The GAIA SUBCRITICAL REACTOR with hydrino augmentation

[Jones Beene]

Wasn't it Mark Twain who, in a long letter to someone, apologized for its length by stating that he didn't have enough time to write a shorter note? Well, consider this to be a similar apology in the era of email where with the availability of "cut and past," it seems that short but meaningful messages take way too much time.   Yesterday, the idea of using the Mill's microwave technique as an integral part of a subcritical reactor was broached. I have played around with some of the nucleonic calculations, based on Mills reports, particularly the Rowan study. Unfortunately even Mills has never stated the critical detail which would allow an accurate model. Although Mills has stated that at some point in hydrino shrinkage (n/25 or thereabouts) the process becomes unstable and auto-catalytic - after which a virtual neutron results; we do not know how long that process takes in an actual environment of continuous irradiation, nor the probability of any hydrino reaching the state (n/25) and subsequent immediate virtual-neutron. For the purposes of this design, I assumed that 10% of all hydrinos will eventually become virtual neutrons in an average time of 100,000 seconds of irradiation and that additional gamma irradiation in a reactor would only help, not squelch the process. This is probably extremely optimistic, because if true, it would allow less than 3 tons of uranium carbide to reach "virtual" criticality due to ongoing hydrino "virtual-neutron" supplementation (after a day-long startup process). And far less if D2 is substituted for H2.   If this was true, BLP should drop everything else they are doing, find new investors, and switch over to the hydrino boosted subcritical reactor.   5000 to 6000 pounds of uranium in an safe unpressurized 100 megawatt reactor in a size factor which would fit into - say a railroad car and have a base cost factor of less than the average house here in Mill Valley and be safer than a tankload of propane... well that's a hard combination to beat. Anyway, this would be an exciting prospect...  the only problem being that, personally I do not believe that Mills is correct in this CAF hypothesis. Why the long write-up then?   Well, the potential advantages of this are so outstanding that even if there is only a chance in a million of Mills' being correct, it is almost criminal for a committed environmentalist and free-energy advocate not to mention it...   To backtrack, Mills introduced a concept called CAF - columbic annihilation fusion, but has offered precious little in the form of actual proof to back it up. I find myself in the squirming position of accepting the reality of a "shrunken" hydrogen atom, at least through stage one (and even then it could be shrunken due to other reasons); but most importantly do not see the hydrino as necessarily an entity which can keep shrinking to become a virtual neutron. However, R. Mills is a far smarter guy than me or anyone I know, and has raised and sunk more than $50 million into his pursuit; therefore - for purposes of this piece, I will assume that he knows precisely what he has been talking about and publishing.   Consider a thin plasma and a temporary nanosecond in time when the electron from a free hydrogen atom (not a molecule) gets trapped near a helium ion. Then thermal and electrostatic agitation causes the heavier catalyst (helium) to try to pry off the electron; but it will instead radiate photon energy if it cannot quite succeed, then causing the electron orbit to fall into a quantum sub-orbit (or as Mills' calls it: a redundant ground state). In effect, the electron's angular momentum has given up the energy which was radiated by the He ion and we are left with shrunken hydrogen. Carry this out for 137 steps and we have a virtual neutron. Carry it out with Deuterium and we have two neutrons.   Mills says no orbits are stable after a few hundred eV are radiated, and the orbit of the hydrino then becomes so eccentric and that it immediately collapses into this virtual neutron. Is there any reason why this entity would not serve as the make-up neutron in a subcritical reactor scheme? In fact, it slightly more negative near-field (my guess) should if anything increase its cross-section for inducing fission.   THE GAIA SUBCRITICAL REACTOR WITH HYDRINO BOOST All things considered, energy from uranium fission involves some exasperating tradeoffs, but nevertheless can be easily rationalized as the “lesser of all evils,” at least for providing favorably-priced reliable energy for a future world where oil prices have sky-rocketed out of control. Plus, if done right, it can be cleaner and safer than combustion. But before rushing into a frenzy of 'throwing good money after bad,' it would be advisable to determine if the base technology for fission can be improved very significantly (which would also give LENR and ZPE projects, not to mention normal hydrino projects, more time to mature before major expenditures need to be made at the national level for old-style fission). And... to also see if we can't do it right this time. IMHO its time for Manhattan project, part deux...   