Teen Builds His Own Nuclear Fusion Reactor At College (interestingengineering.com)
Posted by BeauHD from the impressive-feats dept.
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.
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