HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: quest@iowegia.uucp (Steve J. Quest)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion,sci.physics
Subject: Re: The H-Bomb secret is out
Date: 10 Oct 92 18:00:45 GMT
Organization: Iowegia Public Access Usenet/UUCP, Clive IA USA.

houle@nmt.edu (Paul Houle) writes:

> 	This would actually be a pretty amusing home project.  Get several tons
> of natural uranium.  Process it into uranium hexaflouride and hope that you
> don't spill any nasty chemicals.  Probably would do much better using laser
> enrichment in your basement.  (Or maybe steal electricity from the local
> baseball stadium to run caultrons).  Maybe you build your own reactor,  which
> 
> 	Anyway,  let's suppose that you actually get away with this and
> pull your fuel rods after you get good burnup...  Say a year.  Now you need t
> worry about radiation protection and need to do the Purex process in your
> basement (nah,  maybe it's safer to do it in an outbuilding like the garage)
> and figure out what you're going to do with all the rest of the actinides and
> other waste components (Answer: vent the gases into the atmosphere and keep
> the rest in oil drums.  Surround your bomb with the crap so it will at
> least spread radiation around if it fizzles)
> 
> 	When you actually get the plutonium,  you then need to machine it,
> which I suppose would also be a pain since the dust and filings produced woul
> be very poisionous.  Just remember to wear your paper mask and to wash your
> hands before you eat.  It might also be a pain to actually machine a
> (barely) subcritical sphere from a larger piece of plutonium,  but I think
> that this can be accomplished by cutting it out of a cylinder that has
> certain dimensions.  Once you've done all this,  without your neighbors
> finding out,  the rest would be pretty easy.

Paul,

        I didn't say it would be "EASY", I only said it would be 
possible.  Take for example, when I rebuilt my automatic 
transmission.  I had never done this before, so I bought a 
Chiltons manual on it, a rebuild kit, and set to work.  Once I had 
the information I needed as well as the materials, all I needed 
was the effort.  Initially, I thought I might be in over my head, 
because if you have ever seen the insides to an automatic 
transmission, it is a mechanical nightmare!

        I took a deep breath, and began my work- piece by piece, 
taking undue amounts of time.  Finally, I was finished- and now in 
reflection I can truly say, it was really quite simple (but going 
in I thought I was over my head).  I can even do it again, only 
much faster the second time around as I now know what I am doing.

        You see, building a nuke is like anything else you do, it 
is hard the first time- but since you and I both know it can be 
done, and *HAS* been done, that part makes the task that much 
easier.  The pioneers did not have that luxury- they weren't sure 
if it would even work, or what the effects would be..........sq
From: logajan@ANUBIS.NETWORK.COM (John Logajan)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Verified "soundness" of PostScript posting
Date: 14 Oct 92 23:23:50 GMT

I retrieved the PostScript file from a remote news site, and printed it
again to see if all was well -- it worked, though the line count was 1906
rather than 1907, but the byte count remained at 34922.  No problemo.
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: M21742@mwvm.mitre.org
Subject: Re: Cornell archive-Erratum
Organization: The MITRE Corporation, McLean VA 22102
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 13:39:47 GMT

In article <168808F8F.M21742@mwvm.mitre.org>
M21742@mwvm.mitre.org writes:
>any astronomer list, I can't find him. Any help with his name and e-mail
>address will also be greatly appreciated. Apparently he doesn't follow
>this newsgroup.  I think he recently published a book and it was reviewed
>in either Science or Physics Today.  Help!  Thanks.
>
>E-MAIL TO: DICK@MITRE.ORG
>RICHARD A. (DICK) FORMAN AT MITRE IN MCLEAN, VA  (703) 883-6198
>DISCLAIMER: MY OPINIONS ARE MY OWN NOT MY EMPLOYER'S.
The correct name is Roman Vishniak--Sorry for the misrecollection. He
was the photographer who had the photographs of Poland and Polish Jews
from Hilter's days.  His grandson is ...?
 
