High Schoolers Use Homemade Nuclear Fusion Reactor To Dominate Science Fairs (us.com) 126
An anonymous reader writes: 20 high school students gather every Friday night in a basement of a modest home in Federal Way, Washington to work on science experiments using a home-made nuclear fusion reactor. [They've also reportedly won top honors in science fairs as well as college scholarships.] This extreme science club is the brainchild of Carl Greninger, a Program Manager at Microsoft by day, scientist by night. He was concerned about the current state of high school science education, [and] lamented that the public school system does not truly expose students to the excitement of experimental discovery.
So using his own money (and one-ton of radiation shielding), Greninger "gathered some students and built a working nuclear fusion reactor in his garage."
So using his own money (and one-ton of radiation shielding), Greninger "gathered some students and built a working nuclear fusion reactor in his garage."
Re: Radioactive boyscout (Score:5, Informative)
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Not to mention he was creating a fission reaction that got away from him real quick. Fusion reactors you can unplug and they tend to be safer.
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"Fusion reactors you can unplug and they tend to be safer."
For now. But 25 years from now, when we have practical fusion power, the fusion reactor can power itself.
On the plus side, 25 years from now, we will still be 25 years away from practical fusion power so, no worries.
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Where was your submission on the subject in 2011 that wasn't published?
Slashdot doesn't write its own articles except in special cases, they publish people's writeups, no writeup, no publish.
If you want to see this in action, take a look at the firehose. These are the articles that haven't made it to publish stage yet.
And furthermore.... (Score:1, Insightful)
The labor-market currently has far more scientists in it than jobs for them. There aren't nearly enough professorship spots open either. An education in science is a sure-fire way to wind up with crushing student debt and a bottom-of-the-market salary in fast food service.
We do not need to encourage kids to like science, there is already an abundance of interest. We need to encourage politicians to like science, so they will allocate more money to research and put all that talent to productive use!
While
Re: And furthermore.... (Score:1)
There are many scientists who work at non-academic jobs. Sometimes a love of science inspires a kid to become an engineer. The job market is usually good for them.
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The small and medium sized companies in the industry are struggling with their old HPC codes and proprietary systems, while the academia and big industry are able to push the scale at the national super computer centers. People with scientific training, skills in software and numerical methods will be needed. The issue is that those companies simple don't have the money (or budget, more likely) to hire a PhD or two with the proper salary corresponding to the education level to implement the scaling codes th
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Well some of those kids will still grow up to be politicians.
Would be nice if they have been introduced to science and understand what it's about already.
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Well, if you think that ignorance or liberal arts will pay your way to living somewhere besides the homeless shelter, go for it. Technical fields are the only ones that still have jobs available.
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I completely agree that we should encourage politicians to support science - the NIH and NSF could both use quite a bit of money.
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Thank god they did not try to make a clock... they might have been arrested
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The "one ton of radiation shielding" appears to be a significant difference, so no, not *exactly*.
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This is exactly what the radioactive boyscout did...
fusion != fission.
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Re:Radioactive boyscout (Score:4, Informative)
No, that guy built fission reactors using various radioactive sources, while this guy is using a fusion reactor - the two are entirely different concepts. In this case the fuels are (relatively) inert when not involved in an experiment, the only radioactivity being produced is during collisions.
Fusion Reactors have Radioactive Waste too (Score:5, Informative)
fission reactors .... fusion reactor - the two are entirely different concepts. In this case the fuels are (relatively) inert when not involved in an experiment, the only radioactivity being produced is during collisions.
Actually that is not really correct. Before use uranium fuel is only very mildly radioactive (the half life is in the billion year range) but is toxic whilst hydrogen is explosive if it mixes with air so both have their own hazards neither of which is really radioactivity before use. Both fission and fusion reactions produce radioactive products such as tritium from fusion depending on what you are reacting. The key difference is that fusion reactions produce light nuclei which, if they are radioactive, decay with short half-lives unlike the products of fission which have half-lives in the thousands or years or more.
Both types of reactor also produce lots of neutrons which activate the material around the reaction when they are absorbed. So really the two types of reactor are very similar the difference being the far short half-lives from fusion which make it far easier to deal with (just store the waste for a few years and it becomes safe) and the fact that the fuel in a fusion reactor is enough to last of order a second while a fission reactor's fuel can last for of order a year. This makes a fusion reactor far safer because all you have to do if anything breaks is wait a second (or less) for the reaction to stop plus you don't have a reactor which contains many months of radioactive decay products that need active cooling.
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Fusion "products" don't have a shorter half live than fission "products".
Your idea is nonsense.
None of the products is necessarily "raioactive". Plenty are, plenty are not.
There is nothing in the fundamental reactions that make one kind more radioactive than the other!
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Fusion "products" don't have a shorter half live than fission "products".
