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Building a Homemade Nuclear Reactor In NYC
yukk writes "Mark Suppes, a web developer for Gucci, is working on his own personal fusion reactor. His work in a NYC warehouse using $35,000 of his own money and $4,000 raised on a website has made him the 38th independent researcher recognized as creating a working fusion reactor. How's that for a hobby?"
(yeah, yeah, I know...never trust anything on Wikipedia... but it's still a good reference starting point)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
Agreed. There are at least 25 people who've done it, maybe a lot more. Here's a guide to the whole process if you want to do it yourself: http://brian-mcdermott.com/fusion_is_easy.htm
That's fission, they really are pretty different. On a hobby level, fission consists of lots of playing with radioactive things and all that. Fusion consists of putting some gas in a box, turning it on, putting a whole lot of power in and ending up with a different gas in the box.
-- All your booze are belong to us.
He tried to build a fission reactor. This is a fusion reactor.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
That money would sure buy a lot of smoke alarms (a legendary story). ...... Kids, don't try this.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
No, Fission involves the process of heavy (unstable, usually something like Uranium) element decaying into a lighter element and some radiation, where the radiation is used to generate electricity.
This is a proper fusion reactor, as it uses electricity to join (light, usually some form of hydrogen, be it H2 or H3) atoms together, releasing neutrons in the process from which you can generate electricity.
Problem with fusion reactors is that the input (electricity used to join the atoms) is usually bigger then the output, so it's not viable yet as a power source, but when it is figured out, you have a clean power source that uses light elements to produce slightly heavier elements with no radioactive by-products.
Actually, Hahn didn't do this - He created a fission reactor. (Which, IMO, makes him deserve far more credit because fission is dangerous and far harder to get the materials for.)
Basic fusion is easy with the Farnsworth Fusor design. The problem is that it's not a useful design for anything but low-yield neutron generation for experiments - it can't generate power due to operating nowhere close to breakeven and, if I recall correctly, with quite a bit of physics saying that such a design will never be able to achieve breakeven at any scale.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
By no radioactive by-products we are ignoring the walls of the torus which do become radioactive and do need to be replaced.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
http://www.google.com/images?q=david+hahn
what that is is kaposi's sarcoma
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaposi's_sarcoma
if you need a hobby, radioactive materials is not your best choice
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's an polywell in fact: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell
"Beta-rays" means electrons and positrons. These are light charged particles. Neutrons are heavy and neutral.
That being said, being in a high neutron flux for any length of time can be harmful to a human.
Of course this is handled with shielding. And I believe in any serious fusion reactor breeder blankets (not sure which material) are put in place, which absorb neutrons to generate lithium. Lithium is required for the D-T reaction.
Since I'm no expert in fusion I'm sure someone else can give a more precise answer.
Yes, they are quite different. One is a super-category, and one is a sub-category. Like vehicle and car. All cars are vehicles, but not all vehicles are cars. Similarly, all fusion reactors are nuclear reactors, but not all nuclear reactors are fusion reactors.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Here's your Ghost Busters reference at XKCD.
Neutrons are best blocked with materials containing light elements like hydrogen. Sometimes a combination of lead bricks and polyethylene bricks is used around a target in a fission based neutron source. The lead bricks block gamma rays, and the neutrons scatter off the hydrogen in polyethylene, slowing them down until they can be absorbed. In Alcator C-Mod tokamak, a concrete neutron shield is used.
Lithium is mined, not generated. It is used in the breeder blanket to produce tritium by the reaction n + 6Li --> T + He.