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The Fusioneers, who build nuclear reactors in their back yards
- riprowan 10y agoNice bios. Would rather read about what they're building.
- leecarraher 10y agoFarnseworth Fusors it sounds like. So EIC fusion, fortunately it's pretty tough to get a strong enough vacuum and proper backfill of deuterium to produce actual fusion which would stream neutrons out and actually be dangerous beyond the dangers of dealing with high voltage, high pressure, and x-rays. They do usually ionize the gas in the confined center which looks pretty cool.
- djaychela 10y agoExactly - this was just the opening page to the article I would have like to have read; that may be because I did my apprenticeship in the UK Atomic industry and long for my 20s, but maybe it's because it would be really interesting to read about this stuff - I had no idea people were doing this sort of thing as a hobby. I feel an evening's search-and-read activity coming on!
- snarfy 10y agoI have a hack project like this going in my garage. I'm trying to build a resonant tuned polywell device. The tldr is polywell + tesla coil power source + microwave oven = fusion? I have no idea if it will work but is something I wanted to try. The original polywell is a steady state device, where this is meant to create a dynamic system in tune with the power source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3BPtWiGxd3c/Vj7ecWEoXuI/AAAAAAAAGcs/ywhNj7we_AU/s1600/4.png http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3BPtWiGxd3c/Vj7ecWEoXuI/AAAAAAAAGc...
- adaml_623 10y agoHow do you measure your fusion events? Does a geiger counter work?
- FiatLuxDave 10y agoNot the above poster, but typically people will test first with hydrogen to make sure they have good plasma characteristics and containment, then switch to deuterium and use a neutron counter to measure the 2.45 MeV neutrons that come off of the D + D -> n + He3 branch reaction. A Geiger counter is a good idea, though. Many people don't know until they work with it that high voltages (above 30 kV or so) will cause a fair amount of X-rays from stray electrons being accelerated. So, even when you aren't actually doing fusion, just having a device turned on will cause some X-rays, and its helpful to know that your dose rate is low enough to be safe. There are some failure modes that can cause large amounts of X-rays and you'd want to be aware if that was going on.
- snarfy 10y agoI haven't gotten that far but this is correct. Most people in the fusor community fuse deuterium and use a neutron detector to prove fusion is happening.
- FiatLuxDave 10y agoAye, you can also get additional proof by placing different thicknesses of attenuators (parrafin wax works well for this) between your neutron counter and the fusion device to demonstrate that the energy of the neutrons is commensurate with the energy from a D+D reaction. Borax is cheap and helpful for shielding if you start getting more neutrons than is comfortable. Neutrons are a serious radiation hazard but most fusors would be happy to get into the dangerous range.
- mh-cx 10y ago> I'm trying to build a resonant tuned polywell device. The tldr is polywell + tesla coil power source + microwave oven = fusion? I have no idea if it will work but is something I wanted to try. I hope you thought about all the consequences this may have. See Primer.[1] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primer_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primer_(film)
- paulsutter 10y agoThese are Farnswoth Fusors[1], first developed by Philo T Farnsworth, one of the inventors of television. The devices use about 100,000x more energy than they produce FROM FUSION (edit, thanks), but some fusion does occur. An individual ion can be heated by 11,000 kelvins with a single electron volt, so 15,000ev is enough to reach fusion temperature. The statistical challenge is getting ions to collide - overcome the (repelling) coulomb force - and fuse. There are discusson groups online for this topic [2] and there's even a high school in the Seattle area that has a fusor [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor [2] http://www.fusor.net/board/ http://www.fusor.net/board/ [3] http://www.industrytap.com/overview-polywell/31940 http://www.industrytap.com/overview-polywell/31940
- Retric 10y agoIMO, produces energy is a poor way of describing at this. They produce ~1,000 parts light:99,001 parts heat per 100,000 units of electricity and 1 units of fusion. In other words 100,000 units of electricity liberates 1 unit of fusion power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_energy_gain_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_energy_gain_factor is meaningful, but it's talking about inputs not outputs. PS: Ok, heat is a poor description. 1,000 pars light, 99,000.9 units of heat, and 0.1 unit high energy particle radiation.
