Jones,
You have called me a Rossi fan but I have no trouble considering that he
may have used a rare isotope of Ni. That is the point. Nobody knows and
it is better to wait for full information.
It does not seem necessary, at least for relatively low COPs. See this
example of a paper on replicating Rossi. Or are you one of those like
Jed who is certain that it doesn't work and any replication must be flawed?
http://www.e-catworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/ExcessHeatInLAH-Ni_Stepanov_English.pdf
AA
On 2/19/2017 11:29 AM, Jones Beene wrote:
Interesting article turned up, for those following the ongoing
Rossigate drama... starting about the 7th paragraph concerning Russia,
and the deployment of nickel isotopes for power, first to replace
strontium-90 but also "with possible applications for space travel."
http://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2016-04-russia-setting-up-for-new-radioactive-batteries-months-after-norway-helped-shut-down-the-old-ones
According to the article, the active fuel will be Ni-63 which has been
produced from Ni-62 "in a centrifuge".
That info is a bit senseless without more detail - but it does point
to two things. First, Russia is already deploying Ni-63 as a beta
emitter which is a fully developed fuel source, not an inventor's
dream, and second the active isotope is derived from Ni-62 in some
undisclosed way - possibly as a byproduct. We already know that there
is large market for Ni-62 which Russia dominates - since the US
stopped making it twenty years ago.
Moreover, Ni-63 has a short half-life of 73 years and only releases
electrons of moderate energy - 67 keV which would NOT have been
noticed in LENR. For a light house, with an intense light beam, it
would require kilograms of Ni-63 so it must be moderately affordable
to Russians, in that context. The present price here is about
$20,000/gram and all US sellers get it from Russia.
There is further implication from this scenario - possibly that Ni-63
could be produced from Ni-62 more easily than being irradiated in a
nuclear reactor and then separated by centrifuge. LENR. Many theories
of NiH suggest that dense hydrogen acts as a virtual neutron. Would
the route for gain then first involve using dense hydrogen to convert
Ni-62 to Ni-63 using dense hydrogen in situ?
Funny thing, Rossi initially staked everything in his IP on a patent
application which protects the use of Ni-62 and admitted in his blog
that he was using it. Then the patent application appears to have
rejected, and we hear nothing more on it after the IH contract.
Ironically - for some idealist reason, even Rossi's strongest
supporters balk at the suggestion that his secret is a rare isotope,
despite its obvious fit, his many messages about it and the original
patent application. They apparently resist the implications of a
required costly isotope because of a preconceived notion about the
larger field of LENR providing almost limitless "free energy". But, it
is easy to see how the rare isotope fits into the category of "mouse"
if you believe that myth... so the inventor may have thought he could
solve the high-cost problem by using less of it, as a trigger.
It is unwise to be too idealistic about cheap energy such that one
refuses to consider what is becoming most likely from looking into the
public record, which includes the reality of Lugano being gainful, but
less gainful - and not with the salting of the ash with Ni-62, but
with the isotope being the actual fuel from the start, but the
inventor needing to hide that fact.
This viewpoint suggests:
1) LENR can happen with NiH far more easily with enrichment of the
isotope of nickel-62, which converts to Ni-63 via dense hydrogen
2) LENR as a robust energy source is therefore dependent on the cost
of a rare isotope, limiting its market
3) Ni-63 can be converted in situ and then produces about 50,000 time
more energy than combustion.
4) Even though the Ni-62 isotope will be brought down in cost,
eventually, in a similar way that U235 was, it will be expensive and
thus LENR will not propel society into the lofty realm of energy
independence as idealists want to believe.
5) To explain the failure of the megawatt system - this is of course
hypothetical but probably relates to the inventor's own self-deception
about steam, along with the fact that a two-stage "cat and mouse"
system with a tiny amount of Ni-62 as a trigger does not work as well
as he imagined, since he thought all along that his data was real
when it was bogus from the start, thanks to Penon. Rossi fooled
himself to the end.
In conclusion, it looks like the Ni-62/63 reaction, would provide a
compact source of energy as is already being implement by the
Russians, but likely too expensive for widespread civilian use, except
for a few niche applications. The big $ market could be military and
aerospace - where any small advantage can be "priceless" as they say
in MasterCard lingo. The fact that Penon moved to Russia may not be
coincidental.