No fusion product has a nucleus larger than iron-56 which is the most stable nucleus because any larger nucleus will take energy to create rather than release energy in its production. Fission products typically have mass numbers 2-3 times larger because they come from the decay of elements with mass numbers just below ~300.
As a general rule the half lives of heavier nuclei tend to be far longer than those of smaller nuclei. In addition because the stable value of the ratio of neutrons to protons depend
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both fission and fusion products tend to be unstable because you are taking nuclei with one ratio and combining or splitting them to form a larger or smaller nucleus.
That is simply wrong. Fusion products as we will have them in fusion reactors are usually very stable. If you want to talk about fusion products that are produced in a super nova, you are right.
That the tendency of having longer half lives the bigger the core is is wrong to, otherwise Iron would not be the most stable element. On the other han
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That is simply wrong. Fusion products as we will have them in fusion reactors are usually very stable.
A very common product of fusion reactions are neutrons which are themselves radioactive and can also be absorbed by nuclei to create an unstable nucleus.
That the tendency of having longer half lives the bigger the core is is wrong to, otherwise Iron would not be the most stable element....But you are right if you say _statistically_
Since I was using the term "in general" I was clearly talking statistically and, as shown above, you clearly contradict yourself since a "tendency" implies some sort of statistical average. Statistically speaking the larger the nucleus the longer the half life because of the difference in binding energy. If you look at the binding energy per nucleon its g
Re:Radioactive boyscout (Score:5, Informative)
This is exactly what the radioactive boyscout did, but he got arrested and his work confiscated. Yet this guy gets to keep his? Maybe I should build a reactor.
This is exactly what's wrong with science education in America.
The radioactive boy scout did fission, while these high school students are doing fusion.
Buy a dictionary, there's a difference.
I couldn't find any definite information, but this is probably a Farnsworth Fusor [wikipedia.org], which is every bit a valid and interesting science project for high schoolers. (It's about the right size and gives off about the right glow.)
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Re:Radioactive boyscout (Score:5, Informative)
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If you get free neutrons you can get all sorts of nasty stuff. Luckily, the amounts involved are too small to matter.
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He didn't produce self-sustaining fission (criticality). You can't do that in such a small volume without HEU. He *may* have managed to get some neutron multiplication by putting a neutron source surrounded by a bunch of crude U ore.
What he did wrong was collect too many otherwise legal, unlicensed sources together making the sum total in one place violate NRC regs. That is why they took his stuff away.
You can play with a lot of radioactive stuff without trouble, if you just stay under the quantity lim
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Amazingly no one else has bothered to correct you on this, instead focusing on the fact that he was trying to build a fission reactor, not a fusor, but:
(a) He fucked up badly enough that his mother's property ended up being declared an EPA superfund site, needing to be cleaned up at considerable expense
(b) He was not arrested at the time he was trying to build the reactor (1994) -- he was arrested in relation to possibly trying to build another reactor in 2007, but that was because he was stealing smoke det
Are they on a watchlist now? (Score:2, Insightful)
Serious question.
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No. Contrary to popular consensus, there are smart people in the government.
Re:Are they on a watchlist now? (Score:5, Funny)
[citation needed]
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No. Contrary to popular consensus, there are smart people in the government.
However, the smart people in the government are on that same watchlist...
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So, "people". More than one.
Good to know. Do you know how many more than one?
Let me know when it's just about unanimous, OK? So I'll know it's time to start worrying.
Because their stupidity is an important thing working in our favor.
So little detain in this article (Score:2)
Are we talking about a neutron source, like the Farnsworth Fusor? A good neutron source could supply subcritical fission reactions, those which operate only while the neutron source is running.
Re:So little detain in this article (Score:5, Informative)
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Good news, everyone!
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Re:So little detain in this article (Score:5, Funny)
You come to slashdot and ask "Why behind a bookcase"? What is wrong with slashdot?
You, dear sir, hand in your geekcard at once.
Why? Because it is a freaking cool to have a fusion reactor in your garage in a secret lab behind a bookshelf! I cannot imagine someone on this website even has to ask that.
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I don't think you need an NRC license for a Fusor. This isn't ever going to be a power plant and the radiation threat is minimal. You probably want to protect against those free neutrons though if you're going to run it for extended periods, but otherwise, no big deal.
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You probably want to protect against those free neutrons though if you're going to run it for extended periods, but otherwise, no big deal.
Tell that your neighbours.
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It's more like a Wernstrom coalitioner.
Re:So little detain in this article (Score:5, Interesting)
If you look at the images on the site, you can see it is a Fusor. It has the wire cages and all of that.
Fusors are pretty cool. Was thinking of building one myself. You can definitely build one as an amateur. It's like 1950's TV era technology.
Of course a Fusor is not a power plant, but it's a decent neutron source.
