My Visit w Doug Coulter

Reflections on fusion history, current events, and predictions for the 'fusion powered future.
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Paul_Schatzkin
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My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by Paul_Schatzkin »

I got to spend a little time last week up in Virginia with Doug Coulter.

Read all about it here: https://fusor.net/doug-coulters-solar-p ... -in-a-jar/

--P
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Mike Beauford
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Re: My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by Mike Beauford »

Hi Paul,

I'd be real interested in knowing if/when Doug would disclose his general design. I'm curious if it matches up with what I'm working on.

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Re: My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by Doug Coulter »

I will be sure to tell all as soon as I think I can do it without some big outfit stealing it - we need legal protection, similar to how open source software uses the copyright system to ensure you can give code away. Same principle here, just with patents, which aren't free and automatic like copyrights.

This board helped me get started - I owe y'all -, and while there has been the odd bit of public friction, in person, I think we are all pretty good friends at this point, and share most of the same outlooks on this and other things. No worries here.

Paul may have jumped the gun slightly to get a "scoop" on this (you'll note I didn't even say much on my own forums) - there's still some real work to be done to ensure we have this really nailed down well enough that someone doesn't patent a 10% better way and give the world the finger with that. We want to ensure we have the best way, and license it so cheaply that no one has a reason to bother fighting over it. I don't want to be in the business of building "black box fusion power sources" myself, there are plenty of other outfits that will do that just fine - and make plenty of money they earn honestly - doing the infrastructure required. They know better than anyone (despite their public propaganda) that the music is going to stop, and you can bet they want a chair for that time. Some have already been in touch (news travels!) - it's all good so far.

I'm going as fast as I can, while also maintaining a large off-grid homestead single-handed, which slows me down a bit. (Winter also shortens my workday; most things require power from the solar system and adds tasks - like keeping a stove stoked).

Anyone who wants to join the team and who can actually contribute would be welcome. I don't want money - I want the answer. Sadly, my own funds are limited, or I'd have hired the best long since. Not that they are easy to find at any price.

I have a mountain of software to write, servo systems to build and install, electronics to build (designs mostly done) and so on, as well as just, well, washing dishes and hauling wood. I'll get there...
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Re: My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by Mike Beauford »

Hi Doug,

Well, security software is my bread and butter right now. My C/C++ is rusty, but I think I can get by. Now days its Java/Python for me mostly, got to go where the market is. If you need a hand, let me know. My contact is below...

jade39339@gmail.com
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Paul_Schatzkin
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Re: My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by Paul_Schatzkin »

On the charge of "jumping the gun," I can only say: guilty as charged. But I think the "scoop" is within reason.

First, I didn't assert anything that hasn't already been "disclosed" (if that's an accurately applied word) on Doug's site. And I bent over half-backwards in what I posted to make it clear that nothing has been documented. There are a lot of weasel words in that post, like "If...verified."

Doug's "news" – and, again, I reiterate, it's not really "news" until it is documented, verified, and replicated – came to my attention after I posted my "Bezos, Musk and Thiel..." rant on the front page of the site just before HEAS. My intent in posting the follow up article about my visit with Doug was mostly to report what had come to my attention in the wake of that post, and to bring some of that discussion over here.

I think there are two good reasons to keep an open mind about what Doug might be doing.

1) When he writes (above) of the tasks that lie ahead in the course of replicating his own experience, we get some sense of the extent to which the whole subject of Farnsworth-based IEC research is the orphan child of fusion research. I'm thinking about this a lot lately, as I read more and more about large sums being invested in still more Rube Goldberg (Google it) approaches to fusion. Slamming two magnetically contained plasmas together? Really? OK... if you say so... sure... go for it... But in the meantime, remember what Hirsch told me 15 years ago: the book on what transpired in Fort Wayne in the 1960s was never truly closed; it was just left open on the lab table and the guys in the white coats left the room (and Farnsworth himself went back to Utah and died).

2) After spending the better part of a day with him, I'm pretty certain that Doug's intentions are worthy, even if his "partial disclosure" ("I got sick, so it must have been a hundred billion n/s") raises a lot of eyebrows. My take away from that day is that Doug has two purposes: 1) to safely retest and report and 2) handle whatever "new art" may be afoot in such a way that nobody gets exclusive ownership of it.

