Carl Willis

Rather binary--either cold or hot in this area.

View southwest from above DeLongchamps Mine adit

Uranophane at Red Bluff Mine

Taylor and Chloe at the DeLongchamps Mine adit

Gamma radiation track showing DeLongchamps at SW and Red Bluff to NE

A pleasant morning today at the DeLongchamps and Red Bluff uranium mines near Pyramid Lake in Nevada with Taylor Wilson. Both were small producers in the 1950s and '60s and offer nice specimens of autunite and radiation-darkened quartz phenocrysts. ☢️fun

Taylor Wilson and GF Chloe visit the UNM nuclear reactor.

Taylor Wilson and Chloe graced us with a visit at the UNM nuclear reactor. He's now working on the frontiers of radiobiology (among other things).

The University of Maryland nuclear reactor, College Park, running at 100 kW. With Tim Koeth.

Tim Koeth measuring the thermalization time of neutrons produced by D(d,n) reactions in his cyclotron.

Tim Koeth, UMD grad students, one of my students, and Tim's cyclotron.

A trip to visit Dr. Tim Koeth, @univofmaryland.bsky.social. I got a couple of my nuclear engineering summer campers and a current UNM NE student in to see the UMD nuclear reactor at power...and Tim's cyclotron, making neutrons!

Aidan McMillan, 12, of Dallas operates his DD Farnsworth Fusor in December 2025.

A calibrated "Bonner ball" neutron survey meter indicates about 5 mrem/h from the fusion neutrons. With a little math, we can determine that the fusion reactions are producing about 150,000 neutrons per second.

Another December highlight: 12-year-old Aidan McMillan's hobby Farnsworth fusor in Dallas, producing around 150000 neutrons / second from deuterium fusion, built over three years of effort. He has great mentorship, especially regarding safety, which is obviously important for kids. #HobbyNuke

Patterson Park Observatory, Baltimore

A crankie panorama show for the winter solstice in Patterson Park, Baltimore

Robbin and Pippin near our rowhouse in Butchers' Hill

A solstice celebration in Butcher's Hill, #Baltimore was a highlight of my holidays, something I found refreshingly original. The crankie theater featuring Ravioli and Dorito is the work of @marthasi.bsky.social.

WaPo wants my subscription dollars back. But as long as this is a Jeff Bezos-owned rag, they have no hope of "holding power to account" and no chance of getting me to subscribe again. Laughable.

Opinion | What to Do When the President Acts Like a Five-Year-Old?

Nobel prize winner George Akerlof (my former colleague) on the firing of statistics officials:

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/o...

Gamma spectrum from linac vault. In-116m and Ge-75m are formed by photoneutron capture in the detector itself. Mn-56, W-187, Nd-141m, Re-184, and Cu isotopes are formed by photonuclear and neutron captures in the structures of the treatment head. All of this is on top of a very strong Al-28 signal from neutron-capture activation of the HPGe cryostat.

☢️fun gamma ray spectrum of the day: photonuclear activation from a 15-MV cancer therapy accelerator. As part of our summer camp, we ran 5000 MU (5 kGy in water, basically) with an HPGe detector in the vault. Some of the observed nuclides are formed in the detector itself, some in the linac head.

High school students perform an approach to critical experiment using the UNM AGN-201M nuclear reactor.

ENE2025 participants in the UNM NE hot cell.

UNM ENE2025 campers visiting the UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center's new 15-MV Elekta linac (and measuring radiation from photonuclear reactions in the head)

At the Mark-17 bomb site near Albuquerque.

"Experience Nuclear Engineering 2025"--a pilot one-week residential summer camp for high-schoolers--concluded at #UNM this past weekend. I had a lot of fun planning all the hands-on components, including #nuclear reactor operations, and made a lot of new friends! ☢️fun #NukeSky

Albuquerque rose to the occasion today to send a message of resistance against the lawless Trump regime and its sycophants. I saw a lot of enthusiasm and homemade signs.

The UNM NE Department is hosting a FREE residential summer camp July 20-26 for HS students. See link in attached flyer for details. #Nuclear #Engineering @unm.edu @unmengineering.bsky.social #NukeSky ☢️fun

#UNM Nuclear Engineering is hosting a residential, hands-on summer camp for HS students, July 20-26. It's FREE to attend--and should be a lot of fun. I'm director. Spread the word & register here: experiencenuclearengineering.totalcamps.com/About%20Us
Questions? Let me know!
#NukeSky ☢️fun

t1-weighted MRI scan through the eyeball

T2-weighted MRI scan through eyeball

The Mind Research Network (www.mrn.org) on UNM North Campus uses a nice 3-tesla MRI for research. If you're in #Albuquerque, sign up for a study, contribute to important research, get cool images & corporeally experience Faraday's Law. T1- and T2-weighted examples of my own dome attached.

The battery is one of the weak links on the 9DP! Otherwise, I really like this instrument.

This is a very professional-looking lead castle. I have made similar castles before, and lined them with 1mm "lead-free pewter" (i.e., pure tin) and then thin copper as shown here.

Immigration officials terminate some UNM international student records The federal government terminated the records of several University of New Mexico international students amid reports of the revocation of hundreds of student visas across the country. The Student &am...

www.dailylobo.com/article/2025...

Awful times we're living in. I hope UNM does all it can to forcefully advocate for its foreign students.

Gingersnap is home and ready to #chonk out after getting treated for hyperthyroidism with iodine-131. His head reads about 10 mR/h at 10 cm. Not great, not terrible, as they say. ☢️fun

A discarded vial that once contained cyclotron-produced F-18 FDG for PET diagnostic imaging.

Low energy end of the HPGe spectrum, F-18 vial

High energy end of the HPGe spectrum, F-18 vial

F-18 is widely used in medical PET imaging. I ran a gamma spec on a discarded F-18 vial (F-18 all decayed away, no activity measurable on a Geiger counter), and the traces of radioactive Re, Co, Cr, and Tc point to a variety of proton reactions on W, Fe, and Mo in the cyclotron target! ☢️fun

It's wages-of-sin-are-death Wednesday out on Central Avenue. I was invited to "get up with Jesus on the cross today," which I politely declined.

Riddance to Amazon Prime

Jeff #Bezos is a disgrace--an enshittifying force in US civics and the marketplace, along with fellow dissipated plutocrats / trumpanzees Musk & Zuckerberg. Accordingly, I've decided to unsubscribe from his rag (WaPo) and his junk emporium (Amazon Prime). Feeling better already.

...And, this is why you don't automatically congratulate a Trump nominee.

Share your favorites if you get a chance! I am growing my collection of modern rad quackery.

It'll be interesting seeing how this rag reconciles its long history of GOP cheerleading and endorsements as the chickens come home to roost.

Ever had to drop a deuce but unsure how to announce it respectably in refined company? Here's how.

I used to have one. Never had much use for the higher decades on the meter, however!

YouTube video by Carl Willis Contemporary radioactive quackery

In "honor" of the appointment of RFK Jr. as Secretary of Health, I made a short video that looks at the kinds of radioactive products that flourish in the alt health and wellness ecosystem of a society struggling with declining information literacy. #NukeSky ☢️fun www.youtube.com/shorts/S4Qjz...

Given the talk of annexation, etc., Canada would be justified in sanctioning trump and other major regime figures and freezing their assets in Canada.

Thermal. We generate no electricity!