Teen Builds His Own Nuclear Fusion Reactor At College (interestingengineering.com) 87
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Interesting Engineering: A student has successfully developed a small nuclear fusion reactor as part of his A-Levels. The 17-year-old built the reactor to generate neutrons as part of his Extended Project Qualification (EPQ). Notably, Cesare Mencarini's work is claimed to be the only nuclear reactor built in a school environment. Showcased at the Cambridge Science Festival recently, the nuclear reactor achieved plasma a few months ago. It also gave Mencarini an A* in his A-Level results, according to reports. [...] Mencarini maintained that the goal of the reactor is to create conditions that are required for fusion. However, the project couldn't get same pressure that's generated by the Sun due to its own gravity. Therefore, to make atoms hot enough, the teen used high voltage.
The reactor achieved plasma in June. "Two days ago I achieved plasma, which was brilliant and I'm massively happy about this," wrote Mencarini in a LinkedIn post. "The system is running thanks to a Leybold Trivac E2 roughing pump, which allows me to achieve a minimum pressure of 8E-3 Torr." At that time, he mentioned that Pfeiffer TPH062 would be used later to achieve fusion. "This turbomolecular pump is currently isolated by a VAT Throttling Valve." "The grid is then attached to a 30kV rated High Voltage Feedthrough connected to a 5kV Unilab power supply, which allows me to use the fusor in my school (It is limited to a 2mA output). While running the fusor I experimented with 2 grids which you can see in the images," added Mencarini in the post.
The reactor achieved plasma in June. "Two days ago I achieved plasma, which was brilliant and I'm massively happy about this," wrote Mencarini in a LinkedIn post. "The system is running thanks to a Leybold Trivac E2 roughing pump, which allows me to achieve a minimum pressure of 8E-3 Torr." At that time, he mentioned that Pfeiffer TPH062 would be used later to achieve fusion. "This turbomolecular pump is currently isolated by a VAT Throttling Valve." "The grid is then attached to a 30kV rated High Voltage Feedthrough connected to a 5kV Unilab power supply, which allows me to use the fusor in my school (It is limited to a 2mA output). While running the fusor I experimented with 2 grids which you can see in the images," added Mencarini in the post.
Not the first nuclear reactor built in a school (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not the first nuclear reactor built in a school (Score:4, Informative)
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A fusor is a nuclear reactor, in that it is a device that causes a fusion reaction.
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These college students [uchicago.edu] built a breeder reactor to win a scavenger hunt.
Usually the reason most people don't play with reactors isn't that they're particularly difficult to build, it's that they tend to draw undue amounts of attention to the builder (hence why we're seeing this story). The old jokes about ending up on some government watch list are less funny when it actually happens.
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Just read through it, they built a neutron howitzer to convert thorium to uranium by neutron capture. A neutron howitzer consists of a strong alpha source (there are some great papers from the 1960s that talk about ordering in plutonium for that like you'd order pizza, along with comments like "we left out the cadmium shielding to save costs"), nowadays you'd use Am241 to knock neutrons out of Beryllium, so a Pu-Be source originally and an Am-Be source now. So now you've got a source of thermal (slow) neu
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Not to mention the safety standards are pretty low with these amateurs and have people playing with radioactive substances with no protection, contaminating the area around them, standing next to gamma and neutron sources, etc.
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Sorry, but a second correction to your post: YOUNGER kids have been building these for decades.
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In English 'school' means high school (Score:2)
The fact that my colonial cousins get this wrong is their problem - perhaps reflecting the immaturity of US undergraduates? ;)
Thank you for a challenging reply (Score:2)
You're right that some faculties within our tertiary education institutions are described as 'schools'. However the term 'I'm going to school at Oxford' could never be understood to mean I am studying at Oxford University. And specifically the phrase 'the first nuclear reactor built in a school' would never mean at a tertiary education institution.
Not Necessarily (Score:2)
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In the movie Fight Club, Helena Bonham Carter read the line “I haven't been fucked like that since grade school” , with no idea that grade school actually meant primary school.
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So, in the US at least, there is no consistent definition of 'Grade School'.
Good spot (Score:2)
School is what you go to as a child not just high school. Thank you for the correction! Mutter...
