!3 year-old achieves nuclear fusion in schol laboratory

[tapkaJohnD]

Last week, Jamie Edwards, a Preston school boy, became the youngest person ever to build a reactor that achieved nuclear fusion. Don't get too excited, it was a very, very small reaction, but surely this young man is potential Nobellist for the UK in about 2035 if he goes on like this.

It's from the Daily Mail, but this link includes pics of the school room experiment, Jamie and his teachers and an explanation of what he did: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-257...

A more 'scientific' explanation on the Telegraph site:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-video/1...

John

[Simpo Two]

'"The reason we can't just take Jamie's experiement and plug it into the National grid and get lots of energy out, is this is rather energy intensive ... more energy goes in than comes out," Dr Foster said.

Given that energy from fusion works on e=mc2 how it can it take more energy in than out? Nuclear is orders of magnitude ahead of chemical.

[BraveSirRobin]

Simpo Two said:

'"The reason we can't just take Jamie's experiement and plug it into the National grid and get lots of energy out, is this is rather energy intensive ... more energy goes in than comes out," Dr Foster said.

Given that energy from fusion works on e=mc2 how it can it take more energy in than out? Nuclear is orders of magnitude ahead of chemical.

To create the right conditions for fusion you need:
1. A vacuum - something has to power the pump that extracts the air from the "reactor"
2. A strong electrical field - that needs an external power source

[Simpo Two]

Yes I'm fully aware that some energy had to be put in BUT it comes from chemical energy. The nuclear energy that the resulting reaction produces should be thousands of times greater - hence my reference to e=mc2. The mass of a helium nucleus is less than two hydrogen nuclei - the difference goes in pure energy and c is a very big number!

[hairykrishna]

Simpo Two said:

Yes I'm fully aware that some energy had to be put in BUT it comes from chemical energy. The nuclear energy that the resulting reaction produces should be thousands of times greater - hence my reference to e=mc2. The mass of a helium nucleus is less than two hydrogen nuclei - the difference goes in pure energy and c is a very big number!

It's not a "one for one" though. You dump a lot of energy into a lot of deuterium ions. Some of them get close enough to fuse and give out energy. The vast majority dump that energy into the surroundings without fusing.

[Funk]

tapkaJohnD said:

A more 'scientific' explanation on the Telegraph site:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-video/1...

Hang about - did the guy on the video really just call it 'nucular fusion'?

[Simpo Two]

hairykrishna said:

It's not a "one for one" though. You dump a lot of energy into a lot of deuterium ions. Some of them get close enough to fuse and give out energy. The vast majority dump that energy into the surroundings without fusing.

Ah I see. Then it's just a very expensive way of producing very small quantities of helium.

Unless you can persuade a greater number of nuclei to fuse - but no doubt that would take more power.

A turbocharger perhaps?!

Funk said:

Hang about - did the guy on the video really just call it 'nucular fusion'?

Americans call it that, yes. Also burgular and aloominum.

[Flibble]

The normal method of increasing reaction rate is make the nuclei more energetic, essentially, more heat. For practical D-T fusion you need to be hitting around 800 million K. Getting your fuel that hot takes about as much energy as your get out from the fusion, hence the problem.

[hairykrishna]

Actually, in the context of this story, reaching 800 kelvin is trivial. That's only about 70,000 volts between the accelerating grids.

The bar to net energy is the various losses and it's the product of temperature, density and confinement time that they're chasing.