Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Advice On a DIY Neutron Beam?
Max Littlemore writes "I have been breeding
thorium
cattle
children
gremlins
at home using lots of old smoke detectors with a view toward generating my own
electricity
radiation
plutonium
wormhole
and getting off the grid. The only thing stopping me is a reliable neutron beam. Given that all the equipment I'm using is re-purposed kitchen equipment, concerns about safety mean I'm
reluctant
hesitant
exuberant
defiant
to build a uranium reactor to supply neutrons to the thorium one. So I'm putting the question out there: do any Slashdotters know of a
hazardous
good
safe
legal
way to make a powerful neutron beam out of things I might find around the house?"
It would be helpful to include images and diagrams of your own personal neutron beam
generators
rifles
casseroles
beer
.
It's days like this when I really miss "OMG!!! Ponies!!!"...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
enough.
Use a neutron generator tube...or a fusion reactor
Not sure, but when you get that beam working, could you point it at whoever is in charge of the Slashdot April 1 thing?
High intensity neutrons would sterilize them perhaps, preventing them from reproducing. What we really need is a "subtlety beam".
My Ahazzz 8====== Makes Radium
i don't really know why exactly but this drop down menus are lots of fun :))
Just for you: http://effbot.org/zone/ponies.htm
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
A DiY neutron beam? Sure. Give me three coconuts, a piece of string, MacGyver, and your bank account numbers.
And OMG Ponies. Please, for the love of God.
PS - Act now and I'll sell you the Brooklyn bridge at a 12% discount.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
under the boiler for steam turbine. You'll literally have energy for the rest of your life, and as a side bonus you'll be permanently reducing your carbon footprint.
Disguise your rig as a powerful cement pump and ship it to Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. They will be glad to irradiate it for you.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
You don't need a uranium reactor to generate neutrons (although if you use the thorium from some lantern mantles, you could probably create one). You also don't need to be messing about with nasty americium to breed plutonium as a neutron source.
Just build a Farnsworth Fusor like that guy on Slashdot did last week. There's your neutron source. Should be pretty safe, compared to the alternatives.
Right, that doesn't solve the problem of your neutron beam beer.
Put a bottle of Pu240 Weapons Grade Ale in front of your Something in there'll get activated for just long enough to technically call it neutron beam beer.
At 8% ABV and 100 IBUs, it's a hop bomb that'll getcha bombed even without neutron activation!
You could just ask your neighbor. Most high school kids who are even remotely interested in science already have a neutron source in their basement. Borax, you get in the laundry aisle and as moderator I suggest to go with pencils. Graphite is a well documented moderator and has worked in Chernobyl for many years without a problem. You could use tea-lights for shielding, but imho shielding is for sissies.
Just one warning: As in banking, the important thing is to start big. If you build a small reactor, the police will come knocking down your door, but if you build a really big one, your local congressman will help you to find a way around stupid regulations.
This is probably a joke or troll, but since there actually have been morons trying to do this sort of thing before:
If you do not have enough knowledge and experience with radioactive materials and radiation safety to know how to generate neutrons, attempting to do so is a Bad Idea (TM). Neutrons are very penetrating and hard to shield against, and when absorbed they activate the material they are absorbed in, creating secondary radiation hazards. Using them to irradiate fissionable isotopes, like thorium or uranium, is an even more insane idea since it will not only multiply the number of neutrons generated, but also produce a dirty mix of fission products, many of which are gaseous and hard to contain.
Seriously, just go do something safer instead, like base-jumping or sword-swallowing.
If you hit the thrift stores and scrap off the glow-in-the-dark paint from pre-70's clocks and watches you can start to collect the needed radium for use in your breeder reactor. Let me know when you've collected at least 28 grams. Then we can start construction of the reactor using an old pickle crock and a washboard....
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
Take approx. 2kg of sifted weapons grade plutonium (this is perfectly safe, it's sub-critical) and place in a mixing bowl. With a mortar and pestle grind together about 5g of polonium-210 and 10g of finely powdered beryllium. Gradually stir in to the plutonium until the mixture begins to get warm, then add about 500cc of deuterium hydroxide. Divide equally into a 12-portion muffin dish. Decorate with thorium oxide granules and bake in a suitable containment vessel until red hot. Serve on a bed of fuel pebbles with a cesium iodide dressing.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
You should look up an old news article called "The Radioactive Boy Scout" about a guy who did exactly what you are attempting to do.
All you need is a whole load of Sellotape (Scotch-tape for you Americans) (and some deuterium).
Everyone (well, Slashdot readers) knows that peeling Sellotape produces x-rays, so get some industrial sized sheets of Sellotape, probably at least a few layers. While peeling, aim your Sellotape at some material why only needs low energies to induce a photonuclear reaction (deuterium, beryllium perhaps).