E-MAIL TO: DICK@MITRE.ORG
RICHARD A. (DICK) FORMAN AT MITRE IN MCLEAN, VA  (703) 883-6198
DISCLAIMER: MY OPINIONS ARE MY OWN NOT MY EMPLOYER'S.
Xref: sparky sci.physics.fusion:2386 sci.physics:16120
From: quest@iowegia.uucp (Steve J. Quest)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion,sci.physics
Subject: Re: The H-Bomb secret is out
Date: 3 Oct 92 20:36:26 GMT
Organization: Iowegia Public Access Usenet/UUCP, Clive IA USA.

mbk@hamilton (Matt Kennel) writes:

> 
> Today's New York Times, and this month's issue of Physics Today, (about
> inertial confined fusion) reveal the 'secrets' of the hydrogen bomb.
> They were declassified since other civilian scientists working in other
> countries on inertial confined fusion already figured them out.
> 
> I'll get right down to it.
> 
> NYT:
> 
>   "The hydrogen bomb was invented in 1951 by Dr. Edward Teller and Dr. 
> Stanislaw M. Ulam after Dr. Teller suggested that radiation from an
> exploding atomic bomb could generate sufficient heat and pressure to
> ignite fusion fuel.
>    Dr Kidder{senior physicist at LANL} said Government officials thought
> the concept of radiation implotsion was so novel that it would be
> extremely difficult for foreign scientists to come up with it on
> their own."
> 
> The essential idea is that they have a "hohlraum" (german for hollow
> room) made out of an unspecified "high-Z" material (nudge nudge wink
> wink say no more) which reradiates X-rays that implode the pellet.

Matt,

        There is an even simpler explanation as to how H-bombs 
work.  Simply put, the core is an atomic bomb, around this bomb is 
loaded a sphere of tritium or deuterium (the fusionable fuel).
Around all of this is placed a jacket of plutonium enriched 
uranium, usually made from spent reactor rods.

        How this all works is simple, the A-bomb explodes causing 
trillions of degrees of localized heat.  Faster than this 
expanding heat is the neutrons which flow right through the heavy 
hydrogens and cause fission reactions in the jacket.  Essentially 
you will simultaneously have a bomb in the core blowing outward, 
and the neutrons cause the jacket to explode both away from the 
bomb and toward the center of the bomb (picture it in your mind).  
You now have a nuclear bottle containing fusible fuel, being 
squeezed with the force of two atom bombs, raised to temperatures 
where fusion is now possible.  Result, great amounts of energy 
released as the contents of the "nuclear bottle" break the 
confines of the forces holding them in, resulting in an explosion.

        Of course I have not gone into details about how fission 
works, everyone reading this sig already knows those details.  The 
nuclear bottle works with amazing efficiency.  Given fixed amounts 
of energy from fission core and jacket, you can have seemingly 
unlimited amounts of fusion energy by simply adding more tritium.  
The more fusible fuel you have, the bigger the bomb- the only 
thing that changes is the diameter of the jacket of course.  The 
core fission bomb remains the same always...............sq
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz)
Subject: Re: Accepting Results at Face Value
Organization: Computer Science Department University of Rochester
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 16:32:35 GMT

In article <00961C7C.86684060.22022@dancer.nscl.msu.edu> blue@nscl01.nscl.msu.edu writes:

>  Even
> the p + p -> d + positron + neutrino that I passed on previously will
> be easy to detect because positrons produce 0.511 MeV gammas.  Thanks
> to Mike Jamison for pointing that out to me.

Actually, the idea was p + p + e- -> d + neutrino.  There's no reason
to expect this to be happening (or, if it was, to expect the channel
making positrons to not be happening); it's only given in a playful
spirit as an example of a channel that would not produce much if any
detectable radiation.

	Paul
From: eightbal@burrow.cojones.com (Eightball)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Backyard Bombs?
Date: 16 Oct 92 00:45:36 GMT
Organization: The Burrow

Anybody who'd wate their time on such a device obviously is already suicidal, 
as the delivery mechanisms are either going to be too hard &/or expensive to 
obtain, or will be within the blast radius of anything with enough yield for 
terrorist actions. The terrorist threat is pretty inconsequential, as anybody 
collecting enough to do the job will be spotted by SOMEONE well before thay 
get anywhere near completion. Then, some paranoid first world nation will put 
in a surgical strike, and kill them before thay can get it working.  Why fret 
over the inconsequential?

William F. Hostman
Anchorage AK, USA

  ___
 /   \
( (8) ) the Eightball
 \___/
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: Jed Rothwell <72240.1256@compuserve.com>
Subject: Not Quite What I Had In Mind
Reply-To: Jed Rothwell <72240.1256@compuserve.com>
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 14:27:02 GMT

To: >INTERNET:fusion@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG

Richard Blue writes:

"Jed Rothwell now proposes to hide the ashes by inventing lots of different
reaction pathways. Let's see how well that is going to work if we can
detect nuclear reactions with a sensitivity of say 10^5 bellow what is
commensurate with the "heat". Have you got 100,000 different reactions in
mind, Jed?"