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That's not a school, it's a university.
Since you're being pedantic, this is a British person speaking, he's speaking in American, not English. Universities are not called schools in the UK.
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That's only a partial quote. The Cambridge dictionary explicitly labels B1 as "US", backing up the claim that it doesn't have that meaning in British English.
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Good catch. Thanks for that callout.
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I mean, I agree with your point, but using Merriam-Webster to make a pedantic point about the definition of a British word is an odd choice, given that Noah Webster is famous for being the person who gave America words like armor, color, and valor that were stripped of the U present in British English. Not exactly the source I would’ve gone to when it comes to correcting someone on the meaning of a word in British English (which is why I was glad to see you pulled out Cambridge, though the OED probabl
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OED says the same as Cambridge: "school" meaning "college or university" is a US usage, not a British one. (Of course, "college" meaning "university" is also a US usage, not a British one).
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Yep, just saw your note on the other side of this thread. Thanks for catching that. I was aware of the "college" vs. "university" difference between American and British English, but wasn't aware of "school" also having differences in how it's applied.
Re: Not the first nuclear reactor built in a schoo (Score:2)
College doesn't mean university in the U.S. They are different terms for different (related) things. A university is made up of multiple colleges. So if you go to university, you go to college (for example, the college of medicine), but not the other way around, necessarily.
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Indeed. Texas A&M University has had operational reactors since the ‘50s (and that was still a good 15 years behind Fermi working at the University of Chicago). Apparently A&M also just announced plans a few months ago to build its first new reactors since the ‘60s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://today.tamu.edu/2024/05... [tamu.edu]
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I was a judge at a science fair about fifteen years or so back, and not one but two different high-school students had built (working) fusion reactors (inertial-electrostatic confinement fusors; not fusion power plants producting power, but, yes, actually accomplishing nuclear fusion). One of them had some help from a local university, but one of them built his from stuff salvaged from a junkyard
Plenty of info on the web, e.g., https://makezine.com/projects/... [makezine.com] )
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"at the JJ Pickle Research campus"
Okay, if you're just gonna make stuff up, you could at least try harder on the names.
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Re: Not the first nuclear reactor built in a schoo (Score:2)
Thatâ(TM)s a university, but this story is about secondary school. Hint: we donâ(TM)t use the word school to refer to university in the UK. School is where kids go to, so itâ(TM)s a bit strange to hear N. Americans referring to university as school. I expect somebody at university with all the more advanced facilities and funding available to achieve far more than a school child.
Re: Not the first nuclear reactor built in a scho (Score:2)
We tend to rely on the older Greek, Latin, and Old English definitions. Many colleges have "school" in their name, e.g., the many Schools of Medicine found throughout the country.
Since Americans tend to preserve pre-colonial English better than Brits, my guess is this is probably how Brits used to use the word school, as well.
Re: Not the first nuclear reactor built in a sch (Score:2)
At the university I went to, I studied in the School of Information Systems, but at no point would we have described it as being at school. Youâ(TM)re right about the origins of many words in the US being of British origin that have subsequently fallen out of favour in the mother country (fall as in Autumn being one of the most common), but at the time the US gained independence from the UK, university was a pretty exclusive affair and was not referred to as school.
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University of Texas Austin has a nuclear reactor at the JJ Pickle Research campus.
Pickle Rick FTW!!!
Not novel on any count. (Score:5, Informative)
https://world-nuclear-news.org... [world-nuclear-news.org]
At 14. In 2014. At a school.
Forget real research, it's like journalists don't even know Google exists.
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Doesn't count as it is not in America.
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Which, the Slashdot post we're discussing or my specific post? Because both are about students in the UK.
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I think you missed it: OZ's post is a joke.
Re:Not novel on any count. (Score:4, Informative)
feeling a bit inadequate though (Score:3)
Talyor Wilson did his Fusor also at age 14, and in 2008. In Arkansas.
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Headline hype is the only type of headline allowed now. I consider it a form of entertainment to look at a headline then see how it is deceptively worded or unnecessarily vague compared to the article. Remember, journalism students (assuming they are even using journalists anymore) were part of the crowd that did everything they could to avoid taking science classes in college.
