Several people have questioned Mr. Rossi on his journal about the SSM operations and how they are defined. He eventually answered that he considered both PWM and zero input drive after warm up as being forms of SSM. The first is when the input power is operated at a certain low duty cycle. He clearly stated that the SSM description applied to this case during the period of time that the drive is set to zero. Since it appears that the internally generated power of the core will retard the rate at which the device temperature falls one can understand how that description seems appropriate.
The other case he mentioned as being possible to utilize within the 1 Megawatt system is a true form of SSM operation. Unless I read him incorrectly, he stated that the input can be totally cut off under this condition while the output power continues to be generated for a very long time. I assume that some form of additional cold shock needs to be applied to the devices to begin a cool down for that system. Perhaps the water flow rate can be modulated to throw the process into reverse which represents a form of active cooling that we have been discussing for a long time. His original design was expected to go into thermal run away which resulted in melting of the core material that shut down the reaction. Apparently the melt down process is now under control within low temperature ECATs. I suppose that boiling of the water which surrounds the core section of a normal ECAT acts as a brake for thermal run away. The phase change of liquid water into vapor is capable of extracting a large quantity of heat from the reaction, and that might be the solution to several difficult problems. A well calibrated pressure reduction and check valve in line with the output port might be used to establish a working temperature and pressure that allows the SSM to keep alive. Then, the limited pressure within the ECAT would allow fresh cold water to be pumped into the chamber at a sufficient quantity to immediately drop the pressure and temperature resulting in a reversal of the SSM state. We are concentrating upon the HotCat devices while Rossi appears to be diligently working on the cooler operating 1 Megawatt ECAT systems. I hope that we are not being misdirected while the major progress is occurring elsewhere. The joke may be on us. Dave
