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Build Your Own Cyclotron
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New York... when civilization falls apart, remember, we were way ahead of you. - David Letterman
New York... when civilization falls apart, remember, we were way ahead of you. - David Letterman
Yesterday's technology, tomorrow! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Terrorism (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Things that go boom (Score:4, Informative)
You can make 'em out of U-235, too, which is a little easier to come by. It's still not all that easy to build one. Assuming that you manage to machine and assemble the fissionable mass without killing yourself, there's the little matter of making the conventional explosives that work as a trigger do their thing in the right way, at the right time. If you're building a bomb that uses explosives to crush a hollow sphere of fissionable material, for instance, you have to make sure that all the charges fire at exactly the right time, or it'll fizzle.
Re:This is very interesting indeed. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Things that go boom (Score:2, Informative)
Just a request... (Score:3, Informative)
So, please, when you post an article to
*meant as a polite request, not bittery sarcastic or anything*
Baa.. Need more power (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Things that go boom (Score:4, Informative)
Nuclear weapons that operate on this principle usually have a sphere with a large hole bored in one side, and a plug of U-235 with the particle source on the tip. The plug is fired into the hole (adding up to the critical mass), the source emits particles at the center of the sphere, and no one is around to observe what happens next.
All you need, in addition to the material and firing mechanism, is a concentrating layer around the core. Beryllium is ideal (Hollywood got that one right in The Shadow) but even water will work. If beryllium is used, the end of the plug will have a piece of beryllium on it, so that when the plug is fired, the warhead is completely enclosed in the concentrating layer with the source activated at the center. There has been speculation that a nuclear bomb could be assembled in a filled bathtub or toilet, making the size of the weapon much easier to hide and smuggle.
The people most worried about the possibility of homebrew nuclear weapons are those closest to the development of these weapons. That is the scary part.
A great Scientific American home experiment (Score:4, Informative)
They have a lengthy article on how to build a 1 MEV particle accelerator. It generates a "spray" of alpha products if I remember correctly. Since this is from the 1950's I just love how in light of recent discoveries, the author recommends leaving the room if you plan to operate it for more than a couple of hours.
Similar warnings are given that a home made X-ray machine may have some risks.
Articles also include:
Build a steel rocket with launch girder assembly that reaches a 1 mile altitude. They recommend having a desert for launching.
Build a telescope, hand grinding the mirrors.
Build the 1MEV Van de Graff generator to power the accelerator.
Re:Yesterday's technology, tomorrow! (Score:5, Informative)
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! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:bubble chamber (Score:4, Informative)
It's impossible. You must have seen something else. I tell you, you're wrong.
It couldn't possibly have been neutrinos - the setups to detect those are huge things, vast underground caverns full of bleach or water. The vapour would detect much heavier particles... Was there a radioactive source nearby?
Re:This is very interesting indeed. (Score:2, Informative)
Building a cyclotron is not that difficult technically, but finding all the needed material might be(high voltage for the magnet, and especially the vacuum pump able to get it down to about 10^-5 atmospheres...) In all cases, it certainly is an interesting project to take up if you have interest in physics, as it touches a lot of different fields of physics and teaches you a thing or two about how simple it can be to make such a complicated experiment work in theory, while being such a pain in the friggin a** in practice...