#6 FAQ: Quick fusion factoids

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RobertTubbs
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Re: FAQ: Quick fusion factoids

Post by RobertTubbs »

I'll vouch for Carl Greninger, Jake Helca and David Housley.

They have made a very professional setup with a great degree of transparency which as a result is very appealing to the uninformed and regulatory agencies. I've had the fortune of witnessing several of their neutron runs first-hand and I can say with certainty that my skepticism and scrutiny has been satisfied by means of my own measurements and observations. While it's max TIER is still unknown (and really needs to be addressed at some point) the question of "can you make neutz in a bell jar" has been satisfied in this instance and in the past aswell.

In regards to the safety warnings going willy-nilly here allow me to point out that they've already one-upped you on the safety. Their Fusor is in it's own lead/paraffin/cadmium lined motor-driven shield that lowers over the entire apparatus weighing upwards of a hundred pounds no-doubt and everyone working on it is wearing dosimeters that get sent in for monitoring and the health department has inspected it. While a bell-jar is not my first pick for a chamber this is the best publicity we've gotten in ages and as a result the WA-state Health Department is actually encouraging it of all things. Get real folks - job bloody well done.

-RT
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Richard Hull
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Re: FAQ: Quick fusion factoids

Post by Richard Hull »

A sight glass in an SS fusor is fine, but it poses the same risks as the bell jar mostly due to radiation and not shattering, if thoughtfully installed. Intense and dangerous x-ray beams will exit this port during fusion.

I am an advocate of using a video camera on all SS fusors. This needs only a 3/4" to 1" diameter sight glass, (view port). All such ports are Pyrex, at least! Second, if you have such a port, orient your grid such that your port looks straight at a grid wire, (normal to it). This will warrant that no electron beam will ever hit it.

A video camera will stop or absorb some of the x-radiation coming out of the port, but not all. It is wise to orient this dangerous port away from the operator or spectators. My own port is aimed down at the concrete floor with the video camera blocking and looking up into it.

I highly recommend no in-line, direct visual viewing of an operating, fusor, ever! Point the port away from you and use a mirror and telescope arrangment to direct view if you refuse to use a video camera/monitor arrangement. Again, do the best thing and use a $70.00 small video camera and observe your poissor and fusion grid spread out over a $2000.00, 62" plasma monitor..... (or an old 15" commodore 64 color monitor that you bought at a hamfest for $10.00)

A well designed and thought out SS fusor that is fired up once a month for your own use and sees visitors only twice a year, needs no real radiation protection up to 40kv applied, provided the operator/visitors are kept about 6 feet back. I would hate to think of a bell jar system run normally and often at 40kv.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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