Going back over a decade to when several top level LENR researchers at a National Lab were using lithium hydroxide with deuterium (Claytor and Tuggle) in cold fusion cells, and getting results including the production of tritium and 4He - there has been speculation in an ostensibly unrelated field.
When we look at some of the "runaway anomalies" with lithium batteries over the years (overheating and explosions are not uncommon) - and dig deeper, this problem could be possibly be explained as the result of a form of "cold fusion". Here is a recent and alarming story, but over 100 million lithium batteries have been recalled in recent years, so it is not unexpected: http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2012/04/explosion-reported-at-gm-tech-cen ter.html Since 3H (tritium) has such a unique decay signature as it goes to 3He (helium-3) one has to wonder if radiation was being monitored during the battery testing. Probably not, since without deuterium in higher proportions, this kind of radiation would be unexpected. However, it is naïve to think GM would admit to this, even if it was a possibility. They stand to lose more than $10 billion is the Volt turns out to be a flop. OTOH, I doubt very much that tritium was really involved in the GM accidental explosion, as it is too easy to spot. However, that does not rule out all forms of LENR, including some that "look a lot like Ni-H". Please excuse the long-winded posting but this could be important. The Claytor, et al. results with tritium are well-documented and happened with heavy water, and of course none is used in lithium batteries. That is the main argument against LENR in batteries, since the easiest reaction is 3H+2H -> 4He+n. However, IF (big "if") there is any possible application of the various theories where protons act as "virtual neutrons" when exposed to deflated electrons, then there exists another route to gain, without the need for deuterium. W-L theory is the recent and most notable theory of this kind (virtual neutron variety) but there have been many others over the years, so who exactly should be given credit for the general insight is not clear. At any rate, natural water contains about one part in 4000 deuterium. In rare cases, perhaps a tiny amount of tritium could accumulate in the battery and further react with the lithium, or with the tiny amount of deuterium present. That is very unlikely, even in the perfect storm scenario, so let's ditch this possibility rather than waste more time with it. (someone always brings it up) The major source is of tritium is D+D, of course - but that is not the only source. In fact, Both lithium-6 and lithium-7 produce tritium when irradiated by neutrons. The cross section for fast neutrons favors the former, so the later is ignored, and 7Li (93% of natural) has a low cross section for thermal neutrons. But what about virtual neutrons? No one has a clue about their cross-section. Anyway, to cut to the chase - one of the most important reactions in all of Cosmology and in all Stars like our sun is called lithium burning. A proton reacts with 7Li, and the result is two alphas which carry away the energy efficiently and with less secondary radiation than one would expect. This is one of the most common nuclear reactions in the Universe, so it is a mystery why some version of it seldom turns up in this kind of discussion, related to lithium batteries. In fact, in terms of LENR, and having the simple goal of "overcoming a Coulomb threshold" - the 7Li(p,a)4He reaction (it is often written this way) has a similar threshold to the D+D reaction, the one which is normally associated with the P&F effect! Yes, the reaction rate is lower, but it requires nothing but lithium and water - two ingredients that are found in lithium batteries. Plus, the reaction rate would be expected to be much higher if the hydrogen were "not exactly" natural hydrogen, but instead was "fractional" (below ground state orbital, ala Mills). Here is the shocker. Did you know that many lithium batteries use Nickel electrodes and more recently nano-nickel has become the rage for improving these batteries? How farther, with this new twist - are the battery anomalies from the prior results of Thermacore, Mills, Focardi, Piantelli, Celani, Ahern, Rossi, DGT etc? My prediction is that GM was testing an advanced lithium battery which had nano-nickel electrodes; and the result of this (unknown to them) was an accumulation of fractional hydrogen, which eventually reacted with lithium to fuse to helium in an explosion. They should find helium as the ash of the reaction. The "trigger" was possibly an inadvertent over-discharge ... this kind of discharge causes instant excess heating, and this heat resulted in the trigger needed for the 7Li(p,a)4He to proceed in an auto-catalytic way. But again, I doubt we will ever know the full details of this explosion, and whether helium or radiation was seen. We can only hope that someone at GM has enough curiosity to "take off the blinders" - long enough to figure this one out. It could turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Jones
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