Amateurs Building Homemade Nuclear Fusion Reactors

This week, the BBC published an interesting article on a community of amateur scientists building their own nuclear fusion reactors. Fusor.net is an online community of nuclear fusion enthusiasts, many of whom have actually created reactors at their own expense. Building fusion reactors is legal, as a fusion reaction doesn’t require dangerous nuclear materials like uranium or plutonium. The community has DIY guides and discussion forums for these amateur science junkies who juggle their passion for building reactors with their day jobs. The challenge they, and for that matter, scientists and research labs across the world, face currently is that nuclear fusion reactors still use more energy to run than they produce.

BBC centered the story on Mark Suppes, a Brooklyn-based web developer, who hopes to developer a reactor which produces as much energy as it uses to operate and is looking for investors to fund his project. Suppes, like other amateur scientists, has his share of skeptics that doubt their claims of producing fusion reactions and neighbors that are concerned about nuclear reactions taking place near their homes.

Fusor.net

[BBC via SmartPlanet]