"For the past four years, Brooklyn web designer Mark Suppes has been building a nuclear-fusion reactor in the corner of a friend's cluttered warehouse -- even though he has no background in nuclear physics, has never even studied electrical engineering and has a full-time website job at The New York Times." Says Suppes in the August issue of Wired, "The whole thing is really cool, ancient technology," he says. "Pipes and pumps and tubes. I am using an electron gun from an old cathode-ray tube from the 50s."

  • Christopher Hill

    Spoops rules!

  • CSBD

    HAHN!

  • Quiche de Resistance

    building a nuclear-fusion reactor…has no background in nuclear physics…
    has never even studied electrical engineering…

    Nothing could go wrong here!

  • http://memoid.tumblr.com/ memoid

    Call me when it fuses nuclei.

  • Sigmund_Jung

    Guy is building something that has “nuclear” in its name and Homeland Security couldn’t care less. But just let him try to download Call me Maybe.

  • milkman

    Millions upon Billions have been spent trying to create Fusion, but this guy is just guessing he’s got it cracked because of his background at the NYT?  I suspect New York to be missing a borough or two in the next few weeks.

    • jackbird

       Building a fusion reactor isn’t hard; it’s building one that produces more energy than you put into it that’s hard. 

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnsworth_fusor

      • http://twitter.com/HenryKBarton Henry K. Barton

        Now a fusion reactor that produces more energy than it consumes can be pretty easy to be done with the wise use of electrostatic acceleration. http://youtu.be/ro5-QYqqxzM

  • bcsizemo

    I remember in high school there was a science book in the school library that had a chapter on building a homemade nuclear reactor.  It was pretty spot on, including the lead shielding and the need for Uranium. 

    • Conan Librarian

      I’m sure that in 1955,  Uranium was available in every corner drugstore, but in 2012, it’s a little hard to come by.

  • theophrastvs

    The key is to bombard the palladium sphere with slightly greasy solar atoms output from the inverse phase discriminator

  • https://nomen-nescio.myopenid.com/ Nomen Nescio

    without reading the article, i’m going to guess he’s building a Farnsworth Fusor. it’ll probably work fine, and fuse just dandy; look the things up on wikipedia for how and why.

  • petedavo

    Well they arrested the Swedish guy because he bought too many smoke detectors at IKEA. Apparently that reactor could produce weapons grade something or other. LOL

  • Lukerst

    Check out the February article from PopSci. About 14 year old Taylor Wilson successfully building a fusion reactor in his parents garage. Called The Boy Who Played With Fusion. 

  • Christopher Hill

    This ain’t your grandpa’s fission.