Just to give an update:
I am basically waiting for my Li to be delivered. I have already gotten the argon gas kit in place, ready to use.
Meanwhile I have today continued with my radiating reactor, wanting to pursue some strange increases in power, that seemed correlated with the mildly raised baseline activities. My take is it is the impedance changing somehow, changing how the load is perceived relative the transformer, causing some more current to flow, and modifying the voltage the transformer then is capable to supply.
Well, I used the standard setup,minus the pyro IR gun, because it was employed to measure on my bake oven.
The game plan was the following temperature sequence: 500, 800, 900 and 1000C. At 800C (well about 830 C ) I got some elevated baseline followed by some spikes to about max 80 cpm. I then tried again to block betas with the aluminium and copper shields I used before, and so no more spikes. The baseline to went down after a little while (But I think it is not so much related to the shield due to timing). The baseline remain pretty much with an 40ish average although pushing for the 900C mark in the plan, yes, even when going for a the thousand. Still having an elevated baseline, even though small, I decided to test blocking with lead, which worked fine. If you look in my graphs that would be the low part at about 15:15. Then I decided to try to set the GMC on a permanent basis at the side of the tube, perpendicular from the usually used venue, overlooking the end of the tube. Now the GMC aimed ate the shell of the tube, through the little hole usually used by the pyro gun to measure the temperature.
I did not wait for long before a HUGE signal (well, all things relative...) of 125 cpm was detected. I monetarily left the lab and ventured outside, in case it would increase further or have a long duration. After that the baseline was at a high level and there were several instances of elevated levels at or above 100 cpm.
I saw strange behavior in power/resistance/temperature already at 830 and climbing towards 900 (without any explicit power increase from my side). Had it ended at 900C at that time it would have had constituted a detection event in my calibration graph. But it did not, it fell back. The same behavior was seen after the big peak of 125 cpm. the temperature continued to climb upwards, but with a very slow pace. But it is still so that it is not a free ride. also the poser is rising, due to the impedance of the system (or so I conjecture). At the end (not seen in the graph) I was worried about the temperature of the GMC, exceeding 55C), so I moved it back, resulting in that the otherwise very high baseline (about 80-90 on average) fell back to about 50 cpm.
So no excess heat confirmed today, but more radiation seen, and the suspicion that there is something lurking just under the surface of all this.
I have the following take aways from the experiment today:
1. I can not exclude betas. I can only conclude that covering the GMC with lead from the direction of the reactor, will kill off all elevated counts, hence the source is in the direction of the reactor.
2. It is likely that there are betas and that some of the extreme lonely peaks may be such events, while some of the elevated baseline could very well be due to soft gammas and X-rays. The rationale is that while applying the beta shield, there was still the baseline, but no peaks, and without the beta there was the peaks and the baseline. Now this is in a very narrow time span, so it is conjecture. But it is not exactly unlikely.
3. Radiation event and elevated baselines seem be triggering extraordinary behavior in the system power setup, and my conjecture is that the gammas and Xrays interact with the alumina and coil in a way that changes the impedance.
4. There are a very distinct oscillation overlay (small scale) on both the pressure and the temperature, which lead me to believe that it is physical and not instrument jitter. (not easily seen in the graph, I will be back on this subject I think later in a report).
5. No preferential direction. If anything the radiation is a bit higher from the side, 90 degrees angle from the previous point of measurement at the end of the tube.
6 and the some....
In graphs: blue is GMC. In pressure/power, green is pressure, red is power. In GMC/temp graph red is coil temperature, green is shell temperature (inside insulation)