Jed Rothwell

http://www.lenr-canr.org/

28 Comments

    • Investing In a Resource-Constrained World (Part V) [view article]
      You wrote:

      ”I thought you wrote that the gas products have to be released. Do you mean these cells are completely closed then?”

      I mean:

      1. The alpha particles whack into a wall, stop moving, and become ordinary helium atoms.

      2. The gas, including the helium, gets out eventually, usually through a bubbler (trap) and then into a mass spectrometer. But even if you let it out directly into the air it would not hurt. (I wouldn't breathe it however, because effluent gas from a cold fusion cell usually has droplets of toxic electrolyte mixed in.)


      ">> 2. They are not dangerous “in the air.” 1 cm of air will stop them.
      >> Less than 1 cm if the air is filled with smoke or steam will stop them.

      I accounted for that in my calculation. It's absorbs exponentially, so assuming you're standing about 5 feet from the cell you're only getting the tail of the decay. But that's enough."

      They NEVER get through the walls of a cell. A piece of paper is enough to stop any alpha particle. A glass or steel cell wall is much thicker, and will stop any alpha particle.


      ">> Everything that Fleischmann knows about this fills several textbooks.
      >> Storms put a lot of what he knows into his book. It is 312 pages.

      I understand, but those were published well after the initial paper couldn't account for all of those null results."

      There were not many null results. I can account for most of them. It was obvious why they failed. Actually, the most famous three of them, MIT, CalTech and Harwell, successfully replicated cold fusion heat. They don’t want to admit it, but their results clearly show excess heat.


      ”So then [F&P] were fortunate the first time out. That happens too.”

      Not the first time out. It took about five years before they got anything, as I recall.


      ">> Not really. It can’t be controlled. If you scaled it up, it would probably
      >> blow your head off.

      They can't find a way to control it? So why not just work with a small lattice and a small amount of 'fuel' and let the thing run itself out?"

      That’s what they do. They use a small lattice and let it run for a long time. Not too long because they need the equipment for other tests and they need to analyze the cathodes.

      “Letting the thing run itself out” until all of the deuterium converts to helium would take hundreds of years, or thousands, or millions of years, depending on how much heavy water there is in the cell. I have never heard of anyone running one for more than a month or two.


      ">> Not even one tiny bit dangerous. No worse than a helium balloon."

      A helium balloon is full of an inert gas, there are no alpha sources in a helium balloon.

      There is no alpha SOURCE in the effluent gas from a cold fusion cell. The source is the cathode. The gas is oxygen, D2 and a minute amount of helium, that was deuterium before the reaction. I am sure the contamination exceeds the helium in most cells.


      ">> In your entire lifetime you would produce even 1 kg of the stuff.

      The average human gives off about 7000 bq of radiation. How do you use this to compute 1 kg of alpha particles?"

      I computed how much deuterium you need over a lifetime to generate all the energy you need. It is about 500 g to maybe 1 kg. It does not all convert to helium; a tiny fraction converts to energy, of course. The rest is helium. 1 kg of alpha particles after they stop moving is 1 kg of helium, which is perfectly harmless.


      "There are billions of tons of Uranium contamination in ground water sources, but we're not gassifying it, standing next to the source and breathing in the alpha particles."

      You breathe billions of alpha particles with every breath. They are called helium atoms.


      ">> By the time they come out, they are inert helium.

      Brush up on your statistical dynamics, airborne alpha particles are a real threat, they cause lung cancer."

      Not after they stop moving (and de-ionize, I suppose). Alpha SOURCES are a real threat. If you swallow americium you are in big trouble. If you swallow a cold fusion cathode you are somewhat less trouble because the reaction usually stops quickly once the cathode is removed from the cell. Although I wouldn’t recommend breathing in the Pd-black or Zr-Pd powder from Arata’s cell. It probably continues to produce cold fusion heat and helium for hundreds of hours after loading. It might even continue in your lungs. This could be a problem after a severe accident with a cold fusion powered machine.


      ”I must be losing it. I thought you wrote that the cells are vented.”

      By the time the gas comes out of the vent (and through various 1-way doors to keep the outside air out), the alpha particles are ordinary helium.


      "If you can get consistent data for the tritium, and you can account for all of the energy, writing the energy balance is not difficult."

      You cannot get consistent data for tritium because nature does not produce tritium consistently. Writing the energy balance would be easy if it were not so difficult. Or as Anna Russell put it: “Things would be so different, if they were not as they are.”

      - Jed
       Jun 30 05:05 PM
    • Investing In a Resource-Constrained World (Part V) [view article]
      You wrote:

      "[Alpha particles] are dangerous in the air, much more so than any other kind of radiation. Again, I didn't see any data on how much alpha radiation was measured."

      1. They never get out of the cells into the air.
      2. They are not dangerous “in the air.” 1 cm of air will stop them. Less than 1 cm if the air is filled with smoke or steam will stop them. See: smoke detector, americium


      ">> That’s 24 MeV of energy PER HELIUM ATOM, when they measure helium.
      >> Not 24 MeV per palladium atom yet!

      I got that, it implies very accurate measurement of the helium."

      No especially accurate. Normal for the labs where they measure it.


      "You lost me. If they're claiming 24 MeV per reaction, how would that go higher?"

      I mean normalized against Pd atoms. It will go up indefinitely as new deuterons move into the lattice. It will keep increasing for as long as you run the machine.


      ”>> Of course they knew a lot more than they put in the paper,

      That's not good practice, they are supposed to put in everything they can.”

      Everything that Fleischmann knows about this fills several textbooks. Storms put a lot of what he knows into his book. It is 312 pages.


      ”>> It was not luck at all. When they decided to do the experiment,

      But you wrote that it can take months of looking at nearly identical electrodes to find some that will work.”

      Yup. That’s with Tanaka KK palladium or some other off-the-shelf stuff. If you can get the specialized material from Johnson Matthey it will pass the tests at a much higher rate. Unfortunately, I do not know anyone who can get it.


      “None of that difficulty with characterization was in the paper.”

      The paper would have to be hundreds of pages long to characterize the difficulties. It would also have to be clairvoyant, since F&P were not even aware of many of the difficulties when they wrote it.


      ”>> Many cold fusion reactions with input energy have reached 300% excess.

      If that's the case, that's commercially viable.”

      Not really. It can’t be controlled. If you scaled it up, it would probably blow your head off.


      “. . . which leads to suggest that 1 watt of power would necessitate a flux of 2.6 x 10^11 alpha particles per second. How dangerous would this be?”

      Not even one tiny bit dangerous. No worse than a helium balloon. In your entire lifetime you would produce even 1 kg of the stuff. The whole world will produce 6 tons per year. There must be billions of tons in the atmosphere already. (5.2 ppm * 5.2 * 10E18 kg = 267 billion tons)


      "Unfortunately it's gaseous. Now, the max allowable Polonium in a human is 6.8 picograms. So assuming 5% of the alpha particles escape with the vented gas breather to the calorimeter . . ."

      By the time they come out, they are inert helium.


      ”Unshielded? They're breathing in -- assuming the measurements are correct -- straight alpha particles? I wouldn't be so cavalier with safety.”

