There's no modulation transformer in this amateur's homebrew rig.

[k4kyv]

Thiago Olson joined the extremely sparse ranks of teenage amateurs with the homebrew project in his basement.

For two years, Olson researched what he would need and scrounged for parts from eBay and the hardware store, including the high-voltage transformer.  “I have cross-country and track, so during those seasons I don’t have much time to work on it,” says Olson, a high school senior in Michigan. “It’s more of a weekend project.” Last November he finally got it to deliver output, even though the efficiency is still not up to snuff.


Kid built his own

[W2XR]

Hi Don,

Interesting story. It's good to see that some U.S. teenagers take this level of interest in such a technically complicated and challenging subject. Although unrelated to this story, thank goodness we still have the Intel (previously Westinghouse) science scholarships for high school students!

I did not know that you could purchase deuterium (heavy water) so easily, if I interpreted this article correctly.

I personally think it's a national travesty and a shame that this country has not invested heavily in the R & D  in or seriously pursuing the harnessing of nuclear fusion. I think a project with the national will similar to the Manhattan Project, the Mercury/Gemini/ Apollo Projects to land a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s, etc., is essential here.  It would preserve our global position in terms of basic physics research and engineering, and create an entirely new industry that we could conceivably monopolize on a global basis. Cheap, clean, essentially unlimited energy from water, and the elimination of our dependance on petroleum from most of the politically unfriendly sources of supply the U.S has come to rely upon, are some of the major benefits of this technology.

Not surprisingly, the amount of federal funding allocated to fusion basic research in the U.S. has actually decreased over the years.

Just my 2 cents worth. Thank you for sharing this article with us.

Best 73,

Bruce

[WA1GFZ]

This kid is my Hero!

[AF9J]

Cool!  I wanted to do Fusion stuff in college, but they only allow Grad students to work with it.  Which was a bummer for me.  I've always been more interested in nuclear fusion, than nuclear fission.

Ellen - AF9J
B.S. - Nuclear Engineering, Univ. of Wisconsin, Class of 1987 

[KB2WIG]

Its really sad that the country that developed nukler energy can't seem to use it for power.

Yes, I know we have nukler electrical generation, but when was the last new plant built? Mil power doesn't count.

Here in new york, actually long guyland,  The local power co built a plant. The then Govner, Como, had the state buy it and destroy it.. A few $Billion thrown away.... 

Maybe in the future, we can have nukler power, and get to buy the plants from France.....      klc

[W1RKW]

The scary thing is those of us who like to experiment may raise eye browse amongst the less inquisitive or mind numbed robots of society.

Try to by basic chemicals that used to be part of a real chemistry set of yesteryear.  They're tough to come by.

My wife and neighbors think I'm nuts when I'm running wire all over the place and that's only wire.

Radioactive BoyScout appeared in Reader Digest.  As far as I can tell this is a true story and an interesting one too.
http://www.wesjones.com/silverstein1.htm

[W2JBL]

our edumacational system needs to re-orient it's countersubersive educational priorities and set them back to what they were in the early 60's.

[wa1knx]

ha,
    a reasonable chem set, oh oh save us from ourselves. I had potassium nitrate, sulphur and others in mine. added a little charcoal
and yep, made gunpowder as a kid.

    the high school kid just may go on to solve a workable fusion
solution. its no trivial task to make one with a positive net energy gain.
esp with the high temp plasma schema. MIT announced around
6months ago a room temp, accelerator device that used an exotic
material which when cooled or heated (don't remember) created a
high voltage in a pair of concentric rings of deuterium. result, it
worked. same thing, low output though. the thing is, lithium 3 looks
like an easier target. you can do fusion burning all the way to IRON
on the atomic scale and net energy. I think the sun has enough
thermal energy to fuse up to oxygen? correct me if wrong, my
physics here are rusty. viva that HS student!

[WA1QHQ]

What does nuclear fusion and amateur radio have in common? More than you may think. Check out this presentation made by Robert Bussard who was quoted in the article Don posted.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606

This is kind of long but well worth the view once you get past the Physics. Bussard points out some interesting things such as how the department of energy is blowing billions on fusion research that is going down the wrong road. His approach shows the possibilty of everybody having their own "Mister Fusion Home Reactor" within our lifetime if the proper resources are focused on his approach.