It's just a fusor (Score:3)
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Building a *safe* one I think demonstrates some engineering prowess.
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Ain't nobody got time for that!
My coworker made a cyclotron in his garage. For fun. Some people like dangerous hobbies. Statistically safer than owning a glider though.
Very first (Score:5, Informative)
The very first reactor was built in a school environment called the University of Chicago, by Enrico Fermi.
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That's a university environment. Although some British universities or university faculties have names containing the word "school", in contemporary British English the word covers primary and secondary education.
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That's a university environment. Although some British universities or university faculties have names containing the word "school", in contemporary British English the word covers primary and secondary education.
Yeah but at some British schools it doesn't quite matter what name you put on, you can guess what it is by the fact that Jamie Edwards was 13 when he built his for his ... British Educational Institution's science fair project 10 years ago. ;-)
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That's a university environment. Although some British universities or university faculties have names containing the word "school", in contemporary British English the word covers primary and secondary education.
School is any kind of educational institution. However if the headline was written in British English its clear it would refer to someone in their secondary education as people at university are typically 18 or over and we refer to those people as adults (as in you can drink, kill for your country and be tried as one).
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That's a university environment. Although some British universities or university faculties have names containing the word "school", in contemporary British English the word covers primary and secondary education.
Nobody cares.
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The very first reactor was built in a school environment called the University of Chicago, by Enrico Fermi.
That's a university environment. Although some British universities or university faculties have names containing the word "school", in contemporary British English the word covers primary and secondary education.
Are you aware that Chicago is in the United States, not Britain?
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Yes. However, the assumption that OP was following the Gricean maxim of relation implies that OP believed they were contradicting the summary, so it is relevant to explain why this is not the case.
Nuclear Fusion vs a Bunsen burner (Score:2)
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I dunno, a jar of oil and sodium's pretty bad if there's any moisture around. The T-tables at my school had sinks...
Anything that can start a fire is likely more dangerous than a fusor unless you manage to close the fusor's high voltage circuit with something flammable.
The fusor might kill one stupid person, but a fire could kill a whole school full of innocents.
Another kid did this in 2018 (Score:5, Informative)
This has been done before (a few times actually). Its called a 'fusor', and you do it with high voltages working sort of like a CRT.
A great web page explaining the device that a particular kid made and got working is here:
https://fusor.net/board/viewto... [fusor.net]
Farnsworth fusor? (Score:3)
That's cool. A lot of kids nowadays are uninterested in doing cool shit. Anybody could have done this, you can find the plans on the internet: https://github.com/LDMDS/Farns... [github.com] and also here's people doing it on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/result... [youtube.com]
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Fusors were cool in early 2000s. They're retro now.
Torr (Score:1)
A Torr, how many libraries of congress per football pitch is that?
Re:Torr (Score:4, Informative)
A Torr, how many libraries of congress per football pitch is that?
I assume you are being facetious...but a Torr is a measurement of gas pressure, 760 Torr per atmosphere at "standard" conditions. It's used really commonly in the gas industry where you need to have vacuum jackets for insulation, cracking hydrocarbons, etc etc.
Vacuum is actually an interesting thing in that you'll see it measured using a whole bunch of fun and exciting units, Torr is common, as is "micron" which is essentially a millibar. Sometimes you get it in inches of mercury, where 30" is standard atmosphere. Sometimes you get it in bar in absolute pressure (i.e. 0.00 is perfect vacuum) and sometimes in gauge pressure (i.e. -1.0 is perfect vacuum).
Don't worry, when you work in the industry with the stuff all the time it is still confusing. %)
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Funny how you haven't even mentioned Pascal as a possible unit :-)
(at least you do use bar, so perhaps there's still hope for you Americans...)
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Funny how you haven't even mentioned Pascal as a possible unit :-)
(at least you do use bar, so perhaps there's still hope for you Americans...)
Haha, I use Pascal in the operating parameters for control of turbomachinery for gas liquefaction, but rarely otherwise, it is generally all bar. All of the pressure transmitters we use can be ordered in Pascal (well, typically MPa) but we get them ranged in bar absolute instead, as the conversion is simple. PLCs don't have wide FPUs so numerical errors start to creep in when you are doing a bunch of macc instructions against lists of numbers ranging from 1.0e-7 to 2.5e12 as might be assumed when dealing wi
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Funny how you haven't even mentioned Pascal as a possible unit :-)
(at least you do use bar, so perhaps there's still hope for you Americans...)
