Other collecting activities?

On Friday 16 April 2004 23:50, ben franchuk wrote: While I'd personally love the idea, it seems the NRC (and probably some people form other 3-letter government orgs) don't like people posessing large amounts of radioactive materials; especially things like Pu-239 or U-235... And I don't think I'd want to maintain a large scale atomic power plant, either. It'd be interesting, however, to set up a small scale breeder reactor, like the PUR-1 that Purdue has, or maybe even something that would fit on a table top (although it's hard to go critical with that little of mass). Also, don't forget you'd have to cool the machines and power plant (unless you live in Alaska.. or northern Canada :). Of course, the gov't (and neighbors) probably also would have something to say about the x-ray equipment I've collected. I just wish I had the time to set up a nice lead-shielded box for making x-ray photos of stuff. I've got basically everything I need, I just need to form the box out of clumps of lead. What I need is a blast furnace to melt the lead; my stove sorta works, but not quite well enough. So I guess my "other" collections would include: 1) Video editing stuff 2) Electronic test equipment 3) Anything with tubes in it that I can get cheaply...which isn't too difficult around Purdue 4) "Nuclear" equipment, like geiger counters, scalers, x-ray tubes & power supplies (some of this overlaps with #3) 5) High-voltage gear, like power supplies (this overlaps with #3 and #4) At some point, I want to combine 4 and 5, and make a small linear accelerator, but I don't have any ideas on what to do for it (and would need somewhere to put it...underground would probably be a Good Idea (TM)). Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCS --- http://www.itap.purdue.edu/rcs/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org