In reply to Stephen A. Lawrence's message of Mon, 24 Jan 2011 13:55:15 -0500: Hi, [snip] >Among other things, this makes it sound /extremely/ surprising that no >gamma radiation was detected during the public demonstration -- and it >also makes the statement that the spent material from the reactor was >not detectably radioactive seem rather startling.
Indeed, as has been pointed out here before. One type of nuclear reaction that might come close to this scenario. Ni-60 + 4H => 2 S-32 + 16.7 MeV This is a "clean fission" reaction. All isotopes are stable. The output energy is in the form of kinetic energy of the Sulfur nuclei, which are heavy compared to protons or electrons, and hence "slow" moving. IOW they don't create gamma or x-rays. There could however be the occasional neutron from collisions of the S with other nuclei (note however that these should be rare because the S nuclei are slow moving and have a considerable electric charge which tends to repel them from other nuclei, so most collisions are far more likely to be elastic, and there aren't likely to be many collisions anyway because most of the energy will be lost ionizing other atoms. Unfortunately this scenario doesn't explain the appearance of Copper. The enhanced electron capture scenario I previously described would explain how a reaction to Copper might not result in any positron-electron annihilation gammas (due to absence of positrons), however it wouldn't necessarily explain why the copper was always formed in the ground state, and hence no ordinary gammas were created. (This might be explained by an IC mechanism, however). Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