      Of course they are not open! All kinds of contamination would get in. They are not shielded against neutrons and gamma rays.


      “>> Varying amounts [of tritium]. That’s a mystery.

      That's a key ingredient to do an energy balance. It's a pretty simple problem, but only if you know what the measurements are.”

      Anyone can see what the measurements are. The problem is not simple. If it were simple, it would have been solved years ago.

      - Jed
       Jun 30 01:29 PM
    • Investing In a Resource-Constrained World (Part V) [view article]
      You wrote:

      "So you're looking at roughly what proportion of helium compared to energy? Also, did anyone detect gamma rays, or beta or alpha particles?"

      Alpha particles are helium-4, measured in the gas after they stop moving. I don’t think you could get a detector into a liquid cell or even a gas cell to catch them when they are formed. It doesn’t take much to stop them.


      "Is there any measurable difference in the other gas products, like Hydrogen, before and after charging? Also, you mentioned some experiments saw 24 MeV . . ."

      That’s 24 MeV of energy PER HELIUM ATOM, when they measure helium. Not 24 MeV per palladium atom yet! As far as I know the record is roughly 10,000 eV per atom of Pd. Of course it could eventually go much higher than 24 MeV, as new deuterons move into the lattice.


      "Also, the error is not a huge problem, is it larger than 20 or 30%?"

      Very large for small amounts, smaller for large amounts. See McKubre or Miles.


      “>> There are other disparities and they are the source of the problem,
      >> as you say.

      Disparities in energy or gas products?”

      I would say the biggest inconsistencies are in the tritium, gamma rays and neutrons. My guess is that the reaction produces varying amounts of these. In other words, it isn’t that tritium is measured wrong; it actually appears in widely varying amounts. It seems to appear when excess heat is weak or intermittent, analogous to the way heavy smoke is the product of incomplete combustion. (Incomplete? Insufficient?)


      “>> It lacked critical details mainly because these details were unknown.

      He meant process details. Precisely what steps to take to reproduce his results. F&P must have known those steps, assuming they took careful notes.”

      No, they did not know these steps, as Bockris remarked at the time. Their success rate was still low. Of course they knew a lot more than they put in the paper, but it was mostly common knowledge of electrochemistry, such as: “keep the electrolyte clean.” In other words, do not let cat hairs into the electrolyte.

      Everyone, including F&P, grants that the paper was written quickly with few details.


      “Of course, it's also possible that they lucked onto perfect electrodes the first time out, and didn't think anything of the difficulty in characterizing them.”

      It was not luck at all. When they decided to do the experiment, Fleischmann went to Johnson Matthey, told them he wanted to try extraordinarily high loading, and asked them to recommend the best material for that purpose. They recommended the palladium used in hydrogen purifier filters, which has a lot of silver in it as I recall. That is not a surprising recommendation.

      Many others have used this material successfully. Researchers at NASA and BARC both used an actual hydrogen filter (the whole gadget), successfully.


      ">> Cold fusion cannot be reproduced nearly 100% of the time,

      If it cannot be reproduced nearly 100% of the time, roughly what is the success ratio in your opinion?"

      It depends on the group and the experiment. Mitsubishi’s transmutation experiments work every time, as far as I know. McKubre says that when they achieve the target loading, flux and whatnot, it always works, but I think they only achieve the conditions ~70% of the time. See:

      lenr-canr.org/acrobat/...

      www.lenr-canr.org/acro...


      "Earth-based plasma fusion has obviously never hit break-even."

      I assume you define break-even as: as much heat comes out as you put in. This might also be called “100% excess.” This is not enough to sustain the reaction mechanically.

      Many cold fusion reactions with input energy have reached 300% excess. Some cold fusion reactions have no input energy; they are completely self-sustaining or “fully ignited” sometimes for hundreds of hours. This is not actually a desirable condition because there is some question as to how you might control or quench this reaction on a large scale. It would be better to have some control factor such as input energy, but as far as I know the input energy into electrolysis has little relationship to the strength of the reaction. It is needed to form the material and maintain flux.


      “>> people used to set up brand-new transistor facilities for about $50,000

      Remember the first transistor, it was made for little more than pocket change.”

      No quite pocket change. Around $6 each I think, which would be ~$60 today. The zone-refining gadgets and other equipment was expensive. Also the failure rate was much higher than for cold fusion, so they had to make many devices to get a few good ones.


      “>> That is not a supposition. It is an experimentally proven fact. As I
      >> mentioned, if they were gamma rays are neutrons I would be dead, and

      Nah, not necessarily. The body can repair a fair amount of radiation damage.”

      The plasma fusion people never tire of telling us that if cold fusion produces even 1 watt, everyone in the room should be dead within minutes. That is called the dead graduate student problem; i.e. why isn’t the graduate student dead? Hundreds of researchers have spent days or weeks working next to unshielded cells that produce anywhere from 1 to 100 W, and not one of them is dead. Although a couple of them narrowly avoided being hurt in serious explosions.

      The plasma fusion people think this proves that cold fusion is an experimental error or fraud. I think it proves that cold fusion is aneutronic.


      ”>> It produces massive excess heat with absolutely no chemical reaction.
      >> It produces tritium.
      >> It produces helium commensurate with the heat.

      I would love to see some amounts/proportions of these. How much tritium?”

      Varying amounts. That’s a mystery.

      - Jed
       Jun 27 01:33 PM
    • Investing In a Resource-Constrained World (Part V) [view article]
      Thanks to voice input I said the photo of Arthur is in the "new" section. Meant NEWS section:

      lenr-canr.org/News.htm

      Scroll down a tad to see cute photo.

      Scary and pretty photos are here:

      lenr-canr.org/Experime...

      This illustrates why you should not do cold fusion at home.

      - Jed
       Jun 26 05:40 PM
    • Investing In a Resource-Constrained World (Part V) [view article]
      You wrote:

      >> Evidently it is not trivial, because thousands of experts including
      >> distinguished theorists have not yet solved the problem.

      It's not trivial because it seems nobody knows which data is correct and which is in error. You show me that one group gets 24 MeV, another gets 11, and another gets 0.5 MeV. One group measures no helium, another measures 0.3% flux. One group detects no radiation, another does. With all of this widely disparate data, it's difficult to know which set to use to write the energy balance."

      The particular disparities you described have not occurred. Everyone who has measured helium has discovered helium, in roughly the same proportion to the heat (although the error bars are large.) Neutrons are either completely absent or if present at levels 10E10 or 10E20 times lower than plasma fusion, which is tantamount to being absent.

      There are other disparities and they are the source of the problem, as you say.


      "A well-respected electrochemist claims otherwise, he says F&P's original paper lacks all of the critical details."

      It lacked critical details mainly because these details were unknown.


      “That's not a good paper.”

      On the other hand it is one of the most important papers in history and it was replicated thousands of times, and if political opposition can be overcome it will probably give mankind unlimited amounts of energy without any measurable level of pollution, so in these respects it was a good paper.


      ”>> paper had to be written in a big hurry, to protect U. Utah’s intellectual
      >> property.

      Not true. I.P. is filed first, which is not disclosed . . .”

