New use for a old tube

[JamieMcC]

You don't want to drop this one on your foot it weighs in at 5.5kg

[johnsonad]

Great idea! I've been collecting a few old transmitter tubes bases on appearances.  That is a much more practical application!

[SteveH]

Interesting to see the Thomson Communication Sans Fil (Wireless Communications) logo.  I worked for Thomson-CSF in Canada during the time when they re-branded themselves as Thales.  I knew there was a division that did transmitter tubes, just never got to visit them.

Very neat find and a cool use for the tube.

SteveH

[JamieMcC]

The tube is apparently meant to still work but needs to be submerged in bath of circulated oil to dissipate the heat. The mods I have done to the top of the tube could be easily enough removed if it required.

[Jim R.]

I wish I still had some pictures of the custom 320 pound RCA pentodes we used at Princeton in tthe early 80s. Water cooled and sat in a fiberglass tub filled with SF6. They each had to carry 100 amps dc at 120 kv. That kind of power and voltage is freaky stuff. :-)

[JamieMcC]

Jim what sort of things would these big tubes typically have been be used to power?

[Jim R.]

They provided the accelerating potential for a neutral ion source which was then injected into a plasma to heat the plasma even more. There were 3 ion sources per neutral beam injector box, and a total of 4 boxes arranged around the reactor vessel for a total of some 35 megawatts of extra heating power. Kind of Stone Age technology compared to some of the RF heating approaches, but very effective. Of course that whole experiment ended sometime in the later 80s and as far as I know is all cut up and stored at the Hanneford nuclear waste facility -- not far from our friends at bottlehead.

-- Jim

[2wo]

I went to night school with one of the techs on the project. He brought in a 4' tall rectifier tube one day, very cool.

I have not kept up, is Princeton still working on fusion?...John   

[mcandmar]

That's a lovely big chunk of copper you have there, very cool.

[Jim R.]

John,

I really don't know. Some of the guys I knew went to General Atomic in San Diego and there was talk of building a new test cell and larger reactor next to the old TFTR reactor, but somehow I think that never happened as large scale reactors seem to have fallen from favor, unless they went to europe. I alsodon't know if they're continuing low-leevel experiments on the older reactors on the old site -- PLT, PDX, S1 and any others left there.

I also have not kept up.

-- Jim