Confirmation from a particle physicist working at an electron beam accelerator facility.
Trust me when I say that this is one of three people I know who is smarter than I am. As in, I KNOW he's smarter than I am. I also know he's smarter than those other two people.
"We make beta particles every day."
300 amp, 12GeV electron beam.
Question: "A .5V 300A plasma collided with a tokamak wall when one of the containment magnets quenched. The tokamak was destroyed by primarily beta radiation."
Response: "No shit!"
Me: "Does this thing [VSG] produce beta"
Physicist: "You're sure he's making a megawatt pulse ["yes - 100-ish joules on a microsecond scale discharge"] - ok, then he's just hitting the tail of the probability distribution. How much beta was he measuring?"
Me: over 1Sv/hr - meter maxed out with a counter overrun, "clicker" was screaming.
Physicist:"And when does he get out of the hospital?"
Me: He doesn't even have a sunburn
P: "And his thyroid is still functioning after 1Sv of X-rays?"
Me: "Probbably not - since he's still conscious."
P: "Right. 1MW pulse... commercial/military meter, or consumer grade"
Me: "eBay"
P: "Yup, EMI. Lemme guess, he also erased a hard disk or two?"
Me: "Fried a camera and a calculator. Smelled like he'd been arc welding"
P: "EMI."
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In other words, you're creating beta. No problem.
You are not getting a positive "delta E".
It would take Sv after Sv (100's of roentgens) to create the kinds of energy levels that we're talking about. Even 60KW.
My assumption for 2% consumed input current was incorrect.
Apparently the quoted probabilities for the reaction to occur are accurate - 1E-9% is not far off.
A tokamak is exactly what we are talking about here. Hot plasma in an axial magnetic field with electrons flying through it. This reaction, as with any other nuclear process, depends on reaction containment time (small) reaction cross section (really small) and energy density (incredibly fucking small).
Each reacton, undoubtedly, is "overunity". A 13MeV electron goes in, sure.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Me:"So it's possible to put in a few hundred eV and get out 13MeV"
P:"Sounds a little high, but you're in the ballpark."
Me:"So EUV and soft Xray energies would do it"
P:"Oh sure, a few hundred or 1 or 2KeV would get the job done"
Me:"So what we're talkign about really isn't too little energy, just no way of making sure the current hits a nucleus instead of empty space"
P:"Right, the likelihood of getting a positive delta E [change in total energy] is going to be nil. If you want to have an expensive electric bill, you can make beta particles very easily though."
Me: "Juice a computer monitor"
P:"Or buy a particle accelerator."
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So, in short, unless you've managed to increase the reaction cross section/probability by a factor of 1E6, and capture close to 100% of the emitted beta particles as energy, and magically absorb all your X-rays (and not scatter them as beta, alpha, and neutrons) then we're done.
He also indicated that a plastic jar with dry ice in it would be our best bet. Build a cloud chamber.
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~adf4/cloud.htmlSo, in short - try a cloud chamber
Or photographic film.
Or both.
Either one will teach you alot, but is highly unlikely to make you some free energy.