David Hahn’s “nuclear reactor”

So, I’ve heard many outlets refer to David Hahn’s “nuclear reactor” as a “breeder reactor” when it was more like a pile (second pic related), bevause in order to make a breeder reactor you would need a massive industrial project that would be worth the economy of an entire nation to afford and wouldn’t be possible for someone like him to hide from the authorities. But one part that confused me was the “gun” he made for the device. It was made from a Beryllium Copper strip (like a piece of film) with tritium waxed over it. First of all, I don’t see how this would work for many reasons, secondly I doubt that it even would work even if you somehow got the right amount materials in a sufficient enough quantity, because Beryllium copper is like 0.5 - 3% Beryllium and the Beryllium that nuclear facilities use is pure non-alloy Beryllium. And the fact that Tritium is a gas, not a wax. Does anyone know what the hell these media sources were talking about?

Attached: BC122CC4-198A-4011-A42E-115A076BA097.jpeg (250x333 966.75 KB, 37K)

Other urls found in this thread:

harpers.org/archive/1998/11/the-radioactive-boy-scout/?single=1
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_cross_section
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_moderator
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKER
m.youtube.com/watch?v=Rjk55FZBPKk
youtube.com/watch?v=yx_XoqXNtRM
youtube.com/watch?v=Ja03J1RQ3Hw&list=PLGueTK9Crnm-i0QfmusYrNJ4p5RC4YDlY&index=1
youtu.be/LmlAYnFF_s8?t=466
youtube.com/watch?v=SsdLDFtbdrA
osti.gov/etdeweb/servlets/purl/66190
wikiwand.com/en/Nuclear_meltdown
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

This is part of an entry from David Hahn's wiki entry, and the original article that outlines that Hahn's reactor was indeed an attempt at creating, not a successful creation of, a breeder reactor.
God rest Hahn, I just hope he gets to research and fuck around with nuclear reactors in heaven.
harpers.org/archive/1998/11/the-radioactive-boy-scout/?single=1

Attached: Hahn.jpg (700x511, 320.03K)

That's what I'd tell people if I was an authority and I wanted to stop people from trying.

It's all made up, he collected some radioactive materials and the media jumped on it calling it a "nuclear reactor!" They did the same recently with a little kid who had supposedly built a fully working fusion reactor, its all bs to sell papers/get clicks.

I agree. F for Hahn. But really though, what was that Beryllium/Tritium gun for? Ive never heard of any nuclear reactor use something similar. Did he just put the Uranium in front of the reactor and get behind the Uranium powder that he intended on turning into Plutonium and point the thing at it? That sounds weird. So he basically just took some piece of film, spread a bunch of tritium on the whole strip, picked the strip up with his bare hand (when it would’ve been safer to wear a Hazmat suit doing this since it’s Beryllium and that shit is some nasty stuff) and pointed that damn thing at the Uranium? I know that Beryllium can be extracted from Beryllium Copper by simply melting it to release the carcinogenic Beryllium dust and oxides, but I seriously don’t see how this reactor would work.

He built a neutron gun and died of radiation poisoning.

He drank himself to death IIRC.

And fentanyl was found in his system too I believe.

Turns out it's incredibly easy to do, but getting proper materials is rather tricky.
Putting it together safely might take a little more thought put into it than what Hahn displayed.

For a pile reactor, you’d need a sufficient quantity of all the materials listed, including the Americium, Radium, Barium Sulfate, Thorium, Lithium, Uranium (although you could get this naturally), and Beryllium and Tritium possibly. For the Americium alone, you’d need about $850 billion USD worth of smoke detectors for it, which is around about 190 - 200 billion smoke detectors just for one component of the radioactive core. You could get a patent and use that as your excuse of obtaining all of the ingredients (at least, theoretically), but even then you’d probably (well, most likely) need a license in order to even test your reactor, so even then you’d have to lie about the reason for it, and find something else that you can come up with that would also require all of those ingredients with an idea you invented, so that you can trick them into thinking that you’re not building a nuclear reactor.

And btw, that’s if you wanted to make Plutonium. I’m not talking about enriched Uranium-235, which can be found in Pitchblende or could be enriched from some Uranium-238 using a SILEX process.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK

It is possible to use natural uranium in a reactor with basically nothing but chemical processing. You just need a good moderator. The problem that most of these natural uranium reactors have is a positive void coefficient that can lead to a steam explosion like what happened with Chernobyl. If you somehow manage to get the materials for a reactor, learn from the mistakes of the past and avoid the flaws of the RBMK.

