Fusion reactor built at home in 4 weeks, neon transformer used to achieve plasma

When the world is racing to develop a working fusion reactor, a student appears to have joined the race to meet the demand for clean and limitless energy. The University of Waterloo student has developed a fusion reactor in his bedroom in a few weeks.

Hudhayfa Nazoordeen used a 12kV neon sign transformer that successfully produced plasma. To establish a vacuum and measurement system, the math student decided to use the MKS-901p transducer, which combines both absolute and differential pressure measurement technologies to provide superior performance and functionality.

Vacuum reduces collisions with background particles, allowing the ions to reach sufficient energy for fusion.

Without any hardware experience, the math student took just four weeks to complete this project. The first week was dedicated to design and sourcing parts from McMaster-Carr for his experiment.

Developing the main chamber

The process of building the reactor started the following week as the parts began to arrive. Initially, the student started developing the main chamber and then assembled the half-bridge rectifier.

Later, he set up the entire system in his bedroom and started exploring ways to connect the neon sign transformer .

Nazoordeen didn’t own a multimeter, so he used an Arduino to check circuit connections. Later, he set up a vacuum and measuring system using an MKS-901p transducer .

“I fed Claude all my datasheets, and it helped a ton with this,” said Nazoordeen.

Nazoordeen’s experiment achieved plasma in fourth week

He achieved a pressure of 25 microns after addressing several vacuum leaks over an entire week. “This was by far the most annoying part of this project,” added Nazoordeen.

To build this fusor from scratch, the student took the help of Claude 3.5 Sonnet, an AI assistant that provided comprehensive guidance throughout the experiment. The undergraduate achieved plasma in the fourth week.

However, the experiment failed to achieve fusion, but his work showcased LLMs can pave the way for modern scientific explorations.

Nazoordeen was inspired by Olivia Li

Nazoordeen was actually inspired by Olivia Li, who is building an electrostatic fusion reactor in her New York City apartment.

In her experiment, Li opted to generate deuterium gas from heavy water, as D2O was significantly cheaper to buy. She had leftover proton exchange membranes from a previous project involving microbial fuel cells, so she used them to electrolyze heavy water into deuterium gas .

This approach was both cost-effective and allowed her to repurpose materials she was already familiar with.

She praised Hudhayfa’s project. “A lot of people I’ve talked to have been excited about building a fusion reactor. Hudzah is the only person to have actually went on and executed! I’m creating a write up to help anybody else wanting to make their own fusor at home,” wrote Li on X.

A fusion device uses an electrostatic field to accelerate ions, such as deuterium, toward a central point where they collide and fuse. The setup needs a high vacuum to minimize collisions with background particles, high voltage to create the electrostatic field that accelerates the ions, and deuterium gas as the fusion fuel .