If you don't know that you are a under achiever then watch this.

[loose nut]

A real life Sheldon Cooper.

https://www.ted.com/talks/taylor_wil...fusion_reactor #t-1526

[David Powell]

I know I am an under achiever------ I NEED a nap every afternoon, and a few other times occasionally. Regards David Powell.

[oxford]

I was hoping to see the Nuclear Boy Scout as the story is quite a bit more entertaining.

[Richard P Wilson]

If hes doing nuclear fission in his garage I don't think I'd want to live next door. Or even in the same state.

[loose nut]

If a 14 year old boy can build a fusion reactor in two years (yes it is limited but it is still there, was there it is in a museum now) in a garage with no resources and is basically at the same level that took physicists 60 years to achieve and billions of dollars, Ponds, Yen, Euros etc spent, you have to wonder why fusion is always 25 years away.

[loose nut]

If hes doing nuclear fission in his garage I don't think I'd want to live next door. Or even in the same state.

Just be satisfied with the regular meth heads and bikers.

[tomato coupe]

If a 14 year old boy can build a fusion reactor in two years (yes it is limited but it is still there, was there it is in a museum now) in a garage with no resources and is basically at the same level that took physicists 60 years to achieve and billions of dollars, Ponds, Yen, Euros etc spent, you have to wonder why fusion is always 25 years away.

Despite the title, he did not build a fusion reactor. He built a fusor, which is a device incapable of generating power.

[loose nut]

He did state that the output was less then the power input, still impressive for a 14 year old and he didn't blow up the neighbourhood. It would be interesting to know how he got away with processing his own uranium, probably for a different project.

[mikey553]

He did state that the output was less then the power input, still impressive for a 14 year old and he didn't blow up the neighbourhood. It would be interesting to know how he got away with processing his own uranium, probably for a different project.

He mentioned deuterium in his presentation. It may be used in nuclear fusion. Uranium or similar heavy metals may be used in nuclear fission, which is very different from fusion.

[tom_d]

As Bart Simpson is known to say: "Underachiever, and proud of it, man!"

[tom_d]

If hes doing nuclear fission in his garage I don't think I'd want to live next door. Or even in the same state.

Neat thing about fusion vs. fission is that with fusion if there's a failure the whole thing just shuts itself down. There is no runaway reaction like what we have with today's highly radioactive fission reactors. That, and the hydrogen isotopes used as fuel are as plentiful as our supply of water.

If a 14 year old boy can build a fusion reactor in two years (yes it is limited but it is still there, was there it is in a museum now) in a garage with no resources and is basically at the same level that took physicists 60 years to achieve and billions of dollars, Ponds, Yen, Euros etc spent, you have to wonder why fusion is always 25 years away.

He had those 60 years of research to base his work on. Much of the heavy lifting had already been done. Still, an impressive achievement. Sounds like he's well on his way in contributing to the ultimate goal which is a stable reaction that produces more energy than is consumed. As for always being 25 years away, it might have a little something to do with this technology potentially putting an end to the oil company's grip on our economy.

[loose nut]

If you watch some other Ted takes he has done the fusion plant is the least of his accomplishments.

[darryl]

I suppose one could characterize any project, such as a search for the answers to fusion, as a potential money-making scheme. If there wasn't money to be made, there wouldn't be the project. The money being made is from research funding, and there are lots of projects, such as cancer research, that are in this category. If fusion delivered on its promise of cheap and virtually limitless energy- well it becomes an oxymoron. It couldn't be cheap because all that research money would have to be paid back, with interest, and it would have to keep that money stream flowing and in ever greater amounts. That's just business as it is in the world today. We know that all our sources of electricity are being put under more and more scrutiny, and at some point the end user purchase price will be all but out of reach. At that point fusion derived power would come on-line- at a cheaper but still exorbitant cost. At that point it could start to perform. I don't think the challenges are technical anymore- one look into the drug industry will show you what drives it.

Yes, there is a lot known now about fusion, and a lot of ground work has been done. I'm not surprised that a student could come up with something like this. No disrespect meant to this guy- he is far beyond what I may have come up with at that age, or even now. Kudos to him.

[macona]

Yeah, he is/was over on the fusor forum.

So this kind of fusion, IEC fusion, was originally invented by Philo Farnsworth (as in the TV inventor) invented in 1962. The design has not really changed since then and is actually easy to do assuming you can scrounge parts or have someone that will fund the project. There has been a few kids building these things, I think there might have been one younger than him.

The consist of a vacuum pump, a small chamber and a high voltage insulator feedthrough with a grid. It's pumped down and a little bit of deuterium is introduced into the chamber and then a negative high voltage source is applied to the grid, around 20-40kv. electrostatics cause the D2 to smash in the center and fuse and out comes the neutrons. At least that's the theory. Recently people have been studying where the fusion is actually occurring and it seems to be happening all over the interior of the chamber, so it's possible the theory of operation is all wrong.

Fusor's are not good for much. You can use the neutron flux to activate other materials like silver for doing other experiments. I did have a friend who managed to get a neutron flux high enough where it made him sick. He ended up moving the fusor out to an outbuilding and ran it remote control. There are no radioactive byproducts from this other than the neutron activation of materials. The reaction creates Helium 3 in tiny, tiny quantities.