They are trying to use the same concept for an actual power plant with the polywell, which uses magnetic fields instead of the wires to provide the confinement and the charged particle acceleration.
Since the Fusor's inability to be a power generating source is due to radiation and conductive energy loss from some of the particles impacting the physical surface of the wires, the magnetic confinement should dispense with that issue.
The major problem is that getting the right geometry for the magnetic fields is difficult and it hasn't been demonstrated whether it is possible to get the fields to allow for this approach yet.
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Are we talking about a neutron source, like the Farnsworth Fusor? A good neu--
--ews everyone! [youtube.com]
(Since I have no idea what a Farnsworth Fusor is, I'll just make a pithy cultural reference.)
Re: So this Carl Greninger... (Score:2)
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Since when has that been important?
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They mean fission, right?
Yea, is fusion reactor, the article title is wrong
Now I'm confissed...
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That saved my day!
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They mean fission, right?
It's an ion collider. It's not a "fusion reactor" as most non-pedants would think of the term.
Re:Fusion? (Score:5, Informative)
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Fukushima is all fission products. This is fusion, which a field trip there won't do squat for, other that more quickly exposing them to a lifetime's supply of radiation if they get too close.
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In order to get too close to anything at Fukushima you'd have to be inside the _pressure vessel_, not just the reactor building.
Yes there are radionucleides in the environment, the hot ones are detectable from a safe distance and collectable (unlike the mercury products further down the coastline at Minamata Bay) but in general you'll face greater radiation exposure as a pack-a-day smoker.
It's worth looking for "the 10 most radioactive places on earth" on Youtube. It does a good job of pointing out the rela
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Fusion reactors can make things radioactive over time, but they cannot meltdown. Fusion plants or devices only use a very tiny amount of fuel at once.
Fission plants can meltdown because they are stocked with a decade's worth of fuel in the plant all at once, which means that criticality always needs to be controlled.
With a fusion plant, the reaction stops the second the tiny amount of fuel is used up or the reaction is disturbed in some way.
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"Fission plants can meltdown because they are stocked with a decade's worth of fuel in the plant all at once"
No, it's because theyr'e designed in such a way that they _can_ melt down. Better designs exist - and have been tested in operation too, but civil systems chose to remain with dangerous water- or molten-metal- based systems.
"which means that criticality always needs to be controlled"
See above. The criticality issue comes down to needing to limit the temperature to prevent water boiling instantly (pro
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I suspect it's the kind of twattish thing the French do.
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More likely it is because they are posting from a phone or tablet and are using the word complete thing instead of typing the entire word out and it inserts a space after the word it inserts. Most of the time it backspaces for punctuation but I noticed my android phones seem to skip it sometimes with anything other than a period.
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Not an English major here, but I always thought that only the quoted content belonged within the quotes. The comma isn't part of that. No?
Science fairs... (Score:5, Insightful)
When you use students for your pet project and they go on to win every science fair, isn't that more discouraging for the competitors who don't get free money behind the scenes? Or is it naive to think that any participant in a high school science fair is autonomous enough to produce interesting projects on their own?
Doesn't sit well by me to see them snag a bunch of scholarships and apparently crowdfund their project (according to their website) with all that money and expertise doing (presumably) most of the work for them.
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This. Every highschool-science-fair-kid that I've heard of, that got national recognition, had some pretty heavy-duty backing for "their" project. Focusing on these kids really irritates me. Many, many, many highschool kids could do this level of work if they had the money and experience that these kids had as backup.
Real science (Score:1)
In a lot of cases that's how much of real science works. Even if you have a great idea, unless it's great and CHEAP, you'll need to dig up funding or get a backer so you can make it happen.
If you've got a good concept for a working long-range teleporter, or a way to convert sand to gold but they require access to something like the LHC, then it won't do you much good without backing to get there...
Re:Science fairs... (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps Mr. Greninger should just keep his enthusiasm for science, and his willingness to teach young people, to himself. Then who would benefit?
I didn't have the fortune of having this man in my life as a student, but I did have a retired friend in the early 1980s who was a computer enthusiast. He purchased an early Apple II, and invited me, a high school student, to come over to learn how to use his new toy. That was when I knew what I would be doing with my life.
These students are receiving a wonderful gift from Mr. Greninger. It would be great if everybody had the same benefit, but we don't. It's too bad there aren't more passionate people who are willing to inspire high school students. Instead of complaining about those who are missing out, how about let's get up off our rears and look for ways to inspire the young people who are in our own lives!
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Unfortunately, with today's climate of fear over child molestation, very few children have the chance to be mentored by an older man. It's a real shame, and ultimately a loss for society, not to mention a horrific bias against men.
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He purchased an early Apple II, and invited me, a high school student, to come over to learn how to use his new toy
Did he give you candy with that?
