I wrote: I would be surprised if the answer to the second question [Is it possible > under any circumstance for an NiH system to operate at or above 600 C?] were > unequivocally negative; it is possible to think up scenarios in which the > nuclear active environment rarely reaches the melting point of nickel, even > with a low-grade reaction proceeding. >
I just happened upon a writeup by Stan Szpak, from SPAWAR, and others, concerning the PdD co-deposition process he pioneered, in which palladium is electroplated on a gold or copper or similar base. The SPAWAR video I have referred to elsewhere, which shows a number of bright hot spots rapidly appearing and disappearing against a red and blue background, is of one of these assemblies. What the authors have to say about it sounds similar to what Guenter guessed might be going on, where a small region destructively melts, or, in their words, explodes: The ‘hot spots’ observed in the infrared imaging experiments are suggestive of ‘miniexplosions’ (Figure 1b). To verify this, the Ag electrode on a piezoelectric transducer was used as the substrate for the Pd/D co-deposition. If a mini-explosion occurred, the resulting shock wave would compress the crystal. The shock wave would be followed by a heat pulse that would cause the crystal to expand. In these experiments, sharp downward spikes followed by broader upward spikes were observed in the piezoelectric crystal response. The downward spikes were indicative of crystal compression while the broader upward spikes are attributed to the heat pulse and the consequent crystal expansion following the explosion. http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/SzpakSlenrresear.pdf So there may be no reason to try to think up a nuclear active environment that is long-lived; it is possible that the NAE (if things can be generalized, here) typically explodes and goes away, with the reaction continuing on elsewhere in the substrate. Eric
