Bench Degree·NUCLEAR POWERchapter

Appendix A: The Bench

The whole volume’s kit in one place. Every experiment in this book is on this list, so you should never have to stop mid-chapter and wait two days for a delivery. Each chapter names what it needs when it needs it and points back here; if you would rather order once and be done, order from this list.

Owning none of it, the whole volume comes to about $250 to $310. Chapter 18 sets the same bill out as a six-weekend programme, in order, and this page is the shopping list that goes with it.

One instrument is most of the value and it costs $60 to $100. A Geiger-Müller counter with a wide-window tube appears in Chapters 1, 5, 6 and 7, it will last the rest of your life, and it is the only thing here that turns an argument about radiation into a number.

Nothing is specified by brand or by part number. Every item is described by function, size or grade, so the list stays orderable from anyone, anywhere, for as long as the book exists. Suppliers change and a printed link dies permanently. A specification does not.

Section 1: The starter set, for Chapters 1 to 7

Starter set total: about $190 to $250, and $60 to $100 of that is the counter.

Section 2: Added for Chapters 8 to 18

Second set total: about $130, plus the mousetraps.

Section 3: Free, and worth more than most of what is above

Section 4: The one expensive thing, and whether you need it

A model stationary steam engine. A Mamod or Wilesco with a boiler, a throttle, a piston and a flywheel is $150 to $350 secondhand, and it is the only item in this volume that costs more than the counter.

You do not need it. Chapter 13’s point is that a nuclear station is a steam plant with an unusual firebox, and a pop-pop boat at $10 to $20, or a tin can turbine made from a drinks can, a tea light and a pinwheel, makes exactly the same point for a fortieth of the money. What the model engine adds is a throttle and a flywheel, which lets you feel load following, and that is a genuine addition rather than a nicety.

Buy it if you want the whole cycle in your hands. Skip it without guilt. Two thirds of the thermal energy in the real plant is thrown away regardless, and Chapter 13 proves that with two thermometers and a wet rag.

A continuous electronic radon monitor, at $150 to $250, is the other optional purchase. The $15 charcoal canister answers the question. The monitor lets you watch the answer change hour by hour when you open a window, which is a different and slightly addictive kind of understanding.

And if the budget is one item, it is the Geiger counter. Four chapters use it, it is the instrument that made this subject a science in 1908, and there is no substitute for having watched the background count in your own kitchen jump when you walk into the basement.

Section 5: What you already own more of than you think

Your basement is a radon generator. Uranium in the ground decays to radium and then to a noble gas that seeps up through the floor, and Chapter 5 collects its daughters on a balloon in ten minutes.

Your smoke detector is a sealed alpha source. Chapter 2 uses it as a check source and Chapter 12 explains why a device with no moving parts and no maintenance is the right engineering answer to a ceiling in a hallway.

Your salt substitute is radioactive and it is food. Potassium-40, at a level you can count, in a bag from the supermarket.

Your kitchen hob is a decay heat simulator. Chapter 13 boils 500 g (18 oz) of water, switches the ring off, and watches how long it keeps boiling. That is exactly the problem Fukushima had, and the reason a reactor that has been shut down still needs cooling.

Your bathroom is a control theory laboratory. Chapter 8’s demonstration of why a delay makes a system controllable is a broom balanced on a finger, and then a shower with a slow mixer.

And your own body is a source, mostly through the potassium-40 in your muscles. Chapter 6’s table puts internal dose at 29 percent of the annual total for a typical person, which is more than medicine and more than cosmic rays. There is no getting away from it, and the whole point of Chapter 7 is that this is fine.

Section 6: The experiments, and where they are

Thirty-seven, and fourteen of them are calculations, labelled as calculations, because there is no bench chain reaction and this book will not pretend otherwise.

The five in bold are the ones to do if you do only five. The cloud chamber makes the invisible visible in the first half hour of the book, which is the promise the whole volume is built on. The Geiger walk-around gives you the background in your own rooms, which is the number every argument about radiation should start from. Meitner’s calculation is the most consequential piece of arithmetic in the subject and you will land within ten percent of her answer. The mousetraps are the only chain reaction anybody can safely put in a box. And the radon test is the only experiment here whose result might make you change something about the house you live in.

Twenty-one of the thirty-seven cost nothing at all, and fourteen of those need only a spreadsheet and a published table. This is a cheap subject to learn honestly, and the reason is that the expensive half of it is off limits to everybody, including the professionals, without a licence and a building. What is left is not a consolation prize. It is thirteen of the subject’s own measurements, made with your own hands, and Chapter 18 lists them.

The safety gear, which is not optional

Wear this for the experiments the book says to wear it for. The reasons are on the Before You Start page at the front, and in the chapter that owns each experiment.

Section 7: Kits

A single collection covering the counter, the cloud chamber materials and the check sources, ordered once, is the obvious convenience and it is being worked on. When it exists it will be at benchdegree.com/kit/nuclear-power, and that address is deliberately the only place it will be published: suppliers and product listings change, and a link printed in a book cannot be corrected. The specifications above can be taken to any supplier and will still make sense in twenty years.

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