Nuclear Fusion

[rov1200]

After reading yesterday that an amateur is able to create nuclear fusion in the home and this article saying how easy it is to do should we be worried about these amateur experiments and where they might lead?
Madame Curie did not realise at the time of her experiments how dangerous they were.

http://www.brian-mcdermott.com/fusion_is_easy. htm

[R1Geezer]

looks like another crackpot. These nutters working away in their sheds are probably only a danger to themsleves! There's some bloke near me who reckons he only has to dissprove 2 major laws of physics and his anti gravity mchine will work!

[rov1200]

What got me thinking after reading that article yesterday was that the highly qualified and experienced amateur saying that if he had a bit more capital he could produce a better result. Crackpot he may be but in an unregulated market what he might get up to. This article attached shows how many amateurs have latched onto Nuclear Fusion in the lab and is growing.

[dundurn]

I think you'll find that the article was very tongue-in-cheek and there's very little chance that anything will or could come of the "experiment".

[rov1200]

famous last words eh!

[jake-the-peg]

This is a "farnsworth" reactor they've been about for about 50 years or so.

Problem is in scaling. You can never produce uasble amounts of energy from one for various reasons.

Firstly you have no magnetic confinement so as your ion beam increases it will disperse and the whole thing will become unstable , secondly we are talking of millions of degrees kelvin here as the ion bem increases the target will simply melt or vaporise.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2003/sep/25/ science.highereducation

This is no amazing amateur breakthrough but well known science and from a fusion perspective a dead end.

[rov1200]

Thanks Jake, I believe you are an expert in this field. It was the dangers involved in these experiments. ie radiation emitted and explosions.

Obviously if governments have spent �millions on research the input from one amateur is hardly likely to produce results.