This last point is critical, and I surmise that Doug's saying as much as he has comes from a sincere desire to NOT be secretive about what he's doing – despite the complications of a) replicating the results safely and b) establishing his priority by dint of filing rather than disclosure.

I refer you to the words at the very top of this website: this is and always has been "The Open Source Fusor Research Consortium." That mission has served us well for almost 20 years now (the first iteration of this site was put on the web in 1998). Doug says as much above – he learned a lot from this site, and now, maybe, he's taken the stew we've stirred here, mixed in a few ingredients of his own, and come up with an interesting new recipe.

Time will tell on that score. But in the meantime, if nothing else, the way Doug is handling himself is instructive.

Fusion – if ever achieved – is civilization's next form of fire. Nobody "owns" fire. And that's the way it needs to be with fusion. That's what Doug is doing, and that's what we're doing here as well.

I'm assembling a gauntlet of my own here. I intend to throw it down soon.

--PS
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Re: My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by Doug Coulter »

Paul, I was just ribbing you about jumping the gun. A joke. I prefer to wait till I have replication more than the two single-second runs I made after moving my neutron detectors far enough away to not have them "blank" due to the high count rate when they could "only" handle 100m n/s or thereabouts. That's all. They blanked again at 10' away (one 3He and one very old B10 tube that's very numb)...they could handle hundreds millions at 18". One should be able to gather some kind of guestimate about the lower bound of output from that alone. Since the setup reliably crashed my data aq (yet another thing I'm fixing - I could not initially do this with all my shielding in place) I couldn't do silver activation with any confidence, so I didn't try - yet.

I have more than "I got sick" - I had to toss a couple thousand bucks worth of activated machine tools in the trash, and move out of the now-hot shop. But it's still not enough to satisfy any reasonable definition of scientific rigor - it's just enough that I'm very convinced I've either "got it" or will have it soon - I believe I've found the road to go down at the very least, finally. Having to move out of my living quarters was a major setback in terms of the time it's taking to make new tests, and remote the thing so I can continue to follow this line...which is why I've gone "dead" re communications about it for awhile - it's not that interesting to most about building a new room, setting up a "LAN of things" and all the other junk required just to keep going.
All this has to be done inside our budget, which is from a couple of retired guys - maybe it's a better budget than some here, but we're way not in a position to rent a space, hire qualified help and so on, so it's taking longer than any of us would wish.

I'm beating this problem to the mat and won't let it "tap out". It will just take however long it takes - we've been at this 6 or 7 years (at least?), and didn't wait around much to scrouge things like the basic gear - we simply bought brand new vacuum system stuff from pfeiffer (pumps, mass spectrometer, plumbing), supplies from Spellman (Thanks CliffS! - you deserve kudos for your help and support and the sheer quality and resilience of your products.) and Kurt Lesker, and only scrounged or made (in the machine shop we built just for this) what we had to in order to stay in-budget. But we have a real good part of a million bucks in this at this point - which we use far more effectively than any government project, so it's not as orphaned as it may appear.

Good, fast, cheap - pick any two - still appears to be a basic law of engineering, or nature (al philosophy) itself.
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Re: My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by Bob Reite »

Ah yes! Good, Fast, Cheap. You get to pick two.

My thoughts on the patent process. IMHO the government is now so corrupt that if you come up with anything really groundbreaking, the moles in the patent office will delay your application until they tell their buddies "on the take" about it, and 'somehow' their application beats yours.
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Re: My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by Doug Coulter »

I'm not going to give up as you suggest - someone has to beat me if they can. Not going the legit route ensures someone else will steal it, patent it, and own it - to the detriment of all. Yes, patent examiners are overworked and underpaid...else Microsoft wouldn't have a patent on exchanging two variables without a temporary one using XOR (math), or numbers zero modulo 7 (the old windows activation key system - still math) and IBM wouldn't have a patent on entertaining your cat with a laser pointer (obvious). Nor would there be patents on tuning DPF fusion (focus fusion - math), or warp drives (let's see one that works!), teleportation, and so forth. I'll take my chances. More likely they'll just think this is yet another crackpot scheme, and give it to me to get the fees (congress made them self-funding awhile back). which appears to be the norm these days.

