On Sat, Dec 28, 2013 at 8:20 PM, Alan Fletcher <[email protected]> wrote:
> the cylinder was cherry red, then in 10 seconds all the cylinder became > white-blue, starting from the white dot you see in the photo ( after 1 > second) becoming totally white-blue in the following 9 seconds, and then an > explosion and the ceramic inside ( which is a ceramic that melts at 2,000 > Celsius) turned into a red, brilliant stone, like a ruby. When we opened > the reactor, part of the AISI 310 ss steel was not molten, but sublimated > and recondensed in form of microscopic drops of steel. > This reminds me of the palladium cube that blew up in Pons's lab at the University of Utah. I suppose the sublimation of the AISI 310 stainless steel inside the Hot Cat might be the kind of thing that could happen with a genuinely nuclear process, even if it turned out to be fundamentally safer than the type of chain reaction we're already familiar with. Even if the process in the Hot Cat turns out to be safer, the remarks above and earlier ones about radiation and the destructive tests being carried out in a special room suggest it may not be benign under all operating conditions. We will have to revisit the question of power plants for pacemakers when we have more information. Eric