      I wouldn’t know about that. Fleischmann and officials at the University tell me and had to be published quickly.



      ”>> This philosophy is the basis of the scientific method. If we had to have a
      >> theory to explain every anomaly, there would be progress in science.

      And how is that working out for you in Cold Fusion?”

      Magnificently, considering the difficulty of the research, the political opposition, and how little funding there is. Cold fusion cannot be reproduced nearly 100% of the time, and some cold fusion experiments have produced hundreds of times more energy than the best plasma fusion experiment in history, sometimes in fully ignited self-sustaining reactions. Cold fusion has made more progress in 20 years than plasma fusion did in 60, at a cost roughly equivalent to one week of plasma fusion research.


      “You can't even give me a basic energy balance of the process.”

      You are asking the wrong person, as I mentioned.


      ”If it was no harder than making an advanced battery I would be able to buy a test Cold Fusion cell for a $0.5 million and get to work.”

      If you knew how to do it, you could, of course. If you had known how to make a transistor in 1935 it would not have cost you much to actually do it. In the 1950s, people used to set up brand-new transistor facilities for about $50,000 (roughly $500,000 today). As the scale of the devices got smaller and smaller the production equipment got more expensive.

      The equipment and procedures used to make cold fusion devices are similar to equipment used to make other electrochemical devices such as batteries. Some of the hand-made laboratory scale cold fusion devices have produced enough power and energy to be commercially useful, at least for small-scale applications. If people learn to control the effect, there is no reason to think manufacturing will not be a major challenge or expense.


      "Let's be accurate here ... you meant to write "at a trivial cost compared to the energy yield of fusion." The extraction of deuterium is only affordable if you can make fusion work."

      Obviously that is what I meant! That’s true for both cold fusion and plasma fusion.


      ">> A force of nature cannot be patented. If one implementation is patented,
      >> there will a dozen others available.

      Wow, and you wonder why there is no funding for CF."

      This is indeed a major stumbling block. This is why research should be carried out at national laboratories and other facilities not oriented to making a profit.


      “With that attitude, why would any company invest a few billion into possibly making it work if someone else can just fiddle with their method and come out with their own system for $1 million?”

      It is not an attitude; it is a fact. (Or a very likely a fact.) Several executives from large companies have asked me that same question. My best answer, which I will admit is not that good, is that many other products are not patented and yet companies that develop elite making these products often make large profits. For example, food recipes cannot be patented, and yet large companies do make a profit selling food. My other answer is that I predict there will be more profit potential in cold fusion related peripherals than in the core technology, but you can’t have one without the other. So the companies ought to consider the cold fusion technology itself a “loss leader.”


      “And remember, all of my suppositions are pure fantasy, and assume that there is no radiation (gamma rays or neutrons, etc.) from the process.”

      That is not a supposition. It is an experimentally proven fact. As I mentioned, if they were gamma rays are neutrons I would be dead, and sold several hundred people I know. There are four things that we can be absolutely sure of about cold fusion:

      It produces massive excess heat with absolutely no chemical reaction.

      It produces tritium.

      It produces helium commensurate with the heat.

      It does not produce dangerous levels of penetrating radiation.

      Researchers have made many other assertions about the effect which may or may not be true, because they have not yet been widely confirmed or refuted.


      ">> my late friend Arthur Clarke

      Nice, you knew him?"

      I did. But he knew hundreds of people, probably thousands. Still, I have many letters from him covering an impossibly wide range of topics, and I worked with him on the Millennial Edition of “Profiles of the Future.” Plus I have nice photos from him, especially the one I put in the new section showing him with his pet Tyrannosaurus rex.


      "Do we need to use a thousand times more energy than we use today?"

      Yes. Emphatically. See the reasons described in the book.


      "Is it possible that we already use a hundred times more energy than we need?"

      No, we could use a million times more. For example, I think we should terraform Mars.


      "Is it desirable to clog up orbit and the trash the moon with our manufacturing?"

      Orbital towers do not orbit. If you drop something it falls back to Earth. Trash & pollution are misplaced resources, caused by ignorance and incompetence. Advanced technology properly done does not produce trash.


      “What is the end purpose of this expansion you propose?”

      Quoting my book again, and a sentiment that Clarke would wholeheartedly endorse: “The ultimate purpose of cold fusion, or any technology, is to give people the freedom to do for themselves, take charge of their lives, and make themselves happy or miserable.”


      ">> A child playing a video game today has more computing power at her
      >> disposal than any scientist had in 1970, and the machine does more

      And at what cost? Can the kid with the video game do long division in his head?"

      Probably not. People could not do that centuries ago, and yet they did pretty well for themselves. I couldn't do it to save my life. I used a slide rule before small computers came along.


      “Can the scientist with the supercomputer do some pencil and paper theory to find out what is happening in his Cold Fusion test?”

      Absolutely, positively not. For one thing, the people doing cold fusion are mostly over 70 years old and they do not use computers. A lot of them are “greatest generation” types who cut their teeth at Los Alamos during World War II. One of them pushed the button to fire off the first bomb. Young scientists do not believe in things like cold fusion. Only older scientists to understand how science is supposed to work.

      Computers may be partly to blame for that, as you suggest.

      - Jed
       Jun 26 05:18 PM
    • Investing In a Resource-Constrained World (Part V) [view article]
      Mike Wofsey wrote:

      "As long as Cold Fusionists still believe in conservation of energy, conservation of lepton number, etc., it should be pretty trivial to find the formula."

      Evidently it is not trivial, because thousands of experts including distinguished theorists have not yet solved the problem.


      ">> Right. After electrolysis. The cold fusion process never begins.

      That's the after, what about the before? Do you have microscopy in some form of the uncharged electrodes?"

      Of course! I suggest you read the papers. Or read any electrochemistry textbook. I am not going to spoon-feed you every detail.


      "Why would they release a paper that unintentionally misled so many people? It's not transparent science, and now the whole field of CF is paying for it."

      That is nonsense. No one misled anyone. Every electrochemist I know who read the original paper knew the experiment was difficult. If non-experts were confused, that’s a shame but it wasn’t F&P’s fault. The paper was not good because their knowledge was incomplete, and the paper had to be written in a big hurry, to protect U. Utah’s intellectual property.


      ”>> Theory is not needed to confirm that cold fusion is real.

      This philosophy is going to continue to hobble CF.”

      This philosophy is the basis of the scientific method. If we had to have a theory to explain every anomaly, there would be progress in science.


      “Doing science without theory is like trying to find a destination without a roadmap.”

      What are you talking about?!? Do you think they do not WANT a theory, or they are not looking for one? This is nuts. I said they do not have one now, and they do not need one to prove the anomaly is real. Nobody ever said a theory is not needed, or desirable.


      “Well, based on what you say, Cold Fusion is very difficult and complicated.”

      No worse than making computer chips or advanced batteries. The material purity and precision is about the same as an advanced battery. There are probably a thousand industrial corporations that could do it. It is difficult now because no one knows how to do it yet, and because the people trying to do it are not funded and do not have the equipment they need.