I have a pretty decent track record working the legal system. I don't tend to lose.

I'll just try the legit route with a very good, experienced, and well-connected attorney, thanks. It's possible I have a backup plan...

And that there is more than one country on the planet...not to mention a few other possibilities.

Having worked in .gov myself...I find most conspiracy theories laughable. Either I know the actual truth, and how the c-theory helps them keep the real secret, or...well, most of them are rotten at keeping a secret and ain't that smart.
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Re: My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by Jim Kovalchick »

I am in the "I want to believe camp" on this story, and I totally understand why we all need to be patient on design details. All that being said I am super curious about an event that activates tools with a lingering effect. I did enough activation analysis in college to know what it takes to activate stuff especially if we are talking about a flux that would be mostly fast (right?). A fluence that would leave tools unusable would leave a human unusable.

Doug, I think a lot could be learned by gamma spectroscopy of hot material in your lab. I don't think it would hurt your patent pursuit if you share info from a study like that.

Good luck with this work. Who knows, maybe Doug can be the donkey that Richard has spoken of.
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Re: My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by JoeBallantyne »

I must respectfully disagree that you have to patent this in order to prevent other people from patenting it.

I was on the USPTO web site just yesterday (http://www.uspto.gov), reading about first to file and how things work now.

If you want to make something unpatentable by anyone else, all you have to do is publish it, (preferably with the patent office itself, by filing a provisional patent - which is cheap), and then NOT file a patent on it within the one year grace period you have in the USA after filing provisionally.

As soon as you have published without actually filing a patent, you and everyone else pretty much immediately lose any possibility of patenting the same invention in the EU, or most other countries that have first to file laws.

The point is that in most places on the planet you have to file BEFORE you go public. If you go public first, you lose the opportunity to file in most places in the world. Because you established prior art which would invalidate your later filing.

Although publishing on fusor.net, may or may not be sufficient proof legally as to when you came up with it, you could also post documentation with clear explanations on your own site, and videos with full explanations on youtube at the same time.

There is also I believe a way to prove the date that a document exists by incorporating its hash into the BitCoin block chain. Which would irrefutably establish when a particular electronic document existed. (I think there is a guy who has a service that will do this for people - for a small fee payable in Bitcoin, of course.)

So, while I fully understand the desire to patent something that if it works will be worth tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of dollars. The point of having a patent is so you can make money.

Not so you can give something away. To give it away you just have to establish irrefutably that you came up with it first, and that you published it to the world in all its detail. Then no one can patent it. Not even you (except perhaps in the USA within a year).

I suspect that when you saw the results you got, and it happened two times in a row, that your eyes rang up with dollar signs. Just like in looney tunes. Hence the patent filings.

Joe.
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Re: My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by Bob Reite »

Considering that Doug has close to a megabuck invested, I don't blame him at all if he wants to patent the device and at least get his investment back. I also agree that he needs to be able to operate the machine for longer than one second bursts. Who knows? He may find out that all you can get out of it is extremely intense, but short bursts. He needs to know what part is actually the "secret sauce" that makes it go. I'm itching to find out of course so that I can build a copy and verify the results. Then again, as they say in programming, "There is more than one way to do it", so perhaps I should continue with my own experiments.
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Re: My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by Paul_Schatzkin »

Even a "one second burst" would put him league with MUCH more costly operations. But still.. Verification and replication.
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Re: My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by Doug Coulter »

I limited replication to 1 second bursts for no other reason than desiring to stay alive - there is no indication this can't run continuously.

Please do build fusors and do your own experiments - if you want to dupe my results later, you'll need one to do it with that already works right in "stable, Farnsworth" mode. In fact, you will need one that works well enough to not require a big ballast resistor in the HV due to micro arcs here and there - and lack of perfect gas pressure control - no small challenge.

For reasons having to do with accurate electrostatic lensing - cylinder designs work better here. If you're going to do a sphere, you should at least have a hole in the end (instead of simple crossed loops) so the end doesn't burn up and waste so much power with ions hitting it (and ejecting electrons). Of course, that just winds up as a warped, imperfectly shaped cylinder in the end...but it would probably be better if you've got a spherical tank than a pure cylinder grid.

