Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

Reflections on fusion history, current events, and predictions for the 'fusion powered future.
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Richard Hull
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Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

Post by Richard Hull »

I am a member of the American Nuclear Society (Virginia section). We have monthly meetings hosting professional speakers in the nuclear biz. Meetings are held at the large Dominion Power executive office building here in Richmond. I actually gave a talk on the fusor back in 2011.

Last week, we had a great speaker, Greg Piefer, founder and head of Shine Medical Technologies. Shine is all about molybdenum 99 and its production for medical use. (Moly 99 half-decays in a few hours to Technicium 99m which is vital for tens of thousands of medical diagnostic tests performed daily around the world. In short, the medicos are hooked on the drug. Currently, there are virtually no suppliers of Moly 99 in the quantities demanded and one of the largest suppliers in Canada is scheduled to shut down next year!!

Moly 99 is a fission product! How is this linked to fusion and who is Dr. Greg Piefer?

At the ANS meeting Greg picked me out of the crowd and introduced himself as the speaker. I told him that I had a fusor doing fusion and that there was fusor.net. Wide-eyed and in an excited tone, he said, "Yes, I know... Richard, you are a legend!"....... We followed your and others work on fusor.net" ....I thought, What!??

It turns out Greg was working on his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in the 90's and worked with their fusor constantly. Part of that effort had their people read fusor.net to see what we were up to. Greg said he read often and was impressed with what he saw of our efforts. Graduated, Phd in hand, he went to work in the field and quickly realized real money was in a business that had a demand for a forever supply of a product and had a fixed or dwindling group of suppliers.

Moly 99 was it! This boy is sharp. He has figured out a killer process, (killer? Bad choice), for making Moly 99 to supply the world in the quantities needed without a formal, power fission reactor. I will give a short discussion of the epitome of the process.

Make a lot of high speed neutrons......

First, get an 8 foot diameter tank of 19%, U-235 enriched Uranyl sulfate dissolved in water. In the center of this tank, place a natural, un-enriched, U-238 uranium metal pipe. In the center of this pipe you place a 300kev, 15kw, deuteron beam-on-target, tritiated titanium targeted, linear accelerator. Most of the tritium will be knocked out of the target back up the accelerator column where the entire length of the column and target will do D-T fusion. Part of this fusion will take place in velocity space and part on the target.

Multiply the fusion neutrons many times by a bit of fast neutron fission in U-238......... then do a lot of fission, in enriched U-235, but keep it sub-critical....

The neutrons produced in D-T fusion are in the 17mev range and, like the fusor, are all isotropically emitted. These bombard the Uranium pipe surrounding the fusion accelerator, creating fast neutron fission within the Uranium pipe multiplying the neutrons created in fusion. Those fusion neutrons not fissioning in the Uranium pipe plus all the multiplied fission neutrons from the pipe are moderated in the large tank of water dissolved enriched uranyl sulfate solution. This causes a calculated, sub-cruitical U-235 fission system within the tank. (about .94 critical with a flux of about 10e12!)

Draw off your goodie (moly 99)....... Then recirculate........

As this baby cooks, the witches brew is drawn off through a "separation column" which selectively extracts only the moly 99. The brew that is not moly is pumped back into the subcritical reactor tank for more fissioning. This is the basic operation. There are other minor, easy issues already tackled in the process (hydrogen generation in the tank, long term plutonium build up, etc.)

Subcritical means, no explosion hazard, runaway to criticality or control rods needed. Neutrons to keep the process going can be clicked off with an electrical switch. Tank of witches brew self cooling and once turned off, there is no long coast to nuclear or thermal cooling. Shielding is, naturally, required and several of these smallish fusion-fission tank systems are in one building with many shielded enclosures. Thus, if one or more of the systems are down for service etc., others are still cooking and making Moly 99.

This is not pie in the sky or theoretical. It is already tested and works! They are fully funded. They have their licenses all in hand and are building the plant. They have 5 and 10 year contracts with moly 99 distributors to supply them, signed and in hand.

This is Ameican engenuity at work. There was much more detail in the 1 hour talk that Greg gave. Check out the multiple sources of info related to Shine on the Web.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHINE_Med ... chnologies

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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Re: Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

Post by David Kunkle »

Richard,

Congrats. Not many people can brag they're a legend in their own time!

Definitely brilliant of Dr. Piefer to put those steps together.

