Radioactive Boy Scout
Teenager achieves nuclear fusion at home
by Stephen Ornes
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"—shown at the left—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.”
|
and gas generators are dear (well, not so bad ~15,000US).