Homemade nuclear reactor?

[tycon69]

http://www.hunkinsexperiments.com/pages/nuclearfission.htm

 

This site tells you how to make a homemade nuclear reactor from an apple, a few graphite pencils, and 6 luminous watches. Is this truely possible? Would it work? I came here because i can not find anything else about this anywhere on the internet. I would have dismissed this as a joke, but everything else on the site seems credible. If it is real, is it safe?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I doubt you could form critical mass with the radium on an old watch face.

[kanzure]

At first glance, it looks like a simple reaction that will make children happy, something like an explosion, not a serious nuclear reactor. The real deals are intense pieces of technology and engineering, you'd know one if you saw one.

 

- Bryan

[Stan]

http://www.hunkinsexperiments.com/pages/nuclearfission.htm

 

This site tells you how to make a homemade nuclear reactor from an apple, a few graphite pencils, and 6 luminous watches. Is this truely possible? Would it work? I came here because i can not find anything else about this anywhere on the internet. I would have dismissed this as a joke, but everything else on the site seems credible. If it is real, is it safe?

 

They don't specify which watch faces to use, but all the modern radioactive watch faces that I have seen use tritium and are alpha emitters. You aren't going to get a pop and a mushroom cloud from that. So, no, I have no idea what they were smoking when they made that page.

 

For a read on some children who got a little farther along, you might refer to

Radioactive Boy Scout

or

Teenager achieves nuclear fusion at home

[YT2095]

it`ll only work if you have the eaten apple inside though!

I think any idiot knows that a reactor need a Core

[thedarkshade]

http://www.hunkinsexperiments.com/pages/nuclearfission.htm

 

This site tells you how to make a homemade nuclear reactor from an apple, a few graphite pencils, and 6 luminous watches. Is this truely possible? Would it work? I came here because i can not find anything else about this anywhere on the internet. I would have dismissed this as a joke, but everything else on the site seems credible. If it is real, is it safe?

Take a

look at this !

It's not that easy man!

[ydoaPs]

http://www.hunkinsexperiments.com/pages/nuclearfission.htm

 

This site tells you how to make a homemade nuclear reactor from an apple, a few graphite pencils, and 6 luminous watches. Is this truely possible? Would it work? I came here because i can not find anything else about this anywhere on the internet. I would have dismissed this as a joke, but everything else on the site seems credible. If it is real, is it safe?

 

This, IMO, is intellectual dishonesty. It is NOT fission as the url states. It isn't even the "Nuclear Boyscout" reactor. As far as I can tell, it won't even do anything. And I laugh at the "control rods" for more than one reason.

[swansont]

They don't specify which watch faces to use, but all the modern radioactive watch faces that I have seen use tritium and are alpha emitters.

 

Tritium is a source of betas, not alphas. I don't think there are any naturally occurring alpha emitters lighter than lead.

 

 

As far as the link in the OP goes, it says it was published on April 1st, and elsewhere they admit that one of their experiments is a joke. Care to guess which one?

[ydoaPs]

Tritium is a source of betas, not alphas. I don't think there are any naturally occurring alpha emitters lighter than lead.

 

An alpha decay of tritium produces a negatively charged tachyon!

³₁H->^-1_-1?+⁴₂He

[thedarkshade]

Tritium is very very very rare, it's located in the highest layers of the atmosphere and is created as a result of cosmic rays. It can otherwise be produced from the reaction of two deuteriums, and as a result we get one random H and one tritium.

It has a use in nuclear physics, as a fuel for hydrogen bombs!

[swansont]

Tritium is very very very rare, it's located in the highest layers of the atmosphere and is created as a result of cosmic rays. It can otherwise be produced from the reaction of two deuteriums, and as a result we get one random H and one tritium.

It has a use in nuclear physics, as a fuel for hydrogen bombs!

 

It also has a use in exit signs, watches and gun sights.

[Ozone]

Fact or Bullcrap?

 

1. graphite is used as a moderating material, serving to slow down the neutrons that would exist *if* the isotope were capable of spontaneous fission (e.g. large nuclei). The slowing of these neutrons, a process referred to a "thermalization" involves bouncing them off of light weight nuclei, like C or H (water) or D (deuterium in D2O, see CANDU reactors). "Control" involves the absorption of the neutrons to create an actived isotope. The likelyhood of this occuring is referred to as the absorption cross-section and it is measured in Barnes; elements which are quite good at this include B and Cd (heavier isotopes tend to yield fissionable nuclei).

 

2. There needs to be a large nucleus present to absorb the neutron (if it is moving at just the right energy, eg. thermal neutrons are absorbed by 235U. If the energy is correct, the nucleus becomes unstable and will split to yield two new nuclei (e.g. 92Kr and 144Ba) and a few neutrons. These neutrons, if the material is dense enough (and isotopically pure) will propagate the rxn (critical). If the density is higher still, this may occur at a rate analogous to an explosion (supercritical).

 

3. The mass of a reflected weapons grade (239Pu) core is ~1kg (reflected implosion) and has an isotopic purity >93%. A reactor at static criticality contains *tons* of lightly enriched material (maybe 8%) or tons more w/D moderation if at natural abundance (~0.75% 235U).

 

The given device takes into account non of this and contains (even with Ra watches, which are very nice a sources) no fissionable material:doh: .

 

I must call bullcrap!

 

O3

[YT2095]

Naaah! Really?

 

that can`t be right, I mean it`s got a Real Core and everything!

[Ozone]

And rods! Oh my!

 

The humanity!

 

The treatise was for fun (and to jog my decrepit memory on a subject that was canned at my university in the mid '90s).

 

Cheers,

 

O3

[Stan]

Tritium is a source of betas, not alphas.

Right you are. Sorry for the mis-information.

 

I don't think there are any naturally occurring alpha emitters lighter than lead.

Depends on the isotope of lead (how's that for grasping at straws?), but yeah, generally, you are correct.

[DrDNA]

I think it will work.....if you happen to have a half dozen weapons grade plutonium watches.

[ydoaPs]

I think it will work.....if you happen to have a half dozen weapons grade plutonium watches.

 

Still won't work. Graphite reflects scatters neutrons far more often than it absorbs them. That is why graphite is used as a moderator instead of a poison. Even if you had, say, boron pencils, it still wouldn't work as the watches wouldn't be at critical mass(and you'd need some source neutrons).

[foursixand2]

this has actually been done in my home state. http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,510054502,00.html

other products of utah? Television and Methamphetamine.

Technically it was only the Electronic Television (not the original idea), and it was made in California by a former Utahn. And it was one of those darwin/wallace type events. A dude working independently in germany finished basically the same thing a few months later.