.94 critical. Just wondering what happens if it hits 1.0? Obviously no Hiroshima, but 19% U-235 in 8 ft. diameter tank of water is still quite a lot of U-235. Big explosion as all the water is turned to steam?
If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.

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Richard Hull
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Re: Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

Post by Richard Hull »

I don't think I'm a legend, but Greg apparently did or just gave me a tip of his hat for my efforts.

Greg noted that it is physically impossible to cruise to 1.0 criticality from .94 based on the physics and safeguards of his system. He actually proved this to the NRC and that is how he got his licenses.

Others at the meeting brought this up, too. 90% of all in the ANS meeting were Dominion Power employees and were all Nuclear physics, engineers or technicians. Therefore, to them, this was a valid question.

Greg noted that from the the time he applied for all the licensing to the issuance only took 1 year! The audience was stunned.

Why so short a period?.....No power production.....warranted sub critical operation....... and a "special research and development" codicile in NRC regs that allow for easy licensing of such non-power efforts employing under 100 people.

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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Re: Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

Post by David Kunkle »

1 year. Some guys have all the luck, huh? ;)

Didn't really think it *could* go critical- no doubt it would take more than cranking too hard on the Variac. More of a thought experiment kind of question of what would happen if it did make it to 1.0. Any takers? All I know for sure is I wouldn't want to be the one to clean it up.
If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.

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Re: Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

Post by JakeJHecla »

Just to be clear- this would never happen at a SHINE facility! However, accidental solution reactors have happened a number of times previously. In such a criticality accident, when the solution hits k=1, there's a large release of heat and radiation, but rarely an explosion. The burst usually drives the solution back under k=1 in a few ms due to the formation of radiolytic gas bubbles and/or steam bubbles. Once these dissipate, the system will go critical yet again (often repeating many, many times). Assuming no new fluid is added, this process will typically extinguish itself by boiling off enough of the solution for the fissile material/moderator ratio and geometric buckling to change enough for the system to go permanently subcritical.

Here's a link to a summary of criticality accidents: https://www.orau.org/ptp/Library/accidents/la-13638.pdf
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Re: Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

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they have it pretty much figured out with hydrogen gas venting which will occur rather constantly and dump tanks of neutron absorbing solutions into the vessel, etc. Believe me, the NRC made them prove no possible k=1 will ever occur. Each of the reactors in the system is small enough that materials can be changed out and the plutonium can be column extracted as the tank is in constant liquid recycle mode to also extract the moly99. Everything that can happen based on years of accumulated fission knowledge is covered.

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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Re: Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

Post by JohnCuthbert »

How do you avoid this problem?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine_pit
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Richard Hull
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Re: Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

Post by Richard Hull »

Again, in a cored power reactor, you have frozen, fixed elements. In Shine, you have a tank of uranyl fluid which is constantly pumped out through columns and then pumped back into the tank, (reactor). In short, poisons can be removed or left in as needed to keep K below unity. This is not a fixed, stagnant core reactor. No control rods needed. Poisons are welcome to a point, but can be leached out to keep the reactor humming. These folks are not producing a functioning power reactor and many issues associated with same are just not encountered.

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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Re: Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

Post by Dennis P Brown »

A fusion reactor as bad as ITER could easily breed enough fuel (uranium) for ten fission nuclear power plants every year even as it produced no net power itself. These ideas have been discussed about fusion and aren't worth the trouble.

As for a fusor to create economic levels of medical isotopes, the flux just isn't there to be viable on a cost bases from all I've seen. But since the Candu reactor already exists, and produces this isotope and many others AND creates power for the grid (a thousand mega watts), I'd think we need more Candu reactors (also near fool proof and woun't melt down with coolant failure) but that is a discussion for another day.

Ready and easy access to plutonium is the biggest danger that any advance system has to face if one wants to get approval and that isn't something the US or any major Government wants available or to deal with. That hurtle is very high bar to this idea.
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Re: Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

Post by Dan Knapp »

The Canadian reactor that was producing Mo-99 used HEU. The Shine process uses LEU. Do you want to build more reactors that use HEU?
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Re: Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

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As noted in his talk to the ANS, Canada will be shutting down, forever its major, production of Mo99 next year! This is why Shine is forging ahead into construction now. It is important to remember that once you have refined M099 in hand, its half life is on the order of 6 hours and that the technicium decay product also has a very short half life. So, if you make Mo99 in Timbuktu you need to air express it to Bejing before its medical value rots away. The US uses more Mo99 than any nation on Earth. Canada was a good rapid, inexpensive source. That is going to disappear.

