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12-Year-Old Boy Reportedly Builds A Nuclear Fusion Reactor (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Guardian:
An American 14-year-old has reportedly become the youngest known person in the world to create a successful nuclear reaction. The Open Source Fusor Research Consortium, a hobbyist group, has recognised the achievement by Jackson Oswalt, from Memphis, Tennessee, when he was aged 12 in January 2018....
The enterprising teenager said he transformed an old playroom in his parents' house into a nuclear laboratory with $10,000 (£7,700) worth of equipment that uses 50,000 volts of electricity to heat deuterium gas and fuse the nuclei to release energy. "The start of the process was just learning about what other people had done with their fusion reactors," Jackson told Fox. "After that, I assembled a list of parts I needed. I got those parts off eBay primarily and then oftentimes the parts that I managed to scrounge off of eBay weren't exactly what I needed. So I'd have to modify them to be able to do what I needed to do for my project...."
[S]cientists are likely to remain sceptical until Oswalt's workings are subject to verification from an official organisation and are published in an academic journal. Still, the teenager may now have usurped the previous record holder, Taylor Wilson, who works in nuclear energy research after achieving fusion aged 14.
The enterprising teenager said he transformed an old playroom in his parents' house into a nuclear laboratory with $10,000 (£7,700) worth of equipment that uses 50,000 volts of electricity to heat deuterium gas and fuse the nuclei to release energy. "The start of the process was just learning about what other people had done with their fusion reactors," Jackson told Fox. "After that, I assembled a list of parts I needed. I got those parts off eBay primarily and then oftentimes the parts that I managed to scrounge off of eBay weren't exactly what I needed. So I'd have to modify them to be able to do what I needed to do for my project...."
[S]cientists are likely to remain sceptical until Oswalt's workings are subject to verification from an official organisation and are published in an academic journal. Still, the teenager may now have usurped the previous record holder, Taylor Wilson, who works in nuclear energy research after achieving fusion aged 14.
Also, he said he built a time machine in his garage based on a 1976 Toyota Corolla. The only problem was he couldn't get it up to 88 mph.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I can see the conversation.
"Hey Jackson, can you come out and play?"
"Not right now. I'm building a fusion reactor."
"Okay, maybe tomorrow."
The device in question is a fusor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor which does involve actual nuclear fusion. They aren't easy to build but they do engage in actual fusion. They are used for a bunch of practical purposes, including as neutron generators. Hobbyists have built them before. Still, a 12 year old doing it is pretty impressive.
Fair point, but consider this: He was 12 years, 11 months and a few days old at the end of January 2018. He turned 13 in February of last year. The Guardian story was published this week, so the kid had exactly a year (and a few days) to grow by one year. Which he did.
No, that would make it not a "sustainable reactor" - which nobody claimed it to be.
Because all 12 year old boys have $10,000 to do whatever they want with.
I think the term "reactor" came from chemical engineering, meaning a vessel in which a *reaction* takes place. So in that sense, what was built was a "reactor".
In a nuclear fission context, it implies a device capable of supporting a sustained and controllable reaction, in which sense this is *not* a "reactor".
But by that criteria, there are no nuclear fusion reactors in the world. It's not unusual for fusion researchers to call fusion devices such as tokamaks or magnetic mirrors "reactors", even though they cannot sustain a reaction. So in that sense it *is* a "reactor".
It's less important what you call a thing as being clear what you mean, which of course in an age where most news sources have shed their science desks in favor of opinion journalism is a rare thing.
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I'd say you, for jumping to a conclusion about something you don't know anything about. That's kind of the definition of stupidity.
Creating a fusion reactor isn't particularly hard, and many, many people have done it. The cheap and easy fusor design doesn't produce usable energy, however, and that's why it's only used for research, or as a cheap Neutron source. The design goes back to the same guy who invented television, Philo T Farnsworth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor
It's fine to not know about the Fusor and how easy it is to build a fusion reactor. It's not fine and rather stupid to tell other people it can't possibly be true.
Indeed. It doesn't even take $10,000 - you can build a fusor with less than $500 worth of second-hand equipment. Handy if you need a convenient neutron source, or a bad case of radiation poisoning, but not much else.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
50kV isn't that strange. Fairly easy to make, as long as you don't need a lot of current.
When I was twelve, I had trouble scraping together 10 bucks. Rich kids, hmph.
