When we read about Mark Suppes, the Brooklyn amateur physicist who built a nuclear reactor in a warehouse lab, we got curious: Is building a nuclear fusion device in your spare time a thing that people actually do?

It turns out that, not only is this a legitimate hobby, it’s actually a thriving, supportive subculture. Asylum dove into the “Fusioneer” community to learn who its members are, how they practice their science and what they get out of it.

Meet Chad Ramey

In the seventh grade, our hobbies included listening to Danzig, drawing comic books and trying to hit level 99 with every character in “Final Fantasy IV.” When Chad Ramey was in the seventh grade, he began the process of learning how to build his first nuclear reactor.

Today, Chad is 17 and attending the Georgia Governor’s Honors Program at Valdosta State University, which took an interest in him after his exhibit, “Furthering the Farnsworth Fusor,” netted him four awards at the Georgia Science and Engineering Fair. Whereas Chad isn’t the youngest person to build his own nuclear reactor – that’d be Taylor Wilson, who started producing neutrons with his reactor at the age of 14 – he’s on the verge of flipping the switch on what will be the smallest fusion reactor ever built.

“I was quite the nerd in middle school,” Chad says. “And I started actually building last summer. It’s pretty much physically complete now – the tubes connecting the deuterium to the chamber have to be hooked up, and then I should be producing neutrons when I get back home from the Governor’s Honors Program in August.”

The Fusioneer Community

Fusor.net, an online forum for amateur Fusioneers, keeps a list of everyone who’s built a reactor, and marks their progress.

Right now, Chad’s listed as part of “The Plasma Club,” for people who’ve built a demo fusor. The exclusive “Neutron Club,” populated by those who have successfully created a neutron-producing reactor, boasts 38 successful fusors. Chad hopes to soon join their ranks. The forum was founded in 1998 by Paul Schatzkin, a historian who wrote a book about fusor and television inventor Philo Farnsworth.

“We’ve had over 5,000 registered members in that time,” he tells Asylum, “and pretty much everyone who’s built a reactor has come through the site.”

While the reactor built by Suppes in Brooklyn cost a reported $39,000, Chad’s been able to accomplish his work on the cheap, thanks to the Fusor.net community.

“I think I put about $5,000 into it so far,” he says. “Most of my parts are secondhand. Networking through the guys on the message board, especially since some of them are professionals in the nuclear field, they have a lot of contacts throughout the industry … It’s really easy to get some great deals when you tell these guys that you’re a high school student interested in nuclear physics.”

So, What’s the Point?

Nuclear fusion, at least right now, doesn’t actually provide any energy, so those who build a home reactor are doing it to show a proof-of-principle, not to make any significant breakthroughs. No one who’s built a Farnsworth reactor believes that it’s going to become the “break-even” device that would allow it to generate at least as much energy as it requires to be active, which Schatzkin says has led some of the elder statesmen among the Fusioneers to become jaded.

“That’s what makes someone like Chad Ramey so important,” he notes. “People in his generation don’t know that it can’t be done, so there’s nothing to stop them from doing it.”

Chad, for his part, isn’t even thinking in those terms right now. Mostly he’s interested in learning how to build a device that he’d otherwise have to wait until after college to work on, as well as seeing a project that’s been the focus of his life since middle school to completion.

“It’s taught me a lot of patience,” he says. “If you go out and say, ‘I’m going to build a reactor in a couple months,’ everyone on the forum will say, ‘No, you’re not.'”

Sure, when it comes to pre-teen productivity and “impressive achievements,” Chad may have us beat, but then again, he probably can’t draw as awesome-looking a Wolverine as we can.

Reprinted with permission from Asylum.com.

July 13, 2010