Element spacing determines the effective E-lens focal length, so the usual sphere design has "issues" due to variable element spacing. You can't (basic geometry) tessellate a sphere with circles for an accurate common focus. A buckyball would be a reasonable approximation, perhaps, but I doubt anyone could build that.
And it's not like spherical chambers are easier or cheaper than a pipe(!).

Our boron nitride/pyrex feedthrough design turned out to be a necessary (but not sufficient) prerequisite. I should write that design up better somewhere; while it's simple in a picture, the reasons things are as they are aren't so simple - it took a few years of iterations to get it all right. In short, I'm using pyrex as a slightly conductive glass to control field gradients inside and outside the tank (almost as a replacement for corona rings on the outside), and having the BN project past the pyrex inside the tank for E field shaping and to keep the pyrex out of "the action" where hot D will reduce it to a good conductor. It turns out that BN is about the only thing you can use (other than *maybe* Al99) that hot H doesn't destroy. Sadly, most of my documentation on HV feedthroughs was for things that turned out to be failures in the end - the result of trying to do good documentation in general (and then failing to go back and say "this didn't really work out" - a human failing)...most of that turned out to be "don't bother with this, it doesn't work that well", which is still useful information if you know that. The all-glass or quartz designs turned out to be a waste of time and materials, part of that 99% perspiration involved in invention. You can save yourself the trouble at least. Ditto - the Al-85 commercial feedthroughs fail young due to the binder being chemically reduced by the hot D ions, and don't control the E field shape well at all, which turns out to be really important.

This isn't telling you "the secret" but you'll need this stuff too, which is far from a secret - and stuff I've been saying all along. My gut turned out to be right, it just took all too long (and too much effort and $) to prove it out.
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Re: My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by Bruce Meagher »

Doug,

You've made some pretty bold claims in this thread and in Paul’s front page article.

1) A 10^11 n/s fusor
2) Radiation sickness caused by said fusor
3) Activation in the lab that required disposal of thousands of dollars of equipment

For those of us struggling to believe can you provide a little bit of data on your amazing runs?

1) The approximate operating voltage and current.
2) The number and length of time of each of these groundbreaking runs.
3) What’s a typical distance you stand/sit from your fusor during operation?
4) How long after your runs did you start “puking” and how long did this last?
5) Did you seek medical attention?
6) You state “I had to toss a couple thousand bucks worth of activated machine tools in the trash.” What equipment did you trash, where was it located w.r.t your fusor, and what activity level did you use to determine the equipment needed to be removed?

Bruce
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Re: My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by Jeroen Vriesman »

Is it true that for acute rad sickness you need a minimum dose of about 1 Sv? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_radiation_syndrome )

25E+6 neutrons / cm^2 is about 1 rem or about 0.01 Sv, so to get 1 Sv you need 25E+8 neutrons per cm^2. ( http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-colle ... -1004.html )
If the projected front surface area of the body is about 80x100cm = 8E3 cm^2 this translates to 20E+12 neutrons absorbed by the body.

The symptoms could also occur at 0.35Sv, but that would still be more neutrons absorbed by the body than the reported total flux of 1E+11 for that 1 second burst.

What was the distance to the reactor?

If very close (2m), assuming a non-directional point-source, the total flux would be about 60 times more than the radiation absorbed by the body, so total flux would be 1.2E+15 ( or 4.2E+14 for the 0.35 Sv ) n/s.

So, the total amount of neutrons for 0.35Sv in one second would be 4.2E+14 ( 2.45MeV ), and there would also be 4.2E+14 protons ( 3.02 MeV ), this is a total of about 370 J, way beyond break-even.

Or was the distance to the reactor less than 2m? Or are my calculations wrong? Or can you get sick from less than 0.35 Sv?
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Re: My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by Doug Coulter »

Sorry, there are some details I won't reveal till legal protection is had. I didn't set out to popularize/claim a bunch of stuff, I merely informed my own board (which I guess Paul reads - he's now a member there as well) why I hadn't been posting for awhile. Actually, I don't care if anyone believes this report or not - it's better for me if people don't, at this point. I don't need the attention, I need to finish my work. This is a distraction. I will be more than happy to give a full report with all the details at the right time - it's the entire point of the open source exercise.

