Uploaded April 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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This is a calibration of the "Looking for Heat" little robot reactor, built by the late Alan Smith and used by Neil Creighton-Gould in his LION series of experiments.

There is no active fuel in this calibration, but two dummy cells in order to understand the target temperature thermal characteristics of the device.

The two dummy cells are sealed with Parkhomov-type cement and have an embedded 8 cm iron bolt which is into the core about 7.5cm.

The fused quartz cylinders are bunged at either end by a ceramic felt, with the heater coil of 15 turns of Kantal or similar heater wire wound around the outside.

The setup includes an Optris PI 160 camera with two zones of 10 by 10 pixels on the top side of the foamed alumina insulation. There are two thermocouples at the back:
- One is connected to the PID controller and is the basis for the temperature target.
- The other is attached to a LabJack T7 Pro, and these are displayed in the bottom right-hand corner.
The power going into the system is captured by a PCE-830, and you can see that in the top right-hand corner as an overview of the layout. The experiment is in a video in the bottom left-hand corner of the frame.