One potential compound device which seems to go most of the way towards a MUCH better integrated system may well be based on the Mills' hydrino. This technology may provide a natural synergy for use in a fission reactor to provide some "makeup neutrons" for subcritical fueling, if Mills is correct, of course. That factor of correctness could be determined rather quickly, with modest funding, and with or without cooperation from BLP. This proposed advanced reactor design is 1) unpressurized, 2) natural U fueled, 3) nominally subcritical, 4) direct heat-->electricity conversion 5) driven to criticality by hydrino shrinkage and the creation of virtual neutrons 6) moderated by graphite with perhaps some strategically situated D2O, 7) Perhaps employing continuous, on-site, just-in-time reprocessing (engineered for robotic operation with no added proliferation risk). The overriding advantages, however, are extremely impressive: the safety of natural fuel and subcriticality, the safety and low cost of an unpressuized reactor, far less heat rejection, and getting completely free of the steam cycle. The steam cycle is the one debilitating anachronism of all present day reactor designs which is totally unacceptable for the future - at least as long as there is any alternative. Using steam together with a dangerous fuel like enriched uranium has completely morphed what could have been a safe and inexpensive heating device into an extremely expensive time-bomb which must be micro-managed, and is always subject to a terrorist threat. An unpressurized subcritical reactor should end all that. Thermionics - the “Edison effect” - relates to the emission of electrons by heat. Essentially, electrons entropically “boil off” any hot material in order to lower its temperature - and they can be collected and used as direct current when the emitter is hot enough. In theory, thermionic conversion (TIC) would be the most efficient form of direct conversion for use with fission fuel except for one major problem. Extremely high fuel temperature and the kinetic "jitter" of such can inhibit fission by thermal neutrons, and this is probably why TIC hasn’t been seriously considered before now. TIC  is currently used in "decay-type" plutonium reactors for the space program - which is unfortunately an implementation for which thermionics is poorly suited. That misuse has tarnished the concept in the minds of many engineers. The enormous gamma radiation which is unavoidable in fission reactors - and either wasted or a big problem for other forms of conversion, could actually be put to great use in order to accentuate the normal thermionic driving mechanism of heat alone. Additional microwave irradiation on the surface opposite to the emitting surface should also greatly help. These are two enormous synergies which have yet to be tried. If TIC can be implemented at more moderate temperatures – and that may now be potentially feasible with this novel design, then excellent net efficiency is all but guaranteed. Unlike steam conversion of fossil fuels, the fission energy spectrum is all at the 'high end' and does NOT necessarily require convective heat rejection as does combustion; therefore, to the degree that TIC could be implemented at all, it would result in perhaps double the efficiency of steam. The requirement for extensive heat-rejection is also the one of the many intractable and costly problems for steam conversion. Simplistically stated, when you do not actively reject heat via conduction, the worst thing that can happen becomes the best thing that can happen - the fuel gets hotter and forces more electrons to boil off.  This can be enhanced by either a "push" or by a "pull" or both; but any enhanced TIC concept will necessarily involve novel additional features.   The history of the radio vacuum tube may be helpful in understanding this. The simplest example of thermionics is provided by the diode vacuum tube, the device that started the modern era of wireless communication. In this tube, electrons are 'boiled-off' a heated cathode to be collected on an anode plate, an inefficient process because the cathode must be parasitically heated. Not a problem in a fission reactor - where the fuel itself becomes an intrinsically heated cathode and electron emitter with a double (or triple) push beyond heat.   Imagine that your fuel is natural uranium in the form of 36 long hollow cylinders or pipes – lets say ~3 cm in internal diameter, 2 meters long, wall thickness of 2 cm, each weighing about 80 kg. Each fuel tube will be surrounded by other closely space cylinders of zirconium metal, electrically insulated from each other with ceramic end caps. All the cylinders external to the fuel pipe will be closely space and called grids. There will be two or three grids per each fuel pipe, all concentric axially, each serving a purpose to convert heat into emf in well-know triode or tetrode fashion. The total unit is the functional equivalent of a long radio vacuum tube, having a "filament" which is the hollow fuel tube which is irradiated down its central axis by microwaves. This is where hydrinos are bred. The central diameter is chosen to be a quarter wavelength of the microwave, in this case 2.45 Ghz with a wavelength of a little over 12 cm. gives a diameter of about 3 cm.   