If no one believes me, I would then have to worry less about theft of IP and the feds...and so on. Replication (hopefully not only in my lab! I'm lining up candidates now.) will happen soon enough, and either I'm right, or I'm wrong. There's no need for argument of any kind at this point. It will only make one side or the other feel stupid later. And trying to steal my IP by fishing and argument is not how you'll make a friend of me. The truth will out and will take care of itself. Just be patient. If I give enough clues for $BigCorp to steal it - we all lose. Give it a break.

I normally sit quite close - about 18" - from "the action". But that is behind 3/4" of pyrex followed by half an inch of radiology lead glass, and the fusor itself is coated with lead other than a tiny hole in the back I left to be able to count (X ray) radiation output there. Neutrons of course aren't bothered by lead, nor are high energy gamma rays - lead may as well be paper at 2 MeV. Wikipedia used to have a nice plot for lead vs energy, I couldn't find it just now, but other than the K line glitch location, it's about the same for iron, like this -
Increasing the thickness is pointless when it just doesn't absorb at high energies anyway.  Note log scale here.
Increasing the thickness is pointless when it just doesn't absorb at high energies anyway. Note log scale here.
The run I assume made me ill was around 30 seconds long before I turned things off to investigate why all my counters (two neutron detectors and a geiger counter, all behind at least 1/8" lead and in some cases much more - 5" for the geiger so it would only see either high energy stuff, or stuff that had backscattered) blanked - during which time I walked around a bit to look at things trying to figure out what was wrong. When the cosmic ray clicks came back as soon as I turned off main power - I knew there was an "issue". I'll have to thank Richard for inspiring me to hook all those up to audio outputs, else I might not have noticed that as quickly.

I was running around 50kv at around a 10ma current limit, but the current input went down when the event happened. I was not using the usual hookup.

I moved the detectors further out and then tried two replication runs of about a second each (people, please read fully!) and they still blanked. I'd have made them 1/10 second if I could have, but the power supplies have ramp up times.

I was pretty euphoric, but lacked good data collection, as there were no counts, and my computers crashed (I use several computers and uP's for data aq). As I stated, this prevented me from doing an accurate measurement of silver activation, which requires a precisely known time between the neutron flux cutoff and the measurement, since that's handled normally by the computers that crashed. Nearby indium, gold, and antimony were noticeably active later on, though. Not hot enough to be dangerous, but above background significantly.

I started puking the next day, and it continued for ~8 weeks with varying severity, but it was far worse feeling than a bad flu, and much longer in duration. Kind of reminds one of being seasick - you wish you were dead, but fear you won't die.

I did get medical attention from a local retired doctor and friend, whose wife is also a radiologist. Mostly having to do with keeping hydrated while my body was flushing out the dead cells. Had I gone to a hospital (assuming I could have made it to one, I'm pretty far out in the sticks) and explained why I was sick (what would have been the point otherwise?) - it would have made front page news and the feds would likely have confiscated all my toys. There's really not much modern medicine can do for this kind of case, so I opted not to go that route.

This fellow has already been out to talk to me about the possible dangers of fusors in private hands. Luckily, I'm good at seeming harmless and he's true to his name. I don't think you people realize what the risks are of making these guys afraid of us. We could lose it all - don't assume the laws in one country today will always apply here or in other places - if they even do here and now. Let's don't go there.
My friend at DHS - truly a good guy.
My friend at DHS - truly a good guy.
I think the math on the dose is wrong. I can only guestimate the total output for that time, but it was more like 100mw, not many joules (watt-seconds) in 30 seconds. Remember, just being hit by a fast neutron (and there are many slow ones in a room with moderators in it) - you don't actually absorb it all, most energy just goes on through. IIRC, enough absorbed energy to heat one up by .01 degree C will kill promptly. This was pretty close to the hairy edge. That's subjective, of course, but it felt very close to dying. I doubt it was a whole Sievert - but it was close enough. I don't recommend trying it.

