On Jan 22, 2011, at 4:53 PM, [email protected] wrote:
In reply to Terry Blanton's message of Sat, 22 Jan 2011 11:08:03
-0500:
Hi,
[snip]
On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 11:00 AM, Jones Beene
<[email protected]> wrote:
Otherwise a runaway is more likely. In fact as far as the ‘grail’
metaphor
goes, I think most engineers would STRONGLY prefer to control the
reaction
via P-in.
If N quenches the reaction, tweeking by nitrogen injection is not
a bad idea.
T
I doubt Nitrogen can be used as a regulatory mechanism. It probably
poisons the
whole lattice, so I suspect that the reactor wouldn't work again
until you got
rid of it. IOW it was a good idea to shut down a run-away (like
dumping Boron
into a fission reactor), but not something you could use continuously.
Regards,
Robin van Spaandonk
http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
The effective thing the adding of N2 probably achieves (since it is
not adsorbed) is to quickly reduce the partial pressure of H2, which
causes H2 desorbtion from Ni. This contaminates the H2 gas with N2
which later has to be purged. Yes, it is possible N2 contaminates
the catalyst, as you say, especially the surface. Easier in a
production machine to simply pump down the H2 pressure or raise it
for slow speed control purposes. If a fast emergency scram is
needed, then liquid N2 (or cold N2, or CO2, which cool upon a high
pressure drop) would reduce the partial pressure of H2 fast while
simultaneously providing the necessary cooling. However, it is not
at all certain this would work in all circumstances. Cooling
increases the lattice pressure and reduces the lattice spacing.
Reducing H2 partial pressure initiates degassing, and thus tunneling
flux. These all together could momentarily increase the fusion
rate. This is substantiated somewhat by the gamma flash that occurs
in the demonstration device when power to the device is turned off. I
would guess a lot of safety related experimentation is called for.
Relying on any theory for this is not wise. I expect Rossi et al are
well aware of all this.
Best regards,
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
