Apparently some kid built himself a nuclear reactor in his backyard and got radiation sickness, and had to be hospitalized. However on of the firemen/medics said "man is this kid stupid or what"
But if a kid has the ability to actually build machinery that complicated is he actually stupid???
Posts: 1567 | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
"Since it's a slow day here at ITA, I thought I'd bring to you the fascinating story of David Hahn, a 17-year-old aspiring Eagle Scout whose Atomic Energy merit badge led him to attempt to build a nuclear reactor in a potting shed behind his mother's house. The story was originally reported by Ken Silverstein in a Harper's Magazine article, and later expanded by Mr. Silverstein into the book The Radioactive Boy Scout.
David was an extraordinarily inventive young man. His scientific adventures read like an episode of "MacGyver"--turning ordinary items into powerful (and often dangerous) scientific instruments. His attempt to build a breeder reactor in fact fell woefully short of being effective, yet was effective enough to create some serious hazards to himself and others. In a day when commercially-sold chemistry sets contain nothing of much interest due to legal liability concerns, David's home-made experiments are remarkable. Here's an excerpt from a review of the book last fall in Chemical & Engineering News (sorry, access for subscribers only):
[David] tested his putative neutron gun by aiming it at a small block of paraffin next to his Geiger counter. The rapid clicking indicated to him that he was successful. However, it was much more likely that he was only observing X-rays emitted by the 241Am.
He crudely extracted thorium from the thorium dioxide in the lantern mantles by heating the dioxide with lithium he'd removed from lithium batteries. He then began to assemble his reactor in the potting shed behind his house.
In the next days and weeks, he made regular measurements of the reactor's radioactivity to see if the thorium was absorbing neutrons. Before long, he found that the readings were increasing regularly. He was now convinced that his model was working. But the increases were very likely due to the fact that he had purified the thorium from its radioactive daughters, which were just growing back in.
When the radioactivity kept on growing over the following weeks, however, he finally became worried, thinking his reactor was running away. He set about disassembling his handiwork, for he thought that he had accomplished what he had set out to do, and he did not want to hurt anyone.
The entire Harper's Magazine article is worth your time and is comprehensible, I think, to anyone regardless of scientific background. I'll leave you with a quote that aptly sums up David's scientific investigations, by David's scoutmaster's wife, Barbara Auito: "The typical kid [working on the merit badge] would have gone to a doctor's office and asked about the X-ray machine. Dave had to go out and try to build a reactor."
Posted by Eric Seymour at April 20, 2005 12:48 PM"
posted
and here's a kid who makes his own fusion reactors...
Fun with fusion: Freshman's nuclear fusion reactor has USU physics faculty in awe
By Alan Edwards Deseret Morning News
LOGAN — A widespread belief among physicists nowadays is that modern science requires squadrons of scientists and wildly expensive equipment. Image Spanish Fork High graduate Craig Wallace shows off his nuclear fusion reactor, based on the plans of Utah's own Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of TV.
Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret Morning News Craig Wallace and Philo T. Farnsworth are putting the lie to all that. Wallace, a baby-faced tennis player fresh out of Spanish Fork High School, had almost the entire physics faculty of Utah State University hovering (and arguing) over an apparatus he had cobbled together from parts salvaged from junk yards and charity drops. The apparatus is nothing less than the sine qua non of modern science: a nuclear fusion reactor, based on the plans of Utah's own Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of television. The reactor sat on a table with an attached vacuum pump wheezing away. A television monitor showed what was inside: a glowing ball of gas surrounded by a metal helix. The ball is, literally, a small sun, where an electric field forces deuteron ions (a form of hydrogen) to gather, bang together and occasionally fuse, spitting out a neutron each time fusion occurs. "Here I am with this thing here," Wallace mused, looking at his surroundings. "Who'da thought?" Wallace and Farnsworth are much alike. Both are (or were — Farnsworth died in 1971) tinkerers. While Wallace was in grade school, his mother got a flat tire while he was riding with her. He fixed it. For his part, Farnsworth began improvising electric motors at a young age. Both went on to bigger and better things. "He was never motivated to take science," said Wallace's father, Allen Wallace. "It was really the tinkering that motivated him." When Craig was a sophomore in high school, browsing the Internet he discovered that Farnsworth had come up with a way to create deuteron ion plasma, a prerequisite to fusion. While it was not good for production of energy (the source of much embarrassment to the University of Utah in the cold fusion debacle in the late 1980s), Farnsworth's design did emit neutrons, a useful tool for commercial applications and scientific experimentation. Image USU freshman physics major Craig Wallace, center, demonstrates his experiment to USU professors John Raitt, left, and Farrell Edwards.
Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret Morning News "He (Farnsworth) was after the Holy Grail of excess energy, but everyone agrees that it's mostly useful as a neutron generator," Allen Wallace said. About 30 such devices exist around the country, owned by such entities as Los Alamos National Laboratories, NASA and universities. ("I bet I'm the only high school student that has one," Craig Wallace said.) Looking at Farnsworth's plans for the first time, Craig and his father both had the same thought: Now there's a science project. They set to work. They found a neutron detector in an Idaho Falls scrap metal yard. Craig built a neutron modulator (which slows down the emitted neutrons so they can be detected) out of a few hundred spare CDs. They found a broken turbo molecular pump lying forgotten at Deseret Industries. Too poor to buy pricey deuterium gas, Craig bought a container of deuterium oxide, or heavy water, for 20 bucks and came up with a way to make it a gas and get rid of the accompanying oxygen by passing it over heated magnesium filings. Not bad for a backyard amateur who considered himself more mechanic than scientist. "I teased him that he was now officially a science geek," Allen Wallace said. One professor Friday stood nervously away from Wallace's reactor — which is notably free from any shielding — but he needn't have worried: Wallace's detector measures 36 neutrons per minute just in background radiation from space, and the device's usual output adds only four neutrons per minute. People in airplanes absorb much more than that. It took two years of gathering materials and six months of assembly, but the final product actually, incongruously, works. "(This was) the day I achieved a Poisser plasma reaction," Wallace wrote next to a picture of the glowing ball. "Probably the coolest thing I have ever seen." Others thought it was cool, too. Wallace began winning contests — local, state, national — culminating in second place in the International Intel Science and Engineering Fair last May in Cleveland. He's now beginning work on a USU physics degree. "The whole thing combines chemistry, engineering, physics," he said. "Put them all together and you come out with something pretty sweet." Farnsworth would have been proud.
Wow! This would be yet another glaring example of how intelligence != common sense. I am impressed with his ingenuity in extracting radioactive substances from available materials, but I can't believe that a 17 year old would somehow think this a perfectly acceptable backyard activity. I'm sorry he was injured, but 'twas his just desserts. Too bad the EPA didn't bill him and his parents for the clean-up.
Posts: 5879 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
One of my friend's little brother builds crazy stuff like that in his back yard all the time. Well, maybe not a nuclear reactor. After a while we just stopped asking him what he was building.
posted
Just because you are well informed on how to make something doesn't mean you are well informed on what could happen if you do.
Posts: 1132 | Registered: Jul 2002
| IP: Logged |
When I was a teen I wanted to be a space pilot. Not a shuttle pilot, I wanted to be one of the guys flying to other planets on nuclear powered faster-than-light space ships. Wheee!
Technology didn't advance fast enough...
Posts: 1209 | Registered: Dec 2003
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
![[Laugh]](graemlins/laugh.gif)
![[No No]](graemlins/nono.gif)
![[ROFL]](graemlins/rofl.gif)