      Looking at cost of materials and at similar manufactured devices, there is no reason to think that cold fusion generators and heaters will be more expensive per unit of power than, say, automobile engines or gas-fired emergency power generators.


      "It requires deuterium and/or tritium, which is pretty tough to get, even if you can separate it from seawater."

      It does not require tritium! You can separate deuterium from any water on earth, at a trivial cost compared to the energy yield. The cost is of extraction is already thousands of times cheaper than oil or uranium, and it will soon fall to be millions of times cheaper, since the main cost component is energy itself.


      "So do we really get limitless energy, increased a "billion-fold&... Probably not, because the technology (and fuel) is tightly controlled by a few consortiums."

      Never happen. That scenario is out of the question. The principles are already in the public domain. A force of nature cannot be patented. If one implementation is patented, there will a dozen others available.


      "And then, let's say that Cold Fusion is somehow able to eventually be made so simply that everyone can run to the local K-Mart and pick up a Cold Fusion generator to stick in their basement next to the water heater."

      The water heater will also be cold fusion powered.


      "Or do you think it more likely that an ounce of the fuel will cost them $1000 and last them three months?"

      An ounce of heavy water (28 g) costs $28 retail. I can get it from China for $20. With cold fusion input power, any chemical company on earth could make it for $0.28. 28 g of heavy water is enough to power your car for 28 years. You will not use more than ~500 g in a lifetime. (That’s $500 now; a few dollars worth after cold fusion becomes common.) Energy will cost you far less than drinking water from the tap does today.


      "Do you really have that much confidence in the free market that deuterium will not be tightly regulated?"

      There is not a chance it will be regulated. You might as well try to regulate raindrops.


      "What would we do with limitless energy? Would we have the robot drive the Cold Fusion flying Hummer a hundred miles to pick up the morning newspaper? Would we stroll out to our artificially-lit underground greenhouse and have the robot pick out a particularly delicious mango for breakfast? Limitless energy produces limitless excess."

      I disagree. See my on-line book on this subject, which was recommended by Arthur C. Clarke and several distinguished professors:

      lenr-canr.org/BookBlur...



      "I'm an eternal optimist unfortunately, we'll solve our energy dependence by learning to live lean. And we'll learn to live lean through solar power."

      You are neither optimist nor pessimist compared to my late friend Arthur Clarke. He saw how things might be incomparably better than they are now, or worse, in ways that most people could never imagine.

      There will be no need to be lean. We will use a thousand times more energy people do today, and think nothing of it. The only problem will be waste heat, which can be fixed by moving heavy industry to orbital towers and the moon. As I wrote in the book:

      “If people in future generations expend energy at a rate a thousand times greater than we do, and they expend it for purposes we would consider frivolous, it will make no difference and cause no harm, as long as the noise and waste heat does not bother anyone or harm the biosphere. A child playing a video game today has more computing power at her disposal than any scientist had in 1970, and the machine does more calculations in a single second than an ancient mathematician did in a lifetime, yet no one considers this an extravagant waste of resources, and no one raises objections to it.”

      - Jed
       Jun 26 11:01 AM
    • Investing In a Resource-Constrained World (Part V) [view article]
      Mike Wofsey relayed remarks made by an electrochemist friend:

      “2) He felt the original F&P paper was dramatically lacking in necessary details.”

      I have met at least 250 other electrochemists who agree, including Fleischmann and Pons.


      ”3) He has an open mind to the possibility of researchers in Japan getting positive results with this.”

      Why Japan in particular? Why not researchers at Los Alamos, China Lake, SRI, or BARC? Some of the Japanese researchers are pretty good, but they are not the only ones who have reported positive results.


      ”5) He feels that the fundamental problem here is that the electrochemists don't want to learn the theory, and the theoreticians don't want to learn the electrochemistry.”

      Theory is not needed to confirm that cold fusion is real. You need only measure the excess heat far beyond the limits of chemistry, tritium, helium and so on. As some researchers put it:

      "The calorimetry conclusively shows excess energy was produced within the electrolytic cell over the period of the experiment. This amount, 50 kilojoules, is such that any chemical reaction would have had to been in near molar amounts to have produced the energy. Chemical analysis shows clearly that no such chemical reactions occurred. The tritium results show that some form of nuclear reactions occurred during the experiment. . . . The main point of the tritium in this experiment is then that there are some nuclear processes involved. . . "

      lenr-canr.org/acrobat/...


      “6) He had an idea for an experiment that would more closely qualify if the process is happening or not, but it required more specialized equipment than he had.”

      That is what always happens. However much equipment you have, you always need more. As a rule of thumb, to estimate the budget realistically, take the expected cost of the experiment and multiply by 10. Then double that answer. Do the same for the time and effort you think will be required.

      Hundreds of experts have “an idea for an experiment.” It isn’t as if they have run out of ideas, or they can’t think of experiment that might spur progress. No doubt many of their ideas are wrong and would lead nowhere. But if a single one of them works out and we learn to control cold fusion, within 10 or 20 years oil may be obsolete; the cost of energy may be reduced by a factor of a thousand; our supplies of energy may be increased a billion-fold; and the threat of global warming eliminated. So I think these researchers should be funded. It is hard for me to understand why so many people furiously oppose this research, and grow livid with anger when someone proposes that a modest experiment be funded.


      “Specifically, he would make a hollow palladium negative electrode and let the solution infuse through it, and then measure for helium coming out through the top, from the center of the hollow electrode.”

      Various hollow electrodes have often been used, with mixed results. They usually put the entire electrode in the solution and run a wire down the middle in order to load from both sides. Otherwise loading would be uneven, which usually prevents the reaction. If this worked I expect the helium would come out of the electrolyte side, which defeats the purpose. Arata’s DS Cathode is a hollow electrode with Pd-black inside of it. Arata says that the reaction occurs in the Pd-black but I recall SRI and others have seen evidence that the hollow electrode itself plays a bigger role than Arata suspects.


      ”In the solution, there are loose protons, due to the high dielectricity of the solution, and these can 'filter' through the bulk material of the negative electrode if driven to do so by a voltage gradient. The question is, do these loose protons somehow react in the unit cell of the lattice, and if so, how?”

      I wouldn’t know. That’s too advanced for me. You would have to ask an electrochemist, such as Oriani.

      - Jed
       Jun 25 06:03 PM
    • Investing In a Resource-Constrained World (Part V) [view article]
      Mike Wofsey wrote:

      “Okay, but the lepton numbers and energy still have to balance in the end. So what is the formula for the Cold Fusion process that you get in these cells?”

      There is no formula. It is not known yet. The purpose of the research is to discover the formula.


      "But the problem here is that if I ask you about the formula . . ."

      You are asking the wrong person. Ask a theorist. Read theory papers.


      “. . . you then give me an answer that "experiment trumps theory." Scientifically, it's difficult to follow an argument where the well-behaved theory is used but the disagreeable theory is discarded.”

