That guy who made his own reactor

[bill nye scienceguy!]

using tin foil and fissile material from 1950s glow in the dark stuff. does anyone have a link/ know anything about this? i vaguely remember reading about it a while back but maybe i just dreamt it or something...?

 

[CarlB]

I read the book, here it is:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/037550351X/?tag=pfamazon01-20

If you read it carefully, you will find that all the actual evidence that he got the reactor to run is due to the boy scout himself. My guess on this is that nothing significant actually happened, but that the author of the book was a little too easily convinced.

 

[bill nye scienceguy!]

yeah, i was a bit sceptical about how he could have made it work when i thought about it. I'm glad i didnt just make the whole thing up though.

 

[Trino]

Anybody knows why Xe135 captures neutrons at such huge cross section at thermal energies? Is it something related with the nuclear structure of the final nucleus Xe136?
Thanks

 

[Pieter Kuiper]

There also exists a tv documentary:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0378468/

Quite interesting. If there really was in increase of the thorium activity, it must be attributed to the growing amounts of radioactive thorium progeny after Hahn had isolated the material from lantern mantles.