Haha, I use Pascal in the operating parameters for control of turbomachinery for gas liquefaction, but rarely otherwise, it is generally all bar.
Yeah, I hate gas pressure measurements specifically because there are so many arcane units (and we didn't even mention PSIa and PSIg yet).
Fortunately a bar is equal to 100 kilopascals, so that's one conversion that's easy.
(nominally sea level pressure is 101,325 pascal, but they normalized a bar to 100, not 101.325 kPa for convenience, so it's slightly above sea level.)
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One torr is approximately 10^-3 LoC/Pitch. That is based on the size of the LoC collection, an approximate mass per item, and excluding the building itself, and using the area of a typical soccer pitch of 7000 m^2.
I'm not a bot, but you piqued my interest, so...there you go.
Scientifically Illiterate Article (Score:5, Informative)
This article makes a number of very basic errors that reveal the author has a total ignorance of high school level physics, ironically.
I want to make three things fully clear. The first is that a Farnsworth fusor is around a century old. It's simple enough that a motivated high school student could build one given a lab. Second is that this student is neither the first nor the youngest to have done this. The third is that this device hasn't generated neutrons, meaning it's unlikely that it's actually achieved fusion. That means it's not actually a fusion reactor as it has never induced a fusion reaction.
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Nevermind basic physics, journalists have as their mainstream thought that 2+2=5.
I'd start there with "problems with journalism today", not at high school physics.
Tuned for the audience. (Score:1)
Nevermind basic physics, journalists have as their mainstream thought that 2+2=5.
I'd start there with "problems with journalism today", not at high school physics.
It really is sad that we need to have a “breakthrough” in journalism again, simply because a global pandemic revealed you can manipulate (and profit) off moron citizens with lies far more than you can benefit by educating them with simple truth.
Root cause analysis says the problem isn’t with journalists and lack of integrity. It’s the ignorant audience and their lack of intelligence. Fix the root cause, and bad journalism starves. As it should.
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So...
Good news! -- Dr. Farnsworth
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I literally say that in my head whenever I think about fusors. The best part is that a Farnsworth fusor looks like a really fancy lightbulb or vacuum tube, too.
Kids these days (Score:5, Funny)
Self-promotion much (Score:2)
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what materials are those (Score:1)
That's ruff (Score:3)
"Teacher, my homework melted the dog!"
When I see stories of wunderteens... (Score:2)
...I always wonder who their parents are. Is it a variation of the kids with techy parents with CNCs and 3D printers at home just coincidentally build the fastest pinewood derby cars?
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Hate those. No, your kid is not a super-genius, we all know you threw money at the project and held their hand from start to finish. And yes, we all resent that your kid will be treated as better than others regardless.
And also yes, those advantages will often take a decent student and make them a better one.
Re: When I see stories of wunderteens... (Score:2)
The last craft project I ever did for school was a diorama I spent countless hours on, which didn't score as well as the kid who just stacked some Legos. After that I was like "fuck this, I'm not here for arts and crafts".
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I once read a story about a kid who did this. It's been a while so the details may be foggy. Digging into it, the parent worked at a national lab or someplace, they found discarded materials to make the chamber and other bits and pieces. It's truly a great technical achievement even if you only make plasma but your average kid, even highly motivated and educated genius kid, doesn't have access to an awesome scrap pile like that.
Philo T Farnsworth (Score:3)
no he didn't. (Score:1)
Boy scout did it in 1994 (Score:2)
There was the popular story of the "nuclear boy scout" I thought I'd add, in case some hadn't heard about him...
About David Hahn, while his life went downhill in later years as a teenager David was a boy scout in 1994 and was wanting to get a rare atomic energy scout badge. So he built a secret breeder reactor in a backyard shed at his parent's house. While he did become an eagle scout, that backyard shed scared local authorities when they found suspicious items in David's car during a stop and it led to fi
Pricy (Score:2)