I ditched everything in my shop that counted above my normal background. I probably didn't need to - it wasn't all that hot, but after being that sick, enough is enough - and I need to keep my background low (it's about 1/4 of what I measured at Richard's, normally - I take pains to keep it down, including force venting the radon out of the crawl space underneath) to make my other measurements accurate.
Not that big a deal to replace things like drill bits and lathe tool inserts that have odd, easy to activate components in their alloys. Seemed like a good idea at the time. After that level of illness, anything you can do to make it never happen again seems like the smart move.

Again, to repeat myself, anyone hardcore enough who knows their stuff and has their own gear (why trust mine if you don't trust my word?) is welcome to come try themselves. But it's on you if it does replicate and you get sick. I prefer to try again from a distance...
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Re: My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by Frank Sanns »

Good to see you posting Doug. It has been a while but I see you are still pushing into new territory with your fusion research.

Many of you have questions for Doug but for those of you that have operated a fusor, you know the x-rays are prolific even at relatively low voltages of 20kv through a sight glass. By 50 kv, the fusor shell becomes transparent to x-rays and back scatter from the room even becomes a problem. By 70kv and certainly 100 kv like I think Doug runs, the x rays are screaming out of the machine and bouncing off of everything. It is not a good environment especially with some of the currents that Doug and some others on here have run.

Neutrons have a quality factor of 20 so they are 20 times more damaging to biological material than gamma rays. Put them together and it is not a good combination no matter what the actual calculated numbers come out to be.
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Re: My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by Richard Hull »

I have held off on comment as replication via good instrumentation is needed.

I am 100% with Jim Kovalchick and his critical observation and comments regarding activation of tools and other items and the required thermal flux and length of exposure to said thermalized flux in order to truly activate to a readable level long half-lived materials.

10e11n/sec isotropic still converts to a smallish flux even if fed through a blanketed moderator fully surrounding the device. Such a flux at most any range as relates to serious activation over small increments of time save for the shortest half-life materials, like rhodium, silver, indium, etc., would not activate long half life items to any significant degree. I am assuming there was no all encompassing moderator surrounding the fusor. Fast neutrons don't activate stuff very well and distant moderators and local scattering to thermal energies would not intercept a decent fast flux to a significant degree to create a distant thermal flux to activate much in longer half-life materials around them.

I'll take the wait and see attitude, just like in the cold fusion debate. Extra-ordinary claims and all that sort of thing......

'nuff said.

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: My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by Jeroen Vriesman »

Looking at radiation sickness time lines, the symptoms you describe might be somewhere between 0.5 or even 2 Sv.

The main mistake in my calculations was the distance and the run-time, I thought the 1 second run made you ill.

Correcting it for a 30s run and a distance of 18 inch (that's very close...), still assuming 100% absorption of the neutrons, the flux needed to get 1 Sv would be 550 times lower than under my previous assumptions, that would translate to about 2J of energy in the fast protons and neutrons, over 30s that is 66mW ( p + n ) of fusion output. Extremely impressive!

This is still a low estimate, not all neutrons are absorbed by the body. Any idea which percentage of 2.45MeV neutrons are absorbed by a human body? It would take me some time to look at moderation and absorption of neutrons in the human body, but maybe someone here knows an estimate?
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Dennis P Brown
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Re: My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by Dennis P Brown »

Doug, I always enjoy your posts and you are certainly one of the better fusion/electrical engineer's here.

You talk of radiation exposure so I felt I should pass on the tiny amount of information I have read on this subject relative to treatment.

Obviously, there are MD's who can do tests to determine the severity of any effects/illness due to radiation exposure. I, of course, know little on this subject (critically, you need a blood test to check white blood cell count among other flags a doctor can use to determine if there are any issues. A baseline is always a good idea no matter what for future reference during your research.)

That all said, I do read on the subject and one major peer reviewed article I read in a medical journal indicated that large doses of Vitamin D was the best "anti-radiation" sickness medicine that is available - it can counter some of the effects of radiation exposure (help repair radiation damage in tissues/organs) and help prevent cancer development later in life (as can low dose aspirin but that can be very dangerous if not dissolved first in water.) I'd guess that as long as one used a safe dose of Vit D - under 6,000 IU a day (aim for 70-90 ng/dL blood levels) - it couldn't hurt but could do a great deal of good.

