Comments on: Make your own fusion reactor

By: ViscountValmont

ViscountValmont — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 20:30:28 +0000

These are absolutely fascinating. I would love to build one if I could afford the extra money for materials. For those of you who have built one, what sort of interesting experimentation have you found it useful for? Or, if lacking in that, what “fun” demonstration-type functions?

By: Lead Roofing

Lead Roofing — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:18:00 +0000

Great!. . It is a good sign of human improvement with the fact of seeing creative inventions that continuously brings a good edge and standard in the modern day inventors.

With fresh minds and excited emotions could possibly brings out a new sort of fusion reactor.

Good job!.

By: Jon

Jon — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 17:30:57 +0000

“Mini-Chernobyl”? No, a fusion reactor, unlike a fission power plant, can’t spiral out of control and explode. That’s exactly the problem. Physicists can’t get “exploding” fusion reactions when they try!

Please, please take a basic course in Physics or Chemistry before damning all science.

By: PKM

PKM — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 20:59:07 +0000

sl, you are probably right- aguiluz needs to go and read about what chernobyl actually was, and read the article about this fusor and how they are not “literally” the same. never mind- maybe a few people will learn that nuclear experimentation does not necessarily = mutants and ecological disasters.

By: Cynical Jawa

Cynical Jawa — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 19:59:38 +0000

Playing with rads is indeed bad, but these things produce *very* low amounts. Unless you stood next to one operating none-stop for about a fortnight, it wouldn’t exceed your annual dosage from other natural sources (minerals, radon gas, food/drink, cosmic rays…)

By: Aguiluz

Aguiluz — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 05:17:19 +0000

What?! Playing with nuclear radiation is bad, real bad. I will get something else to generate power. I would put that in a concrete bunker and observe it using a CCTV I hate to be near that stuff! It is literally a Mini-Chernobyl! Nukes=Nasty

By: SL

SL — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 05:09:38 +0000

Hmm. Did this get posted somewhere outside the technological community ("ZOMG, crazy kid build fusion bomb, CLICK ME NOW" or something)? We're getting a lot of dumb comments.

Pretty neat, though the farnsworth-hirsch fusor has been around since the 50s. If I had built one, I'd put it up on the mantelpiece with a viewing window so that people could see the little sparkles of plasma.

"yep, that there is nuke-yoo-lar fujen."
"well, I be. that'll show them commies...we got so many nukes that anyone 'n his dog can build one these days."

By: Cynical Jawa

Cynical Jawa — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 22:26:23 +0000

^Wow. An energy troll.

Hydrogen fuel cells are all well and good, but produce nowhere near the kind of power you could get from a working fusion reactor. Furthermore, the energy to electrolyse the water into H2 and O2 has to come from somewhere…

By: fuk_fU510n

fuk_fU510n — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 20:54:04 +0000

Hey fuk fusion try water cells, they harness the power of nature directly.

By: PKM

PKM — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 15:24:20 +0000

@mouse: I seriously hope you’re being sarcastic there. in answer to your first and most serious point, no, large-scale fusion reactions haven’t reached break-even yet, and yes, they do produce a lot of gamma radiation and neutron flux. as these tabletop fusor designs are producing only thousands of fusion reactions per second, the amount of induced radioactivity in the vacuum chamber is pretty negligible. the “millions of tons of water 6 miles underground” sounds like a neutrino detector. i don’t have a clue what you mean by “is the proton unstable”.

By: Wurx

Wurx — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 14:48:50 +0000

His 3 legged mutant children will be so proud. Scarry stuff.

By: paige

paige — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 13:58:16 +0000

I think the fusor II is the coolest one there. It is the perfect addition to any tube collection. Also it looks like the easiest to build and a great addition to everybody’s living room, right next to the lava lamp. I may actually see if I can build one. . . on top of all of my other projects. Lets see, rewire my mercedes, megasquirt it, fix the turbo in the diesel, build a fusion reactor. Ok I think I got the plan

By: Carl Holmberg

Carl Holmberg — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 04:14:34 +0000

From my limited poking around on the site, I see that author’s rev 1 set up was getting a vacuum down to “only” 20 microns (0.00026% of sea level) using a run of the mill electric air pump. Ah, but Mr. McDermott says that to get the ~1 micron needed to really get into the game can be acchieved with a two stage mechanical pump. No need to get into the oil diffu$ion or turbomolecular pump$.

I wouldn’t get too worked up about the steel chamber becoming significantly radioactive. Unfortunately, Brian’s decay curve xls data sheet from one of his experiments is offline, but I suspect the mass of all isotopes stays pretty low, even more so for long half-life isotopes.

By: chris

chris — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 02:42:58 +0000

wow

By: Mouse

Mouse — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 22:26:04 +0000

but dude, don’t forget, the more you operate one of these things, the more nutrons hit atoms and cause them to turn into isotopes, usually unstable ones. So i would imaging that this thing would get more and more radioactive just like the casings of nuclear power plants and that fusion reactor they trying to perfect. and may we not forget of all the undetectable sub-atomics, like nutrinos and pions and crazy shit. or does this thing have a bubble chamber on it!? that would be cool. btw, did they prove that a proton is unstable yet!? didn’t they have like millions of tons of water like 6 miles underground or something?