Getting power out of a fusor

[Elliot_Capson]

Hello all. I've been searching around the web for a while, trying to see if there's any way to get any power out of a fusor at all. i haven't found anything useful, but y'all are a lot smarter than most people.

I'm not trying to get any usable power out of this thing. At all. I merely just want to get something. Even just a volt or two. Thing is I'm not sure how to even do that. I'm hoping someone here can share some insight. I'm planning on a semi-large fusor, so there might be a bit of extra output vs other smaller ones. Again not looking to get anything usable, just merely to do it and see a number on a meter indicating power output.

Thanks y'all!

[Jim Kovalchick]

You will not get power out of a fusor. Not even close.

Increasing the size does not help.

There is plenty of discussion in past posts about this.

If that is your goal, you will be frustrated and disappointed by fusors.

Sorry

[Matt_Gibson]

I use mine as a space heater in the winter. Guess that’s something, no?

-Matt

[JoeBallantyne]

A typical fusor has a Q of about 1e-9. That means that one might put in about 1 kilowatt of power, and get out in terms of nuclear reactions about 1 microwatt of power.

In that case, literally 99.9999999% of the power you put into your fusor will be dissipated as either sound (not much as fusors are pretty quiet), heat, or some form of electromagnetic radiation. A fusor emits lots of different frequencies of EM radiation - all of which are losses - radio frequency radiation, infrared light, visible light, UV light and soft and hard x-ray radiation. Some fusors that go above 100kV on their cathode will also emit gamma radiation.

So, yes, you can use it as a heater, and as a really dim light bulb (assuming you have a viewport somewhere).

But useful power from fusion products? Not so much.

Joe.

[Richard Hull]

Know this and learn this well.

With countless billions spent on fusion since 1952, a number of different fusion reactors have actually achieved megawatts of fusion energy produced!
Yet, to date, not one single fusion reactor producing megawatts of fusion has output a single watt of useful energy in the form of electricity!

These massive billion dollar bastions of fusion are, themselves, nothing more than megawatt space heaters and not one of those producing megawatts of fusion energy has operated at that level for even one minute before something goes wrong and the reactor is either damaged or is automatically shut down to avoid being damaged.

There is no controlled nuclear fusion reactor producing useful energy any where on planet earth! There is a distinct possibility there never will be.
A continuous stream of brilliant failures litter the halls of fusion energy science since 1952 with no success in sight...

We can do fusion with relative ease here at fusor.net and don't mind it being a small space heater. We are looking at obtaining the neutrons produced by fusion to do experiments. Fusion is just a step in that path.

Note: There are a large number of people who do fusion here just to say they have done it and then we never hear from them again. I, personally, feel these are DIY, badge of honor seekers who are in-it-to-win-it. There is not an ounce of true amateur scientist investigator and experimenter in them. Thank goodness most fail just like the big boys. The few who succeed just had the money behind them to have most of the real work done for them. I give a pass to those high schoolers who succeed, for they soon will matriculate to college where there is no time for their fusion win to be carried forward.

Again, as noted above in the wise responses, there is no way to tap into the one microwatt of fusion energy we generate among the kilowatt of heat energy that might be pumped in from the wall outlet to power not only the fusor, but all the pumps and instruments needed. Oddly, a true, successful fusion reactor of the type dreamed of will still use the heat of real fusion to boil water and drive an electrical power generating turbine.

Richard Hull