Eric--
The first reaction that produces Ni-59 will end up as Co-59 with no gammas
since the Ni-59 decay involves an electron capture and a hot beta +, which will
give thermal energy to the matrix ( about .52Mev) with a subsequent beta+,
beta- decay with its back-to-back .51 Mev gammas. The total energy from the
Ni-59 decay--half live 7.6x10^4 years-- is 1.073 Mev. Ni-59 has a -3/2 spin
and and Co-59 has a -7/2 spin. It seems that spin is changed since the beta+
particle would only carry +or- 1/2 spin. I do not understand how spin angular
momentum is conserved in the Ni-59 decay reaction, unless there are several
neutrinos involved which could carry away spin angular momentum.
You have not considered neutron capture reactions with the various Ni isotopes.
If the H reacts in the magnetic field in the Rossi device with an electron to
form a neutron as an intermediate virtual particle, then Ni-58 would go to
Ni-59 and hence to Co-59 as described above.
Proton absorption reaction with Ni-60 would give Cu-61 with a 3.41 H half life.
Cu-61 decays by electron capture and gives a beta+ with soft gammas (.28 and
.65 Mev) and a stable Ni-61 isotope. (Focardi indicated that Cu was formed
and in non-natural isotopic ratios in the Rossi device.) This conclusion seems
to differ from your table regarding the desirability of the reaction.
Proton absorption reaction with Ni-58 gives Cu-59 which decays with a half live
if 82 s and produces a beta+ at 3.75 Mev and hot gammas at 1.3 Mev. Total
energy of this decay is 4.8 Mev. This does not look like it would be a
reaction that Rossi would like given the hot gamma. And there is a
radioactive product, since the final item is Ni-59 with its long half life
and its .51 Mev gammas from the beta+ annihilation.
A proton reaction with Ni-62 would give Cu-63, which is stable. This reaction
would involve a decrease in energy (mass) of about 6.22 Mev. How the energy
would be released is a question. It may be distributed by spin coupling to the
rest of the matrix electrons and hence as thermal energy.
Rossi would not want Ni-58, but Ni-62 and Ni-62 would seem to be ok. Ni-61
would be undesirable also since it gives Cu-62 with the addition of a proton,
and Cu-62 decays with a hot gamma of 1.17 Mev.
It is my thought that there may be two reactions occurring at the same time
with spin of the resulting Cu-63 isotopes having equal but opposite excited
spin states such that spin angular momentum change is 0 and each of the two new
Cu-63 nuclei decay from their excited states at the same time, coupling with
electrons in the matrix, with each electron receiving a quanta or two in the
process. It may be that a pair of protons, a Cooper pair, actually react with
two Ni-62 nuclei in a solid state BEC configuration. The magnetic field that
exists in the Ni matrix would cause the degenerative quantum states in the
adjacent Ni nuclei to allow the necessary excited spin states to handle the
excess mass energy released in the reactions. All this is without gammas.
How's that for a guess?
Bob Cook
----- Original Message -----
From: Eric Walker
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Sent: Saturday, September 06, 2014 8:01 PM
Subject: [Vo]:transmitted radiation for potential reactions in an NiH system
I was curious what the numbers would look like for a range of possible
reactions in an NiH system if the only two assumptions that were made were that
nuclear reactions are the main show in NiH LENR and that somehow there is a way
to overcome Coulomb repulsion. Although I suspect this is not the whole story,
I wanted to see what would happen if we keep things somewhat simple.
Here is what I found:
a.. The Ni(d,p)Ni reactions are benign and can shielded against fairly
easily.
b.. Nearly all other obvious exothermic reactions (e.g., Ni(p,*), d(p,*))
lead to penetrating radiation, for which even 5cm of lead will not be
sufficient.
c.. The Ni(d,p)Ni reactions produce fast protons, which can potentially
lead to secondary reactions of undesirable types.
You can see the model here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ylFdUCZ65O7V06MAX1KGmYC4UaaVII4HU5vJ6BIHnPU/edit#gid=399187264
It is very crude and is surely wrong on some details. I had to estimate the
cross sections in some cases, for example, and cross sections are pretty
finicky. But even a set of back-of-the-envelope calculations can lead to
insights. If the general trend of the model is correct, the numbers tell an
interesting story. Perhaps the columns most of interest will be W, X, Y and Z,
which estimate the number of escaping photons for each reaction for different
thicknesses of various materials. If you find a mistake, let me know.
Here are some possible implications of the model:
a.. Proton capture in NiH leads to nasty byproducts, including gammas and
electron-positron annihilation photons, and is to be avoided.
b.. Anything that leads to proton capture, e.g., hydrinos being captured by
nickel lattice sites, is similarly to be avoided.
c.. If Rossi's E-Cat is powered by reactions of the Ni(d,p)Ni type, either
there is something inherent in the geometry of the reaction that is avoiding
proton-initiated secondary reactions or Rossi has found a way to avoid the
secondary reactions.
Again, I'm not sure the story is as simple as the starting assumptions
suggest. For example, I'm interested the possibility that there's a mechanism
that transfers the energy of a nuclear transition to sources of charge in the
environment, thereby precluding the emission of gammas. If such a mechanism
existed, the Ni(p,*) and d(p,G)3He reactions would not necessarily be harmful.
Nonetheless it's quite interesting to me how under less generous assumptions a
whole class of reactions (Ni(d,p)Ni) turns up as somewhat benign and all other
classes turn up as quite dangerous.
Eric
