From: H Veeder
Is Kim saying a cold fusion bomb is possible?
Look at slide 31
https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10355/36783/TheoreticalA
nalysisReactionMechanisms.pdf?sequence=1
This looks more like hot fusion but Kim appears to be fond of conflating
everything in these slides - including random anecdotes told to him by DGT,
which he assumes are true; and this is unfortunate for everyone concerned.
Kim's reputation has suffered.This question about the possible weaponization of cold fusion does bring to mind past speculation about the puzzling level of "official neglect" of the field - in the context of proliferation issues. We tend to forget the lingering role of the cold-war in decision-making 23 years ago. The suggestion has been made - that at the highest level of government, resistance to cold fusion technology was based on information known to only a handful of people - and it did not relate to scientific issues so much as to practical fears. Teller's famous question to P&F could have merely been a ruse to find out how much information had already slipped out. He knew of the real risk, yet probably was convinced that they did not. One way that proliferation issues could be involved is with fractional (below ground state) hydrogen. The scenario goes something like this. The process for creating hydrogen below ground state may have been known for some time under other names going back 80+ years to Tandberg - but it has more recently been discovered that deeply redundant hydrogen atoms (monatomic) can be absorbed into the electron cloud of heavy metals and stay there permanently but NOT as covalent molecules. The f/H atoms that can do this are essentially neutral. When the electron of the f/H is located at a deep Rydberg level at the time it encounters the inner electrons of the host - a match may occur in resonance. Then the species it can lodge in that orbital as what Mills calls a "hydrino hydride" which is essentially one proton plus two electrons with a negative charge. This species then acts as a very heavy electron when it lodges within a p-orbital, and that orbital geometry can on occasion push it close to the nucleus. Moreover, if f/H is to be absorbed at all, it must be as a Rydberg multiple p-orbital, due to its density (in this hypothesis). Note- this is NOT the way Mills has suggested that the hydride is formed, or operates. But if you are with me so far, then the above scenario is the setup for U becoming impregnated with 3 of these hydrides filling the inner three p-orbitals of the heavy metal. At this state the resultant metal is massively densified, and would be extremely reactive under further compression. The evidence of this kind of isomer is supposedly an increase in density of the new species. U has a density of about 19 g/cm^3 as a metal, but the hydride drops to 11 g/cm^3, a huge drop consistent with covalent bonding. The putative f/H loaded metal would go the other way - to over ~22 g/cm^3, at least in this scenario. As you might suspect, this reads like a SciFi plot, and that is probably where it will end up. But there is more. U-238 does not undergo fission from slow neutrons as a general rule, but will split when struck by a high energy neutron, but even then - the cross-section is low. The fast neutrons produced in a hydrogen bomb by the fusion of deuterium and tritium have enough energy to do this. In fact, many do not realize that fast fission of 238 provides most of the yield in the typical hydrogen bomb, not fusion. Presumably, a fast negatively charged particle like f/H- will have little problem inducing fast-fission, and moreover - with a high cross-section. Thus... connecting all the dots... this is where the speculation about proliferation due to LENR begins, and it is nothing more than speculation, but it involves an alternative way to make an explosive by a less sophisticated country, since it presumably could be accomplished using natural metal and simpler techniques than isotope enrichment. However, it sounds just as complicated to many of us - as enrichment, given the problem of manufacturing f/H. Even though this scenario is highly unlikely - if we go back to the time when cold fusion was being rejected in spite of decent but inconclusive evidence, it made about as much sense as anything else (other than incompetence) ... at least in answering the question of why officials in the Pentagon (specifically) would "actively ignore" what should have been a breakthrough technology... while at the same time, they were spending billions, funding hundreds of projects that were complete tripe. In truth, bureaucratic incompetence is probably the best explanation.
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