VCU news

A team of four Virginia Commonwealth University School of Engineering seniors has completed work on an Inertial Electrostatic Confinement (IEC) fusion device, which it designed and built this spring.

The goal of the project was to develop a functioning IEC fusion reactor by May 2014 that would serve as both a learning and research tool for future students and faculty at VCU.

The team, which received top honors at the 2014 VCU Senior Design Expo, included students Nibras Abdalameer, Matthew Giffen, Paul Harper and Caleb Massey, all from the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering. Advisers were James Miller, instructor in the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering; Vaibhav Sinha, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering; and Sama Bilbao y Leon, Ph.D., associate professor and director of Nuclear Engineering Programs in the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering. The Expo was held during VCU Research Weeks in April.

“This development and demonstration of a nuclear fusion device is particularly impressive. [I]t was accomplished by a team of undergraduate students on a shoestring budget,” said Gary Tepper, Ph.D., chair in the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering.

An IEC fusion reactor uses a high voltage cathode within a vacuum chamber to ionize deuterium gas within the chamber. The resulting potential difference causes the positively charged deuterium nuclei (deuterons) to accelerate to high enough speeds to overcome Coulomb repulsion and to collide producing nuclear fusion. This deuterium-deuterium (D-D) fusion yields a measurable fast neutron flux.

VCU Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering faculty and students plan to use the neutron flux generated by the fusor for various nuclear science and materials characterization research projects.

“We are very excited to be a part of the development of this important new technology,” said Barbara Boyan, Ph.D., dean of VCU School of Engineering, referring to the February 2014 success of the National Ignition Facility (NIF), to achieve a positive energy gain fusion.

This project was supported by Dominion Nuclear Analysis and Fuel.

To demonstrate the fusor’s abilities and implications for research and practical education of fusion reactors, the School of Engineering will host an open house on May 7 at 5:30 p.m. in East Hall, room E3229. Visitors will have a chance to tour the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering’s labs, the VCU Nuclear Simulator and the VCU IEC Fusion Reactor.

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