[NewCandle] further adventures of pixie 23

[Nick Reiter]

Hello all,

A bit of an update for this evening, on the last aluminum roll hydrolysis reactor, "Pixie 23".

As you might recall, this is the version in which the hydrolyzing salt solution consists of ~.12M uranyl acetate in H2O, with .03% D2O added...

When I last reported, the primary puzzler was the interesting rise in count rate as seen by a fixed GM tube, when the U solution wicked into the roll turns when the rolls were placed into the bucket.  The emission from the bucket rose from about 300CPM to about 600CPM.

Over the two andf a half weeks that have followed, the foil rolls began to eventually generate H2 gas and before the thick bubbling began to drop off, we hydrolyzed maybe around 1.25l of water.  During the time of gas evolution, the emission count rate read by the Geiger counter would fluctuate, sometimes taking on what may be a diurnal patter, ranging between 450 cpm to 600cpm, with late evening readings being higher in most cases than morning readings.

Over the time, as bubbling dropped off, so did the overall count rate, until at about T+10 days or so, we were back down to almost the starting cpm BEFORE the foil rolls were added - 250 to 300cpm.

Yesterday evening, as things really seem to be pretty quiescent now, I carefully lifted out the foil rolls, allowing them to drip dry on a "safe cloth".  The background emission from the solution in the bucket remained at about 300cpm.  That being established, though, I slid the bucket out of the way, and brought one of the rolls (side) up to the GM head.  Very strangely, the rolls were "hot".  At about 4cm distance from a roll side, we see between 1000 and 1500 cpm!  One by one, I placed the rolls back into the liquid bucket, and repositioned all.  Back to 300cpm...

somewhere in all of this there is a mechanism - anomalous or not.  But to me its giving some brainhurt for now.

Any thought aspirin out there?

nr