Up until very recently - when a researcher - even at a top Lab - bought lithium hydroxide, it almost never contained the natural level of Lithium-6 (which is already low).
This is an undisputable fact, not revealed until circa 2010 - that for 50 years in the USA there has been a hidden isotopic depletion in commercial lithium - which was a relic of the cold war. Don't ask don't tell. What does this mean for LENR, in the historical perspective - "if and when" it is finally shown that the active isotope - going all the way back to 1989 is and always has been Li-6 and not deuterium? For one thing, this helps to explain why the cold fusion reaction was so hard to replicate. Obviously is success depends on one rare isotope which is never more than 7-8% under the best of circumstances (unless deliberately enriched)- and that isotope is systematically removed from some but not all commercial electrolytes - then it becomes very difficult to achieve the same results from run to run. Most of the available electrolyte was severely depleted and simply will not work at all. RELEVANT QUOTE: "Because of the fact that the enrichment of Li-6 was part of a classified military weapons program, the general scientific community and the public were never provided information that the lithium being distributed in the chemical reagents was depleted in Li-6. This distribution resulted in labels on containers of reagents, which had incorrect atomic weight values listed on them." http://www.iupac.org/publications/ci/2010/3201/3_holden.html I have come to believe in recent weeks that Li-6 is the active isotope for thermal gain. Admittedly that is not proved yet, but I think it will be in the next few months. It really pisses me off that this charade has been going on for all of these years and some of the biggest critics of cold fusion, early on - probably knew this all along. Jones