Unfortunately his research funding which came from a Navy "under the radar" grant has been cut. Does our government really want to get away from fosil fuel dependency? Perhaps not when the big picture is viewed, something revolutionary like cheap energy could lead to a global economic collapse. At the very least a lot of oil men are going to end up in the poor house unless they have diversified their portfolio, not that that's a bad thing.

I mentioned Fusion power and ham radio having something in common. Bussard mentions how his reactor depends on extremely high voltages, high voltage insulators and coils and how the knowledge base for doing this stuff is all dieing off...who do you know that is still keeping this "Art" alive...strrraaapp. Bussard also states that Philo Farnsworth the inventor of the raster scan television system also invented and built a working fusion reactor and that there is still research going on today to perfect the Farnsworth reactor. The trick as mentioned in the article is to get more power out than you put in, I'm not sure if anybody can prove success on this yet, although Bussard seems to indicate that he has been successful.

As far as "The Radio Active Boy Scout" goes the original story was about a loaner high schooler who got so consumed by chemistry and his quest to own a sample of every substance on the periodic table that he built his own breeder reactor. The story originally appeared in Harpers as a short story, there was a book that came out subsequently that filled in more details, I read both the article and the book and will say that in a lot of ways the radio active boy scout did get as consumed by his hobby as some of us with ham radio. Ultimately this messed up his adult life. The author of the book was definitely anti nuke and anti boy scout so you know it wouldn't have a happy ending.

Who is going to be the first in the group to build their own fusion reactor, the challenge is on!

73s
Mark WA1QHQ

[WA1GFZ]

Hey Mark,
Don't worry about the oil men they are buying up all the water rights they can.

[AF9J]

Past Iron, it takes more energy than the reaction gives off, so fusion goes from being exothermic, to endothermic.  To get plain old Protium (your normal hydrogen with just 1 proton in the nucleus, and no neutrons) to fuse, would take on the order of 100 billion degrees of temperature. So they've been using Deuterium, Tritium, and Lithium 3 for some time.  The only problems - Tritium and Lithium 3 are relatively rare, and Tritium is pretty radioactive (but at least it isn't as nasty as the Plutonium we used in college), and Lithium is very chemically reactive (hence the reason why it is used in the Lithium Deuteride compound/form in thermonuclear weapons).  Also the nuclear reactions with Tritium, Deuterium, and Lithium 3 do have some residual radiation in the form of Neutrons.  There are 2 ways you can extract energy from fusion: 1.) the heat from the reaction (which is the main way a Tokamak reactor would do it), or by stripping off the stray electrons that also occur as a part of the reaction (mainly would be done in Tandem Mirror designs [like Phaedrus at the University of Wisconsin - my alma mater]), for direct electrical generation.  Interesting stuff, albeit very expensive.

With regards to the sorry state of the Nuclear power industry in this country - yeah, I know first hand.  I never was able to get a job in the field, when I graduated college in 1987.  Ever since the mid 80s, it's been almost impossible to get a job in the field (so much so, that the University of Wisconsin, and some other schools, have quit offering the Nuclear Engineering degree).

73,
Ellen - AF9J

    the high school kid just may go on to solve a workable fusion
solution. its no trivial task to make one with a positive net energy gain.
esp with the high temp plasma schema. MIT announced around
6months ago a room temp, accelerator device that used an exotic
material which when cooled or heated (don't remember) created a
high voltage in a pair of concentric rings of deuterium. result, it
worked. same thing, low output though. the thing is, lithium 3 looks
like an easier target. you can do fusion burning all the way to IRON
on the atomic scale and net energy. I think the sun has enough
thermal energy to fuse up to oxygen? correct me if wrong, my
physics here are rusty. viva that HS student!

[WA1GFZ]

You don't get a job at a nuke plant unless you belong to the Navy nuke click. They are very tight and don't like outsiders.

Don't worry Al Gore will make it right today....He uses more power in a month than I do in a year and has the balls to cry global warming.