Neutrons are readily absorbed by water and the human body is about 72% water so neutron radiation is a major threat to health. So caution and proper shielding (for neutrons as well as x-rays) is critically important. Shielding is a must if you are creating any significant radiation flux. A good neutron shield should also absorb (boron or proper lithium isotope), not just modulate.

I do run models to check radiation protection for space environments (on my spare time) to shield against both high energy cosmic (protons up and past iron nuclei) and moderate to low level neutron radiations. Basically, these require opposite types of shielding materials - any gamma or x-ray need high density shielding; as you well know; neutrons (especially fast) need high hydrogen materials like paraffin for shielding to defeat this threat. I have both types for my accelerator (which to date, has created zero protons and zero radiation levels ... lol.)

Best of luck in your exciting research and be safe!
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Doug Coulter
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Re: My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by Doug Coulter »

Thanks, Frank - we indeed had a problem with power supply energy X ray shine through - one we nearly eliminated via the lead coating of everything - perhaps surprisingly, we even had to do some of the vacuum plumbing. At least at those energies (50kv nominal here, probably more with some inductive kickback peaks we have seen when things aren't stable) lead works fairly well, but any hole means a lot of backscatter all over the place. I admit to some surprise over just how much. Bill was very helpful in chasing all that down. He worries more than I used to. BTW, one thing we did that helped (accidentally) was wind up coating most of the tank innards with a low Z material, in this case Al, in another experiment. We have also tried Richard's suggestion of something that holds D well, in our case Pd - and that made things a LOT worse re both X rays and the ability to control gas pressure as the temperatures changed. Low Z is the way to go here.

Ditto neutrons, which get scattered and moderated in the building materials and air itself (it's an old saw in the fast-neutron research papers - "first, remove the air from the lab"). Worst case for them - and our next test to explain the still-high geiger counts was going to be using a gamma spectrometer to see about capture gammas from neutron capture or decay - we were just about to do that test when this happened, but it would be significant in my estimation - and another reason to get to distance, since lead does little in that energy range (or for that matter, at the capture gamma range from boron - see the plot above). I asked Richard to do this test years ago but he never did, fearing for his NaI head (the I and Tl can be activated). Well, we now have spares, so it's going to get done even if we lose one. I could say "shame on you for refusing to advance our knowledge" but since it took us so long to get decent gamma ray spec heads ourselves - and they were pretty dear, financially, I understand. I suspect we'll see both those ~~ 2MeV gammas as well as the odd few from fast protons/He3/T hitting tank walls and happening to pass close to a heavy nucleus in the stainless steel. Of course, till that measurement is actually done, that's a guess.

I agree with Richard about the wait and see - and further replication(s) - one way or the other, we'll know in a few months, and yes, anyone who is willing to go the NDA route and try this - let me know, it will take some bucks on top of a decent normal fusor to do, as well. And I formally thank him for inspiring me to hook detectors to multiple indicators - including an audio amp (you might not be looking at a meter or plot, but you can't turn away from sound - if it's there, you'll hear it - or maybe notice that dog didn't bark), or I might not be making this post. Further, some replication is almost certainly going to show I wasn't even on the "sweet spot" for this new technique, there's probably more "in there" to be had, and I'm chomping at the bit to do just that - it would be nice to get to a practical net gain level, after all, that's my quest. This announcement was premature. Sadly, it's taking awhile to add the stuff to do that with some version of the definition of the word "safely". There was indeed quite a bit of moderator around, Richard (hundreds of pounds), and my counters saw what they saw re things sitting on the fusor table/next table being above background after. Not thousands counts/minute, but not the same as "nothing" either. I have no reason to make that up, just the observation that modern tooling uses some odd (and sometimes proprietary - trade secret) elements in the alloys and binders that might be easier to activate than the usual vanadium/tungsten/molybdenum/cobalt of old. Things move fast in that biz these days and I try to obtain the best. I know some of the cermets contain oxides of "things you wouldn't expect" in a tool bit. By the time I recovered enough to get serious back in the lab - and got some GR-130 gamma specs (thanks to Bill), the normal background made it difficult to see tiny additional bumps on the usual background spectrum and be sure. Just a longer tail at higher energies than usual. As well, a statistically valid higher count than normal on a good geiger counter (the nice pancake we got from GEO - wired in to good data analysis software).