      Cold fusion is based on calorimetry, x-ray film and other instruments which, in turn, are based on thermodynamics and other well-established theories of physics and chemistry. The “disagreeable” theory in this case is a narrow range of plasma fusion theory, which may or may not have to be discarded. That remains to be seen. If we have to choose between plasma fusion theory on one hand, and the laws of thermodynamics and a large chunk of other 19th century theory on the other, I think it is more likely that the latter is correct. In other words, I think it is extremely unlikely that cold fusion researchers have uncovered a host of heretofore unknown reasons why static, flow, Seebeck and bomb calorimeters do not work; x-ray film does not register x-rays; and mass spectrometers do not work. I would say the chances of that are astronomically small, whereas the chances that a new form of aneutronic fusion has been discovered are high.


      “If you're not producing neutrons, then I would like to see just a simple input/output formula that accomplishes that.”

      I am sure everyone in the field would also like to see that. If research worked like it does in the movies no doubt we would have something like that. What you get in real life is a pile of conflicting evidence, some of it right, some wrong, and no magic touchstone to tell you which is which. As Segre said of Hahn and Meitner: “Their early papers are a mixture of error and truth as complicated as the mixture of fission products resulting from the bombardments. Such confusion was to remain for long time a characteristic of much of the work on uranium.” (Quoted by Mallove, p. 22)


      “>> The ones that do not work swell up, crack, or disintegrate.

      But I assume you mean they swell up, crack or disintegrate after the process."

      Right. After electrolysis. The cold fusion process never begins.


      "How can you tell before you charge them up?”

      By various methods described by Storms, Cravens and in electrochemistry textbooks. For example, you can charge them to the beta phase (which is not difficult) and then observe the bubbles on the surface as they degas.

      I recommend you build a machine to speed up and automate the process of characterizing palladium. Doing it manually sometimes takes six months to a year. A custom-designed machine could do it in a few days. This illustrates why cold fusion research should be funded: so that researchers will not be forced to spend years or decades doing work that can be done in a few days with proper equipment. Naturally, the equipment will cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. I have never heard of cold fusion experiment that cost less than $100,000. I cannot imagine how anyone ever got the idea that the research is “cheap” or “easy.” It is roughly as easy as making a computer chip, starting with sand.


      “>> It is, because it fuses deuterons to form helium-4 and 24 MeV of heat.
      >> Most scientists I know say that makes it fusion. Perhaps you have some
      >> other definition.

      That one is fine, but how does that balance?”

      Figure that out and you will win a Nobel prize -- assuming the establishment someday admits that cold fusion is real. I am not optimistic that will happen.

      - Jed
       Jun 25 05:33 PM
    • Investing In a Resource-Constrained World (Part V) [view article]
      Mike Wofsey wrote:

      “>> Also, transmutations and so on are mainly at surface levels.

      What transmutations? What is your evidence for claiming they are on the surface?”

      See Iwamura, Miley, Mizuno, Bockris. Depth profiles show the transmutations waning at lower depths.


      >> Enyo and some others have found evidence that electrochemical
      >> overpotential in certain conditions with 1.5 V can produce 10E47 atm of
      >> pressure across areas on the surface. These are atomic-scale areas.

      How did they measure 10^47 atmospheres?"

      Not by direct measurements. If it happens, it would be on the atomic scale, literally a few molecules across, nearby surface protrusions. I don’t know much about this work. It was described in the Mizuno book that I translated, but I did not read original sources.


      “>> Fleischmann thinks it is a bulk effect. (He said some years ago.)

      If Fleischmann things it's a bulk effect, why do "most people" think it's a surface effect? What evidence do they have?”

      Their evidence is helium in the gas, transmutations, loading mainly at the surface and so on. I would put it the other way around: I do not understand why Martin thinks it is a bulk effect. I don’t know if he still thinks so. I will ask him.


      >> Of course they analyze the output gas. They analyze everything. That’s
      >> what most of the expense and effort of an experiment goes into.

      Ah, excellent. And what is the helium increase on a typical experiment?”

      The amount depends upon the excess heat. Sometimes it accumulated for a long time, and sometimes it is a “snapshot” for 20 minutes or 2 hours or what-have you. In every case I know of, after the helium is carefully accounted for and flushed out of nooks and crannies, it comes to the same ratio as plasma fusion: 24 MeV/helium atom.


      >> at 10 to 100 times background, occasionally at a million times
      >> background, but every single one of these was also mistaken?

      There was not a tritium measurement in the paper you sent. Would you please send the link to a paper with the tritium measurement? Please don't tell me to look in the index, I would like to see what you consider to be a good experiment that measured the tritium and/or helium."

      Unfortunately some of the best papers in helium and tritium are not in the library because of copyright restrictions. For tritium in the early papers (which is mostly what we have), I think most people would cite Will and Cedzynska, or Bockris et al and the people at BARC. You can look up the indexes as easily as I can. For helium, see Miles (China Lake), McKubre, and the people using the enormous mass spec machine shown here:

      lenr-canr.org/Experime...


      “I can't say anything without reading the paper.”

      True, but many people do, and you had a lot to say previously.


      >> this was the most difficult experiment he ever replicated. The difficulties
      >> were obvious to these people from the moment they heard about it.

      That explains a lot, because at the time, perhaps due to F&P's paper, it was perceived as something fairly easy to do.

      “Percieved” by people who knew nothing about the experiment and had no business guessing about it. I have never heard an electrochemist say that.


      “Helium is nonreactive, you should just be able to grind the cathode apart and check for an increase. Would you link to a paper that measured the helium from the cathode?”

      Mainly they don’t find it. Only a tiny bit. Arata’s latest papers is the exception, but that’s in the powder. My guess is that it comes off the surface of one particle and is trapped by another.


      ">> How likely is it that cloning mammals is an error, and Dolly the sheep
      >> was not actually a clone of her mother?

      Off the subject, but I don't understand the allure of cloning. Mother Nature's technique is far more advanced, she gathers together the best aspects of each cell and makes a new one, and with her method, the likelihood of DNA error is so much smaller."

      I agree but it was an amazing accomplishment, and even if it has no practical application I am sure it will teach us much about biology.

      Back on the subject, how much are you willing to bet that every single cloning experiment has been an experimental error? Do you really think that is possible? And do you seriously, really believe that people cannot measure 100 W with absolute confidence? All this talk about “noboby is ever certain in science” is pure B.S. in my opinion. There is nothing more certain than a replicated experiment. No human knowledge is more solidly based or more certain than what we learn of natural laws & phenomena by experiment. You can bet your life that calorimetry works. You do, in fact, bet your life on such things, every day, in a thousand different ways.


      “>> Cold fusion has no significant waste products.

      The containment facility is bathed with neutrons and becomes radioactive as surely as any fission plant.”

      No, it isn’t. If cold fusion produced neutrons I would be dead, along with several hundred other people. Cold fusion does not produce a measurable level of neutrons. Cold fusion will not require a containment facility. If it works at all, you will be able to use it to power a heart implant. It does not matter what you think or what you predict – the experiments prove that there are no neutrons. Period. Full stop. You can’t argue with experiments.


      “>> Of course. But you do not even need a microscope in many cases. You
      >> can see with the naked eye why many cathodes fail.

      Why? Why do some work and some don't? What is the surface feature that allow some to work but not others?”

