*At 10:03 AM 3/29/2012, David Roberson wrote: * > > *I think the government officials in power most likely do not believe > LENR is real and therefore are not too concerned with secrecy. The > international work being performed upon the concepts prevents them from > having significant control in any case. > *
*The position of the U.S. goverment is a bit unclear. The reality of LENR hasn't been well publicized, even though a turn obviously happened sometime around 2004.* > *I do suspect that they would change their position and actions quickly > if anyone develops a technique that leads to dangerous weaponry. I hope > that this will never be possible and most of the evidence points in that > direction. > * LENR could pose a significant proliferation threat. First some background. Isotope separation is the process of concentrating specific isotopes of a chemical element by removing other isotopes, for example separating natural uranium into enriched uranium and depleted uranium. This is a crucial process in the manufacture of uranium fuel for nuclear power stations, and is also required for the creation of uranium based nuclear weapons. Plutonium based weapons use plutonium produced in a nuclear reactor, which must be operated in such a way as to produce plutonium already of suitable isotopic mix or grade. While in general chemical elements can be purified through chemical processes, isotopes of the same element have nearly identical chemical properties, which make this type of separation impractical. This process of separating even numbered isotopes from odd numbered transuranic isotopes is the greatest disincentive to rampant proliferation of nuclear weapons technology in the world today There are three types of isotope separation techniques but the one in general use today is directly based on the atomic weight of the isotope. It is hard to separate uranium-235 from the more common uranium-238. On the other extreme, separation of fissile plutonium-239 from the common impurity plutonium-240, while desirable in that it would allow the creation of gun-type nuclear weapons from plutonium, is generally agreed to be impractical because of the closeness of the atomic weights of these two plutonium isotopes. All large-scale isotope separation schemes employ a number of similar stages which produce successively higher concentrations of the desired isotope. Each stage enriches the product of the previous step further before being sent to the next stage. Similarly, the tailings from each stage are returned to the previous stage for further processing. This creates a sequential enriching system called a cascade. There are two important factors that affect the performance of a cascade. The first is the separation factor (the square root of the mass ratio of the two isotopes), which is a number greater than 1. The second is the number of required stages to get the desired purity. The number of times the cascade process may be repeated is based on the purity of the isotope required. This number can get into the tens of thousands. The bomb grade U235 enrichment level starts at about 80%. The equipment needed to do this isotopic separation is large, hugely expensive, power intensive, and highly controlled. As opposed to terror groups, only countries have the money and the nuclear know-how to do isotopic separation. Once you have bomb grade uranium the bomb is relatively easy to build. LENR may provide an easy way to enrich uranium, because it burns even numbered isotopes of an element leaving the odd atomic numbered element behind. For example, U-238 would be converted to Cesium-137 and iodine-131 among other nuclear wastes products, but U-235 would remain unaffected. How far this LENR based enrichment of U-235 would go is not known, but the potential is there. I could replace the nickel in my DGT reactor with pitch blend and in a year or two have some enriched U-235 to experiment with. On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 1:03 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <[email protected]>wrote: > At 10:03 AM 3/29/2012, David Roberson wrote: > > I think the government officials in power most likely do not believe LENR >> is real and therefore are not too concerned with secrecy. The >> international work being performed upon the concepts prevents them from >> having significant control in any case. >> > > The position of the U.S. goverment is a bit unclear. The reality of LENR > hasn't been well publicized, even though a turn obviously happened sometime > around 2004. > > > >> I do suspect that they would change their position and actions quickly if >> anyone develops a technique that leads to dangerous weaponry. I hope that >> this will never be possible and most of the evidence points in that >> direction. >> > > The context of this discussion is the claim of Le Clair. That's not LENR, > I'll keep repeating. This is quite clear. It might be hot fusion, it might > be a schizophrenic fantasy, but LENR, it isn't. It isn't "Low-energy." The > effect is happening from bubble collapse, which means really, really hot. > > Except for what might happen with rarity on the level of "maybe a few > times in the history of the universe" -- or rarer -- the reactions involved > in LENR could not occur in plasma conditions, they require the influence of > condensed matter, which can't exist at those temperatures. > > We still don't know what, specifically, is allowing LENR. There are plenty > of theories, but it's quite difficult to investigate. Plasma physics is > well known, because you can literally see what is happening. How can you > tell what is happening in a palladium lattice? > > NiH reactions open up some possibilities for exploration, but ... I > haven't even seen helium results from Arata's PdD work (which is similar in > being gas loaded). It's like we are blind. We need to see much more. > > More basic science, less jumping up and down from visions of cheap energy, > which are not likely to be realized until we have a much better idea of > what's actually going on. > > >
