The team of Kentwood High student Ray Maung, Aviation High’s Jake Hecla, and Rian Chandra of Capitol High won the second place Grand Award in Physics and Astronomy at the Intel International Science & Engineering Fair, held May 12-17 in Phoenix, Ariz.

Their project was called, “Investigation of Anisotropic Neutron Production in a Farnsworth lEC Fusion Reactor.”

The Grand Award included $1,500 and was in addition to the $1,500 special award from the American Coalition for Plasma Science.

Each member of the team will also receive the right to name a recently discovered asteroid through the Ceres Connection Program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Earlier in the year the team won the second place silver award at the South Sound Regional Science Fair in Tacoma.

In April they won the top state gold award at the Washington State Science & Engineering Fair.

Maung, Hecla, and Chandra are members of the Northwest Nuclear Consortium, a group of students from South King County who meet once a week after school to explore high energy physics and operate a working fusion reactor. The reactor is safe, generating temperatures as hot as the sun, but confined to a small volume isolated in a vacuum.

The program offers students the experience of extreme science in an environment inspected and certified by the state of Washington. Fusion reactors use fuel extracted from ocean water, emit no carbon, and produce no long term nuclear wastes. The National Academy of Engineering has identified the development of safe, clean, fusion power as one of the grand challenges of the 21st century.