On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 9:21 AM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > 1. Stored energy can only cause the temperature to decline monotonically, > very rapidly at first (Newton's law of cooling). Yet this heat increased > during the event. > Not true. If the inside is hotter than the outside, the outside can heat up, just from stored energy. Try this: Get an oil-filled space heater, and plug it in for about 5 or 10 minutes, then measure the surface temperature. It will continue to increase after it is turned off. With water-vapor in equilibrium, it is even easier to explain. If the inside of the container is well above boiling, then the temperature of the water/steam will be completely determined by the pressure. So, if the pressure increases as steam is formed, the temperature will increase. Moreover, chemical fuel can produce heat, which could increase the temperature. An increase in temperature, by itself, is no evidence of nuclear reactions. And the energy density is but a tiny fraction of the best chemical energy densities. > > 2. You cannot heat the iron around the cell or in the call walls up to > 543°C with electric heaters inside the cell. They would have to reach much > higher temperatures than any electric heater is capable of. > But the iron in the walls accounts for only a small part of the 100 kg mass. The inner part could easily consist of 30 - 50 kg of thermal mass heated up to hundreds of degrees. About 15 kg of metal hydride could store the 13 MJ necessary to produce all the observations in that demo. 3. The data shows that the reactor cools in ~40 min. when the power is cut. > No. It doesn't. It cools by 10C in 40 minutes. And that's when the coolant flow rate is doubled. And it's at the end of the run, when most of the stored energy will have already been drawn down. For this oft-repeated argument to be valid, it would have to be done at the beginning, not the end, of the run, with the same flow rate. That is the actual, measured limit of stored heat with this system, at > these temperatures and inputs. > No. It's not, because you don't know the temperature of the inner core. At the end of the run it may have been 200C or less, but at the beginning at 500C or more. Those two temperatures give the same temperature of the water-steam mixture. To get the limit of energy storage, you have to see how fast it cools *right after it's heated up*, not 3.25 hours later. You cannot magically change it to 4 hours. The data shows a rapid decline > in temperature. You cannot magically change that to an increase. > There is nothing magic about starting at a higher inner temperature. That's just simple physics. And there's nothing magic about part of a system increasing in temperature, even if the average temperature decreases. That's just physics. To some, simple physics may look like magic. But if you've studied physics, it just looks normal. Your friend has a famous quote about that. > This analysis cannot be taken seriously. It is full of gaping holes and > impossibilities. I realize that Heffner does not see it that way, but I do. > You are in the minority.
