There were a couple of reasons. First, Alan was at near maximum power when the reactor tube outside temperature was 900C and the internal core temperature was over 1200C. The Kanthal A1 heater wire would have burned out by the time the reactor tube temperature could have been driven to 1200C, even if Alan could drive it that hard. Parkhomov had a different differential between his tube OD and his core temperature than Alan did. Alan measured his differential curve. If he had gone to 1200C at the reactor tube OD, the heater wire would have been at or above its melting temperature and the core may have been nearly 1400C. It was just not practical.
If Alan had the same insulating system as Parkhomov, his reactor tube may have read nearly 1200C while his core was at 1200C. Another reason was the cool-down cycle time. Alan was uncomfortable leaving the system to run un-monitored, so he had to shut it down in a controlled cycle before he fell asleep. On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 10:16 AM, Daniel Rocha <[email protected]> wrote: > Bob, why didn't you continue with until 1200 outside, I thought you were > following Hank's advice. But, suddenly, the experiment stopped. Can you > explain that? >
