[ RadSafe ] Coming soon to a basement near you???????
Jake Hecla
jakehecla at gmail.com
Sun Jun 10 19:00:03 CDT 2012
Dr. Presig, as a "fusioneer", I may have some answers to your
concerns. Though the equipment used in fusors is often nonstandard (my
powersupply is two NSTs hooked to a voltage multiplier made of microwave
oven capacitors), it poses negligible risk to anyone other than the
operator. Yes, the potential for a nasty accident is omnipresent, but it
would not result in damage on a large scale. The same goes for neutron
shielding. The best amateur fusor yet made produced a paltry 5 million
neuts/sec, which poses a negligible risk to anyone standing more than a few
meters away. X-rays are of a far greater concern. In addition, deuterium
does not pose a proliferation hazard in any way. While massive amounts of
heavy water were a concern in WWII (because of its use as a moderator in a
reactor that could produce plutonium), it is of little concern in this day
and age. It is not fissile or radioactive and cannot be easily used to
boost a nuclear device. Simply packing a small nuke in a deuterium blanket
would do nothing, as the ignition of D-D fusion is considerably harder than
the D-T process used in thermonuclear weapons (if you would like proof, I
have the cross section data). Even the largest hydrogen bombs (using "easy"
D-T fusion) rely on carefully designed hulls to reflect gamma rays to heat
the fusion fuel, which only then can go off. Needless to say, no scheme of
deuterium surrounding a stolen Russian nuke could ever pull this off.
-Jake J. Hecla
Northwest Nuclear Consortium
2012/6/10 <JPreisig at aol.com>
> Dear Radsafe,
>
> The Fusor website is pretty interesting. Kids and adults doing
> fusion science with
> high voltage power supplies, bottles of deuterium, etc. Normally I would
> just chuckle about all this,
> but I have some concerns.
>
> The Voltages being used are pretty high, and the power supplies are
> not necessarily
> good, off-the-shelf, well-designed power supplies.
>
> People are buying lab. bottles of deuterium from Scientific supply
> houses etc. For a few hundred $$$.
> This is a low-level proliferation hazard. Transactions should be tracked.
> Someone buying more than a
> few lab. bottles of deuterium needs to be tracked.
>
> One Suitcase nuke from the former USSR, or wherever, combined with a
> fair amount of
> deuterium could produce a home-grown Hydrogen (Fusion) weapon. D, D
> reaction etc.
> It could happen. It shouldn't be allowed to happen. No wonder the
> USA/Allies were so
> concerned about that Heavy Water plant in Norway (or wherever) during World
> War II.
> The Hydrogen weapon might have already been in someones mind at that time.
>
> I see no evidence of neutron shielding for these Fusor amateur fusion
> efforts.
> Shielding should happen as such experiments are scaled up.
>
> I'd hate to see what would happen to a safety official (state
> government level???) on the western
> USA coast if some kid were to electrocute himself, and the state official
> knew the
> situation.
>
> Have a safe day... Regards, Joseph R. (Joe) Preisig, PhD
>
>
>
>
> In a message dated 6/8/2012 3:06:25 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
> JPreisig at aol.com writes:
>
> Kristian and Radsafe,
>
> What a seriously cool thread here on radsafe. A small 200 keV
> particle accelerator with
> possibility of having a deuterium and/or tritium source would allow one to
>
> do fundamental fusion
> research in a rather small academic and/or corporate environment. Get 2
> LiI detectors with
> a set of polyethylene Bonner spheres and you can readily measure the
> neutron spectra coming from
> your fusion experiment. Fusion, Cold Fusion, Warm Fusion, whatever....
>
> Doggone, scooped on my research grant application by a group of
> basement inventors. Ouch.
>
> Google search also migma AND maglich (self-colliding beam
> fusion).
>
> Someone's going to the Fusion promised-land well ahead of PPPL
> (Princeton Plasma Physics
> Lab) and/or ITER (International Fusion Effort). See Radsafe archives
> for
> very much more information.
>
> Have a great weekend!!!! Regards, Joseph R. (Joe) Preisig, PhD
>
>
>
>
>
> In a message dated 6/8/2012 12:24:28 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
> doctorbill34 at gmail.com writes:
>
> When I worked at Argonne, a group of researchers built its own homemade
> particle accelerator; didn't bother to tell hp, of course.
>
> It's a tribute to the intelligence of American scientists that most of
> them
> survive working under the conditions they create for themselves!
>
> Bill Lipton
> It's not about dose, it's about trust.
> On Jun 8, 2012 10:16 AM, "Kristian Ukkonen" <ktu at iki.fi> wrote:
>
> > On 6/7/2012 18:17, Ted de Castro wrote:
> >
> >> I thought people here might be interested in seeing this link telling
> >> whomever how to make their own x-ray machine.
> >>
> >> Now "Instructables" is a great web site with articles telling you how
> to
> >> make all sorts of interesting and useful things - and some,
> well.......
> >>
> >> A while ago they had a "make a spot welder from a microwave oven
> >> transformer" that was a major electrical death trap.
> >>
> >> Today I got my usual email showing new entries and saw this one:
> >>
> >> http://www.instructables.com/**id/How-to-X-Ray/<http://www.instru
> ctables.com/id/How-to-X-Ray/>
> >>
> >
> > Nothing new. Already in 50s amateurs were building crude x-ray
> machines
> > from 01, 6BK4 triode etc. commercial tubes.. One of instructions was
> > in "amateur scientist" column of Scientific American in 7/1956 by
> > C.L.Stong. Also there was Van de Graff generator based proton/deuteron
> > linear accelerator in 8/1971 number.. For a whole list, see
> >
> http://amasci.com/amateur/**sciamdx.html<
> http://amasci.com/amateur/sciamdx.h
> tml>
> >
> > Nowadays people are already building inertial electrostatic
> confinement
> > deuterium fusion reactors in their basements with proven neutron
> > production by activation experiments.. X-ray tubes are so old news. :)
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Fusor
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor>
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