Fusion Reactor Construction Tour (Part 1)

This a brief 2 part tour of the in progress construction of our Farnsworth-Hirsch fusion reactor. We're fortunate enough to have our own space in the Van der Graaf accelerator lab at UMass Lowell to work in. Pretty much any tool or piece of equipment we need can be found down there.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Fusion
• reactor
• high
• voltage
• Farnsworth
• Hirsch
• Fusor
• tour
• Lowell
• diy
• electronics

[markakroll]

Ha ha ha, Have you fused anything yet? If so, Have you detected any HE neutrons, Helium gas or Alpha particles? That would be a good sign.

Does your team take suggestions?

If so, I would suggest after testing with Deuterium (possibly Tritium)upping the proton-neutron density in your evacuated chamber by injecting free Beryllium ions from that "crazy filament" thing on top of your "reactor proper."

If you guys spontaneously evaporate into an atom vapor, don't blame me.

[userjjb]

If you have a cheap, non-government regulated source of Tritium, by all means share, considering the current price of Tritium is around $30,000 per gram right now, a little too rich on a student budget. Deuterium is currently what we are using, we still have to calibrate our MFC in order to use it however.

BTW the filament is actually a Bayerd-Alpert vacuum ion gauge and has a thoriated iridium filament, you would never see beryllium in there.

[userjjb]

"If you guys spontaneously evaporate into an atom vapor, don't blame me."

Considering gases are actually composed of atoms, there is no such thing as atom vapor. Also fusion is an inherently non-runaway process, it requires a constant input of energy to continue. We are working at low enough energy levels that there is no chance of self-sustainability here, if there was we'd be first in line for the Nobel prize. I suggest you get a greater understanding of the subject if you want to critique.

[markakroll]

Whats your contribution userjjb?

Or are you the quintessential security risk?

[userjjb]

I'm one of five students working on the project, it's our own project ie. not run by a lab or professor. So you might say my contribution is fairly large by necessity if anything is to be done in a reasonable time frame.

There is no "security" risk here, it's an academic project on 50 year old technology using off the shelf commercial products. Nothing new or top secret here.

Do you even know anything about this subject?

Or maybe you're just the quintessential jackass.