Bring nuclear fusion to your classroom
Free content, with technical rigor — made for high-school students.
Simulator in the browser
A fusion simulator that runs directly in the browser, no installation, no sign-up. Students explore the triple product and the Q factor with their own hands.
Open the simulator →Content in four languages
Articles on fusion, fission, nuclear myths and Brazil's nuclear program, available in Portuguese, English, French and Mandarin.
Visit the site →Talks and meetups
NEXA's founder presents the project and the field of fusion energy to classes and science fairs, in person in São Paulo or by video.
NEXA SERIES FOR EDUCATORS
Ready-to-teach materials for your classroom
I prepared these materials for a simple reason: no teacher should need hours of preparation to bring nuclear fusion into the classroom. The full series has six modules that, together, walk the entire path — from the climate problem to the global race for fusion. Each module is self-contained, fits in 15–20 minutes and comes in three formats: editable slides (PPTX), a PDF to project or print, and a one-page teacher sheet with objectives, timing and discussion questions.
Made by students, for students.
Energy, climate and the dilemma: fission vs. fusion
Why solving climate means solving energy — and what changes when the answer lives inside the atom. Fission and fusion compared the right way: at equal mass, with ITER's numbers.
The physics of fusion
Where the energy comes from: mass defect, the 17.6 MeV of the D-T reaction and the Coulomb barrier that must be overcome.
The confinement challenge
How to hold a plasma above 100 million °C: magnetic confinement and the Lawson criterion.
The tokamak
The anatomy of the machine that dominates fusion, piece by piece: vacuum vessel, the three magnetic fields, central solenoid, blanket and feeders — with ITER as the guide.
The stellarator
The twist sculpted into the coils: why the concept nearly died, how optimization revived it — and what Wendelstein 7-X proved.
The global race
Governments, laboratories and companies — and the case study of a country outside the leaders' club: Brazil, with the TCABR tokamak (USP) and ETE (INPE).
Module 1 is already available in the site's four languages — Portuguese, English, French and Mandarin. The next modules will arrive in the four languages as well.
This material is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0: you may copy, adapt and redistribute it for non-commercial purposes, with attribution and under the same license. Used it in class? Tell me how it went — the form on this page reaches me directly, and every classroom report improves the next module.
Module 1 sources: ITER Organization (iter.org) · Our World in Data (CC BY) · NASA/SDO (public domain) · infographics: NEXA — Nucleus of Atomic Exploration.