Video of Carl Willis on Atomic tourism - Fabulous!

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Richard Hull
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Video of Carl Willis on Atomic tourism - Fabulous!

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The URL listed below will take you to a professionally done film.

The star of the show is Carl Willis. He was one of the most helpful, insightful and giving people here at fusor.net. He taught many of us the more intricate details related to fusion. This film will introduce him to many newbies. He mentions I was his mentor in Tesla coils. Once I gave up Tesla coiling and moved to fusion, Carl came over to songs.com while in college. Our roles quickly reversed in the fusion arena as he got his BS in nuclear physics and went on to get his MS. He built his fusor quickly and became everyone's mentor at fusor.net. I have been on a couple of Uranium hunts with Carl out west and here in the East. Carl, along with Bill Kolb and I were offered a tour of the North Anna Nuclear reactor here in Virginia by a friend and employee of Dominion Energy who was in the American Nuclear Society with me.

As Carl joined the day-to-day nuclear physics work force and moved to New Mexico, he focused on Nuclear tourism in Russia and left fusor.net, save for occasional postings. The crush of his job and carrying on in life left little time for fusor.net. Much like my leaving Tesla coils, so Carl left fusion. Things just run their course for active folks on the move and the search for other pleasures.

In the film, Carl will note that it is all about radiation and its attraction for him. I am in the same boat! There is something in the soul that is captivated by the mere knowledge that rock and some contained elements are constantly dismantling themselves after being created in a hype-super nova or colliding neutron stars billions of year ago. At the instant of their formation, they began to decay. This stellar waste drifted through space for millions and billions of years decaying all this time. Finally it accreted into our young solar nebula forming the sun and earth. Now 4.5 billion years after the earth formed, with the material still decaying, I can, today, pick up a hot Uranium rock and have it read 250,000 counts per minute. All this decay energy was stored in Uranium and Thorium billions and billions of years ago. I have this pulsating source of nuclear energy decaying in my hands. We are using it everyday to generate electricity. No wonder Carl and I are hooked on radiation its origins and its marvel never loses its shine for us.

A great film and a great way to get to know Carl for those who never knew or met him. He now is married, has a family and teaches in New Mexico......He is still a "nuke head".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6j7wksLhaw

Richard Hull
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Our 2009 U hunt in Utah.  Carl holds two real "smokers" he found at the Radon mine waste dump.
Our 2009 U hunt in Utah. Carl holds two real "smokers" he found at the Radon mine waste dump.
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Dennis P Brown
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Re: Video of Carl Willis on Atomic tourism - Fabulous!

Post by Dennis P Brown »

And that uranium and thorium were most likely formed in a neutron-neutron star collision or even possibly a black hole - neutron star Collison those many of billions of years ago - and those stars formed many millions if not some billions of years before they became neutron stars or black holes. That is really old stuff - the earth is a young child compared to those elements!
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Richard Hull
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Re: Video of Carl Willis on Atomic tourism - Fabulous!

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Uranium U238 that accreted to form the earth has only about half that mass remaining. The U235 that accreted has gone through over 10 half lives. thus 1000 lbs of U235 at accretion would now be reduced to about 0.97 lbs. Certainly, in the early earth, there must have been many Oklo type natural reactors active and running that are now subducted and dead...

All thorium still remains, for the most part, as its half life is on the order of the age of the entire universe!

Many radioactive rare earth isotopes on earth are as fresh as the day they were formed tens of billions of years ago having half lives on the order of trillions of years. The singular radioactive isotope of Bismuth 209, (100% of all Bismuth), has many quintillions of years for a half life. In short, its half-life is a billion times the age of the entire Universe! (hyper-weak alpha emitter decaying to Thallium) No you can't detect it!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismuth-209

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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