Fusor Forums

Thoughtput on a diffusion pump is closely related to the input power transferred to the boiler and the cooling of the pump. An analogy of a flowing river has been used to described how this works. A slow boil (either too little power transferred to the boiler or too much cooling) will produce a smal...

Marcin, Your english is excellent. I personally have no experience with huge diffusion pumps like yours, but a couple things to consider. Could the DC-704 oil just need to be degassed a bit longer? On smaller diffusions pumps I’ve experienced long initial pump down times with a new charge of oil (ge...

A few years ago our local university demolished a large shielded room with many tons of low background steel acquired from some pre-WWII ship as well as a bunch of virgin lead. It was unfortunate for sure. One of my professors mentioned that steel made post the atomic era contains radionuclides maki...

Richard, A few additional details of what’s involved in your daily set of runs would be useful. How many are done, and how long is each run? Do you believe it’s just a matter of a particular amount of running time with D2, or do you believe shutting down the system and cool everything plays a part i...

Congratulations Dr. Seltzman! If you come to San Diego contact me if you’re interested in joining several of us fusor members for one of our meetups.

My understanding is no MeV X-rays will be produced by heavy energetic charged particles (proton, triton, or He3 particles). Heavy charged particles don’t emit measurable bremsstrahlung radiation when slowing down in the stainless steel shell. Lots of characteristic X-rays from the iron and other ele...

To get the expected X-ray exposure rate of your fusor you might consider running a Monto Carlo radiation transport simulation with programs such as GEANT4, Gate, MCNP, etc. These programs have fairly steep learning curves, but should provide the results you’re after. Another method would be to hand ...

Rich, try BR? not BD? to get the baud rate.

Saint-Gobain acquired Nuclear Enterprises in the 90s. You might try contacting them to see if you can get the specs. These could be the same as the BC 400 series scintillators they currently offer.

Bruce

Great suggestions Rich. Two experiments to add to the list.

Bruce