Carl Willis's video: Simulated nuclear fuel from Project Rover one of which is spicy

*Thanks to John Webb, 7Land Entertainment, for editing this clip. Linda Johnson operated the camera, and Pippin helped with various tasks, including flashlight and liquid nitrogen refilling of the HPGe detector.* Project Rover was the effort run by Dr. Raemer Schreiber at Los Alamos from 1955-1972 to develop nuclear thermal rocket engines. The project achieved its objective--design and demonstration of high-power nuclear rocket engines with a high level of technological readiness for deep space missions. The engines were tested at the Nevada Test Site, at thermal power levels up to and beyond 4 GW--at the time, the most powerful nuclear reactor in existence. In this video clip, we look at a few pieces of simulated Rover reactor fuel from Dr. Schreiber's collection. One of the pieces was evidently made on the same die as the real highly-enriched uranium carbide fuel, as attested by a significant radioactivity measured by the Geiger counter. We subsequently identify the nuclide responsible (U-235) using a high-purity germanium detector by means of gamma spectroscopy. Enjoy!