No, I was thinking more in terms of setting up a large scale experiment
that simultaneously monitors the electrolyte, the gas, and a wide spectrum
of particles that might be emitted by the cell. We might even want to check
for GeV particles; you never know. I am not sure if there is any practical
method of monitoring the cathode in real time.

The problem up until now has been that different experiments monitored
different products, but no single experiment monitored them all, in real
time. We know already that tritium and neutron production turns on, and
then turns off again at different loading levels, so perhaps the other
products come and go, and appear in the gas, and then are stored in the
cathode. If one experiment was to look in all imaginable places
simultaneously, perhaps it would see the mix of products change, and move
to different locations. This is an analogy, but as a fire consumes a log,
it emits many different products, at different intensities, in solid, gas
and even liquid form. Perhaps the CF reaction is as complicated as a fire
burning a log.

Have you got a better plan, Richard?

The program I have outlined above has one obvious drawback. It would cost
a great deal of money. Far more than anyone in the U.S. has got, except
McKubre. Because you, Huizenga, and the other so called "skeptics" oppose
all funding for cold fusion research, and would like to see all experiments
stamped out everywhere (I gather), this sort of experiment is out of the
question. I asked you some time ago, "how much funding do *you* want to
see." Since you never answered, and you never signed my Petition, I presume
you think that $10 million is far too much. A program like the one I
describe here would cost several million dollars.

We shall have to wait for the Japanese to do this for us.

- Jed
From: jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: Short lived events, can we see their granularity?
Date: 12 Oct 92 02:48:18 GMT
Reply-To: jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr)
Organization: SCRI, Florida State University

In article <9210081701.AA28218@anubis.network.com> logajan@ANUBIS.NETWORK.COM (John Logajan) writes:
>
>As the time gets shorter, the event gets hotter.
>
>This has implications for detection.

 ...

>How about neutron counters.  Suppose it gets a blast of neutrons lasting
>a few pico-seconds.  Does it count just one?  Or can it count the trillions
>that have flashed by in the pico-second wide burst?

This does not have a simple answer, since it depends a lot on the setup 
(number of detectors), the detector (its refractory time), the electronics 
(computer dead time), and the detection efficiency.  One can usually 
design a system to detect neutrons (or whatever) with a known efficiency 
under a wide range of circumstances, but no one system will work under 
all circumstances.  There are always tradeoffs. 

Now I am a theorist, but I do spend my leisure hours hassling my more 
numerous experimental colleagues about their detection systems.  I mean, 
how else can I take them seriously when they tell me they can measure 
the spin of a neutron after it has traveled 100 m through air!  These 
sorts of problems can be dealt with by segmenting the detector (Steve 
Jones can tell you about how his system detects bursts of several 
hundred neutrons with zero background).  Granted, a system designed 
to see a single neutron would, in the presence of lots of neutrons, 
have some pileup that would look like very energetic neutrons -- but 
this would be a sign that would be hard to miss.  

--
J. A. Carr                                    |  "The New Frontier of which I  
jac@gw.scri.fsu.edu                           |  speak is not a set of promises
Florida State University  B-186               |  -- it is a set of challenges."
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute |   John F. Kennedy (15 July 60)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: M21742@mwvm.mitre.org
Subject: Re: Secondary x-rays as nuclear evidence
Organization: The MITRE Corporation, McLean VA 22102
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 23:29:42 GMT

In article <1992Oct10.005913.8105@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
 