Let’s call them FEP assemblies, or fuel-emitter-pipes, and they will be designed to be robotically removed and replaced in a short time period, like vacuum tubes in an old radio - so that fuel reprocessing becomes an ongoing automatic operation. This arrangement then allows a concentric multipactor grid to feed a collector anode – a larger surrounding cylinder. In this fashion, we should (optimistically) be able to achieve high current (100,000 amps/pipe) at moderately high voltage (300 volts) from a fuel element that is kept around 2000 Kelvin. For use in a fission reactor where the fuel must be kept below the optimum temperature for efficient TIC electron emission, the available ways to overcome this limitation go back 60 years to radio. In a triode tube, a charged open grid can serve to accelerate (pull) electrons away from a cathode at far lower temperature than when they are being forced (pushed) by heat alone; or electrons can be pushed from the opposite side of the emitter by a higher potential or emf capacitance which the microwave irradiation will provide (in addition to supplying the emf for hydrino formation). In order to get maximum efficiency, we need to find a ways to actually multiply electrons from the emitter. Tetrode and pentrode tubes expand the role of the grid, but don't multiply, yet there is a gridless device invented by Philo Farnsworth called a "mulitpactor" which can serve the role of a solid lossless grid, multiplier and re-emitter, especially in a high gamma environment. Even in the 1940s, the multipactor achieved efficiency in the high 90% range when normal power tubes were half of that efficiency, at best. But the use of the multipactor was limited in radio because of 'noise', and eventually it was pushed aside by the transistor, so that even today few EE types are familiar with its features and advantages.   This high efficiency of the multipactor is critical when applied to TIC fission because at a large amount of electron flux must be recycled. For instance, in order to achieve 3 megawatts of net electrical output per fuel-pipe, we might need to achieve over 5 megawatts gross output and continuously recycle over 2 in the form of HV to be used to "force" higher thermionic emission from a surface that is less than optimum temperature. If we can recover that recycled input at 90% efficiency, then the net parasitic loss is only going to be in the range of ~5%.  The parasitic loss of microwave irradiation will be even less.   Furthermore,  potential synergy can be imagined by using deuterium, rather than hydrogen. Since we will be actually only consuming a few pounds a day of either isotope, it makes sense to use D2 rather than H2, assuming that both isotopes undergo hydrino shrinkage to the same degree.   Two interesting ways to boost subcritical fission with "manufactured" neutrons, in addition to the hydrino: 1) Use heavy water under ultrasonic irradiation as an active moderator inside a central cylinder which is surrounded by the FEP assemblies, and/or 2) Use deuterium gas at very low pressure in the inter-electrode spaces in order to provide increased electrical conductivity and to generate some make-up neutrons by photofission and neutron stripping reactions.   The electric field created between the central fuel pipe/ TIC electrode and the multipactor grid can be in the several kilovolt range - and with a fairly large inter-electrode spacing, a deuterium plasma discharge can also be maintained. That means that  there is a potential for added neutron generation due to stripping and photofission. The added operating cost of D2 replacement, if D2 should be substituted for H2 either in the hydrino region, the inter-electrode region, or both will be reasonable since less than a hundred kg per year will be used.   For use within the reactor itself, any of electrode surfaces would need to be fashioned out of zirconium metal or graphite (alloys and cermets). The most external grid could be water cooled, but the fuel pipe and multipactor grid itself should be uncooled except for the heat transfer provided by emitted electrons. No convective heat removal is needed. No expensive cooling towers needed.   A further advantage which can be incorporated is a reflective moderator - a thick graphite blanket which can surround the multi-tube array providing neutron reflection and moderation. This is a huge advantage for a smaller size (100 megawatt) reactor which is unavailable to all pressurized reactors. That is, a graphite blanket of ~1 meter thickness has been proven to both moderate and reflect neutrons - giving over 90% thermal neutron reflection, but because of the high space requirement and the reactivity of graphite with steam, this kind of blanket type reflector is forbidden in all current reactor designs.  Burnup can be high with on site reprocessing. All the fuel the reactor will ever need can be in-place at startup. Total uranium usage per kilowatt/hr produced over the reactor life can be 100 times less than if using enriched fuel. Fission ash can be removed, concentrated and stored on-site in a small area. The list of advantages goes on and on.   Again, many of these design choices can work together synergistically. And it would be an incredible option, albeit somewhat complex,  to consider for validation IF the theory of Randall Mills is correct regarding CAF and the virtual neutron (and particularly if the technique applies to D2 as well as H2). But, alas, despite spending a fair amount of time dreaming this scheme up and reducing it to writing... to be honest, I am far from convinced on that "correctness" of the virtual-neutron part... More on this "pipe-dream" later... Jones