It sounds awfully complex - but keep at it Darling! We need more people like you!

Ouch. That hurt my brain a little. So glad we have people who understand the technology and can think outside the box. The rep-rap is amazing. Now let's use it for good instead of evil.

Nice one! Love the fact that you had no background in engineering and learned your way through this. Congrats on getting backed on Kickstarter

Wow, that is wild! Great idea to write about this project. You never know when you are going to be surprised and learn something new. The articled does pose some new questions though. I wonder... Good work and thanks!

Wow.. hmm.. my next build.. haha I am still Steam Powered.. wood

I had no idea that this was possible, will definitely keep track of your progress on your blog...mind blowing.

Wow! That is crazy!

wow! nice story!

cutting down on nulclear waste is such a great goal. keep up the amazing research!

Terrific!! I would love to understand this a little better. Is there a place where it is explained a little bit further?

Amazing story.

You're joking right? It's a great idea until some fool decides he wants to breach whatever safety protocols are set up in it. Sounds like they're trying to put the "fun" back into funeral.

I can't believe he just decided to create this one day without knowing anything about this. Wow, amazingly brave an passionate.

What an awesome and inspirational post!! How great for someone to just jump into unfamiliar grounds and make it happen!!! Thanx for enlightening us Michelle!!!

Wow, incredible!

Amazing !

WOAH! I had no idea....man, the stuff people are up to, hehe..... Thanks for a glimpse into a universe I knew nothing about. Heidi

TheCrystalCookie, I think you're confusing fission with fusion. There's nothing in this project which is more dangerous that the sorts of things many people do on a daily basis. The main hazards are to the people working with high voltage equipment.

OMGNU! Love this stuff. Nothing beats a tour CERN to get those creative juices flowing! Awesome.

i'll keep my eye out for his etsy store and homemade fusion reactors!

Great job. Amazing stuff.

Excellent article, I'll be following his blog closely. As a physics nerd at heart, this made my day!

Just astonishing; what a fantastic and important endeavour. Also, the photo of the ferrofluid and magnet is curiously beautiful!

all that's old is new, again. this is actually kind of interesting - the Polywell Reactor. confinement has always been a problem. this seems to address that. From the quick read, it's stable and it would only have to scale 10 times for use in a nuclear reactor. i'd be interested to find out if this applies to the neutron flux issue, which from really old info runs about 100 x that for fission. if all that's stated is true and can be replicated, fusion could be here a lot sooner. there's still a lot of problems related to any kind of nuclear power.

I'm against nuclear power, period. Wind energy and solar power are cheaper and safer than nuclear energy.

So great, I love this kind of passion and vision! I've heard from friends in the alternate energy sector that it takes quite a lot of time for these types of projects to get approved before they can go to the public. Hope that it comes to fruition quickly and with grace.

Interesting?!

holy cat. that's new and interesting.

Inspiring in all the right ways. Thanks for saying what you did about consumption, which is the first principle of any energy solution. Engineers are both the most hopeful and the most playful people on earth.

I'm seeing some mad shizuma drive action here. Great project, and open too.

Very interesting and fun to learn about something new. Thanks for sharing!

I'm sure this post will spark up a lot of debate in the community, but there's just do many unanswered questions when it comes to nuclear power. Sure maybe demystifying the process will help but safety always has to cone number one regardless of your chosen craft.

Windrosie, take a minute to google fission before you make neurotic statements.

Btw solar power IS fission. You still feel like denying it?

(My apologies - of course I meant to write "fusion" in the two last comments.)

AMAZING

Great Story !

Incredible! Rock on, Mr. Suppes(the modern Thomas Edison)!

interesting!

Amazing! Will stay tuned for updates! Monica TheIDConnection

Fascinating!

My father was an electrical engineer and a physicist as well. So I am always glad to hear of other brilliant people out there who are carrying on with work that will sustain us. Open source is a beautiful way of not only building the needed community, but affording the transparency of something pretty scary to the rest of us. Can we call it The Brooklyn Project?

hm!

hm!

Let's please not make misleading statements like "solar power is fusion" (corrected for typo). That's like saying old-fashioned plant breeding is genetic engineering, which is a line straight out of Monsanto's playbook and equally dishonest. We know full well that a solar panel has nothing like a fusion reaction going on inside, and that that is what 99 percent of people mean when they say "solar power"--the juice you're getting out of that panel. I wasn't aware that fusion made any radioactive waste *at all*. So clearly, the only way to "cut down" on radioactive waste is to not proceed with this project or anything like it. If you're adding even small amounts to what is already out there, by definition you're not "cutting down" *anything.* You can't honestly tell me we'd die if we scaled way back on the energy we use. We lived for how many million years without harnessed electricity? For at least some of that time we lived pretty well, too. Yes, we have nifty toys now, but I notice these toys have an isolating effect on people, and though I enjoy them too, I don't think I'd mourn them much if they went away. I'd rather have friends and family around me than Internet connections, if I had to choose between the two. Technology makes it too easy to neglect the friends and family. (Yeah, I could drop this stuff in a hot minute, and sometimes I think about doing it, but I can't make anybody else drop Facebook and go for a walk, or have Game Night on Fridays, or whatever.)

