How to generate neutrons using Gamma radiation. At Ole Miss we used sodium 24 as our gamma source. Just place deuterium liquid, gas, or solid next to the gamma source... instant neutrons. Fast neutrons at that. Shielding is a must with 2 Mev Gammas. Worked with microcurie then millicurie sources. Sodium 24 is easy to make with voltage drop accelerators. My school was an accelerator center once upon a time. Now all they do is design detectors for Fermilab. A classic experiment is to cause a pair reaction to occur next to a heavy atom such as tungsten or lead. The positron is deflected by a permanent magnet onto the face of a detector. a .511 mev gamma results .(in a vaccum cell). An area that might be acessable to the home brew community experimenter/ tinker might be low energy antimatter. Hold on Star Trek fanatics, I'm not talking about anything but the positron. Years ago I looked into ultra cooled neutrons ke<10 ev as a power source. Neutrons with energy this low can be stored in a glass bottle! But neutrons have bad habits like a limited half life. The 15 minute half life means that neutrons have to be generated in vast numbers to be useful as fuel. Another small problem is that in order to get neutrons to these energy levels, liquid helium must be used. The liquid helium is a quantum fluid that removes the energy of the neutrons and does not react with them. After making some of this stuff in a lab, I got pretty grumpy after spending all night, the most I could make was less than a nanogram of neutrons. There had to be a better way. After a few weeks of frustration, a wacked out idea emerged. Why not used confined positrons as a power source. Positrons are stable when removed from the electron. High Vaccuum of interstellar proportions would be needed. Say a sorbtion pump with a titanium evaporator in front. It would take a small field to make the positrons precess in a circle. (like a cyclotron) When the desired number of positrons were stored a pulse of high voltage could impact them on the walls of the container. A flash of gammas could be coupled to a blanket of deuterium to release a large number of neutrons all at once. The goal is to take a weak source of neutrons such as a fusor then over time breed positrons, store them, then when a usable number exists, convert then to gamma radiation, convert the gamma rays to neutrons in large numbers. If the problems of postron generation and storage could be overcome... This might work.
Ole Miss Rebel Larry Leins larryleins@hotmail.com
Created on Tuesday, April 17, 2001 2:06 PM EDT by larry l Leins Last Modified on Thursday, April 19, 2001 10:18 AM EDT by larry l Leins