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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Paul W Fontana
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Re: Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

Post by Paul W Fontana »

Has anyone here tried to generate Mo99 by neutron bombardment of Mo98? Would it be feasible (just to observe the transmutation to Tc99, not for commercial purposes) with a Po-Be neutron source, if not a fusor? I saw a thread (viewtopic.php?f=13&t=6266) where @RobertTubbs did it with photon bombardment, but couldn't find any references to neutron activation experiments.

If one were to try it, say with a Po-Be, what would be the ideal configuration? Better off with a thick or thin piece of moly? Moderator between the source and the metal? How much?
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Re: Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

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If you own a good gamma spectrometer and setup everything properly with a very robust neutron source you might...just might detect Mo99. This would not be a walk in the park for the casual amateur effort.

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
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Re: Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

Post by David Kunkle »

Had a Po-Be neutron source for a while. ( A nuclespot- until the State of IA made me give my toy back). It made a very small, but measurable, amount of neutrons with my bubble detector and He3 tube. IMO, bombarding Mo with that small neutron source would produce so little Mo99 as to be undetectable by any of our methods.
If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.

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Re: Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

Post by Jon Rosenstiel »

I had a go at this back in 2007. (Note that images are now in reverse order)

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=5817

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Re: Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

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Thanks Jon! This tells the story here. Yes you can make Mo99! Great huh? However, you can't prove it! Sure you can.....All you need is a multi-thousand dollar EDAX detection system hooked to your Gamma Spectrometer and to blast the Mo target for 45 minutes continuously with 3 million neutrons per second just like Jon did.

Jon is our premier activation guy with all the best gear that money can buy. He can prove he got Mo99 using his plus-ultra, kick-ass fusor and his lucky find EDAX detection system plugged into his lucky find gamma spectrometer, using his best, time honed, technique and some locally supplied liquid nitrogen.

Wanna' give it a go at your end?

The long struggle to answer your question.....No, you cannot make detectable Mo99 with a nucleospot in average amateur hands. You need lots of neutrons poured over a long time into the Mo target and a lot of very specialized and expensive detection gear to be able to say you did it.

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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Re: Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

Post by Paul W Fontana »

Thanks, Jon! Nice work.

Gamma spec we got. Nuclespot Po-Be source we got. Time for long activation runs we got. Moly we don't have yet - I'm guessing a run-of-the-mill coin will do the trick? Is there an ideal thickness?

I'm looking for some interesting and challenging things for the students in the Advanced Lab to do with the neutron source - since Jon has demonstrated proof-of principle on this one, sounds like it might be worth a shot! Students learn a lot from trying hard experiments, even if they don't end up getting the results they're after (possibly the best lesson in real-world science of all). I might have them try In-115 + n --> In-116* first, though, since we already have some indium activation foils and from what I've read that may have a higher chance of success.

-- pwf
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Re: Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

Post by Richard Hull »

Indium, Silver and Rhodium activation are all very easy to do and have been very common activation efforts for fusioneers here for many years. Harder efforts are manganese and gold.

The first three, noted above, activate very fast, needing only minutes of exposure in a neutron oven to reach saturation activation. Plus, they need no gamma spec, just a GM counter to indicate activation has taken place. This assumes you have a decent source of neutrons. Tons of info and reports on these "easy three" abound here on fusor.net.

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
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Re: Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

Post by Paul W Fontana »

Update: The students got the neutron detector tuned up (a small 3He tube device), but were only able to detect about 1 cpm (over a background of about 0.2 cpm) from the Po-Be source after counting with and without moderator for 45 min each. We estimate that source is generating about 6000 n/s isotropic, and it was located fairly close to the tube. That makes the efficiency of the geometry, moderator, and detector combined about 1:400,000. They tried activating indium foils for an extended time by sandwiching moderator between them and the source and surrounding everything with moderator, then took gamma spec for 4 hours, replacing the foil with a "hot" one every hour to compensate for its decay, but could see no sign of 116In or any other indium lines above background.

I guess the bottom line is that a NucleSpot Po-Be source is no match for a well-operated fusor for neutron production rate, and hence for transmutation. It just can't keep up with the decay of an isotope with a half-life on the order of an hour. Needless to say, we won't be trying with moly, at least until we have a relatively efficient fusor going.

