Major shifts have been taking place in the race to commercialize nuclear fusion, but one high-school senior has shaken the fusion world by building a nuclear fusion reactor as a high-school science project.
Cesare Mencarini, an Italian studying in the United Kingdom, taught himself to code and how to work with electrical systems. He searched YouTube and the Internet and built a custom-made reactor that was controlled and hosted from a Raspberry Pi system. His reactor achieved plasma, the fourth state of matter, a crucial step in the fusion process, by effectively using high voltage to heat atoms to the required temperatures.
His work has earned him a college scholarship, where he will be working on larger reactors. Mencarini explains that "I had to adapt the design to fit in with the budget and my aim is to encourage other young people to develop ideas and think about how we can improve our world and be innovative."