      The ones that do not work swell up, crack, or disintegrate. Or they are covered in filth. (I saw one with cat hairs galvanized onto the surface, in one memorable example.) See Storms, “How to produce the Pons-Fleischmann effect.”


      >> Who knows why? There is no significant increase, and that’s all there is to
      >> it. In my opinion, cold fusion probably produces no neutrons directly,

      “Fusion is fusion, plasma or otherwise, it produces neutrons.”

      No it doesn’t. You can’t overrule Mother Nature on this.


      “Perhaps Cold Fusion is actually a high-level effect but is actually not fusion then.”

      It is, because it fuses deuterons to form helium-4 and 24 MeV of heat. Most scientists I know say that makes it fusion. Perhaps you have some other definition.

      - Jed
       Jun 24 11:36 AM
    • Investing In a Resource-Constrained World (Part V) [view article]
      Mike Wofsey wrote:

      “>> It is difficult to do accurate closed cell
      >> calorimetry plus helium in one experiment, although the Italians do.

      Why is that difficult? You should be able to just stick your gas sensor in one of the unused ports.”

      It is hard to get the gas out of a closed cell and do accurate calorimetry. You can analyze it at the end of the experiment, but not so easily on-line as the experiment is progressing. An open cell is self-purging and better for this purpose, but the helium does not build up. Gas loaded cells are best for helium studies, I think. Arata is doing gas loading.


      “>> There is hardly ever any in the electrodes. It is in the gas. It is a surface
      >> reaction.

      Wait a sec, how do you know it's a surface reaction?”

      Mainly because the helium ends up in the gas. Also, transmutations and so on are mainly at surface levels.


      “If you're talking about absorbing atoms into the metal lattice, and then bringing them close enough to tunnel through the barrier, then how could it be a surface reaction?”

      I doubt it is anything as simple as “bringing them close together.” They remain farther apart in a lattice than in heavy water. Something more complex is going on, but I wouldn’t know what it is.


      “There really are no closed unit cells on the surface, right?”

      Enyo and some others have found evidence that electrochemical overpotential in certain conditions with 1.5 V can produce 10E47 atm of pressure across areas on the surface. These are atomic-scale areas.


      “Because my estimate (between 10 and 100 eV per atom) was based on volume. If you base it on surface, the average energy would increase dramatically.”

      The estimates are all based on total volume, but most people in the field assume it is a surface reaction and most Pd atoms do not participate. Fleischmann thinks it is a bulk effect. (He said some years ago.)


      “>> I meant no chemical transformations. No products.

      How do they know there is no byproduct if they didn't spectro or analyze the output gas?”

      Of course they analyze the output gas. They analyze everything. That’s what most of the expense and effort of an experiment goes into.


      “>> Not necessary for the whole run,

      I'm definitely no calorimetery expert, but isn't careful energy budgeting critical when you're dealing with electrolytes? In essence, it's a battery, right? But you did say that they kept track of it.”

      Yes, they keep track of it, but you don’t need the figures for the entire run. Just for the time when uninterrupted heat is produced, if that heat far exceeds the limits of chemistry. Anyway, no one has ever seen evidence of energy storage. That would be an endothermic reaction and cases where the exothermic reaction is longer than the initial loading period this endothermic reaction would have to be much larger than the exothermic reaction that follows. It would be readily apparent.


      “But please understand, I've seen error that has propagated in an ultrasound study for over twenty years.”

      An error of what magnitude, made by how many people? Are you seriously suggesting that hundreds of scientists cannot measure heat ranging from 0.5 W to 100 W? That every single measurement has been a mistake? They measured similar power levels with confidence in 1850. You are also suggesting that over a hundred laboratories have detected tritium, sometimes at 10 to 100 times background, occasionally at a million times background, but every single one of these was also mistaken?


      “So when the theory is screaming one thing, and the data screaming something else, it's wise to stay skeptical.”

      I regard that as pathological skepticism. If so many huge mistakes could be made by so many different researchers over 19 years, the experimental method itself would not work.


      “There has to be thousands, I personally know of about six, and I don't exactly get around too much. But remember, people don't publish null results, they bury them.”

      While there is no point in arguing about events we have no record of, but I doubt there were thousands of null experiments in cold fusion. I know of only a few hundred including several unreported ones.

      In fact, in 1989 there were only a few hundred groups of people in the world capable of doing this experiment and as far as I know nearly everyone of them has done it and has succeeded. It is an extremely difficult experiment. Oriani, who is one of the world’s top electrochemists, told me that in his 50-year career (now 60 years) this was the most difficult experiment he ever replicated. The difficulties were obvious to these people from the moment they heard about it.

      Measuring the effect is not difficult, but making it happen is.


      “>> If you think it is a data or calculation error, what error is it?

      Well, now I'm wondering about the comment you made about it being a "surface effect." If they calculated it as a surface effect, but it is actually a volume effect, then for even a small cat/anode . . .”

      No, they don’t do that. You can read the papers and see they do not. No one knows exactly how much of the surface layer is participating, to what depth.


      “>> I told you, 150% excess. In other words, 1.5 W out per 1 W in. It says right

      That wasn't the McKubre paper though, was it?”

      That was Roulette et al. McKubre reports up to 300% (3 times input).


      “>> >> "Did the cat/anodes show helium increase before and after?"
      >> Never heard of one that did.

      To me, that's sort of a problem. Do you know of anyone that checked?”

      Of course. They all check. I have never heard of one who found a lot. There is some. It is hard to get every bit out. You have to bake-out cathodes, and then finally dissolve them.


      “>> There is no chance they made an error. None whatever.

      Nobody is every willing to say that Jed.”

      Sure they are! How many times do you think Boyle’s law has been confirmed in the laboratory? Do you think there has any possibility it is an experimental error? How about Ohm’s law? When Ohm’s law was first discovered, many people try to confirm that V = W/A, got it wrong, and published reports that it was not true. How likely is it that cloning mammals is an error, and Dolly the sheep was not actually a clone of her mother?

      Do you suppose that every single cloned animal reported since Dolly was not actually a clone but just an animal that bears an uncanny resemblance to the parent, and in every case someone in the laboratory made a stupid blunder and mixed up the DNA samples? How likely is that?

      Experiments have been widely replicated at high s/n ratios are NEVER in doubt.


      “There is never such a thing as 'no error' unless The Almighty himself was down here working in a lab. Humans make all kinds of mistakes, that's the beauty of science.”

      Thousands of experimentalists never make thousands of large mistakes for decades. (Repeatedly mistaking 0 W excess for 100 W excess would be the largest error in the history of calorimetry.) If our mental processes were that dysfunctional, we would have gone extinct long ago. That’s the beauty of evolution. To suggest that thousands of scientists would make elementary mistakes for 19 years without anyone noticing it is like suggesting that every hawk in the state of Pennsylvania will make mistakes and fail to catch a mouse for a month, and starve to death.


      “At the same time, I think that any nuclear energy (hot fusion, cold fusion or fission) is an unsustainable energy source due to the waste products and societal costs.”

      Cold fusion has no significant waste products. If all over energy came from cold fusion, it would produce less nuclear waste than a single coal-fired plant. (Coal fired plants spew far more radioactive garbage into the environment than uranium fission plants do.)