I'm guessing I got a dose in the 100-200mS range FWIW - and it's a guess. I'm not a young guy and things like this probably affect the older and weaker of us more per dose (I have emphysema, for example). Yes, a vastly messed up white count could have also exacerbated things by making me susceptible to whatever other pathogens were floating around. For the reason stated above, I didn't get a blood count done. Really, we kind of already know what the effects of a big fast dose are - it would only have served to prove (and reveal to perhaps the wrong people) what I already knew from being intimately connected to my own body and symptoms. I know my old "be a cowboy, don't sweat it" days are over now.

I'll be reporting back in when I have the real rigor we all know is required for real science - and the transformation of that into engineering. It will take me awhile to do the code, the hardware, the EMI shielding, initial testing in "stable/safe" mode, and get back on this horse - lots to do, but I'll be doing it. I'll report either way - if it works, or doesn't. Revealing what didn't work is as much a part of open source as what does, after all - it can save time for other workers.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
David Kunkle
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Re: My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by David Kunkle »

I know this is an old post, but several things:

1) I only ever follow the technical/construction forum- but I see that needs to change. Therefore, I totally missed this thread on Doug's reactor and possible massive output until recently. It's been a year here and about 7 months since he's mentioned anything about this project on his own site. Anyone heard anything from Doug about this lately?

2)If I read it correctly, he's spending about $1M rigging the reactor for remote operation. I was wondering why he didn't try to replicate his massive output run by "de-tuning" the reactor to non-lethal levels. This might confirm what he believes to be 10E11 n/s output instead of going to remote operation first. And by de-tuning, I thought of several methods:

(Assuming these don't conflict somehow with the way his reactor achieves high output)
-Since the cross-section charts start at 4-5 KV, start the reactor at a measly 4 or 5 KV and go up until measureable output achieved. If it's that powerful, should get measurable fusion by 5KV. Then extrapolate neutron output to whatever KV he initially ran it at.

-Dilute the deuterium with H or He to 1% or even .1% or less. Shouldn't be hard with a couple of empty gas bottles. If I'm figuring right, 1 part per 1000 deuterium should knock the neutron output down by 3 orders of magnitude. Then again, extrapolate the output numbers back to pure deuterium.

-A couple of bubble detectors wouldn't hurt- at least they won't blank out on you even if the output is still massive. ;)

5KV and .1% deuterium fuel together should knock the output down to a relatively harmless 10E6 neutron/sec., which should extrapolate back to E10 or E11 run at full power.

Most people struggle just to get measurable fusion, so this is probably the first ever post on the whole forum on how to hamstring your reactor!!
If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.

Ernest Rutherford
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Richard Hull
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Re: My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by Richard Hull »

Doug's major assistant, Bill Fain, was here for HEAS 2016, but I forgot to ask about Doug's progress or status and he did not volunteer any info. So, we are still in limbo relating his revelations and or progress. Fusion is and has always been a waiting game. So, we wait.

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: My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by John Futter »

David
Doug is still in there.
He and Bill have been doing the remote control and from what I understand it is almost there

watch his space

ps I did stay with Doug for a week a couple years ago to help (maybe I wasnt that helpful) and attend HEAS
you guys are a long way from where I live in New Zealand

I am a global moderator on his website and I can confirm his presence on the site in the last week or so
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Richard Hull
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Re: My Visit w Doug Coulter

Post by Richard Hull »

A couple of year along now........Where is this process. I saw Bill Fain at the Richmond Frostfest last week. I forgot to ask where the research is at this point. Like Jim Kovalchick, I want to believe that there was so much fusion neutron flux that Doug had to throw out a couple of thousand bucks worth of activated shop tools. What in the tools had a high enough cross section to activate even with 10e11 flux for a tiny run period? What activated and had such a long half-life from the short burst that remained so intense that they had to be discarded? Any followup hard data?

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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