kitchen nuclear reactor

I saw a documentary about this guy on tv - he basically collected all the radioactive material he could find everything from the glow-in-the-dark paint on a clocks hands to the strips of nuclear material in a fire alarm
he used a book that was printed by "the boy scouts" on how a nuclear reactor works and he built one in his garden - a very small one - now 4 questions
suppose I found info on the net about building such a reactor to power my house -
1) would it be legal ?
2) would it be unwise to build one
3) what would happen if a meltdown occurred?
4) does anyone know the documentary or anything about the guy I am talking about? he built his in a garden shed and he had a meltdown but I forgot what happened to him - I think it was back in the 1960's or 70's that he built it but the documentary was on I think about 3 years - maybe 5 years ago ?

oh hang on I found this link
http://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/radscout.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/opinion/story/0,12981,1261144,00.html

sorry I just found all the info I was looking for David Hahn was a boyscout working toward a badge in nuclear physics

 

Sorry, no melt down as you could not gather enough stuff to reach that kind of temperature, however you can rest assured that you would die of radiation due to neutrons before it got hot. That was one thing that they detected for several blocks from the kids house in the story.

 

Brilliant story though eh?
I only saw about 3/4 of the documentary and since then I always dreamed of trying to build one - I dont think I'll bother after reading that !!!!!!
I knew there had to be a catch else we'd all have our own nuclear generators in the back yard !

 

Building a fusion tokamak in back yard.
Does anyone know how to keep that damn tritium fusing?
Keeps sputtering out for me.

Occam

 

.

 

yeah - nuclear reactors are a wierd thing - I think governments are right to be looking back into the use of them - I think it may be (strangely enough) the answer to the worlds Co2 problems

 

​

The Yankee Rowe nuclear plant prior to decommissioning.


Thank God they finally got rid of the most dangerous plant in the Nation





Hotwater

 

Slap a few plutonium bateries together.
And you a have a [very low temp] reactor.
But still, a reactor.

Occam

 

That must have been one hell of a dangerous plant ! which one was it ?- was it the spruce or the pine - one of those plants seems to have swept away a whole powerstation ! I didnt think they could do that as they look like ordinary trees

great - I'll go and buy some plutonium batteries -
do duracell make them?
If I use them on my car will my car do about a 1000 miles an hour when I plug them in?
Also - If I become irradiated will I glow in the dark ?
can I buy some at woolworths?

 

Columbo,

I heard from a reliable source in the government that the plant magically turned in a small village north of Shanghai :H



Hotwater

 

Yeah man also being by that nuclear powerstation could mean that whichever plant destroyed the station could be gaining strength in shanghai - my god were gonna be over run by a crazy wooden village from shanghai that eats evrything in its path
people will look and go crazy and start saying
"my god its eating everything in its path"
It will be awful it could be eating half of china right now has anyone got any news about a shanghai village thats mysteriously becoming a town ?

 

Nuclear scientists are in a quandary over what to do, as for the populace, psychiatrists have diagnosed the condition and the panic which ensued and have labeled it The China Syndrome



Hotwater

 

OMFG not CHINA SYNDROME where whole vilages are suddenly irradiated and move to attack the west!!!!! JEEZ the attack of the killer villages all over again !!!!!
OMFG I gotta call my mom she's the one of the firs scientists that documented it !!!!
Call the CIA and MI6 I will get her on the first chopper over to hong kong -
It maybe too late - I will go with her I('ve always fancied a holiday in HK
anyone interested see this link
http://userpages.chorus.net/msutinen/gasmask.jpg
its my dads, aunties, friends brother on patrol during the last attack of the killer villages - on the lookout for killer villages disguised as ordinary sleepy little hovels DOOD GET SOME TROOPS AS WELL - KICK UP A FUSS AND GET THE ENTIRE WEST INTO ACTION AGAINST IT !!!
I will get my dads, aunties, friends brothers army clobber and wear it !
But try not to blab this to the whole of HF or everyone will panic

 

A stack of plutonium batteries also constitues a
'reactor in your back yard'
After all their power is derived from heat due to neutron bombardment.

 

PS...china syndrome is crud.. we all know even a meltdown large enough to puncture crustal plates would 'go away' when reaching magma core.
We float on a sea of lava.
[thus pennywise was right..'we all float down here']
Occam

 

At the risk of sounding very stupid here, dont Plutonium batteries get their heat from radioactive decay? It strikes me that to get neutrons into a plutonium core would take energy and thus not be all that useful for things like satellites where a neutron gun is not practical. I always thought it was heat from deacy used by a thermocouple.

From the original post id be surprised if such as random collection of elements would be fissile in any kind of productive way anyway. Even if it was making a decent neutron source isn't easy.

 

I havent a clue what all you nuclear scientists are on about - just as well I didnt try and make a nuclear reactor !

Tony did you read the story on the radioactive boy scout ?
He seemed to find it easy back then to make a neutron gun or some kind of gun
I dont understand what this concept is anyway could someone point a link to what a neutron gun is plz?

 

I have read the article, it sounds like he had got to the basics of neutron moderation and by the sounds of it he was indeed producing fission in Uranium. But for a reactor you need a sustainable reaction which requires a certain amount of material, I cant remember the exact amount sure I had it as a question in the past. The logic here is that one neutron can break up one uranium nucleus, producing 3 further neutrons. For a reactor these must be absorbed the larger the chunk of uranium the greater the chance of a reaction, there is a minimum radius for this. From the article I don't think he was there, or particularly close. At the same time it was a fair achievement, not to say an incredibly dangerous one.

 

A neutron gun or source, is a way of getting neutrons. A neutron, unlike an electron and proton, is unstable outside of the atom and only lives for about 15 mins so they need to be produced as needed. There a large number of ways of doing it, I believe the alpha particle into a light metal trick is the original technique but there are a huge number of ways of doing it. Im sure having a wonder on wiki will give most of them.

 

F

True

I stand corrected...

Occam