What first drew you to nuclear studies?...And when

[Richard Hull]

I can only speak to my first interest.
I was about 9 years of age when I read or heard about nuclear science. After all, I was born during "the atomic age". I consider the atomic age to have been born to the general public after the atomic bombs were dropped ending WWII.

I can't remember the book I read that sparked my interest. Perhaps it was the Boys Book of Atomic Energy.
I read about radium in clock dials emitting rays that caused the Westclox Big Ben alarm clock by my bed to glow in the dark. This was also boosted by the same rays coming out of Uranium.

I wondered why were these rays exiting uranium for millions of years? I do remember begging my mom to get me a Geiger counter. I found an ad where John Meshna, Inc. was offering a used, surplus navy PDR-27 GM counter for $49.00. ( a lot of money in 1955). Somehow she found the money and for my 10th birthday I received it with batteries inside. The thing roared as I brought the mica windowed probe near my old Westclox Big Ben by my bed. This was the moment I was hooked!

As I matured, The interest in what I now understood to be Nuclear physics became deeply entrenched within me. I never lost the concept of the fact that inanimate matter of some elements constantly emitted real energy. I learned that man could make non-radioactive elements radioactive in nuclear reactors via neutron bombardment. The path was firmly set in me to know as much about nuclear physics via self- directed study and avid reading as I could.

Electronics and chemistry were topics of deep study as well. Electronics was a big part of the atomic age and cold war period. I would ultimately go to college for electrical engineering. Nuclear physics was a lifelong draw on me. I longed to make radioisotopes, but lacked the required neutrons. These could be produced by neutron sources or within a nuclear reactor. Useful sources of neutrons were tightly controlled by the AEC and I had no access to a fission nuclear reactor.

While I knew of fusion as part of my reading on nuclear physics, I knew that man had been trying and failing to control fusion while spending millions of dollars trying to make it an energy source. In 1995 I met Tom Ligon and heard of the Farnsworth fusor and how easy it was to do fusion using deuterium gas. The rest is history for me. I got those neutrons and have made radioisotopes albeit short lived with my fusor. A life-long dream accomplished.

Finally, my first thoughts will always be with me. Why does matter emit radiation or energy?

It turns out in 1890 man knew nothing of this seeming impossibility. Instruments already existed to trace and quantify electrical energy at an incredibly low level. (electroscope). Once the first autoradiograph was made of Uranium ore, the mysterious rays emitted by Uranium ore were studied at a scientific level. Using an electroscope, it became clear that the rays had energy in them! Why? And, why from a piece of rock?
Scientists were baffled. Once it was determined that this was not due to a chemical reaction, the mystery deepened. The scientists of the period were like me at 9 years of age....Fascinated!

By 1908 many scientists were on the hunt and much had been learned about the 3 radiations emitted but still no real physics was able to completely explain why the continuous energy poured out of the elements Uranium and Thorium.

I obtained a first edition of Fredrick Soddy's 1908 book, The Interpretation of Radium. In this book, he waxed eloquent about mysterious energy, much like me as a 9 year old boy! He was totally excited to share his thoughts at this great mystery, all throughout his book, which went through many reprints and editions through the 1920's. In later editions he muted this seemingly childlike amazement as he gained knowledge. In the preface of future editions, he noted that he eliminated many of his "gushings' found in the first edition to appear more scientific in subsequent editions. The glow was gone due to advancement and new knowledge in new texts. The glow of rock issuing constant energy will never leave me even though I am fully studied in all aspects of radioactivity.

Do you have a tale of how and when the amazement and glow occurred in your life?

Richard Hull

[Jim Kovalchick]

Richard,
My story has Virginia connections that you know about.

I was much older at the time of my first interest. I think 19 years old. As a young engineering student at the University of Virginia, I was required to declare a major after the first year of core course work. The individual departments had tours of their respective facilities to help students decide. The tour of the nuclear engineering department included observing operation of the 2 MW UVAR swimming pool reactor. I had never seen such a wonder as the blue glow produced by the core suspended deep under the water. The tour guide shut off the lights in the round brick confinement building, and in the darkness, the Cherenkov was bright enough to read by. It felt edgy, dangerous, and thus exciting. This was my hook moment. So as I nibbled on the hook, the hook was set by them telling me that nuclear engineering starting salaries were generally higher than that for most other disciplines (no longer the case by the way).

Within a year, I pulled my first reactor criticality, and 2025 marks my 43rd year of helping to split atoms for pay.

Jim Kovalchick

[Richard Hull]

UVA shut their reactor down relatively recently. Universities are no longer interested in the added responsibility of a working reactor on-site.
Jim and I chose hot careers way back. But the pay is not what it was, relative to other choices today.
Thanks for your contribution, Jim.

Richard Hull

[Dennis P Brown]

While I already posted on my general background, at least relative to fusion energy, I became interested in that subject while in college. This occurred after attending a seminar on that subject. I asked a question of the speaker that got we in trouble (told in stark terms a clearance was required just to ask that question(!)) so I learned that the subject had more interesting twists then I had at first thought - lol. Certainly that peaked my interest on the subject so that much later in life, it led me into a fusion energy program.

[Frank Sanns]

Nuclear power and above ground atom bomb testing was frequently in the news in the 1960s not to mention the Cuban missile crisis. My curiosity was peaked by something that could power a city and when used differently, could kill me from miles away. It was hard not to be drawn in by such monumental technology.

I was also interested in geology around the same time. My father purchased me a mineral sample tray for Christmas one year. One of the mineral samples was pitchblende ore. I had recognized that immediately as one of the sources of uranium and wondered if it was radioactive but had nothing to test it with.

