The picture shows the inside of the Fusor during an experiment last Friday where a fusion plasma produced almost a million neutrons per second, placing the device among a handful of best performing Fusors in the world.
We are looking through the window of a spherical vacuum chamber, containing a smaller sphere of glowing hot nickel wires ten centimeters across. A voltage of 55 kilovolts, applied to the nickel sphere, accelerates deuterium ions to energies high enough to allow fusion reactions to occur on collision with other deuterium ions or atoms. The high voltage is applied through a wire entering the Fusor from above, creating a bluish glow.
The promising results mean that, in parallel to its educational function, a research program will be set up around the Fusor in the group Science and Technology of Nuclear Fusion (TU/e department of Applied Physics).