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Using a Toy Train To Calibrate a Reactor
alfredos writes "Physicists and engineers at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory built tracks inside a fusion reactor and ran a toy train for three days to help them with their calibrations. From the article: 'The modified model of a diesel train engine was carrying a small chunk of californium-252, a radioactive element that spews neutrons as it falls apart. “We needed to refine the calibration technique to make sure we are measuring our neutrons as accurately as possible,” said Masa Ono, the project head of the National Spherical Torus Experiment.'"
Nuclear reactor training?
http://www.tenjou.net/
You can use this just about anywhere. Now I have an excuse to bring the train into the office!
Boss: What's this?
Me: I'm calibrating the security cameras motion detection system. We need to know at what speeds the motion detection fails, lest the server room be broken into by someone with alot of patience.
I did this plenty of times in the Navy, except that they have a tube installed that circled the reactor between it and the detectors.
The tube contained the source and you moved it from detector to detector by pulling on a cable that was attached to both ends.
That has to be the lamest train setup I've ever seen, at least add some boxcars, a couple switchers and some scenery.
If he spruced it up a little bit then he could have had some fellow over-the-hill model railroad nuts in the picture with him.
Makes more sense than using random passengers to test your airport bomb-detecting technology.
Oh. Right.
Those two surfaces are fundamentally different, topologically speaking. Would a spherical torus would look something like a 4-sided triangle? Or sound like one hand clapping?
Cosmic.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
... did something like this in one story, I'm fairly sure.
Those toy trains are very versatile.
Casey Jones, streaming and decaying
Casey on the Californium Express
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig3GcDBjQN4
Watch those corners
I know the physicists mean well, and it probably gets the job done, but for some reason the notion that they use a toy train to calibrate a nuclear reactor would not make me feel more secure about living near a nuclear reactor.
Maybe if they'd used slot cars.
Hey, now there's a generational reference. Who among us remembers slot cars? And who among us is willing to admit it?
You are welcome on my lawn.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144039/
"So you want to put a toy train in my reactor?" Condescending glare and awkward silence . . .
From the first line of TFA:
During the holiday season, many people place toy trains on circular tracks beneath their Christmas trees.
I've never heard of that before.
I didn't have time to read the article but I must say I love the new look of the TARDIS.
So, that is what is the real Atomic Train!
All I can picture is the tiny conductor from shining time station driving around the toy train as the thermal reaction is occurring.
http://www.pppl.gov/PPPLnews101.cfm
Masa Ono is not the first Ono to dabble in the field of nuclear physics. After a certain other Ono became radio-and-TV-active some people voiced their concern by writing a song about her efforts. The song originally emerged under the title "Yellow submarine", but can now be found in many renditions, most recently as track no. 1 on Masa Ono's debut CD "Toying with US" under the title "Yellow train". Also featured on "Toying with US":
2. Bono's riding on my train
3. One way ticket
4. New clear power
5. Geiger buzz
6. Yellow stain
7. Tingling all over
8. Choo choo kaboom
9. French fries
10. Chinese take-out
11. Afghan delight
12. Toying with US
Coming to a nuclear shelter near you!
We'd all just like to know :)
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
Could we start using more stuff off the shelves of Toys'R'Us for our high energy physics devices?
Component Construction Models. Extension sets. Made of hardened plastic. Safe for kids.
A paper about this would make a brilliant entry for an Ig Nobel.
C'mon physicists! Let's set that K'nex plastic ball accelerator!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
And immediately all imports of toy trains into Iran have been marked as suspicious
Running dope to the US using a model train set up running across the border. Looks like they used the same gauge too.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
I believe Doc Brown used a toy train to test his hypothesis and timing of sending the car into the crosswire from the lightning bolt, thereby providing the 1.21 gigawatts necessary to run the flux capacitor and sending Marty McFly back to the future,... ;-)
So... You are saying that you were a kid sometime between 1912 and now?
Or are you trying to say that you are Scottish?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I'm really not a fan of this sort of reactor design because it greatly reduces one of my favorite features of toroidal plasma devices- kink (aka sausage) instability. It's just not proper science without a little kinky sausage.
I can just see the adv. on eBay now: Slightly used, somewhat radioactive train set. Glows in the dark! Minimum bid $50.00
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
Am I the only one who looked at the that lab and rails and thought of Gordon Freeman "On a Rail"?
I thought so.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
As someone with with years of experience in model railroading, that story is "real scary."
You mean to tell me you are going to count on a model train going around its tracks for 3 days straight without someone, at some time during the 3 days, to either have to give the train a nudge when it gets stuck, or put it back on the track?
The CS department in University of Waterloo has a train set in their real-time computing lab, not sure if it is still there now since it has been a good 5 years since I was last there.
Gaah! Why does this misunderstanding persist? Generally, things which are exposed to radioactivity do not themselves become radioactive (and radioactive things do not glow green, for that matter).
It's amusing. I work at a British research establishment that used to do work for the Royal Navy. We had a little set of toy train tracks set up in the garden to help with our work on missile targeting systems.
"There are three schools of magic..."
I was sad to see that the article did not cite Enrico Fermi using a home made version of a toy locomotive to calibrate the first operation of the cyclotron at the the University of Chicago after the war. see "Enrico Fermi" by E. Segre
I knew those engineers were hired for a reason
Toys are used quite often in research. Who do you think buy the most Mindstorm Lego? We use Lego in vacuum systems on occasion. If Lego came in 316L stainless steel, they'd take a big chunk out of Varian's business.
Children are generally referred to as he or she, hence in the possessive "his" or "hers". "It's" is the contraction of "it is". "Its" is the possessive of a thing eg. "its hard drive".
I spent a summer working at the DIII-D tokamak in La Jolla, CA back in 2001, and this system was already in use. It had clearly been around for years, and the train (and track) had been packed & unpacked for the n-th time during a long period of scheduled downtime. Things were starting up again, and the neutron detectors had to be calibrated. It was my job to get the train working, making sure the connections were good by assembling the train outside of the chamber & sanding the aluminum (some of which was lightly oxidized and nonconductive) until the train ran smoothly.
Things were going well until I disassembled it for reassembly in the chamber. During the process, I dropped a small connector piece on the floor. My attitude was "oh, well, it's not worth my hourly wage to look for this," until I was informed that due to exposure to the radiation, the piece was considered nuclear waste, and had to be found, even if a replacement piece was only $0.01. Half an hour later, the problem was compounded when the lights went off. So there I was, in a huge bay, with a flashlight, looking for a tiny grey connector on a grey unpainted concrete floor.
I didn't realize it at the time, but the lights going off really sped up the search process. With a flashlight, I could simply crouch onto the ground and look for long shadows. I found the piece after about two minutes of trying this technique.