I was thinking of the same thing.
Quite a few students have built reactors. It’s amazing and scary at the same time.
Farnsworth took his to science fairs. The government didn’t confiscate it. I guess tt must not be cranking out uncontrolled radioactive material.
The article you quoted is about nuclear fission, not fusion.
Good news, everybody, here’s the Farnsworth-Hirsh Fusor: Fusor - Wikipedia It doesn’t say how its refueled, it seems to be connected to a constant ionized gas source. But again, all he’s going to get is neutrons.
Well, when he starts getting electrons, have him give me a call.
The original inventor was Philo Farnsworth, who invented the TV and preceded both Futurama and this kid.
My understanding is that he built a reactor that could work if he had the fuel, which he will never get.
So, assuming you did the same, you could show it off to your friends as a really neat but otherwise useless design exercise.
Fuel.. an isotope that works as an input is Helium 3 (regular Helium is mass 4 )
$100 a litre, but has risen to $2000 a litre. (since people want it now, to use for neutron source and for fusion research ?)
Are you pondering what I’m pondering?
Deuterium gas isn’t hard to get.
This type of fusion reactor can produce a barely detectible neutron output when everything is working perfectly, and has a power in to power out ratio of something like a million to one. So it’s not really useful for anything other than a science fair demonstration.