- paulsutter 10y agoIsn't that like saying a lightbulb doesn't use any energy because its output of heat and light equals the energy input? Or that I didn't use any money shopping because the cash all stayed in the economy?
- Retric 10y agoSure, a light-bulb does not destroy any energy, it uses electricity and increases Entropy. If you want to say it consumes something then a light bulb consumes the potential to create Order by transforming electricity into heat and light.
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- Aelinsaar 10y agoImpressive people, but I don't feel that I got a sense of what they were actually doing. I understand that it's a challenge for a writer who probably doesn't understand the subject well, to talk to the average read who doesn't understand it at all. Still, this feels like a wasted opportunity to teach, and to inform others with more knowledge about what these interesting people are doing.
- jdc0589 10y agobingo. I have no idea what they were building based on that article. The first "quote" about uranium was especially misleading.
- josefresco 10y agoFelt like we read just the beginning to a very thorough article. Instead we just got introduced...
- jloughry 10y agoThis feels like the introduction to a book. It sounds like an interesting one.
- andrey_utkin 10y agoThis listing won't be full without David Hahn aka "Nuclear Boy Scout". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn
- codezero 10y agoWow totally forgot about this. Wiki linked to an article about what he's been up to recently: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2506549/Uh-oh-Radioactive-Boy-Scout-built-nuclear-reactor-Detroit-shed-sparking-evacuation-40-000-wants-invent-lightbulb-lasts-100-years.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2506549/Uh-oh-Radioa... He's been through a lot but still has a hunger for learning.
- deepnet 10y agoHahn was working with fission not fusion , he was not a 'fusioneer' but splitting the atom. Hahn produced amazing amateur nuclear work nonetheless, ( somewhat out of control when his reactor went critical ).
- lakkal 10y agoI read his story a while back and was shocked that I used live nearby and may have (as a paperboy) delivered newspapers to his house. I left the area a few years before his experiments, though.
- cm3 10y agoWhile we're at it, are safety considerations the only problem that prevented nuclear powered automotive engines? I've always wondered why.
- brandmeyer 10y agoMostly its about size. There is effectively a minimum viable size for a fission reactor. There are a pinch more than 2 neutrons born from each fission event. In order to operate at criticality, exactly one of them must go on to produce another fission. Leakage of neutron radiation from the effective surface of the core is a major way that neutrons don't make it to cause another fission event. As the ratio of surface area to volume goes up (because the core got smaller) it becomes harder and harder to design a core that doesn't lose neutrons to the other loss mechanisms to keep up with the increasing loss out the core's surface.
- Animats 10y agoLockheed-Martin's Skunk Works is trying to build a useful fusion reactor using a somewhat similar approach.[1] They announced this a few years ago, and last fall, their people gave a talk at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. (There's video, but it won't play in Firefox on Linux.[2]) It's striking that a very capable organization is working on this. [1] http://www.pppl.gov/events/colloquium-lockheed-martin-compact-fusion-reactor http://www.pppl.gov/events/colloquium-lockheed-martin-compac... [2] https://mediacentral.princeton.edu/media/Thursday+Colloquium,+August+6,+2015,+%22The+Lockheed+Marin+Compact+Fusion+Reactor%22,+Dr.+Thomas+McGuire,+Lockheed+Martin/1_5j8kix93 https://mediacentral.princeton.edu/media/Thursday+Colloquium...
- nickpsecurity 10y agoLet's not forget Doug Coulter: http://sploid.gizmodo.com/this-chain-smoking-gun-loving-guy-built-a-nuclear-reac-1536653459 http://sploid.gizmodo.com/this-chain-smoking-gun-loving-guy-... He has a forum dedicated to all kinds of stuff. He occasionally stopped by Schneier's blog to deliver insightful posts. I particularly liked his calling out the Anarchist Cookbook's many ways of killing people... that try to do what it says. ;)