>
>In article <11024@sun13.scri.fsu.edu> jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr) writes:
>
>>Perhaps it is time to think real hard about nuclear reactions that release
>>only a fraction of a keV and that might have a lower coulomb barrier than
>>what we have considered so far....
>
>     This potential lowering of the coulomb barrier (pun recognized)
>     in the appropriate situations has always intrigued me (though I
>     hadn't before considered reactions that might be in the low keV's.
>     Are there any suitable ones?)
>
>     I hark back to interesting and basically unexplanable results
>     by Cecil /etal from the Colorado School of Mines (reported at the
>     early conference on 'cold fusion phenomena' at Los Alamos).  They
>     implanted D ions into a thin foil of Pd (95 keV implantation I believe).
>     They then turned off the beam, turned on a current (roughly 2 A/cm^2
>     in case it matters), and saw a particle spectrum that included a
>     reproducable broad feature around 5 MeV correlated with the current
>     and the implantation with better than 4 sigma statistics.
>     The interesting thing is that this is around the reaction
>
>           Pd(isotopes) + D -> Pd(isotope+1) + P + ~4-5 MeV
>
>     for the Pd isotopes 110 (11%), 108 (26%), 106 (27%), 104 (15%),
>     102 (1.02%) (The percentages are nominal abundances).  Cecil
>     mentioned that this might account for the rather broad feature since
>     the individual lines fit rather nicely in the broad feature.
>
>     Of course, this would not directly help explain things since one would
>     see 5 MeV stuff whizzing around in the lattice, and one would
>     presumably see consequences of the decay of Pd^111, Pd^109, Pd^107 etc.
>     However, if this does happen in this ion implantation setting (the big
>     if), the rather massive coulomb barrier (10^-4000 penetration factor
>     comes to mind) has been breached by some process.   So, maybe such
>     thoughts are applicable to other, lower energy, reactions.
>
>     Does anyone know what has become of Cecil's research, and can anyone think
>     of suitable reactions?  The only ones I can think of are in the MeV
>     range.
>
>                                 dale bass
>--
>C. R. Bass                                           crb7q@virginia.edu
>Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
>University of Virginia
>Charlottesville, Virginia                            (804) 924-7926
I second the request for followup by knowledgable persons. Just because
some of the knock-on experiments may have been contaminated, they all may not b
e.  Help please!
Dick Forman
 
E-MAIL TO: DICK@MITRE.ORG
RICHARD A. (DICK) FORMAN AT MITRE IN MCLEAN, VA  (703) 883-6198
DISCLAIMER: MY OPINIONS ARE MY OWN NOT MY EMPLOYER'S.
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: blue@nscl01.nscl.msu.edu
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Accepting Results at Face Value
Date: 8 Oct 92 14:35:25 GMT
Reply-To: blue@nscl01.nscl.msu.edu
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway

Jed Rothwell continues to struggle to find a way to wrap up a collection
of miscellaneaous conflicting experimental results in a way that will
come out in the end supporting the reality of Cold Fusion.  There has,
however, always been one valid logical choice to make in evaluating
the result of each of the experiments that gave an indication of a
positive result.  It is alway possible that the experiment is wrong!
In fact darned few of the experimental results put forward in support
of cold fusion were worthy of being given a second thought.  I believe
that supporters of cold fusion do their cause a disservice by failing
to drop from further consideration the obviously poorly founded claims
for positive results.  It is too easy to shoot down Ying's experiment
and the crazy ideas that were attached to it so just forget it and
the multitude of others that had gone before.  The whole notion of
reactions turning on and off under the influence of a variety of
unknown perturbing influences to change the detectible reaction products
from tritium to neutrons to helium to GeV particles to shrinking
atoms to. . .whatever, is pathological with a capital P.  Make a
hypothesis, put it to the test of experiment, and then accept the
result (after making an honest assessment of possible errors).

So where should we go form here?  Launch another multimillion dollar
research program?  I don't see that 10 million dollars or even 1 million
dollars can be well spent on cold fusion.  McKubre has plenty of funding
to expand his efforts to include a basic nuclear radiation detection
system to his experiments.  If he has a cell that is truly producing
heat from a nuclear reaction it will take only a few hours with a basic
NaI gamma detector and MCA to show that nothing is happening.  If
he wants to pay someone $1 million to get that result I am sure he
would get some volunteers right off this net.  For low budget operations
I recommendation would be the NaI approach.  Neutrons, as we all know by
now, will produce 2.225 MeV gammas upon capture by hydrogen.  Assorted
other things, including the GeV helium ions, will also register.  Even
the p + p -> d + positron + neutrino that I passed on previously will
be easy to detect because positrons produce 0.511 MeV gammas.  Thanks
to Mike Jamison for pointing that out to me.  If you want to extend
the search down to X-ray energies you will have to take some care to
keep the effective window thickness of the detector low, but if that
is done NaI would cover that possibility as well.  Just remember, if
it isn't clearly above background by a huge factor, you have a nul
result as far as cold fusion at the watt level is concerned.  