Some might say that those might need gamma rays, but those are only high energy X-rays, so shake your Sellotape fast, and you'll increase the frequency nicely.
And voila: Neutrons!
The rest is just details
I really hope this ad lib B***S*** is just an April Fools joke or else I am done reading this site.
Just build a cyclotron. They're quite easy to make, being basically a huge magnet and a curved track in a vacuum. There is a minor technical challenge that they're designed to accelerate protons or electrons, but I'm sure it's easy to adapt it to handle neutrons instead.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Didn't you think that it's April 2nd in some parts of the world already? Here it will be in 50 minutes...
It's really difficult to get voltage that high from household equipment. To make your own beam target you will also probably need to build a CVD chamber.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_generator
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_vapor_deposition
But this looks interesting too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyroelectric_fusion
All rites reversed 2010
If you just want neutrons, a Hirsh-Farnsworth Fusor is easy to build using ordinary materials. But the neutrons won't be a beam. Instead they spray in all directions.
Another approach is to accelerate protons and smack them into a neutron-rich target, such as lead foil, or the fuel itself. If the protons are fast enough, it will cause a small number of forced fissions producing neutrons. It's not a neutron beam either, but at least the neutrons are in the target instead of everywhere.
Instead of firing protons at a lead target, you can just as well fire lead ions at a hydrogen target. Plastic is mostly hydrogen, so it should work fine for this. Since most of the mass in the collision is from the moving lead ion, the neutrons will inherit most of its velocity, so this will give you an actual neutron beam.
You might consider a neutron spallation source. Just dig your proton linac out of the attic, and fire it up pointed at a high-Z target material. I like tungsten for the target, but you could also go with plutonium if you've got some handy. Bingo, spallation neutrons galore! It's not a beam source, but if you put the spallation target near the thorium, you should be able to get the neutrons to where you need them. Just remember, safety first --- be sure to wear safety glasses and have a couple kilotons of iron-loaded cement shielding between you and the target.
I believe Robert Bunsen invented a Neutron Beam. But he did not get the CopyRight!
yeah this is a fake story, I know, ha. ha. ha.
However:
I would like to give a try to using a Fusor with attached collimator as a neutron source.
Instead of driving it with the usual 20kV you could try 50kV
I'd like to see some information about technology.
Since you have a ready supply of Americium from your smoke detectors, start with that, mix in some beryllium and voila! Use some paraffin to thermalize them neutrons for a good rate of capture. Enjoy!
I understand they have an excess of neutrons and such over at the Fukushima nuclear facilities. You can probably get all the neutrons you want at bargain (turbine building) basement prices. In fact, since it sounds like you are entrepreneurial, you could probably get them to pay you to haul the stuff away. It's a mixed bag of goodies but since the fuel rods have melted down, you might be able to collect enough fissionable material out of the tons of highly radioactive water available to get your own chain reaction going, cutting out the middle man, allowing you to pass on savings to your customers. Everybody wins!
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Do not worry that a neutron beam is hazardous. Neutrons, being uncharged, pose no danger of electrical shock. Also, they simply pass through most materials.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor
I think you can find plans in back issues of Popular Science.
Just because Mass Effect :)
Watch out for the spores... and the green skin!
The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and Stupidity.
.. if you're handy with tools and your money: This solution will require you to put your thorium vessel in a vacuum chamber: Cut the end off some old but still functional 4-400A power vacuum tubes (as would be used in a surplus tube amp from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway or an old AN/SQS-23 sonar system), and put a charge stripping plate (of heavy enough copper) biased to pull the charge off the electrons, at the business end. Glass-weld the tube and plate to a flange on the vacuum vessel. Fire up the cathode, put sufficient voltage on the plate, and you're streaming neutrons.
Slashdot's name? When my compiler sees
...do you need it to run Linux?
We really need to know more about what you need, is it slow thermals (0.03MeV) or fast (2.5MeV - 14MeV), and what kind of rates. You also don't mention beam width or necessity for collimation.
A wheezer Penning could do 10e8 fast neutrons/s in a relatively simple and compact package. There are a bunch of designs that can produce on the order of 10e11 neutrons/s. If you're in the Silicon Valley, you can even rent time on them.
Have you tried eBay?
Oh, and watch out for side-lobes and activation issues -- incident or diffracted beams can play havoc with premature triggering of your krytrons.
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Thanks to tibit I found this webpage, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry has a website at http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/ which has a number of papers on health statements of radiation, some include characteristics of nuclear radiation (rest mass, charge, typical energy range, path length, etc.)
mfwright@batnet.com
If you are after a kitchen based solution see if you can get your hands on some Japanese produce. If it's hard to come by try milk products. Either should produce plenty of neutrons. If you rig up a salad shooter you can create a continuous flow of salad into the reaction chamber. If you go the milk route try ringing the container with crazy straws then pump the milk through those. They should give you a good spread on the neutrons over the Thorium.