6eisha, Why would I deny that solar power is fusion? And why is this commonality so important to you? It's a red herring argument; not only it’s irrelevant here , it supports my point – radiation. Spend too much time in the sun and you’re likely to develop melanoma. Yet I’m not concerned that my solar panel will blow up and give my kids cancer. I should make my statement clearer- there is no nuclear power without radiation as of NOW. Yes, it’s a goal, a possibility of the future maybe. I am not against research. But I don’t want to risk the devastation of all living things in epic proportions while we’re waiting around for radiation-free nuclear energy, so I’m against it. Google “freedom of speech” and learn that I am free to make any statements true to my opinions as much as others are free to make “homemade nuclear reactors”. And excuse me for being what you call “neurotic”- meeting Chernobyl kids in person makes you form strong opinions supported by simple facts and complex science. Unfortunately, we can’t brush it off because it happened oh soooo long ago…………It keeps happening. People tend to stay ignorant until something touches them personally. studiorandom - thank you, well said!

Fantastically stated, windrosie!

Once again, I am reminded that people like the Donald are not really doing much for this world, nor are people who are making babies with their household staff. Nor are people who engineer an unnecessary war for the monetary benefit of the war mongers. Thanks, Mark, inc. - we'll owe you big time! Thanks, Michelle for the blog post.

Without a doubt, if nuclear energy of any sort was safe it would be the best way forward to power the world into the future, but it's not. The problem with all nuclear power generation is the waste it produces is deadly for a VERY long time, even if it's produced in small quantities. With coal or oil fired power generation there have been countless accidents involving loss of life & huge tracts of land grievously damaged, but the science improves, accidents lessen & these things will put themselves right in a few generations. Nuclear waste is dangerous for a lot longer & it won't put itself right in a generation of two, or even a century or two. To most folks now Chernobyl is a vague memory, but every year children are still being born deformed and ill because of the effects. Children whose parents maybe weren't even born when the disaster happened in 1986. If it had been a coal mine collapse or a gas explosion instead of a nuclear leak those children would be healthy & the land would be well on the way to complete recovery. I'm very uneasy about utilising technology we have no way of making safe., however commendable it may be to "think outside the box", use open source ideas or teach yourself new skills. However much or little nucear waste is produced, until we have a way of dealing with it safely it seems to me unwise to keep producing it at all.

Some people gaze at the stars, others reach out and grab them. There was a time when man could only dream to fly. Keep up the hard work, life will take you where you are going.

scarry!

windrosie, you have every right to your opinion and perhaps you cannot be swayed... but I do think the mention of Chernobyl by both you and mazedasastoat is very misleading. A fission reaction, with a critical mass of nuclear fuel is self-sustaining. That's why, depending on reactor design, and behaviour of people (remember: Chernobyl was 100% human error) there can be danger. All fission reactors do have some radioactive waste, and you can form your own opinion on whether that's acceptable. The total mass of waste is much smaller than most people recognize, but you may still deem it unacceptable. I'm a physicist by training. I tend to think that using hydrocarbons for fuel is a far bigger problem (most, but certainly not all, physicists tend to think this). It's not just the dangers in production, mazedasastoat, it's the CO2 and associated climate change. This story is about FUSION, which like the name implies, is about fusing small atoms, not breaking them apart. It doesn't produce radioactive waste (though there is radiation at the fusor). (I'm not sure what waste the 'Ed. note' is referring to). It's entirely a different thing. The radiation produced should not affect anyone, unless they are next to the reactor. It can be stopped by lead shielding.

what i meant to write was that there ARE still a lot of problems related to any kind of nuclear power. i love esl. what i was thinking when i was rushing off was diy nuclear fusion bombs for everyone! woo hoo! you, the neighbor and i can all be terrorists. so that was what i was really thinking. doing away with nuclear meltdown thing is kind of a disappointment, though.

Very interesting article! Very good message! Keep it up your great work! Thanks!

Oh why voicing a concern is so controversial, I don’t understand. Yes, this article is about FUSION, let me be clear. Again, I am pro research on fusion, PRO research in general, but I’m against taking risks while there in no nuclear energy without radiation. Chernobyl -human error, Japan -natural disaster. But human errors and natural disasters tend to happen – fusion or fission. I am a biologist, my scientific research involved a topic that my mentor chose as her lifetime work, not something I happened to stumble upon. And that was after years of academic studies. I do appreciate a great short explanation on fusion/fission differences, but how do I simplify all I know about radiation and pollution from studying just Toxicology? Should I differentiate in detail between the possible hazards of just a bit of radiation on a daily basis versus a burn from a FISSION nuclear reactor explosion? Why this current concentration on nuclear with all its dangers? Why not concentrate just as heavily on coming up with cost effective, efficient ways to harvest solar and wind energy? Why not get involved, campaign, demand it, invest in it, be excited about it and finally make it “mainstream”??? Is it because you can’t drop “wind” bombs or because submarines don’t run on solar batteries??? I quote word by word “A polywell device is a type of fusion reactor that was originated by Robert Bussard under a U.S. Navy research contract”. It’s googlable. Say I come up with a genius DIY solar power plant in my kitchen, who would come knocking trying to buy/steal/confiscate my technology and make me rich and famous? Navy? Doubt it. Mark talked about “consumption” in this article and it’s a very important point. I live in Florida and houses are built here with a supersonic speed but most have the energy efficiency of a cardboard box. After 10 years in FL , I just learned from a friend to turn off your water heater at night/ when not at home or buy a heater timer. It saves tons of energy and $$$ on my electric bill. Not just me who was ignorant- hardly anybody knows this. Your water heater is constantly heating water not just when you open the faucet. I didn’t receive a letter about this in big red letters in the mail. What I did receive is a colorful pamphlet about how happy and excited I should be that we now have a nuclear carrier parked in our backyard. Yay!

Who's minding the store here? We have spammers posting links for off Etsy buying. But I digress. I find this article extremely disturbing on many levels. I think its inappropriate at best.

oh No No No. Just No. This is just a bad idea. I smell a Hipster Real-Labor Fetishist...who isn't thinking much.

wow! nice story!