To have a functioning nuclear reactor, you need to refine uranium first so that you have a certain ratio of the heavier isotope mixed with the much more common lighter isotope.

Since both isotopes chemically bond the same way with other chemicals, the only way to refine uranium is either with a centrifuge or gravity. It also requires more uranium and machinery than this kid had.

But that's wrong in more ways than one. First, the heavier isotope U238 is more common by far. 99.2% of all natural uranium is U238, only 0.7% is the fissile U235. It's the U235 or a similar fissile material that is needed for a nuclear reactor.

Second, there have been several reactors designed to work with very little enrichment or with natural uranium. They do this by using lots of moderating material and sometimes neutron reflectors. Ideal moderators for natural uranium reactors are heavy water (which is expensive) and graphite (which can be dangerous depending on the design of the core, but is far more affordable). Neutron reflectors, such as tungsten carbide blocks or plates, can be used to confine free neutrons in a reactor until they are absorbed by the fuel.

Centrifuge yes, but gravity? I assume you're referring to the Calutron process. Actually those used magnetic fields for the deflection, in order to keep the size of the machine down. The higher massed U238 had more inertia, so it deflected less and impacted the sample plates in a different location than the U235 ions.

It is possible to make a working power or breeder reactor using non-enriched natural uranium, you just need a reactor designed for it. Choose a moderator with high scatter and low capture. Light water (protium) is…okay when using enriched fuels, but it isn't suitable as a moderator with natural uranium until enough of the U238 has been bred into daughter products, mostly Pu239. Heavy water can be bought online, but it's expensive. Graphite really is the best choice for a desktop project reactor, and also maybe for industrial/commercial though extra care needs to be taken with the design to prevent run-away reactions.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_cross_section
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_moderator

RBMK was based, cheap and simple even if it was short on safety features. Russia has a prototype improved design of it:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKER
CANDU is shit because it still requires heavy water.

Speaking of that, I wonder if something like this would work. It’s a low resolution homemade Raman laser.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=Rjk55FZBPKk

Sorry, I got the isotopes mixed up, you're right, the fission doesn't start with the stable heavier isotope

The problem with the RBMK and all other designs where the fuel is placed in a solid block of graphite is that you need to keep control rods in the core block to shut down the reactor. They don't inherently "fail safe". That is, when they experience a sudden rise in temperature, the rods must be forced into the core to stop the reaction. If the reactivity of the core goes too high the control rods may not be able to quench the reaction before the core melts down.

Graphite could still be used as a primary moderator, but I'd feel safer if the graphite were inserted into the core as moderator rods or blades. That way they can automatically retract when things get out of hand, and stop facilitating the reaction. It would make servicing the core easier since the saturated graphite could be more easily replaced, and would make the shutdown core more stable since it wouldn't be fighting to start up as soon as the control material were withdrawn. The advantage of heavy water as a moderator is that in the event it all boils away, it stops moderating the reactor, causing the fuel to stop reacting and lose heat. If graphite is going to be used it needs to be used in a safe way.

Also, since the disaster at Chernobyl was a steam explosion, having emergency pressure relief valves probably could have stopped the core from exploding the way it did. It would still have melted down, the meltdown is what caused the steam to blow off the UBS and expose the core interior, but the incident probably would have been reduced from a catastrophic explosion to a serious environmental contamination. The CANDU reactor includes a system for venting steam into a containment building in an emergency and the whole thing requires no power and works automatically, two very important features in a core safety system.
youtube.com/watch?v=yx_XoqXNtRM

The vast majority of meltdowns, including Chernobyl, happened AFTER the reaction has already stopped.

The Daii-Ichi accident was typical in this aspect, the problem isn't not stopping fission, but handling the decay heat while the turbine that powers the circulation/cooling system is off.

Also, Chernobyl plant did not truly explode, the moderating graphite caught fire when the steam lifted the biological shield and allowed oxygen to enter the reactor.

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this feels like splitting hairs.

Doesn't vodka protect you from radiation ala s.t.a.l.k.e.r memes?

yes if you are radiation you must drink

How does radiation materialize into a form that can drink??

I didn't say it went off like a nuclear bomb. It was a steam explosion. That's a thing that happens when the internal pressure of a pressure vessel exceeds the allowable stress of the wall of the pressure vessel.

