Bob,
Mills uses water as his source of hydrogen. The water is recycled in the device. If tritium is being produced, then it will accumulate in the water. Tritium will always displace a proton to form tritiated water which then glows when a phosphor is added to the water. Anyone given a vial of water from the Sun Cell can perform a simple luminosity test in a darkened room. This would determine only that some (any) source of radioactivity is present – not necessarily tritium. Nevertheless, it provides a prima facie case for tritium, since no other radioactive species would be suspected in the water. I can think of few simpler tests. From there on, it gets more complicated – so what? The case has been made for nuclear energy, over and above anything related to a putative hydrino - and that means a lot. From: Bob Higgins Jones, While I agree 100% that tritium is one of the most convincing evidences for LENR, I beg to differ on your ease of detection comment for tritium: >> The signature of tritium is a well-known beta decay with a short and >> predictable half-life which cannot happen naturally, and also is easy to >> detect with inexpensive meters. The low energy beta particles will not penetrate the device (metal or glass) holding the tritium gas, nor will the beta particles easily be detected in low concentration in the atmosphere (you do not want to be in a position to have tritium in the atmosphere). Also, once in the atmosphere, tritium will diffuse extremely quickly, reducing the local concentration to a small level (thankfully). Thus, detection of tritium via GM tubes is impractical. Tritium is also extremely difficult to detect in a mass spectrometer due to the ionic interferers, such as HD. The gold standard for tritium detection is to catalyze it into T2O and mix into a solution having a liquid beta scintillator. Then this container with the scintillator and the T2O is placed inside a closed photomultiplier sensor where the beta produced scintillations are counted - for many hours. The count provides the tritium concentration. It is not a capability you would find in many laboratories. On Sun, Nov 6, 2016 at 8:30 AM, Jones Beene <[email protected]> wrote: Speaking of the Sun-Cell and its early commercialization… Tritium generation is the gold standard of proof in LENR. There is nothing else which comes close to the certainty afforded by finding a reaction which produces tritium at lower energy input. But the experiment itself becomes radioactive and rather dangerous since tritium is hydrophilic and carcinogenic -- and is therefore seldom performed today. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was created to ensure the safe use of radioactive materials for civilian purposes. The NRC regulates all commercial uses of nuclear materials, even the small amounts of tritium (micrograms) used in nuclear medicine. The signature of tritium is a well-known beta decay with a short and predictable half-life which cannot happen naturally, and also is easy to detect with inexpensive meters. Discovery of the tritium signature is thus rock-solid proof of a nuclear reaction. The signal has been reported many times in peer reviewed experiments from the early days. These experiments have been generally ignored by the mainstream. It may surprise many LENR advocates to learn that one of the first claimants of tritium production in light water electrolysis was none other than Randell Mills, who published his results in the highly regarded Fusion Technology Magazine over twenty-four years ago – long before there was even a company called Blacklight Power. Mills of course would love to have the world ignore this detail about tritium today, since he wants nothing to do with anything that smacks of “nuclear” and wishes to portray the Sun Cell as completely non-nuclear. Yet the possibility that tritium occurs as an inherent result of the Mills effect will not be erased until he permits an independent observer to monitor the experiment for tritium (which has not happened). Any level of secrecy creates a problem for eventual certification of the Sun Cell - if it should bring the results into the purview of the NRC. BTW - the legacy of tritium discovery by Mills lives on in US Patent 6,024,935 - where the inventor himself quotes many varied and different sources to support the discovery of tritium in nickel-light water electrolysis (curiously ignoring Claytor and LANL) in favor of: 1) Notoya, "Tritium Generation . . . Nickel Electrodes", Fusion Technology, vol. 26. 2) Oka, et. al., "D2O-fueled fusion power reactor using electromagnetically induced…Deuterium-tritium reactions-- Fusion Technology, vol. 16, No. 2, Sep. 1989, pp. 263-267. 3) Srinivasan, et. al., "Tritium and Excess Heat Generation during Electrolysis of Aqueous Solutions of Alkali Salts with Nickel Cathode", 3rd Annual Conference on Cold Fusion. 4) Chien, et. al., "On an Electrode . . . Tritium and Helium", J. Electroanal Chem., 1992, pp. 189-212. 5) Storms, et. al., "Electroyltic Tritium Production", Fusion Technology, vol. 17, Jul. 1990, pp. 680-695.