-- pwf
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Re: Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

Post by Richard Hull »

A well operated fusor is a great source for neutrons. I have run tests just recently and found that I prefer silver activation best of all. If you are willing to take great care and can transfer your silver within 10 seconds from the moderator to a "digital readout" geiger counter, 100,000 neutrons per second, isotropic will give an easy proof that you have activated silver. The exposure time for the fast silver would take and exposure of only 2 minutes, but the longer you go, the second longer lived isotope, builds up over many minutes. 300,000 or more n/s, isotropic will activate most any of the easy activated elements based on their half lives and times of exposure.

It is to be remembered that ever larger numbers of neutrons per second will not activate any element faster, but instead to higher levels of radiation emission, (specific activity), per unit time of exposure. Likewise exposure times at a given neutron rate of more than 5 times the half life of the expected activation product will gain nothing as the isotope would be in equilibrium. (decaying as fast as it is produced.)

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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Re: Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

Post by Rich Feldman »

JakeJHecla wrote: ... accidental solution reactors have happened a number of times previously. In such a criticality accident, when the solution hits k=1, there's a large release of heat and radiation, but rarely an explosion. ... system will go critical yet again (often repeating many, many times)...
The Japanese built a facility called TRACY for doing that on purpose, with real fissile materials in solution, and plenty of variables. Some early results were useful for terminating the unplanned criticality at Tokai-mura in 1999.
tracy.JPG
snipped from http://jolisfukyu.tokai-sc.jaea.go.jp/f ... 5/2_4.html

Today I couldn't re-find an online video clip that viewed a TRACY critical solution from above. Not only was the camera shielded, it was at the farthest corner of the enclosure, with telescope and mirrors in the optical path. In spite of all that, the image gets sparkly (and momentarily white) from irradiation of the camera sensor. Like the videos Andrew Seltzman has shown us from camera on conveyor cart in e-beam irradiation facility.

When the criticality at Tokaimura was over, I believe the total fission count (which power of ten) was determined by measuring the activation of coins found at the plant office and in neighbors' houses. They must have been looking at activation products with half-lives measured in hours or days. Maybe that's given in the reference given above by Jake. A friend of mine was in Japan on business at the time, and the accident interrupted his rail travel.
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Richard Hull
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Re: Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

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Again, fortunately, this system can't go critical even by accident or the NRC would never have issued the license to proceed. Nor, would they have ok'd the license to use and receive the fissle materials needed to make "Shine" go. Killing the fusion neutron source, (cutting its power), would force the normally subcritical operation to go deeply subcritical.

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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Re: Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

Post by Rich Feldman »

This came up again at HEAS today, consequent to discussion about Bert Hickman, electron implantation in acrylic slabs, and video from a shielded camera on the train of carts rolling through tunnel of irradiation.

Andrew, once again I couldn't find the remembered video: looking down into a tank of uranious solutions going critical on purpose.
Found one video, generally similar, on today's website for JAEA's TRACY facility: https://www.jaea.go.jp/english/04/ntoka ... en_03.html
There's a link with Japanese text, which leads to a 25-megabyte file called r-nucef-0001.wmv Not sure about the time annotation, method of reactivity insertion in this experiment, etc.
tank1.JPG
tank2.JPG
For new readers of this thread: the shielded camera is not over the mixing tank. It's at the far end of the lab, enjoying the view via mirrors and long-focal-length lenses.
There's a fixed arc In the round field of view, between angles of about 2:00 and 8:00. I think it's the boundary between turbulent liquid surface and the tank wall. Bright spots are reflections of overhead lights.
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Re: Shine - a real use for fusion, now!

Post by Rich Feldman »

Back to the nominal subject of this thread: Looks like Shine has continued its dash through the approval, funding, planning, and construction process. Here's a NYT article from January, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/busi ... onsin.html.

Well maybe not that fast -- there's always going to be self-promotional hype.
In August 2017, Wall Street Journal reported a groundbreaking ceremony in Janesville. https://madison.com/wsj/business/shine- ... fb47c.html
In June 2018, the Janesville Gazette reports "Shine to Break Ground". https://www.gazettextra.com/news/busine ... ce866.html
shinac.jpg
(WSJ)

According to the NYT article, the city of Janesville's generous economic development package beat those of competing cities. Their General Motors plant closed in 2008, and is being demolished as we speak.
jane_gm4.jpg
(Gazette)

None of the articles cited here uses the words nuclear, fission, fusion, reactor, or uranium.
Except about old ways to make Mo-99.
And that the new way "does not require HEU". :-)
All models are wrong; some models are useful. -- George Box
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