I don’t believe that neutrons are involved in the Rossi reaction. The best indication now is that two PROTONS gently tunnel their way into a heavy nucleus.
Next, a truism of bomb physics: isotopes with even mass numbers cannot be used for a bomb. The mass number of U238 is 238. This is even. Therefore, this isotope cannot be used to make a bomb. The number of protons in the nucleus of an atom determines an element's atomic number. In other words, each element has a unique number that identifies how many protons are in one atom of that element. For example, all hydrogen atoms, and only hydrogen atoms, contain one proton and have an atomic number of 1. All carbon atoms, and only carbon atoms, contain six protons and have an atomic number of 6. Oxygen atoms contain 8 protons and have an atomic number of 8. Adding two protons to U238 will give Plutonium 240. This stuff has an even mass number and cannot be used to make a bomb. Only odd mass number isotopes can provide feedstock for bombs: that is U233, U235, Pu239, and Np237. On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 10:57 PM, Eric Walker <eric.wal...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 11:29 PM, Mark Iverson-ZeroPoint < > zeropo...@charter.net> wrote: > >> Sure, the US went off the gold standard decades ago (a mistake in my >> opinion), but where does money get invested when currencies weaken… >> precious metals. You do realize that we’re not just talking transmutation >> of two or three elements… the LENR tests which looked for transmuted >> elements found many… some over ten different elements, and I’m not counting >> isotopes as separate elements. LENR would most likely have a very >> disruptive impact on that market… which has advantages as well as >> disadvans… a lot of those metals are used in technologies like integrated >> circuits and special alloys for aircraft, and the price will come down, >> which is good for the consumer. >> > > Yeah -- I've taken a look at some of the NAA and SIMS spectra. The > isotopes are all over the map. If the data are taken at face value, it > looks like whatever you put on the nickel or palladium surface could > potentially be modified significantly. It's interesting on some level to > think that you could generate isotopes using a controlled process of some > kind, and being able to do this would no doubt be valuable for scientific > and technological applications. > > But there are three considerations that give me pause, here. The first > two are related to evidence and the third to safety. First, a lot of the > spectra in the papers are small and hard to read and don't give you clear > error bars, so it's difficult to get a sense of how much above error the > shifts are at the end of the experiment. Some papers give this level of > detail, which is helpful to have. But in any event the following slides > give a good overview of some of the subtleties involved in this kind of > measurement: http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ApicellaMmassspectr.pdf. > > Second, I don't have a good sense of what the difference between a genuine > shift in isotopes, on one hand, and contamination of some kind, on the > other, would look like. The question legitimately arises whether there are > simply impurities in the hydrogen gas or heavy water that are glomming onto > the cathode. I imagine there are some people who could look at the spectra > and immediately get a sense of the difference. > > A third concern relates to safety. The possibility has already been > brought up that if these experiments emit gamma rays (I've read several > papers that indicate that they do under certain circumstances), then it's > likely that any devices would be regulated. It's fine to create > regulations, but since such devices involve components that you can > purchase over the Internet and assemble at home, there's only so much you > can do to keep any emerging technology under control. What if you could > take something like uranium-238, which is relatively abundant, add > sufficient neutrons to it and then let it alpha and beta decay to > uranium-235? This is the kind of thing that happens in the course of > r-process nucleosynthesis, which seems like it might be similar to what is > going on in LENR. This chart suggests that if you can get something into > the actinide series, you're well on your way: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Radioactive_decay_chains_diagram.svg > > I can only imagine that there are complications here and there, including > losing relatively unstable isotopes before they can accumulate. But the > larger point is that the discovery of LENR, if it is real, might have > negative implications as well as positive ones. > >
