Fusor

Production source
Neutrons
Energy	2.45 MeV
Mass	940 MeV
Electric charge	0 C
Spin	1/2

A fusor is a device that uses an electric field to heat ions to conditions suitable for nuclear fusion. The machine generates an electric potential difference between two metal cages inside a vacuum. Positive ions fall down this voltage drop, building up speed. If they collide in the center, they can fuse. This is a type of inertial electrostatic confinement device.

A Farnsworth–Hirsch fusor is the most common type of fusor. This design came from work by Philo T. Farnsworth in 1964 and Robert L. Hirsch in 1967. A variant of fusor had been proposed previously by William Elmore, James L. Tuck, and Ken Watson at the Los Alamos National Laboratory though they never built the machine.

Fusors have been built by various institutions. These include academic institutions such as the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and government entities, such as the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and the Turkish Atomic Energy Authority. Fusors have also been developed commercially, as sources for neutrons by DaimlerChrysler Aerospace and as a method for generating medical isotopes. Fusors have also become very popular for hobbyists and amateurs. A growing number of amateurs have performed nuclear fusion using simple fusor machines.

For every volt that an ion of ±1 charge is accelerated across, it gains 11,604 kelvins in temperature. For example, a typical magnetic confinement fusion plasma is 15 keV, which is a temperature increase of approximately 174 megakelvins for a singly-charged ion. Because most of the ions fall into the wires of the cage, fusors suffer from high conduction losses. At bench top, these losses can be at least five orders of magnitude higher than fusion power made, even when the fusor is in star mode. Hence, no fusor has ever come close to break-even energy output.

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