Carl Willis

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!

Gotta make room for new toys. This is well used and well loved, and if space and money were no object I'd keep it.

Probably means you wouldn't get much use out of this thing! Sorry for the jargon!

Response to photons (here, saturating the uR/h readout) and neutrons (saturating the CPS readout) in a graphite thermal column with PuBe sources present.

For sale: Polimaster PM1703GN PRD. Working fine (both gamma & neutron response). This device uses both CsI and LiI scintillator modules and reads in roentgen units for gamma and counts/sec for neutrons. Has data logging abilities. $200 OBO. #HobbyNuke

Response in a ~1 mrem/h photon environment with some neutrons present.

The guts of the GR-100

For sale: Exploranium GR-100 PRD, working fine but heavily used, with scratches on the screen! The GR-100 is the gamma-only version of this detector (though it has a neutron indicator lamp). It's a little CsI scintillator with dosimetric readout and data logging. $150 OBO. #HobbyNuke

Hand-loading of nuclear fuel into the #UNM AGN-201M reactor, part of an approach-to-critical teaching lab we perform every year. The fuel is enriched UO2 in HDPE plastic. With our 5W licensed power, the dose rate near the core is less than 10 mrem/h. #NukeSky

One of my favorites also. A digital meter with an analog display, dead time correction, and adjustable high voltage. Typically dirt cheap on the secondhand market, so nice for taking outside.