I was just reading about one of those @ http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/DIY/116659/#habracut
Fusors are very good sources of neutrons. But the concept of a neutron beam is pretty lulzy. Neutrons have no charge and are unaffected by magnetic fields so good luck shaping that thing. May I recommend,
Kitten Kitten Kitten Kitten
Kitten TTTTTTTT Kitten
Kitten T Fusor T Kitten
Kitten T Fusor T Kitten
Kitten TTTTTTTT Kitten
Kitten Kitten Kitten Kitten
Kittens provide dual shielding for both radiation and detection, who would ever look under a pile of kittens for a nuclear reactor? Further the kittens will be drawn to the warmth, just provided a constant supply of Thorium, deuterium, and fish. Remember to remove dead kittens otherwise the smell might attract hobos.
of David Hahn.
I suggest you consider lamp mantles from camping lanterns and gas lamp posts. Much higher yield of Thorium. Then encase the extracted Thorium in depleted uranium in an asymmetric manner. Pack all this in a graphite cylinder with hundred of layers of bimetal sheet thermocouples in a massive series parallel schema. The interstitial material should be silicon dioxide and clay, but make sure it is boron free. Bop down to your local ceramics custom paint shop and borrow their kiln to "fire" the setup into one solid mass to make your own homemade traveling wave radio-thermal-generator. After testing the output of the first one, proceed to manufacture as many as required for your electricity needs. They are after manufacture virtually pollution free. (May we suggest a 1/2 inch stainless steel vessel welded closed around the individual cells, oh, and assure that you use aluminum or silver wiring and avoid copper in the construction.) You may wish to purchase your own kiln after determining the number of units you'll need and the cost of firing them outside of your own facility. Also consider a micro-controller for each cell to monitor its health and power output, as well as a small conditioning circuit to match the outputs into a seamless AC source to minimize interface issue with standard house generation, and provide minimal common failure points. As the controllers will need to be interfaced as a network, you may as well distribute the decisions across all the micro-controllers, thus ending up with a beowulf-cluster of "smartRTG"(tm)s
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Just don't cross the streams.
Whatever you do, don't cross the streams!
Can't you infuse it with milk from Japan?
OMG ponies!
Proton beam, actually.
Ruined the joke for me I'm afraid.
(haughty sniff)
I just wonder how many genuine stories get hidden under the mass of crap that gets 'reported' today.
If the RIAA had bribed judges a bit more that $75 trillion story could have been delayed and forgotten/ignored today.
"Give me three coconuts, a piece of string, MacGyver, and your bank account numbers."
Where'd you get the coconuts? The coconut's tropical! This is a temperate zone.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Adaptation is easy: Use Pinball Flippers arranged about the circle instead. Will work better than attempting to deflect a neutral particle with a magnet.
I don't know if I'm "that guy on slashdot last week" that built a fusor last week, but I am a guy on slashdot who does build fusors and other fusion devices for the last few years, and I even run a discussion board about it to help and encourage others to do so. It's not a hobby for idiots (various parts are dangerous) or the impatient, or people with no funds, but it's a lot of fun for those who do it.
FWIW, my best output (continuous) is on the order of 5 microwatts fusion energy, quite a lot of which goes into energetic neutrons. If I were to use tritium instead of just deuterium, I'd expect about 100 times that. Doesn't sound like much does it? Well, it's enough to make silver radioactive enough to count about 2000 cpm on a geiger with a five minute exposure. Or enough to kill you if you expose yourself to the radiation output (which also has a lot of gamma rays) for too long.
I think, but am not sure, that I hold the record for non-funded (eg I paid for all this myself) fusion work, and beat out quite a few government and university efforts hands down. I fund the effort via trading stocks, as does my partner in this particular crime.
My forum is in my sig. Here's a thread on a recent run I did: http://www.coultersmithing.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=40&p=1836#p1836
This one has a picture of the side I don't sit on while it's running. It's where most of the radiation comes out. http://www.coultersmithing.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=309
And of course, everyone wants to see the eye candy, so here it is: http://www.coultersmithing.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=246
Be aware, we've been attacked by bots lately, and I only allow new members to join if they use obviously real human first and last names....by the time I make the captcha hard enough for the robots to fail, so do the humans, sigh. The site should otherwise withstand a slashdotting, and has in the past.
Bring it on!
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor
If you heat up Helium sufficiently it will break down into neutrons and protons. Separate the protons with an electric charge and you're ready to accelerate them towards your target. I'd tell you one of the two methods of accelerating neutrons except then the black helicopters might come back.
Anyone who knows anything about smoke detectors knows that the isotope is Americium 210, an alpha emitter. Thinking that smoke detectors produce neutrons, and that there is enough material there with their sub .1 microcurie output is just plain silly!
You guys are amateurs!! I simply use a really long straw into the Sun's core.