      “>> I would suggest he pretest 10 or 100 cathodes at a time, by the way, to
      >> winnow out the 1% that will work. Otherwise you are looking at trial and
      >> error, which is to say 5 weeks * 100 cathodes, worst case.

      Interesting, so you're saying it only works for a handful of cat/anodes?”

      That is for off the shelf Pd samples from Tanaka Precious Metals Co. If you use the palladium engineered by Johnson Matthey for use in hydrogen filters, I expect nearly all of it will work. That’s what Fleischmann used and what he recommended, for obvious reasons.


      “Have you done electron microscopy of the cathodes that do work and those that don't so you can qualify why this happens?”

      Of course. But you do not even need a microscope in many cases. You can see with the naked eye why many cathodes fail.


      “>> By the way, that product often has bacteria growing in it, believe it or not.
      >> Proof of Darwinian evolution. Imagine a species evolving that quickly since
      >> 1940! Anyway, it fouls the electrodes and it remarkably difficult to kill. The

      Incredible! I never knew this.”

      It is astounding. Cold fusion researchers in Italy discovered it and named Ralstonia detusculanense. See:

      www.lenr-canr.org/acro...


      “>> That never works! That's a waste of time. Ordinary radiation detectors
      >> above ground have never detected an anomaly in cold fusion as far as I

      Why? If you characterize the vessel, gaskets, and background, why wouldn't you be able to screen an increase in neutron flux.”

      Who knows why? There is no significant increase, and that’s all there is to it.
      In my opinion, cold fusion probably produces no neutrons directly, and only a few as a side effect of other reactions that it triggers. If it does produce them they are least 10E11 times fewer in number than with plasma fusion.

      - Jed
       Jun 23 10:36 AM
    • Investing In a Resource-Constrained World (Part V) [view article]
      Sorry, I did not read your message carefully enough. You wrote:

      "He ran the setup for 5 weeks, and had radiation detectors completely around the reaction vessel to find anything anomalous. After 5 weeks, he detected nothing anomalous."

      That never works! That's a waste of time. Ordinary radiation detectors above ground have never detected an anomaly in cold fusion as far as I know. Sometimes underground (with low background) with super-deluxe detectors they catch something, but before you even look you have to confirm that the cell is producing excess heat. Otherwise you have no cold fusion effect and there is no point to looking for any other product.

      There are other methods of detecting particles and x-rays quite different from this, such as sputtering palladium onto a beryllium window, using the Pd as the cathode, and putting a detector on the other side of the Be.

      The experiment you describe is an example of treating cold fusion as if it were hot fusion. This works about as well as trying to make an airplane that flaps its wings like a bird. You have to adjust the method to deal with what nature has provided, not what you imagine the phenomenon should be.

      - Jed
       Jun 21 09:12 PM
    • Investing In a Resource-Constrained World (Part V) [view article]
      Mike Wofsey wrote:

      "Elsewhere, meaning with a different study, or did they publish their spectroscopic results with the same study but in a different place?"

      Different study, as I recall. It is difficult to do accurate closed cell calorimetry plus helium in one experiment, although the Italians do.


      "How do they know if there is any helium within the electrodes if they didn't measure it?"

      There is hardly ever any in the electrodes. It is in the gas. It is a surface reaction.


      ">> and no ashes found after the reaction;

      There is no visible ash from a stoichiometric reaction."

      I meant no chemical transformations. No products.


      "The difficulty of doing calorimetry over such a long period is in keeping track of the energy both in and out over such a long period."

      Not necessary for the whole run, although they do keep track of it. All you have to do is keep track of the input and output during an uninterrupted heat production event. That was 180 hours in McKubre’s paper that you discussed. It is not difficult to keep a calorimeter stable for a week. Roulette et al. was for 30 days. Still not a big challenge.


      "I have no way of checking your calculation since I don't have access to the original data and I'm not going to argue over someone else's data."

      It is in the paper. You can evaluate the calorimetry.


      "Okay, where is the data then? Please supply a paper that shows an increase in helium in the cat/anode before and after. Isn't that the acid test?"

      No, in the gas. Look at Miles, the Italians, and the McKubre replication of Arata and Case.


      >> We know only that a nuclear reaction is occurring.

      And the people that can explain the data in conventional, non-fusion terms are just skeptics to be ignored, right?

      If you can explain hundreds of megajoules per mole as conventional chemistry, with no detectable chemical changes, write a paper and I will upload it. No skeptic has ever tried to "explain the data." They have published only three responses:

      1. It is theoretically impossible and therefore the data is wrong.

      2. There must be an experimental error (but they never say what it is, and no error could survive this many replications).

      3. All 2000 cold fusion scientists are frauds, lunatics and criminals (so say the Washington Post, the APS and Scientific American.)



      "Isn't that exactly what you're asking me to believe about that thousands of null results after Fleishman and Pons?"

      There have not been thousands! That’s absurd. I know of only about 200, and I know why most of them failed.


      ">> And there are plenty of others such Phys. Let. A.,

      Would you mind forwarding a reference to the Phys Let. A. papers?"

      Go to the publications index and look it up under P. That’s why I have indexes. By the way, the database is not necessarily complete. I know of several papers I have not bothered to add.


      ">> McKubre listed the number of electron-volts per atom of palladium
      >> elsewhere:

      From that same experiment?"

      As he said, that was his best case in 1994. Read the document.


      >> ~450 eV/atom normalized to the Pd lattice or to the deuterium in the
      >> palladium at a loading of ~1."

      450 eV per atom? That is very, very unlikely to be a chemical reaction of high-Z, but I suspect that either that data or calculation is flawed because it is larger than the other published cold fusion events by a factor of ten (!)"

      By 1994 there were plenty of others on that scale, and some, as I said, above 1000 eV per atom. If you think it is a data or calculation error, what error is it? “I think it is an unspecified mistake” is not a falsifiable argument. It can be said for any experiment ever performed, including ones that have been independently replicated hundreds of times, such as cold fusion.


      "9000 eV per atom is definitely not a chemical reaction. But it is also so large that it begs analysis. How much energy was put into the system?"

      I told you, 150% excess. In other words, 1.5 W out per 1 W in. It says right there. Read the paper. Anyway, input is not an issue. There are other papers with no input and 50 to 100 MJ output, in heat after death or with gas loading.


      "Did the cat/anodes show helium increase before and after?"

      Never heard of one that did.


      "Is the 9000 eV per atom excess?"

      Sure, that’s what is says. (If you believe my math.)


      "How long was the test interval?"

      It says right there in the paper! And I told you: 30 days.


      "If they're getting an excess 9000 eV per atom over the life of the interval for the standard mass of the cat/anode, we're looking at an energy source that is ready for commercialization right now . . ."

      Heck, you could get a million times that. The cathodes are not consumed. It’s the deuterium -- it converts into helium. The cathode is only a catalyst.

      It isn’t ready for commercialization right now. That would take hundreds of millions of dollars.

