Teenager creates a nuclear fusion reactor

[Bangkoktraveler]

TEEN GOES NUCLEAR: He creates fusion in his Oakland Township home

On the surface, Thiago Olson is like any typical teenager.

 

He's on the cross country and track teams at Stoney Creek High School in Rochester Hills. He's a good-looking, clean-cut 17-year-old with a 3.75 grade point average, and he has his eyes fixed on the next big step: college.

 

But to his friends, Thiago is known as "the mad scientist."

 

In the basement of his parents' Oakland Township home, tucked away in an area most aren't privy to see, Thiago is exhausting his love of physics on a project that has taken him more than two years and 1,000 hours to research and build -- a large, intricate machine that , on a small scale, creates nuclear fusion.

 

Nuclear fusion -- when atoms are combined to create energy -- is "kind of like the holy grail of physics," he said.

 

In fact, on www.fusor.net, the Stoney Creek senior is ranked as the 18th amateur in the world to create nuclear fusion. So, how does he do it?

 

Pointing to the steel chamber where all the magic happens, Thiago said on Friday that this piece of the puzzle serves as a vacuum. The air is sucked out and into a filter.

 

Then, deuterium gas -- a form of hydrogen -- is injected into the vacuum. About 40,000 volts of electricity are charged into the chamber from a piece of equipment taken from an old mammogram machine. As the machine runs, the atoms in the chamber are attracted to the center and soon -- ta da -- nuclear fusion.

 

Thiago said when that happens, a small intense ball of energy forms.

 

He first achieved fusion in September and has been perfecting the machine he built in his parents' garage ever since.

 

This year, Thiago was a semifinalist for the Siemens Foundation's National Research Competition. He plans to enter the Science and Engineering Fair of Metropolitan Detroit, which is in March, in hopes of qualifying to be in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in New Mexico in May.

 

To his mom and dad, he's still reminiscent of the 5-year-old who toiled over a kid-friendly chemistry set and, then at age 9, was able to change the battery in his older brother's car.

 

Now, in a small room in the basement, Thiago has set up a science lab -- where bottles marked "potassium hydroxide" and "methanol" sit on shelves and a worn, old book, titled "The Atomic Fingerprint: Neutron Activation Analysis" piled among others in the empty sink.

 

Thiago's mom, Natalice Olson, initially was leery of the project, even though the only real danger from the fusion machine is the high voltage and small amount of X-rays emitted through a glass window in the vacuum chamber -- through which Olson videotapes the fusion in action..

 

But, she wasn't really surprised, since he was always coming up with lofty ideas.

 

"Originally, he wanted to build a hyperbaric chamber," she said, adding that she promptly said no. But, when he came asking about the nuclear fusion machine, she relented.

 

"I think it was pretty brave that he could think that he was capable to do something so amazing," she said.

 

Thiago's dad, Mark Olson, helped with some of the construction and electrical work. To get all of the necessary parts, Thiago scoured the Internet, buying items on eBay and using his age to persuade manufacturers to give him discounts. The design of the model came from his own ideas and some suggestions from other science-lovers he met online.

 

Someday, he hopes to work for the federal government -- just like his grandfather, Clarence Olson, who designed tanks for the Department of Defense after World War II. Thiago, who is modest and humble about his accomplishment, said he knew from an early age what he would do for a living.

 

"I was always interested in science," he said. "It's always been my best subject in school."

 

But, his mom had other ideas.

 

"I thought he was going to be a cook," Natalice Olson said, "because he liked to mix things."

 

 

 

[elef]

Then they (USA, EU, Russia, Japan, South Korea, India and maybe some more) don't have to spend the 750 billion dollars on the fusion project in France. It was announced yesterday.

 

Sorry that news is complete BS, you need a temperature of 100,000,000 C and the problem is to keep it inside something which not melts.

[Julian2]

Wikopedia says different elef

 

Muon-catalyzed fusion is a process allowing nuclear fusion to take place at room temperature. Although it can be produced reliably with the right equipment and has been much studied, it is believed that the poor energy balance will prevent it from ever becoming a practical power source. However, if negatively charged muons (μâ??) could be made more cheaply and efficiently somehow and/or if virtually every negatively charged muon (μâ??) that is made can somehow be used to catalyze as many nuclear fusion reactions as possible, the energy balance may improve enough for muon-catalyzed fusion to become a practical power source. It used to be known as cold fusion; however, this term is now avoided as it can create confusion with other suggested forms of room-temperature fusion that are rejected by mainstream science. A much more appropriate name would be cool fusion for obvious reasons, particularly if muon-catalyzed fusion ever did become a practical power source.

