http://discovermagazine.com/2007/mar/radioactive-boy-scout
In 2006 Thiago Olson joined the extremely sparse ranks of
amateurs worldwide who have achieved nuclear fusion with a
home apparatus. In other words, he built the business end of
a hydrogen bomb in his basement. The plasma "star in a
jar" demonstrated his success.
For two years, Olson researched what he would need and scrounged
for parts from eBay and the hardware store. Flanges and piping?
Check. High-voltage X-ray transformer? Check. Pumps, deuterium
source, neutron bubble dosimeter? Check, check, check. “I have
cross-country and track, so during those seasons I don’t have
much time to work on it,” says Olson, a high school senior in
Michigan. “It’s more of a weekend project.” Last November the
machine finally delivered the hallmark of success: bubbles in
the dosimeter. The bubbles indicate the presence of neutrons, a
by-product of fusion—an energy-releasing process in which two
hydrogen nuclei crash together and form a helium nucleus. Fusion
is commonplace in stars, where hydrogen nuclei fuse in superhot
plasma, but temperatures that high are hard to achieve on Earth.
Still, the prospect of creating all this energy while forming
only nonradioactive helium and easily controlled neutrons has
made harnessing fusion one of the most sought-after and heavily
funded goals in sustainable energy.
Olson’s apparatus won’t work for generating commercial power
because it takes more energy to run than it produces. But he
has succeeded in creating a “star in a jar,” a tiny flash of
hot plasma. “The temperature of the plasma is around 200 million
degrees,” Olson says modestly, “several times hotter than the
core of the sun.”
Robert Bussard, a nuclear physicist who has spent most of his
career investigating fusion for both the government and private
companies, applauds Olson’s ambition. “These kids are studying
much more useful physics than what the country is spending
billions on,” he says. “It causes them to think. They’re not
going down the mainstream path to oblivion.” And, aside from
using high voltage and emitting low-level radiation, the machine
has been deemed harmless. “About a week ago, the department of
health from Michigan called my principal,” Olson says. “They
wanted to come over and inspect it. They did that, they were
impressed, and it checked out.”
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