      But MJ/mole is not the issue. What you need is high power density and temperature equal to a fission reactor. (You don’t need combustion levels.) That was achieved by 1992, albeit in smaller reactions, not 100 W. There was never any question after that, that cold fusion is a potentially useful source of energy. If it can be done once at a few watts in the NRL or China Lake, there is no reason to think it cannot be massively scaled up. We just haven’t had the money to do it. A handful of 80-year-old guys puttering around with used equipment can’t accomplish that.


      ", hell, it would blow everything else out of the water. Either someone made a very large error or someone is very, very bad at marketing their results."

      There is no chance they made an error. None whatever. Similar results, albeit at lower power, have been observed in hundreds of labs. The problem is not marketing. The problem is that when people achieve results like that, they get fired, and the program is torn to pieces by academic rivals who despise cold fusion. It is hardball politics. In this case the results were at Toyota, and the program was dissolved by a certain individual high in the Japanese government who is determined to keep Japanese industry from developing cold fusion. A first class jerk, well known to me. I do not believe there is a conspiracy to suppress cold fusion. They don’t hold secret meetings or anything like that, but powerful people make phone calls and budgets get cut and researchers fired.

      Heck, I have met many of the top people out there gunning for cold fusion, such as Robert Park, Slakey, our friend in the Japanese gov’t, and the others. They are among the nastiest, stop-at-nothing political animals around. One of them told me in plain language (Japanese in this case) that he doesn’t give shit whether it is real or not; it isn’t going to disrupt the plasma fusion research budget or energy industry profits on his watch. Another, a former U.S. VP whose name sounds like bore or store or something like that told a U.S. cold fusion researcher: “This is too hot. We can’t touch it.” Meaning there was too much political opposition to allow a handful of federal researchers to do experiments. He wouldn’t risk even that much political capital. The guy has a reputation as an environmentalist, but I have zero respect for him.


      "Okay, I had a discussion with one of the old-timers here, and he set up a cold fusion test after the Pons/Fleischmann paper. He followed the paper precisely because that's the kind of researcher he is, I've known him for years and his technique and care is beyond reproach. He may have forgotten some of the details, but this is what he could remember:

      His working electrode (cathode) was palladium, his anode was platinum. His solution was Lithium Hydroxide which was brought into solution with heavy water which was obtained at great expense from a reactor in Canada. He ran the setup for 5 weeks, and had radiation detectors completely around the reaction vessel to find anything anomalous. After 5 weeks, he detected nothing anomalous."

      I would have to have a lot more information than that to know what happened, such as where did he get the palladium, what alloy was it, how much did it load, what was OCV, and how did it look afterwards. See Storms “How to produce the Pons-Fleischmann effect” for a list of common problems and solutions.

      I would suggest he pretest 10 or 100 cathodes at a time, by the way, to winnow out the 1% that will work. Otherwise you are looking at trial and error, which is to say 5 weeks * 100 cathodes, worst case.

      But taking it from the top, I sure wouldn’t recommend heavy water from a reactor! That’s a crazy thing to put into a cold fusion cell. Do you mean a CANDU? I am astounded they gave him any. They told me the stuff is hundreds of millions of times too contaminated for the commercial market. Are you sure you don’t mean ordinary Ontario Hydro heavy water? (But I doubt that would bust his budget, at $1000/kg.)

      By the way, that product often has bacteria growing in it, believe it or not. Proof of Darwinian evolution. Imagine a species evolving that quickly since 1940! Anyway, it fouls the electrodes and it remarkably difficult to kill. The method you use to kill it will likely screw up the experiment.

      - Jed
       Jun 20 10:45 PM
    • Investing In a Resource-Constrained World (Part V) [view article]
      Oops again. I think I forgot to square the radius. 0.1 cm X 0.1 cm = 0.01 cm.

      X pi X 10 cm =

      0.314 cm^3 (sounds more like it), 3.8 g Pd . . . or on the order of 90,000 eV per atom.

      Anyway, give or take an order of magnitude, who cares? It ain't chemistry.

      Nobody should trust me to do arithmetic. Programming, Si. Avogadro's number, density times volume, hand calculator and paper, No.

      - Jed
       Jun 19 05:26 PM
    • Investing In a Resource-Constrained World (Part V) [view article]
      I wrote:

      "For example, Roulette, T., J. Roulette, and S. Pons reported 294 MJ of excess power (150% excess) from a rod cathode 10 cm long, 0.2 cm diameter."

      OOPS! I committed the unpardonable sin. It was a typo, your honor! I meant:

      Pons reported 294 MJ of excess ENERGY (150% excess POWER) . . .

      Good lord. My supervisor from 35 years ago would have had a fit.

      - Jed
       Jun 19 05:08 PM
    • Investing In a Resource-Constrained World (Part V) [view article]
      McKubre listed the number of electron-volts per atom of palladium elsewhere:

      "For the thermodynamically closed and intentionally isothermal systems described here, output power was observed to be as much as 300% in excess of the electrochemical input power or 24% above the known total input power. When excess power was present, it was more typically in the range 5%-10%, in a calorimeter that was accurate to better than
      +0.5%. The largest excess energy observed corresponded to 1.08 MJ, or 45.1 MJ/mol, or
      ~450 eV/atom normalized to the Pd lattice or to the deuterium in the palladium at a
      loading of ~1."

      - McKubre, M.C.H., et al., Development of Advanced Concepts for Nuclear Processes in Deuterated Metals. 1994, EPRI.

      Same document, intro:

      "Excess powers ranging between a few percent to ~350% were observed, measured to an accuracy of ~0.5%. These excess powers integrated to a total of ~0.1 to 1.1 MJ for a ~2.5 g (1/40 mole) palladium cathode. Thus, the excess heats ranged between 4 to 44 MJ/mole of palladium, which was well above the largest known heats of chemical transformation in this or any other metal. The largest heat of chemical transformation in palladium is to the bromide at 0.9 MJ/mole."

      So there's your standard: 0.9 MJ/mole. Note that some cold fusion experiments have produced way more than this. For example, Roulette, T., J. Roulette, and S. Pons reported 294 MJ of excess power (150% excess) from a rod cathode 10 cm long, 0.2 cm diameter. That's, um . . . 3.14 cm^3, 38 g Pd or 0.35 moles. 840 MJ/mole, or on the order of 9,000 eV per atom if I have done my arithmetic right, which is unlikely. Anyway, it sure as hell isn't a chemical reaction, is it? Especially since, as I mention, there is not 1 g of chemical fuel or ash in the cell.

      To put it another way: this 10 cm X 2 mm object radiated 101 W of heat for 30 days. Does that sound like a chemical reaction to you? Imagine a stick or lump of paraffin of that size, that burns producing roughly 101 W. If it burned for a month underwater, in the absence of oxygen, would you be telling me it might be a chemical reaction? Have you heard of the miracle of the Maccabees? Do you understand why ancient people considered that mythological event a miracle? Ancient people believed in all kinds of impossible stuff, such as people rising from the dead or candles burning for 8 days with 1 day of fuel. But at least ancient people had enough common sense to recognize the limits of a chemical reaction. Some modern scientists seem to have less common-sense based knowledge of physics than ancient people did.

      - Jed
       Jun 19 05:06 PM
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