Building A Nuclear-Fusion Reactor With eBay Parts

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This will end badly.

For the past four years, Brooklyn web designer Mark Suppes has been building a nuclear-fusion reactor in the corner of a friend's cluttered warehouse -- even though he has no background in nuclear physics and has never even studied electrical engineering. Suppes's reactor -- which incorporates parts sourced on eBay -- is about the size of a filing cabinet and looks like something out of Back to the Future
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Steve said:
This will end badly.
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Normally I'd have to disagree. But if you look at what's written on the board behind him... I'd say that if this guy is really that smart he should know better than to try a "simplified electron gun"! :eek: Because that's just asking for trouble.

Unless you keep that part a secret. ;)
 
A Bussard fusor is actually supposed to be very easy to make. As long as you have shielding enough for the neutrons it's safe. In reality most fusors don't even need much in the way of shielding as most don't run at a high enough power level to create enough neutrons to worry about. EMC2 is actually developing a fusion device based off of bussards principles along with some new stuff and they've got some serious money from the military backing them. They went quiet about a year ago and are still working and being funded; which I find interesting. Hopefully something comes out of it. They're shooting for hydrogen boron fusion. If they succeed it would be awesome. it would mean electricity so cheap it might as well be free and no harmful/radioactive byproducts.
 
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Nuclear, you say?
 
Most of the article is behind a paywall, but this probably will NOT end badly.

Nuclear FISSION can end badly, since, really, you only need enough fissile material close enough.

Fusion, on the other hand, is notoriously difficult to get going. People have been doign "garage fusion" for years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor Note the "Fusors have been assembled in low-power forms by hobbyists." part.

What he is building looks like a polywell: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell. The thing about these reactors is that they should not be able to explode. If you unplug them, they stop working. I would not want to be within 50 feet of one while it is running unless I am behind some neutron shielding, and the container might become radioactive over time, but that is the worst of it. Do not expect explosions or anything.
 
you never know where the next breakthrough will come from. It could potentially be from this guy, some teenager from North Carolina, or some computer tech in Colorado. Give this guy some credit for trying.
 
As mentioned above, a Fusion reaction mostly can't go wrong. Parameters change even a little, and the reaction stops. Unlike Fission, where it takes days for heating to stop.
 
Garage scientists have been known to sometimes have breakthroughs, so good for him. At least he's smart enough to do anything like this in a warehouse district.
 
This is how I know the article is bullshit:

Suppes's is the only small-scale project and the only one to use superconducting magnets -- the key, he says, to making the reactor efficient.
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Either the author is a fucking moron and a rubbish journalist, or the guy building it should be investigating the use of the black hole in his head for converting mass into Hawking Radiation.
 
WBurchnall said:
Most amazing part is that his is a working Nuclear Fusion reactor. So you have the potential for unlimited clean cheap energy and the benefits to cancer treatment already working. I can't wait to see what he accomplishes with his experiments by the time he reaches say 40.
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There is no potential. It's a fusor. They've been around for decades, and many people have built them as a hobby or science project. There is NO potential for energy from a fusor.

You need to learn to distinguish between reality and hype.
 
It's a Polywell. It's energy negative. That is, you don't get out more than you put in.
 
Aluisious said:
This is how I know the article is bullshit:



Either the author is a fucking moron and a rubbish journalist, or the guy building it should be investigating the use of the black hole in his head for converting mass into Hawking Radiation.
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Agreed on both points. Then again, sounds like the author is making enough x-ray density that he will ignorantly kill himself off shortly enough.

The 14 year old kid, on the other hand, is brilliant. He never once mentioned energy from fusion (which is impossible), instead, he wants to use fusion to cheaply make radioactive isotopes for medical treatment, something that actually makes sense.
 
Harrkev said:
I would not want to be within 50 feet of one while it is running unless I am behind some neutron shielding....
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Would you mind telling me how to shield oneself fron neutrons? The only thing I can think of is distance. :eek:
 
Nuclear fusion is easy. Hydrogen bombs are fusion bombs. They're very easy to build, though you have to use a fission bomb to start the fusion reaction. Those are very hard to build, thankfully, and you can't build a fusion bomb without one. At least, not right now anyway. Controlling fusion so that it can be useful for power generation is what nobody has managed to do yet. I don't think anyone with some spare parts from ebay and an electron gun from a TV set is going to succeed when the world's best nuclear scientists have not.

Nuclear science is supposed to be hard. Nature needs such safeguards so that your average semi-evolved chimp with delusions of grandeur can't just blow up the universe. :rolleyes:
 
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