Dick Blue
NSCL @ MSU
From: logajan@ANUBIS.NETWORK.COM (John Logajan)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: And High Loading is Scrutinized
Date: 10 Oct 92 18:13:53 GMT

I wrote:
> less resolution combined with overly conservative open systems
> corrections had the effect of delaying the detection of anomalous heat --
> giving rise to the notion of the need for long charging times.

Similarly, such factors could have misled one to the conclusion that super
high loading factors were needed for onset -- though this is less certain.

If super high loading was achieved by extended periods of high current
operation, this would have masked the low level early onset of anomalous
heat.  The growth of anomalous heat would not have been noticed until it
had been maturing for some time.  Its detection would therefore likely
have been attributed, post hoc ergo propter hoc, to the concurrent level
of D loading.

However, if high levels of loading are achieved quickly, and if this does
correlate to faster and more energetic levels of anomalous heat onset, then
my above suggestion may be incomplete to the point of being misleading.


- John Logajan MS010, Network Systems; 7600 Boone Ave; Brooklyn Park, MN 55428
- logajan@network.com, 612-424-4888, Fax 612-424-2853
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: M21742@mwvm.mitre.org
Subject: Cornell archive
Organization: The MITRE Corporation, McLean VA 22102
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 14:12:30 GMT

Does anyone know if the Cornell archive is available via ftp?
I am currently writing an update on my earlier submission to Science,
for submission to the Journal of Chemical Physics, and would like to do
a comprehensive job of referencing other workers. A friend downloaded
Dieter's archive for me last week. I need the archive in electronic form for
my AT so that I can feed it to Lotus Magellan for analysis.  The thought of wai
ting for my AT to do its thing on the contents of 55 microfloppys is daunting,
but I hope not to have a crash. I'll do it in chunks with backup inbetween.
I really need the archive as I note that I have lost the e-mail address of
Roman Vichinsky's grandson whom I discussed this stuff with on the net in
'89.  Since I no longer remember his name or university and I don't have
any astronomer list, I can't find him. Any help with his name and e-mail
address will also be greatly appreciated. Apparently he doesn't follow
this newsgroup.  I think he recently published a book and it was reviewed
in either Science or Physics Today.  Help!  Thanks.
 
E-MAIL TO: DICK@MITRE.ORG
RICHARD A. (DICK) FORMAN AT MITRE IN MCLEAN, VA  (703) 883-6198
DISCLAIMER: MY OPINIONS ARE MY OWN NOT MY EMPLOYER'S.
Xref: sparky sci.physics.fusion:2416 sci.physics:16220
From: houle@nmt.edu (Paul Houle)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion,sci.physics
Subject: Re: The H-Bomb secret is out
Date: 8 Oct 92 21:34:04 GMT
Article-I.D.: nmt.1992Oct8.213404.4301
Organization: New Mexico Tech

In article <mcirvin.718568172@husc8> mcirvin@husc8.harvard.edu (Mcirvin) writes:
>houle@nmt.edu (Paul Houle) writes:
>
>Don't forget the construction of the explosive lenses, if you've
>decided to wimp out and use plutonium!  And that's just the
>fission trigger, if you really want an H-bomb...

	Well,  I don't think that fabricating the lenses would be all that
hard,  presuming that you have access to explosive materials that are not
highly sensitive (which you wouldn't want to use in an A-bomb anyway) and
that are machinable).  I think that the very best people with basement
workshops could accomplish this.  (Just look it up in ~The poor man's
James Bond~ :-)

	Chances are,  one bomb is enough for neighborhood nuclear superiority,
and many kinds of terrorist actions (We figured that George Hayduke could
take out the Glen Canyon dam with a few kT;  we haven't tested Abbey's
claim that nobody downstream would get killed -- that's a really hard
computational physics problem:  an open-channel problem involving the
Grand Canyon! ) especially if you can shoot one off in some place that wouldn't
be missed:  Detroit,  Pittsburg,  Plattsburg,  Socorro.  If you really need
it to be an H-bomb,  then you need to figure out a design.

	Judging from what I've read from people who actually built the damn
things,  there are probably two or three ways to make an H-bomb.  One of
them is better than all the rest (the Teller-Ulam or Sahkarov's "Third Idea").
From what I've seen on the net (and in ~The Atlantic~) there are two hundred
ways to build an H-bomb that doesn't work.  :-)


-- 
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion