University on Maryland amateur fusion effort (Cyclotron)
Posted: Tue Feb 11, 2020 11:56 pm
I am posting this effort as Tim Koeth who teaches there could not remember his password. (please can anyone help him in admin to get his password and pass it on to him?) Tim has assembled a team of students and using what materials they could gather have spent some time building an amateur cyclotron there that has done D-D fusion and producing 2 x 10e7 neutrons per second! I will log them into the neutron club. Rather than blather on about this "other form of fusion, I will copy his e-mail to me and let Tim speak for himself and his team. Note: They are also claiming to be the first amateur group to do fission! Cool!
Tim's missive.....
I was looking at the Fusor.net forum today and I realize that I do not have (can't recall) my login credentials. Who should I ask about being reinstated?
Thank you for listing our big fusor on the site - I did see that.
I thought you might like to add that "Tim's 12-inch Cyclotron" was the FIRST amateur cyclotron to produce D-D neutrons, and our present record is 20 million neutrons per second.
With those neutrons, this was the FIRST amateur cyclotron for sure (and possibly first amateur nuclear anything) to demonstrate fission! Photos of the fission proof, as well as a detailed paper on the collective neutron experiments including the fission are attached. November 2017 is the publicly published achievement date.
Neutrons_Nov_18_2017_ver1.pdf
https://drive.google.com/a/umd.edu/file ... =drive_web
The current cyclotron website is at koethcyclotron.org
http://koethcyclotron.org
Over this winter break, we used the pulsed nature of the cyclotron to measure the thermalization and diffusion time of neutrons in polyethylene. This is of great interest to folks doing pulsed experiments such as Mark Rowley and ourselves. I have yet to write that up, but I should, as this is very very useful for the amateur community who do not know they can use typical He3 and NIM in pulsed measurements. (I will follow up with that later)
We have also been working on a toroidal pinch. While we have not measured any neutrons (mostly because we are testing with Kr and Xe, and only a few runs with D) we have made exquisite movies of the pinching action that you might like to put on the forum too. This work is almost identical to the Perhapsatron S-1, 2, and 3.
There is also one photo of our earlier linear pinch system.
Please feel free to put this on Fusor.net, with collective attribution to Jimbo, Jay, Brian, Scott, and I.
Let us know what you think.
Thanks,
Tim
PS. We clearly have multiple topics to present on at HEAS2020, including the above, as well as the promised neutron diffusion time measurement, and also the stand alone experiment in my basement, measuring the lifetime of the muon, it has been running for several years now, and like a fine wine, is getting better all the time.
End of Tim's communication
I will follow up with noting that Tim and many members of his team have attended HEAS October conferences for many years now. They have always had lots of goodies to sell at the fleamarket. (Tim's sales table is where I picked up the fusor V 6 way cross!). In addition, Tim is a regular evening presenter at HEAS. I am sure he will dominate the 2020 HEAS talks.
Some images Tim sent are seen below.
Richard Hull
Tim's missive.....
I was looking at the Fusor.net forum today and I realize that I do not have (can't recall) my login credentials. Who should I ask about being reinstated?
Thank you for listing our big fusor on the site - I did see that.
I thought you might like to add that "Tim's 12-inch Cyclotron" was the FIRST amateur cyclotron to produce D-D neutrons, and our present record is 20 million neutrons per second.
With those neutrons, this was the FIRST amateur cyclotron for sure (and possibly first amateur nuclear anything) to demonstrate fission! Photos of the fission proof, as well as a detailed paper on the collective neutron experiments including the fission are attached. November 2017 is the publicly published achievement date.
Neutrons_Nov_18_2017_ver1.pdf
https://drive.google.com/a/umd.edu/file ... =drive_web
The current cyclotron website is at koethcyclotron.org
http://koethcyclotron.org
Over this winter break, we used the pulsed nature of the cyclotron to measure the thermalization and diffusion time of neutrons in polyethylene. This is of great interest to folks doing pulsed experiments such as Mark Rowley and ourselves. I have yet to write that up, but I should, as this is very very useful for the amateur community who do not know they can use typical He3 and NIM in pulsed measurements. (I will follow up with that later)
We have also been working on a toroidal pinch. While we have not measured any neutrons (mostly because we are testing with Kr and Xe, and only a few runs with D) we have made exquisite movies of the pinching action that you might like to put on the forum too. This work is almost identical to the Perhapsatron S-1, 2, and 3.
There is also one photo of our earlier linear pinch system.
Please feel free to put this on Fusor.net, with collective attribution to Jimbo, Jay, Brian, Scott, and I.
Let us know what you think.
Thanks,
Tim
PS. We clearly have multiple topics to present on at HEAS2020, including the above, as well as the promised neutron diffusion time measurement, and also the stand alone experiment in my basement, measuring the lifetime of the muon, it has been running for several years now, and like a fine wine, is getting better all the time.
End of Tim's communication
I will follow up with noting that Tim and many members of his team have attended HEAS October conferences for many years now. They have always had lots of goodies to sell at the fleamarket. (Tim's sales table is where I picked up the fusor V 6 way cross!). In addition, Tim is a regular evening presenter at HEAS. I am sure he will dominate the 2020 HEAS talks.
Some images Tim sent are seen below.
Richard Hull