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  • 12 year old creates nuclear reaction
  • Philby
    Full Member

    I wouldn’t like to be his neighbours if it all goes wrong! I think I was still playing with Lego at that age
    Guardian article

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    Well fusion is much better than fission, not self sustaining thankfully!!

    cynic-al
    Free Member

    I bet it’s even been fact checked!

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    30 September 1999 Tōkai At the Japanese uranium reprocessing facility in Ibaraki Prefecture, workers put a mixture of uranyl nitrate solution into a precipitation tank which was not designed to dissolve this type of solution and caused an eventual critical mass to be formed, and resulted in the death of two workers from severe radiation exposure.

    It’s even easier and cheaper to get fission going for a bit and you get to see the flash

    Ming the Merciless
    Free Member

    There’s an article lurking on the net about a youngster who built a fission device in his back garden shed from old bits of smoke alarms etc.  He made a very radioactive mess.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn

    mickmcd
    Free Member

    hold on alarm bells ringing

    theres a forum where other people show what they have been doing with their fusion reactors??

    ffs hold my beer….if you see a flash from sheffield it wasnt me

    cbike
    Free Member

    Fusion???

    There was a US teenager that created a fission reactor in his garage…enough to require a substantial clean up.

    somafunk
    Full Member

    Pah…..that’s nothing special….at 13 (and fascinated by chemicals)  i/we were firing turnips the length of a field using the tried n’ tested fertiliser bomb method (god bless the anarchist cookbook), that was back in the 80’s mind you, and in the wilds of argyll so we were left to find our own entertainment, and with a farm and fully equipped engineering workshop we eventually managed to blow the bloody barn doors off…..and the roof….and the walls……..and a pole mounted transformer which knocked out the power supply to the entire achnamara and castle sween area.

    No more fun n’ games/explosions were allowed after that (sad face)

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    and for reference….
    Fusion – the one where it all gets good if we can get it to sustain
    Fission – the one where sustaining it ends up really bad

    squirrelking
    Free Member

    Fission – the one where sustaining it ends up really bad

    Ahem, you appear to be confusing criticality and supercriticality. Criticality is a sustained and steady reaction whilst supercriticality is an increasing reaction which, obviously, is bad unless under control.

    Fusion isn’t the nice clean energy it’s made out to be either, I for one wouldn’t be volunteering to climb into a tokamak but I would take a dive into an AGR.

    Murray
    Full Member

    Diving into an AGR could be fatal – the fall might kill you. I’d much prefer diving into the spent fuel pond (shallow dive obviously).

    cloudnine
    Free Member

    “He transformed an old playroom in his parents’ house into a nuclear laboratory with $10,000 (£7,700) worth of equipment that uses 50,000 volts of electricity to heat deuterium gas and fuse the nuclei to release energy.” Okay, I don’t mean to question other people’s parenting and budgets, but…

    epicyclo
    Full Member

    What interests me is how a 12 year old kid can get his hands on deuterium gas.

    When you read that, you realise the likes of ISIS is no threat, it’s the smart 12 year olds. 🙂

    Kryton57
    Full Member

    Talking of smart 12 year olds, I was performing due diligence before a customer meeting this week. One of the meeting attendees and it looks as though someone I’ll be working with a bit more is this guy:

    https://ruwix.com/the-rubiks-cube/you-can-do-the-cube/

    Greybeard
    Free Member

    What interests me is how a 12 year old kid can get his hands on deuterium gas.

    Full instructions on the web.

    The average price of 100 ml heavy water 99% is about 120 USD, hence one liter of Deuterium gas (after electrolysis) for amateur fusioneer use costs about 1.18 USD.

    slowoldman
    Full Member

    I bet it’s even been fact checked!

    As it says in the article “However, scientists are likely to remain sceptical until Oswalt’s workings are subject to verification from an official organisation and are published in an academic journal”.

    mick_r
    Full Member

    Taylor Wilson is the other US kid that achieved fusion (without polluting the neighbours). He did some good TED talks on YouTube.

    Greybeard
    Free Member

    Achieving fusion per se is relatively benign and only results in low level radiation – it’s getting more energy out than you put in that’s difficult and potentially dangerous.

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