By the way, fusion of protons with transuranic elements is very unlikely. But if somehow a proton(s) got inside a super heavy nucleus, fission of the new transmuted element would almost certainly happen instantaneously.
Such a fission reaction would be 20 time more energetic per incident (~200MeV) compared to the formation of copper from nickel (~10 MeV). 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. > >
