Neutron tube?

[sgt_bear]

Hello,

I follow quite an extensive list of searches on ebay, including the radiation related ones. Yesterday i saw an interesting item, sadly its already gone.

[broken link removed - Steven]

The seller claims that this is a neutron generator tube that produces 14MeV Neutrons at a rate from 1 to 2.7x10^9 neutrons/s. The working voltage is around 6kV.

So my question here is, would a tube like this work for like neutron activation experiments that can be done with a fusor? Compared to the size,cost and challenge of building a fusor, this tube looks like a wonderfull alternative.
Yet, these tubes only last 200hrs in operation, but in 200hrs you can do alot of experiments...or?

Does someone knows if these tubes are still produced and what their price is? Even if they are priced 2k$ or so, it probably would still be cheaer than a fusor and does not require a lot of work..

[Sesselmann]

Wow, very interesting find, it must contain tritium or He3, but 6kV potential sounds very low for that kind of output, must be a beam on target device. The only place I could recommend asking is

[broken link removed - Steven]

Steven

[pietkuip]

There has been an effort to develop a pyroelectric accelerator as a neutron source, but I cannot find a commercial supplier.

Amptek has a pyroelectric x-ray generator: [broken link removed - Steven]

[Sesselmann]

I haven't reported it here on this forum yet, but I have had quite a bit of success lately with my neutron generator. After the last changes I made, the stability of the system has improved immensely and I seem to be getting a decent neutron output > 10^6 n/s. Haven't done any activation experiments yet, because I am still making adjustments to the machine, but it's on my list.

I attach a quick summary from one of my recent experiments.

Steven

[sgt_bear]

Looks like these tubes use also deuterium for creating neturons, generators like this seem used for oil well logging, there are quite a few different companies who make them

For example this:
http://www.starfireindustries.com/uploa ... v02-17.pdf

schematic of these tubes can be seen here.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Sch ... _284545355