[WA1QHQ]

Ellen,

Bussard's initial experiments used duterium because of his lack of sufficient power to pull off a reaction with his fuel of choice boron-11 which is available in plentiful supply and does not produce any harmful radiation. I'm no expert on this topic but the following is a description of the reaction.

The fusion process recommended by Dr. Bussard takes boron-11 and fuses a proton to it, producing, in its excited state, a carbon-12 atom. This excited carbon-12 atom decays to beryllium-8 and helium-4. Beryllium-8 very quickly (in 10-13 s) decays into two more helium-4 atoms. This is the only nuclear-energy releasing process in the whole world that releases fusion energy and three helium atoms -- and no neutrons. This reaction is completely radiation free.

Bussard's claims his reactor confinement process to be 100,000 times more efficient than previous reactors.

[WA1GFZ]

But Mark,
if we turn all the boron into helium the whole world will sound like slop bucket. 
An idiot comment but I couldn't resist.......

[WA1QHQ]

Frank,

Believe it or not there is a global shortage of helium, probably from all the helium consumed in inert gas welding. This is what I was told when I recently took a MIG welding class, of course the folks providing the class also sold welding gas. So lets get those boron-11 fusion reactors going so we can replace all the depleted helium. Lots of Boron-11 in the Mohave desert Frank, your favorite stomping grounds, remeber Ronal Ragen hosting "Death Valley Days" with Borax as the sponsor.

Mark QHQ

[The Slab Bacon]

Oh, man, that just brought back some memories:

"Death Valley Days, Brought to You by 20 Mule Team Borax"
(I guess I'l just dating myself)

Interesting about the welding industry causing a shortage of helium.
I am also a welder (although I dont do it for a living anymore) It seems to me that much more Argon is used than helium these days.
Shield gasses are predomanently Argon with small percentages of
Helium and/or CO2 added. In many cases if a slightly lesser quality weld is acceptable, straight CO2 can be used for MIG welding steel.
(I have used a beer tapper / soda fountain CO2 bottle with my MIG machine many times and gotten excellent results)

                                                The Slab Bacon

[WA1GFZ]

Hey Mark,
Remember remember the day we drove east for a couple hours to set off M100s and almost got busted for fireworks.
Good thing that CHP chick was so tall and the shopping bag on the seat was against the roof of the firebird.
That cloud of dust drifting across the desert as we told her it was an emergency pee stop.
I still laugh thinking about the poor little animal who lived in the hole we blasted.

[AF9J]

Hmmmm, Interesting.  I wonder why nobody uses it.  Typically the heavier you go elementally, the less energy you get out of the fusion process.  I know that boron has a high reaction cross section with regards to neutrons (which is one of the reasons why it's often used as a part of scramming a fission reactor).  I just took a look online, and found some info on it.  It's considered pretty controversial at the present time (although some people think the controversy is political in nature).  Very interesting.  Well, break over, I'd better get back to work.

73,
Ellen - AF9J

Ellen,

Bussard's initial experiments used duterium because of his lack of sufficient power to pull off a reaction with his fuel of choice boron-11 which is available in plentiful supply and does not produce any harmful radiation. I'm no expert on this topic but the following is a description of the reaction.

The fusion process recommended by Dr. Bussard takes boron-11 and fuses a proton to it, producing, in its excited state, a carbon-12 atom. This excited carbon-12 atom decays to beryllium-8 and helium-4. Beryllium-8 very quickly (in 10-13 s) decays into two more helium-4 atoms. This is the only nuclear-energy releasing process in the whole world that releases fusion energy and three helium atoms -- and no neutrons. This reaction is completely radiation free.

Bussard's claims his reactor confinement process to be 100,000 times more efficient than previous reactors.

[W2XR]

Yes, I believe that boron was or is used as a moderator in fission reactors, or perhaps it was graphite. I think that water may be used for this as well. Ellen/AF9J would know the answer to this. Please correct here me if I'm wrong!

I recall reading the history of the first controlled chain reaction at Stagg Field at the University of Chicago; this was supervised by the superb physicist Enrico Fermi. To a large extent the results at Stagg Field formed the very basis for deciding whether to proceed with the Manhattan Project, as many of the unknowns with regard to fission were answered as a result of these findings.