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Happened once already.... (Score:2)
Longstanding science fair tradition. (Score:2)
This is likely some variation on the Farnsworth Fusor. The main dangers to the students come not so much from radiation as from working with near vacuum in glass vessels, high voltages, and explosive gases (deuterium is, after all, hydrogen).
In my day the popular science fair experiments were also being done with near vacuum in glass vessels and high voltages, with the other danger being the emitted laser beam that could blind you (HeNe, argon) or burn holes through things (CO2).
A manager at MS handling fusion? (Score:5, Funny)
You do know their security and safety history, yes? I consider this a dangerous thing.
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I don't care if it's fueled or operational, in the hands of MS even a bricked computer becomes a security threat.
Farnsworth fusor (Score:2)
These kinds of fusion reactors have been around for a long time. They are fun and not overly hard to build. They are effectively little more than a big vacuum tube. Here [makezine.com] is a Makezine article on how to build one. Here [youtube.com] is a Youtube video. They are used as neutron sources, but none of these designs has a prayer of generating more energy than it requires to run. It's certainly a nice science fair project, but it's not a groundbreaking novel discovery.
Nuclear experiments in a basement? (Score:1)
Good thing these kids are not of Arabic decent.
BTW... do nuclear weapons fall under the 'right to bear arms' in the second amendment of the US Constitution?
The article suggests that schools learn from this (Score:3)
The article suggests that schools learn from this: it won't happen.
This is a highly qualified person running a science club. But he does not have a Masters in Education, and therefore he is not qualified to be a teacher in most of the United States, because the teachers unions closely control entry into the field through an artificial barrier of credentials that have nothing to do with whether or not this guy is a good teacher, or the student are learning.
This is also primarily why this situation is being handled as a "club", rather than as an education program.
Schools can't learn from this because they do not accept volunteer help from extremely qualified individuals.
Do you know who was not allowed to fill in for a high school computer science teacher?
Vinton Fucking Cerf.
IBM used to run a program where they would give a year sabbatical to any employee to volunteer to teach in a K-12 school for a year. IBM shut this program down. They didn't want to shut this program down, but it turns out that the research scientists at IBM's TJ Watson and Almaden Centers, and the regular scientists and engineers elsewhere -- no longer met the credentialing requirements which would be required to allow them to teach in public schools.
The program lingered on for a bout two years, but it was mostly the same people who had been in it before, and who were teaching in Private and Parochial schools, rather than in public schools.
Public education in the United States is a fucking joke these days.
Armchair expert (Score:2)
Just about everybody who has been in college can remember professors who while knowing their subject were absolutely horrible teachers. College is supposed to be where the student teaches themselves and uses the expert for guidance. This is why college requires ZERO education experience and provides ZERO education training for professors. Children and teenagers in public schools are a TOTALLY different situation from that of even a public college.
Anybody with experience in education should be able to info
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The situation is entirely political, in the USA at least. One of the above posters mentioned that it seemed to them it was some sort of conspiracy amongst the teacher unions to set in place barriers to entry, when in fact, that has been the purview of the various Federal and State Departments of Education, most of which are staffed by people who have never spent a single minute teaching in a classroom.
Re: The article suggests that schools learn from t (Score:2)
Teaching as a profession has barriers to entry. These are established by professional organizations through the government because it requires people to demonstrate a minimum basic knowledge of the practices and regulations of the profession.
There are abundant opportunities to achieve certification through legitimate pathways, usually through a small number of courses covering the relevant topics. In many states, you can start teaching in a field for which you hold a bachelor's while taking the required cou
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But he does not have a Masters in Education, and therefore he is not qualified to be a teacher in most of the United States
I do martial arts since 30 years.
I'm somewhat 'known' as well.
I teach marital arts.
The qualification I have is: I'm in the business or hobby longer than you are.
Who cares about the USA? I'm invited to give classes all over the world: without any formal "Master in Education". Why?
Because I know how to 'do' stuff. If I did not know how to 'teach' stuff, no one would invite me.
If you learn
Great technical feat (Score:2)
I commend anyone who undertakes the project to make a fusor. It is a great technical feat.
So far what I've seen in these projects is technical. Learning how to build and maintain vacuum systems, building and safely using high voltage supplies, managing instrumentation, running the device and collecting data on its operation to tweak and modify the operational parameters.
I also see that success depends on access to funding or "salvage" equipment. Even trying to build a single demonstration/experimental plasm
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If you are talking about undergrad. or HS, then it isn't really necessary to be forging ahead with new investigations, but rather to demonstrate and master the connection between already well understood empirical and theoretical science.
Whereas if you are talking about advanced undergrad. or grad. students, then I'd be considering if a fusor could generate neutrons suitable for neutron activation or imaging studies.