A student builds a nuclear fusion prototype with the glowing plasma ball

Nazoordeen, a mathematics student at the University of Waterloo, built the device in four weeks over the summer with parts he ordered mostly online. He said he spent about $2,000 from start to finish.

“This is something out of the ordinary for me,” Nazoordeen told Business Insider.

He had never worked on electrical projects before and was not looking to start a career in nuclear physics. He said he built the device because it was fun.

“I can at least prove to myself that I can do it. And I think that’s a fun part about it,” he said.

Nuclear fusion is what powers our sun and thermonuclear weapons. It occurs when atomic nuclei fuse or fuse together, producing a large amount of energy.

If we could harness the power of fusion, it would generate nearly four million times more energy than burning oil or coal. That’s why scientists around the world have been trying for decades to build a device that can sustain nuclear fusion for long periods of time.

Nazoordeen’s nuclear device is a prototype. It cannot produce nuclear fusion, but it can obtain plasma, which is where nuclear fusion takes place and is a major step in the overall process. For that plasma to reach a state where atoms fuse would require a more powerful device and a bigger budget.

How Nazoordeen created his nuclear fusion prototype from scratch

Nazoordeen was not afraid to ask for help.

He got instructions from online forums like Fusor.net and enlisted the help of friends and roommates. He took Ubers to chat with experts in person. He also used AI assistant Claude, which was especially helpful in keeping him alive.

“I would ask Claude, ‘Should I do this stupid thing where I put this in the hotspot?’ And it would be absolutely like no,” he said, adding that the project has the potential to be dangerous.

“If something wasn’t properly grounded and you knocked it over, you’d die,” he said. “So even when we were building it, we were always standing back and using a stick to make sure things were completely grounded.”

Nazoordeen ordered most of what he needed for parts on eBay, Amazon and other sites. One of the final pieces of the puzzle—the transformer that helps provide the high voltage to power the device—required a little more work.

Couldn’t find the right transformer online after ordering a few and found they didn’t work. “Ultimately what we did was I called every neon sign store in town because they sell this particular type of transformer called a neon sign transformer that has a very high voltage,” he said.

Took an Uber to a supplier an hour away and the device worked the same day. “It was a great feeling, although very hard to find,” he said.

Building such prototypes is not easy, said Carlos Paz-Soldan, an associate professor of applied physics at Columbia University who was not involved in Nazoordeen’s project.

“This student is very capable,” Paz-Soldan told BI, adding that “You wouldn’t find your average student capable of doing that.”

While these devices don’t have much value in the real world, they are great learning tools. “Students who do this learn a lot of relevant skills. They learn about high voltage, they learn about vacuum, and those are the ingredients for larger-scale fusion systems,” Paz-Soldan said.

Nazoordeen’s next goal is to build another device that can actually generate nuclear fusion. He predicts it will cost about $10,000.

Between being a student, having a job, and interning at language model provider Cohere, he’s not sure where he’ll find the time, but he’s excited to get started.