 

 

[elef]

Also from Wikipedia

 

Methods to produce fusion

A variety of methods are known to affect nuclear fusion. Some are "cold" in the strict sense that no part of the material is hot (except for the reaction products), some are "cold" in the limited sense that the bulk of the material is at a relatively low temperature and pressure but the reactants are not, and some are "hot" fusion methods that create macroscopic regions of very high temperature and pressure.

 

Locally cold fusion :

 

Muon-catalyzed fusion is a well-established and reproducible fusion process that occurs at ordinary temperatures. It was studied in detail by Steven Jones in the early 1980s. It has not been reported to produce net energy. Net energy production from this reaction is not believed to be possible because of the energy required to create muons, their 2.2 µs half-life, and the chance that a muon will bind to the new alpha particle and thus stop catalyzing fusion.

Generally cold, locally hot fusion :

 

Accelerator based light-ion fusion. Using particle accelerators it is possible to achieve particle kinetic energies sufficient to induce many light ion fusion reactions. Of particular relevance into this discussion are devices referred to as sealed-tube neutron generators. These small devices are miniature particle accelerators filled with deuterium and tritium gas in an arrangement which allows ions of these nuclei to be accelerated against hydride targets, also containing deuterium and tritium, where fusion takes place. Hundreds of neutron generators are produced annually for use in the petroleum industry where they are used in measurement equipment for locating and mapping oil reserves. Despite periodic reports in the popular press by scientists claiming to have invented "table-top" fusion machines, neutron generators have been around for half a century. The sizes of these devices vary but the smallest instruments are often packaged in sizes smaller than a loaf of bread. These devices do not produce a net power output.

In sonoluminescence, acoustic shock waves create temporary bubbles that collapse shortly after creation, producing very high temperatures and pressures. In 2002, Rusi P. Taleyarkhan reported the possibility that bubble fusion occurs in those collapsing bubbles (aka sono fusion). As of 2005, experiments to determine whether fusion is occurring give conflicting results. If fusion is occurring, it is because the local temperature and pressure are sufficiently high to produce hot fusion.[2]

The Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor is a tabletop device in which fusion occurs. This fusion comes from high effective temperatures produced by electrostatic acceleration of ions. The device can be built inexpensively, but it too is unable to produce a net power output.

Antimatter-initialized fusion uses small amounts of antimatter to trigger a tiny fusion explosion. This has been studied primarily in the context of making nuclear pulse propulsion feasible. This is not near becoming a practical power source, due to the cost of manufacturing antimatter alone.

Pyroelectric fusion was reported in April 2005 by a team at UCLA. The scientists used a pyroelectric crystal heated from â??34 to 7°C (â??30 to 45°F), combined with a tungsten needle to produce an electric field of about 25 gigavolts per meter to ionize and accelerate deuterium nuclei into an erbium deuteride target. Though the energy of the deuterium ions generated by the crystal has not been directly measured, the authors used 100 keV (a temperature of about 109 K) as an estimate in their modeling.[3] At these energy levels, two deuterium nuclei can fuse together to produce a helium-3 nucleus, a 2.45 MeV neutron and bremsstrahlung. Although it makes a useful neutron generator, the apparatus is not intended for power generation since it requires far more energy than it produces. [4] [5] [6] [7]

Hot fusion :

 

"Standard" "hot" fusion, in which the fuel reaches tremendous temperature and pressure inside a fusion reactor or nuclear weapon.

The methods in the second group are examples of non-equilibrium systems, in which very high temperatures and pressures are produced in a relatively small region adjacent to material of much lower temperature. In his doctoral thesis for MIT, Todd Rider did a theoretical study of all non-equilibrium fusion systems. He demonstrated that all such systems will leak energy at a rapid rate due to bremsstrahlung, radiation produced when electrons in the plasma hit other electrons or ions at a cooler temperature and suddenly decelerate. The problem is not as pronounced in a hot plasma because the range of temperatures, and thus the magnitude of the deceleration, is much lower.

 

 

[Flashermac]

<< On the surface, Thiago Olson is like any typical teenager.

 

He's on the cross country and track teams at Stoney Creek High School in Rochester Hills. He's a good-looking, clean-cut 17-year-old with a 3.75 grade point average, and he has his eyes fixed on the next big step: college. >>

 

 

This is typical???

 

 

[Julian2]

Yes elef, I saw all that but only included the bit that supported MY argument.

[Julian2]

Give him time Flash, he'll probably nuke Disneyland next week.

[pasathai1]

next they are going to build a robot ( a GIRL robot)

[David99UK]

"you need a temperature of 100,000,000 C and the problem is to keep it inside something which not melts."

 

Use a microwave. Problem sorted.

 

Next!

 

[Nervous_Dog]

If your using a microwave, make sure you wrap the hydrogen in alfoil

 

DOG