Lab Pictures 12

Lab Pictures 12

early June to September 1, 2009;

NCSU, Raleigh and TUNL, Duke, Durham NC

Still struggling to get lower pressures, I put Apiezon Q putty on the antenna feedthroughs, despite its problems when it gets hot. This actually worked pretty well although it's a mess to work with. Also put some epoxy putty on the grid circles on the 10 that connect only via one point to the other circles by a spot weld, quite susceptible to fatigue fracture. Better to weld a small plate but this OK for now.

I mounted x-ray glass over the microwave grid that usually shields the window port; however this grid shorted to the chamber wall and I had to remove it and place it outside.

I mounted a hydrogen tank on the south hemisphere and ran the reactor, first in air, then in hydrogen. For some reason, after a few runs with hydrogen, the magnetrons started misbehaving, with power concentrating in only one of them (always an occasional problem but terminal in this case). Tried everything but couldn't diagnose the problem; could only run the reactor from the other room and simply couldn't be two places at once.

Bob Golub and Chris Gould helped set up the neutron detector to see if there was any evidence of neutrons when using deuterium. However the reactor continued to malfunction and the tests were largely meaningless. I doubt there would have been any neutron signal even if it worked well.

I packed up and came back to NCSU where I could get much more done, once there appeared to be no need for neutron shielding. After continued frustration with the magnetrons, I stripped them all off and re-rigged the reactor to run only as a ball lightning-style experiment, with the antennas functioning as rectennas to absorb anomalous RF energy.