I`ve been doing a little reading about the first linear accelerators in the 30`s by Cocroft and walton and am really quite astonished how Simple the idea is in principal an equaly surprised that voltages as little as 700kv are perfectly acceptable, I really thought the voltage required would be in the order of several Mev at minimun.

 

can these be scaled down even further?

say test tube sized at 10s of Kv?

 

I`ve had an idea for some time now as to what would happen if say some Am241 were placed as the Cathode in a thermionic valve type structure with a variable metal target Anode and then sufficient voltage pumped through this (similar to an X-Ray tube).

 

I have the Am241 and a Lithium target as well as a soon to be constructed 20 stage CW multiplier (just waiting for my capacitors to arrive).

 

the only problem I can envisage is the Vacuum required, normaly a Getter is employed, but for this application one couldn`t be used as the metal ions would block/deflect the accelerated particles trajectory.

 

any ideas of the feasability of such an idea?

hey you could try building a plasma accelerator, those will get several mev per centimeter of accelerator, although they only work for electrons

LOL, I don`t want to get TOO FAR ahead of myself here! I don`t even know if This idea is workable or not yet

I am actually an author of the TESLA Technical Design Report

 

http://tesla.desy.de/new_pages/TDR_CD/start.html

 

but I have no idea how to go about builing a linac on a tabletop!

well I May be over simplifying things (and am quite prepared for that to be the case), but since X-Ray tubes are often Cold cathode (and will work with a Hot Cathode too), and since these are easily desktop sized.

If we replace the normal passive cathode emitter with an Alpha Emitter, and and the Anode "striking plate" with a target metal such as Lithium, and operate at normal X-Ray voltages suitable for that tube, could nuclear disintegrations take place?