For anyone interested in how this sort of thing is calculated check out this video playlist:
youtube.com/watch?v=Ja03J1RQ3Hw&list=PLGueTK9Crnm-i0QfmusYrNJ4p5RC4YDlY&index=1

As for the second explosion, there is no definite answer on what exactly that was. Oxygen entering the core and mixing with the hydrogen is the main hypothesis but there is another possibility. It could have been caused by ions from the liquid zirconium cladding in a coulomb explosion. Zirconium doesn't normally act this way in water but if it were melted down and exposed to enough ionizing radiation it may have become capable of this effect.

For those interested in a technical explanation of what I'm talking about:
youtu.be/LmlAYnFF_s8?t=466 - High speed camera reveals why sodium explodes!
youtube.com/watch?v=SsdLDFtbdrA - HBOs Chernobyl: BUSTED!

That picture you posted is fake and gay.

>radiation is totally measured in "cm" and its in no way a wave height chart from the earthquake that (((greenpeace))) simply said was radiation and spread everywhere without even removing the key from the corner because people are so fucking stupid they just believe its a wall of death poisoning the entire earth
Strelok come on, this is fucking embarrassing.

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These were the improvements in the MKER, what do you think?:
osti.gov/etdeweb/servlets/purl/66190

further details:

wikiwand.com/en/Nuclear_meltdown

Many people who underestimate just how dangerous David Hahn’s reactor was really do fail to see that his neutron gun actually was capable of producing sufficient fissile material. It consists of a lead block with a hole drilled in one side for you to insert Radium crystals and shavings from Beryllium strips coated in Tritium from scraping the waxy substance on glow-in-the-dark gun and bow sights that hold them together, with Thorium-232 strips around the lead block to act as the foil with another lead block placed on top of it to keep it held in place and to sustain the reaction. What happens is the Thorium-232 is converted into Thorium-233 and then finally, Uranium-233, which can not only be used to fuel a nuclear reactor, but also to make nuclear bombs. And yet naysayers of David think that his reactor wouldn’t have done anything other than be just a pile of radioactive garbage.

It’s probably the simplest reactor ever built. It’s so simple that anybody could understand it. He took some pitchblende, pounded it up into a powder with a hammer, mixed the powder with nitric acid (saltpeter + sodium bisulfate) to make Uranyl Nitrate powder, took thousands of old Coleman camping lantern mantles, burned them into fine black ash, then mixed them on a sheet of aluminum foil with some lithium cut from $1,000 worth of lithium batteries using wire strippers, heated it in a tin can filled with cooking oil over a bunsen burner to starve the Thorium Dioxide from the mantles to make purified Thorium-232, took a bunch of paint chips off of Radium clocks and a bottle of Radium paint that he took off a counter at an antique store, took some Barium Sulfate that he got from nurses at a hospital’s radiology ward, telling them he needed it for a “scouting project” to earn his merit badge, heated it until it liquified, mixed in the bottle of Radium-226 paint and paint chips, then strained it through a coffee filter into a beaker, then dehydrated the glowing Radium that was in the beaker into a crystalline salt, then took over 100 smoke detectors, disassembled them and took out the golden matrix to extract the Americium-241 buttons contained within each of them, then he filed and pulverized both the Americium buttons and Radium salt into a fine powder, placed them inside a sheet of aluminum foil, added some shavings of Beryllium from some Beryllium strips that he got from a friend who ordered samples for a chemistry lab at a community college, and some aluminum shavings to act as his radioactive core, then wrapped some small 1/8” foil wrapped cubes of Uranyl Nitrate powder and Thorium ash around the core in a checkerboard design in a bigger cube around the core, then he surrounded this with some smaller Thorium and Carbon foil wrapped cubes (they look like Bouillon cubes) in the same alternating “checkerboard” pattern, then he surrounded these cubes on all six sides with slightly larger foil-wrapped cubes of Thorium ash (Thorium-232), Thorium strips (Thorium-233 / Uranium-233) and Carbon cubes, and strapped it all in duct tape and added Cobalt drill bits as the control rods, as Cobalt absorbs neutrons, but does not become fissible (he should’ve done this earlier so his reactor wouldn’t have overheated the way it did), and then he had his nuclear reactor. I believe he would place some pitchblende powder in front of the reactor (possibly also aiming his neutron gun at it from behind?), which could make tiny mouse bite amounts of Plutonium-239 (and by small, I’m talking attograms).