At that time many of the wind up alarm clocks had radium dials. My fathers had an open face vintage one (yikes!) and a closed face modern one. They glowed weakly in the dark as did his wrist watch. That intrigued me.

Then there were those trefoil stickers on a university lab that we walked past one day on the way to Heinz Chapel on the University of Pittsburgh campus. I was probably around 12 years old at this point.

Then I happened upon a paper ad for surplus equipment. In there was the ubiquitous US Navy Radiac units for sale for cheap. I know it was my small store of birthday and gift money I used but cannot remember how the payment was sent. I had a savings account at 12 years old but the checking came later. A mystery. It had to be one of my parents writing it but I just don't remember.

Two weeks later it came. Of course the battery was dead and it was a specialized battery that was expensive and not locally available. It was probably another year before I had figured out that I could use AA batteries in series to get to the voltage needed to run it.

Then the big letdown came when my pitchblende ore was not radioactive. I think it was just a piece of feldspar. I had expected to have reactor grade uranium in there and got nothing.

In fact, nothing around the house was radioactive. I was so let down as I thought it was ubiquitous! The radium though, that was worth the wait.

Somewhere along the path I made a crude geiger tube and then put all of that to rest for a while as I started working full time and earning my degree in chemistry. It was not until the late 1990s that I started back into nuclear interest more fervently and it really took off after discovering the Songs and Intranets which are now this site.

[Richard Hull]

I have a nice collection of old Big Ben and Baby Ben Westclox in my outside lab.
I currently have the pictured but clean and functional Big Ben on my current nightstand, a measured 18-inches from my skull. 8K cpm at the glass face with 2-inch pancake GM. Still glows nicely, but is greatly reduced as the copper activated ZnS sites have taken a hit from the radiation since it was sold new in 1950. (Active phosphor sites are destroyed over time by the radium radiation)

I have a wall plugged clock radio on the stand as well. During the recent ice/snow storm power went out as I slept and the clock radio went to 12:00 and restarted when power was restored as I slept. The trusty old Big bin woke me up at 9AM (retired) while the clock radio read 2:45 (length of time since power was restored during the night.)

The constant audible, "chick, chick, chick" helps get me to sleep. My poor wife said it kept her awake. It was disused until after her passing in November, when my glowing mechanical "rad buddy" went back on the nightstand.

Richard Hull

[Jim Kovalchick]

An add on to my early curiosity about nuclear science...
My father worked at the White House as a policeman for a number of years. He once brought home a Civil Defense pencil dosimeter and let us kids examine it. Mind you, this dosimeter would have been part of WH stock during the height of the Cold War including the Kennedy years. At the time though, I was more interested in how it worked. For all I knew, there was something inside that melted because of high radiation, but I found the idea of its small size fascinating. My brother still keeps it as a souvenir.

Richard, one thing I've have found interesting about the burned up ZnS in radium glow indication is that even though it has stopped glowing from the radium, it still glows brightly if you cast uv light on it.

Jim K

[Richard Hull]

Without busting up this thread into trivials,yet getting educational thought out there, I will talk to Jim's point. Think about the number of total phosphor sites in the clock hands and numerals. Think about the limited range of the Radium Alphas in the paint.(a few microns) Thus, available sites near a atom of radium at 1-2uCi concentration are limited. This means there are a huge number of unaffected sites all throughout the ZnS:Cu phosphor laden paint.

In spite of these sites being made up of what is termed a phosphor, in the clock we only see them as millions of scintillations and not phosphorescence. If you dare, take the face off a clock and look under magnification at the hands or numerals. You will see the glow is a summation of individual scintillations. At viewing range, they blend into a glow. True phosphorescence as generally given is a longer after-glow. This can be extremely short as in AgS:Tl or very long, (seconds to minutes), in specially designed phosphors.

A UV light source produces Quintillions of Quanta/Photons of a few Ev to bombard the surface of the paint causing a very bright glow as opposed to the 4 mev alphas around already destroyed sites.

I kinda' noodled all of this out some time ago. I know Jim has it figured too. Still it is good to think these things out in the nuclear minded skull with a far more studied mind related to same. I hope this will explain why this effect occurs under UV light.

A number of scientific papers are extant from the 20's to explain why they were already seeing heavy darkening of early clock and watch dials.

As an aside, I have a few military aircraft instruments from WWII with dials that are hyper radioactive as they had to be very bright during war time. Thus, they were heavily doped with radium. Today, some only glow dimly in total darkness after full adjustment of the eye in pitch darkness. More radium = more dead sites. You can tell a super hot older meter of WWII will have the phosphors and ZnS:Cu change from a dull cream to a very dark tan or even brown! The paint is literally burnt up. Don't expect an easy visible glow from these.

Richard Hull

[Dennis P Brown]

Relative to Jim and Richard's comments of radium dials, if I recall, defects in semiconductor materials like ZnS, under heavy radiation bombardment (like Alpha's), will create sites in the lattice that are traps for electrons. Then UV will excite these sites (electrons) and result in a lower energy photons (light) being released (over a time period since the relaxation times can be fairly long.)

[Matt_Gibson]

After building numerous Tesla coils, can crushers, lasers, ect, my friend joked how the only thing I didn’t have was uranium…

A few weeks later, I had some Autunite from eBay and a cdv700. Next up, uraninite, torbernite, vacuum tubes with uranium glass seals, tritium (which got me in trouble with the NRC).

Fusors came about when I proposed a fusor for my Senior Design project back in college for my EE degree. The professor denied it saying that success would likely get someone hurt.

Years after graduating and accumulating some disposable income, I decided to go for it just to retro spite him!


-Matt