73,

Bruce

[AF9J]

OK,  Here goes - Nuclear Engineering 101:  Basically, in fission reactor, Neutrons that are moving at thermal energies (In other words their "speed is purely from the heat in the environment they are in (most neutrons that are emitted in nuclear processes, are typically going much faster than the speed  they'd have from just the heat of their surrounding environment) , have a greater chance of causing fission, than neutons that are moving at higher speeds.  Sooooo, to slow down the neutrons to thermal (kinetic) energy levels a moderator is used. Now a moderator basically has enough of a target area for a Neutron to "bounce: off of it, and lose energy (that's in pretty simple terms, the target cross section is also a function of other things like isotope of the moderator, the relative velocity a moderator is moving towards the neutron, etc.) 

Basically there are 3 main moderators that are used nowadays for fission reactors:  1.)  Light water (the water molecules are made up of ordinary Hydrogen), Heavy water (the water molecules have one or both of the atoms as Deuterium [BTW, Dueterium makes up .01% of all Hydrogen, so we drink it everyday, whenever we have a glass of water]).  And Graphite.  All US nuke plants (including the two near my hometown of Manitowoc, WI), use light water for moderators.  The Canadian nuke reactors (called Candu reactors  for Canadian - Deuterium) use heavy water as a moderator (which allows them to run with less enriched fuel, than US reactors, but has the unfortunate side effect, of generating a fair amount of Tritium as radioactive waste).  The Russians, and some former Eastern Bloc countries, use graphite moderated reactors (ala Chernobyl), and yes Fermi's reactor also used graphite.

Boron (along with Cadmium), is basically a Neutron "poison".  In other words, it just soaks up Neutrons, eventually killing the fission reactions. 

73,
Slaving away at work,
Ellen - AF9J

[W2XR]

Hi Ellen,

Thanks for the detailed and informative reply!

BTW, if after 10 years you were never able to find work in your chosen profession of nuclear engineering, what line of work are you involved with currently?

I think it's unfortunate that in this country, such a highly skilled technical person cannot find work in the engineering field for which they were trained.

Just curious!

73,

Bruce

[WA1GFZ]

Sounds like Ellen would be right at home hanging out at Sandia

[AF9J]

Hi Bruce & Frank,

I went back to school part time at nights in the mid 90s, through a local 4 year college, and basically got a 2nd degree, in Manufacturing Engineering.  By that time, I was working in Quality Control.  Soooo, degree Number 2 worked out great for my job.  I work as a supervisor in a QA department, and I do Quality Engineering.  BTW, there were a lot of us in the mid to late 80s, who couldn't buy a job in Engineering.  I got my first degree from the Univ. of WI in 1987.  I knew the year before I graduated, that the job situation was bad in Nuclear Engineering.  When I tried transferring to Mechanical Engineering, I was told by the assistant Dean of the College of Engineering that I couldn't (my grades were only so-so), and that frankly it was a waste of time, because everybody in Engineering was having a hard time finding jobs.  Tech jobs in general, didn't pick up until the economic boom in the 90s. 

I will say this though, as a part of Engineering Degree Number 1, I had to take 6 credits worth of electronics classes.  They basically gave me all of the electronics I used to pass my General in 1986, my Advanced in 1993, and my Extra in 1994.  All had to do was just bone up a bit to refresh my memory.  Well, I'd better get going, I'm done for the day.

73,
Ellen - AF9J

[WA1GFZ]

Ellen,
You are welcome here.....we like smart people.

Most of us stick to electronics because we get in enough trouble with high voltage and lots of RF.

[W2XR]

Hi Ellen,

Glad to hear that you landed on your feet in a technical role other than your chosen goal of nuclear engineering.

I second Frank's/GFZ comment; you are always welcome at this forum!!! Too few really intelligent and interesting people in this world, and this forum is fortunately a great place for smart people to congregate and exchange views and information pertaining (mostly) to amateur radio and AM-related topics.

Nice to see that you are not an Extra Lite; that you passed your 20 WPM Amateur Extra back in 1994.

We all also hope to work you on the air, hopefully on 75M AM!

Thanks for joining up with us!

With Best 73,

Bruce