kenthorvath writes "This guy and his friend built their own cyclotron, capable of 1 MeV protons using spare parts and surplus science equipment. Anyone else happen to have a 4600 lb. magnet lying around?"
Actually several points in your note are incorrect. First the name of the place of Oak Ridge TN. Also known as Clinton Engineering Works, part of the Manhattan Project.
Several methods were used to seperate U-235/238 at teh Oak Ridge facilities, of which one was a cyclotron-based production train.
As to the long term effects of cyclotrons on the buildings, in the mid '80s my office was to be on the magnet floor of one of the cyclotron buildings. The building had already been reused at least twice before that. (The Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion project was in there during the 1950's, and during the 1960's the clear bay in the middle of the building was used for part of the drop tests of nuclear fual transport vessels.)
There are buildings in the Oak Ridge DOE reservation that I wouldn't want to spend much time in, but the stories that they were rendered unusable are just that, stories without facts.
John Farmer (Contractor at all the OR sites from 1979 - present, Mother & father at OR sites from 1943 to 1990)
Re:Yesterday's technology, tomorrow!
by
AJWM
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· Score: 5, Informative
This should not have been modded up as insightful, but rather modded down as disinformative.
Where to begin?
Yes, the Hiroshima bomb ("Little Boy") was of the enriched-uranium type, but the uranium was enriched in gas centrifuges, not cyclotrons. (As uranium hexafluoride gas, with the U235 hexafluoride being somewhat lighter than U238 hexafluoride).
The Nagasaki bomb ("Fat Man") was of the plutonium implosion type, no uranium involved. It was originally targeted for the arsenal at Kokura, but the weather forced diversion to the backup target (Nagasaki).
The actual yield of the Nagasaki bomb was about 33% greater than Hiroshima (21kt vs 15-16kt), not "not that much smaller".
The only thing a cyclotron has in common with a gas centrifuge is that stuff goes around in circles in both.
-- -- Alastair
Re:Terrorism
by
packeteer
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· Score: 5, Informative
Oh god this has been argued before. In the 1970's in the supreme court case The Progressive vs. The United States cencorship of nuclear info was tested. The Progressive wanted to publish a layman's description of an H-Bomb in order to show that it was not some "secret" and that keeping it as a "secret" would not work or help anything. The govt. took them to courst and the supreme court decided to cencor them. Its sad but true that these things happen but the supreme court setup some rules about when its ok to publish info and this is something that clearly is not dangerous.
Slashdot Mirror
Looks like they've managed to duplicate one of the first cyclotrons. Question is, what are they going to do with it?
--Larry
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
Oh god this has been argued before. In the 1970's in the supreme court case The Progressive vs. The United States cencorship of nuclear info was tested. The Progressive wanted to publish a layman's description of an H-Bomb in order to show that it was not some "secret" and that keeping it as a "secret" would not work or help anything. The govt. took them to courst and the supreme court decided to cencor them. Its sad but true that these things happen but the supreme court setup some rules about when its ok to publish info and this is something that clearly is not dangerous.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep