Single circuits generate nuclear reactions

[b0rg13]

Hello gentlemen. 

Parts:
Carbon Rod
Permanent Magnets
HV power supply (100-300volts)
Collector (does not have to be toroid, can be inductor).

Hints:
Use permanent magnets for your colinear B-field bias. 
No thoriated tungsten!
No spark gap.

Be extremely careful.  God be with you.

-Feynman

PS  use aluminum shielding

hi Feynman , could you post a pic of how this should be set up...and maybe a good place for a fuse or two, so as not to melt stuff, thanks a bunch

[Feynman]

@stefan
The aluminum oxide is not necessary, it was just a new theoretical way to capture the beta electrons. We have not used it yet.  Do not worry about it too much, the aluminum oxide theory has not been experimentally proven , it's just an idea so far.  Your picture is correct, just remove the aluminum oxide and replace with a toroid or inductor for collection. The device is that simple.  Discharge 100-300V into neodynium magnetic polarized carbon rod and you will get a LOT of beta.  You can capture them with an inductor or toroid instead if you like, or a better method which waits to be discovered.

Who is interviewing whom ?

Dr. F is interviewing Dr. R and Dr. T

What is the circuit diagram of the units ?

Don't have them written up yet, but it's retarded simple.  Discharge 100-300V+ of energy into carbon rod polarized with strong magnet.  You will get out tons and tons of beta.  Collect the beta.   Rinse, repeat.

Is it just a pulse high voltage generator powering a graphite rod ?

Yes!

How do you get the free electrons out of the graphite rod ?

That's the problem we must solve!  We must convert the beta rays to electricity.  Inductor works but it inefficient.  We also must use PWM for feedback to connect output to input, otherwise you will get runaway condition.

Just a coil around it or something else ?

That is one way (inductor/toroid), but it's not a very good one.

I guess the sparking is important, right ?

Spark gap does not appear to be necessary.  But you should replicate and see if affects your results. 

@all
The trick here is converting these beta particles to useful energy.  This is not as easy as it sounds. Be creative if you like.

@Koen
Can you please comment on your knowledge of betavoltaics?  We need some help here! 

@b0rg
Original experiment resulted in beta rays which were far FAR in excess of 1seivert from 6VDC input.  In other words, the energy was so high it maxed out the geiger counter. Cameras also get fried. I will try my best to a replication tonight and post pictures after I give my camera a tinfoil hat.

[aleks]

As far as I know it doesn't "look like" anything, it's just a piece of beta emitting material, and you can only
"see" that when you put your geiger counter next to it...

So, you are not right about my idea here. I'm trying to say it is misleading to show photo and say 'it's fusion'. Beside that seeing a purple glow around the device is to be expected due to air ozonation/ionization caused by free electrons travelling around.

[Koen1]

So, you are not right about my idea here. I'm trying to say it is misleading to show photo and say 'it's fusion'.

Okay, you're right there. Showing semi-molten metal and saying "it's fusion" isn't very usefull.
Molten metal could be the result of fusion but we can't really see that.

Beside that seeing a purple glow around the device is to be expected due to air ozonation/ionization caused by free electrons travelling around.

That depends entirely on how much air you allow to ionise. Seems to me allowing the desired charges to escape the reactor chamber into the
surrounding air means losing a bunch of the energy you want to collect... So if the thing collects the energy, there souldn't be much surrounding
air ionisation going on at all around the device.
Beside that, beta emitters are not exactly known for their purple halos... You need to add phosphorus to turn it into visible light, generally.
Yes, Cherenkov light is purple-ish, but only generated when gamma collides with glass etc... Are you perhaps confusing the two?

@Feynman: what exactly do you want to know about beta emitters?
I was already thinking of using "standard" techniques for collecting beta particles like they use in beta-batteries...
Basically I was considering to build a beta battery with the Protelf process as beta source.
Problem is that most beta "atomic batteries" are not intended to produce nor handle such high output as we're talking
about here... But I'll dive in my collection and see if I can find a usefull setup for our purposes.

[Feynman]

@Koen

I think I guess we are trying to make a 'beta battery' in the sense where the beta particles strike a surface, perhaps displacing charge, in order to create a potential which gives us nice high usable current. At present, we are losing many beta particles by letting them fly past our collector, and consequently we are not getting high enough current density on the output (way below theoretical maximum), although this process does appear to greatly exceed COP=1.  Although we are able to get 'runaway' , and this is great for lab fun and excitement, it is not as useful for a generator to run your house.

Primarily we need two things

1) An efficient method of capturing and converting beta rays into usable voltage and current.
2) A method of PWM feedback which we can connect the output back to the input without the threat of 'runaway' condition.