Bloom County Elementry School would like to state that the school evacuation during the Science Fair was not a drill. The NRC has safely removed the dangerous device from the school.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
... you can buy plutonium off the shelf ...
Where? The only commercial source of plutonium I have ever heard of are ionization smoke detectors (like the KV-1) sold in the Soviet Union, but apparently not made in decades. These don't show up on eBay much (I check from time to time). List a source, or you are blowing smoke.
and order deuterium oxide right from Canada.
I don't know of a regular commercial Canadian source (isotope vendors usually don't sell to the public), do you? If so, list them here. I do know of a U.S. source though, United Nuclear, as far as I know this where all fusor makers get their material (and where I got mine).
I'm pretty sure the do-it-yourself kit also includes radiation poisoning, shorter life span, and investigation by a nuclear regulatory agency since the persons involved would be glowing to the radiation detectors in pretty much any western city...especially since a simple radioactive dye will trip them.
Not with a Farnsworth Fusor. These only put out a few million neutrons a second. Assuming a high performing unit with 10 million, that is 10,000,000 * 2.5 MeV * 1.6*10^-13 J/MeV = 4*10^-6 J/s. A rad is 0.01 J/kg of tissue, so a 50 kg kid would require 0.5 J to get a one rad whole body dose. If the actual absorption from the fusor were 10% of its emission (he isn't wrapped around it), then he would have to sit next to it for 2 weeks without a break to get to 1 rad exposure. Radiation poisoning (overt toxicity) sets in around 200 rads in a short period, no acute symptoms would show up if this is spread out over weeks, much less the 8 years of sitting next to the fusor he would need. He could get up to a 2000 rad lifetime exposure sitting next to it his whole life (80 years) but would never show radiation symptions. His cancer risk would be bumped a bit though.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Still, a 12 year old doing it is pretty impressive.
How impressive it is really depends a lot on how much help he got from his parents. They clearly provided very significant financial support...
Just be thankful that's all he did. With all the neutron and gamma radiation from the fusion reaction, the side effects could have been a lot more serious.
I got those parts off eBay primarily
"Aren't you a little young to be building a fusion reactor??"
"Yes ... yes I am."
Fusion is something else. Nobody will build that privately for a long, long time.
That's not the only problem. The problem of how to harness 1,000,000C heat is still unsolved to put it mildly. The only real use for a fusion reactor is as a waste burner and it would be a really expensive one at that. Fusion power generation will likely be something that doesn't happen in our lifetimes. Perhaps 100s or 1000s of years from now but not anytime soon. We just don't know how to efficiently extract energy from that level of heat and don't have the materials to contain that level of heat either. We hold that heat in a magnetic bottle which uses so much power itself that its difficult to make the entire process produce energy instead of consume it.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Not quite. This is a fusor, aka Electrostatic Confinement Fusion. One of the ways to use that is to use proton-boron fusion, which generates nothing but alpha particles. If the electrostatic well is designed correctly, theoretically you could capture those in the outer grid, where they will steal two electrons, thus generating electron flow, aka electricity.
Robert Bussard was working on that, his company Polywell is still doing research into different grid designs.
I was unaware of proton-boron fusion so thanks. If its just alpha particles, why not just boil water with them? Its basically heat at that point. Getting the alpha particles to capture electrons seems hard and perhaps not the most efficient way to capture power but I don't know. It would be an interesting solution to the problem. Still have to make one that actually makes more power than it consumes though. And since the confinement consumes so much power that is hard. I know scientists always love exploring the unknown (ie extreme conditions), but for civilian fission and fusion power perhaps lower energy things are better. Thermal spectrum reactors are better than fast spectrum (this is one idea the nuclear scientists really missed back in the 60s) and some sort of lower heat/lower power fusion will probably be preferable to more extreme forms of fusion. Also, particle accelerators take lots of power so I'm not holding my breath.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
... you can buy plutonium off the shelf ...
Where? The only commercial source of plutonium I have ever heard of are ionization smoke detectors (like the KV-1) sold in the Soviet Union, but apparently not made in decades.
Yes, back in 1985, plutonium was available at every corner drugstore, but in 2019 it’s a little hard to come by.
Interesting to see how different media are reporting this, from the Weekly World News-worthy:
Teen builds working nuclear fusion reactor
to:
Boy, 12, said to have created nuclear reaction
by a media outlet with a science reporter who actually knows about science.