I'm a retired industrial electrician but always wanted to learn reactor physics and its theory. I'm 73, get bored with TV, but technical things like this is quite interesting. The video on the agn201 that you did sometime back was very interesting. Thank you and have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Thanks so much for this! Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays! I saw in the description that you used an HPGe spectrometer for this experiment...what was the FWHM/resolution you obtained with this?
Hi Carl, I really enjoy your work at UNM and I plan to apply to go there and study at the reactor. Keep it up and i'm excited to see what other experiments you bring to us!
I have the extended spectra out to 3 MeV if interested. With Cs-137 we need to keep in mind its 30-year half-life vs. the 30-minute irradiation: we're nowhere close to saturation on this, and surrounded by lots of short-lived activities that are far higher.
Your video motivated me to find and read Otto Hahn Nobel lecture paper. How they tried to separate radiobarium from barium and could not proving that it was barium isotope created in fision. Merry X-mas!
We don't have simulation software, but are actively pursuing an in-house tool to help with operator qualification. My thought is we might use PyRK with a LabVIEW UI (since our operator aid interface is LabVIEW anyway). The simulator won't do a great job of teaching theory per se, being just a point kinetics model, but it will build intuition, just like operating the real thing.
Carl, I always look forward to your videos. What is your opinion of the new reactors being planned to power data centers for the likes of Meta and Google? Happy Holidays!
I think the reactors themselves are interesting and I'm optimistic about them technically. Much will be learned from these projects and incorporated into thinking about new nuclear power. I am much less certain about their economic competitiveness in the long run, since the lifecycle costs including component endurance and waste management are big unknowns. And I am deeply skeptical about this particular use case (data centers). AI as we know it now seems to be a bubble economy with enormous energy footprint and overhyped benefits. Same (even moreso) with everything crypto / blockchain, which is driving up energy costs and extending the life of old coalfired plants. Nuclear power for wasteful, scammy, private projects isn't very compelling to me.
So, this video is copyleft CC-attribution, meaning you or anyone else can remix and repost it and you can spend time on all the peaks I skipped. BTW, I have these spectra out to 3 MeV so there are hundreds of peaks if you really want to make an entire season of TV out of this kind of thing. Let me know when it drops!
I'm a retired industrial electrician but always wanted to learn reactor physics and its theory. I'm 73, get bored with TV, but technical things like this is quite interesting. The video on the agn201 that you did sometime back was very interesting. Thank you and have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Merry Christmas Carl!
Thanks so much for this! Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays! I saw in the description that you used an HPGe spectrometer for this experiment...what was the FWHM/resolution you obtained with this?
Resolution for HPGe detectors is usually specified at 1332 keV (Co-60). This instrument runs around 2 keV. It's not great. But certainly adequate.
Thanks Carl!! Always a pleasure to hear from you!! Merry Christmas!!
As a learner and ☢️ obsessive I thoroughly enjoy your video tutorials, thank you.
Great video! Merry Christmas!
Thanks for the video. Please post more of them! :-)
Hi Carl, I really enjoy your work at UNM and I plan to apply to go there and study at the reactor. Keep it up and i'm excited to see what other experiments you bring to us!
@@physgun1 let me know if you want to visit sometime!
Very interesting! Thanks for the video.
Very interesting enjoy the video lectures very much.
Great to see you back!! merry Christmas
Thank you for a nice explanation of the spectrum. Wondering about Cs137 decay line that is outside the plot axis.
I have the extended spectra out to 3 MeV if interested. With Cs-137 we need to keep in mind its 30-year half-life vs. the 30-minute irradiation: we're nowhere close to saturation on this, and surrounded by lots of short-lived activities that are far higher.
Your video motivated me to find and read Otto Hahn Nobel lecture paper. How they tried to separate radiobarium from barium and could not proving that it was barium isotope created in fision. Merry X-mas!
Merry Christmas to you as well.
On the agn201 reactor, is there a computer simulator available that I can learn reactor physics theory on?
We don't have simulation software, but are actively pursuing an in-house tool to help with operator qualification. My thought is we might use PyRK with a LabVIEW UI (since our operator aid interface is LabVIEW anyway). The simulator won't do a great job of teaching theory per se, being just a point kinetics model, but it will build intuition, just like operating the real thing.
Nice explanation, thanks!
Thanks Carl, awesome!
86 years ago the end of the world began.
Carl, I always look forward to your videos. What is your opinion of the new reactors being planned to power data centers for the likes of Meta and Google? Happy Holidays!
I think the reactors themselves are interesting and I'm optimistic about them technically. Much will be learned from these projects and incorporated into thinking about new nuclear power. I am much less certain about their economic competitiveness in the long run, since the lifecycle costs including component endurance and waste management are big unknowns. And I am deeply skeptical about this particular use case (data centers). AI as we know it now seems to be a bubble economy with enormous energy footprint and overhyped benefits. Same (even moreso) with everything crypto / blockchain, which is driving up energy costs and extending the life of old coalfired plants. Nuclear power for wasteful, scammy, private projects isn't very compelling to me.
skipping peaks looks silly
So, this video is copyleft CC-attribution, meaning you or anyone else can remix and repost it and you can spend time on all the peaks I skipped. BTW, I have these spectra out to 3 MeV so there are hundreds of peaks if you really want to make an entire season of TV out of this kind of thing. Let me know when it drops!
Lise Meitner was robbed!
For sure. It's hard to know whether the racism or the sexism are more to blame under the prevailing politics of the Nobel Prize during her lifetime.