I wrote: In recent months my bet has been on transmutation from one isotope of > nickel to another, but I will need to read the report to see how I continue > to feel about that. >
I just read over the report, and I feel greatly confirmed in the hypothesis that neutron stripping of deuterium is occurring via the Oppenheimer-Phillips process. I'm also guessing that a 7Li(p,4He)4He reaction is happening, as offered as one possibility by the authors. This means there could be measurable helium, something I hadn't expected. The ratios of isotopes of nickel in the fuel prior to operation were the natural ones. After operation, the amounts of 58Ni, 60Ni and 61Ni pretty much went to zero. This indicates to me that those isotopes were consumed. By contrast, 62Ni went up dramatically. This indicates to me that 62Ni was the final point in the process, at least as far as nickel is concerned. The way I would expect the process to unfold would be something like this: - 58Ni → 59Ni → 60Ni → 61Ni → 62Ni - 59Ni → 60Ni → 61Ni → 62Ni - 60Ni → 61Ni → 62Ni - 61Ni → 62Ni The reaction would be Ni(d,p)Ni in all cases, and these four chains would occur in parallel. Clearly they're different stages of the same chain, but it's helpful to see the starting points. As you consider this list, keep in mind the natural abundances of 68 percent 58Ni, 26 percent 60Ni, 1 percent 61Ni and 3.6 percent 62Ni. Given enough time, and perhaps relatively quickly, you'll progressively burn through 58Ni through 61Ni to 62Ni, which presumably is neutron-rich enough to have a small enough neutron stripping cross section at the energies involved to prevent the chain from going on to 64Ni. There was a remark in the report to the effect that no deuterium was seen in the SIMS results, apparently in connection with the fuel and not the ash, although this is not made clear. Unless there was a specific effort on Rossi's part to use a fuel enriched in 1H, there will have been at least 1 part in 6000 D per H, which I assume would be sufficient to generate energy on the order described in the report from neutron stripping reactions. It is plausible that Rossi will have provided fuel that is not his best in order to avoid giving away too much information; one wonders whether a fuel with a larger amount of deuterium is used in other contexts. I'm going to guess that the lithium plays two roles. First, in the form of LiAlH4 it provides a hydride that can be used to release hydrogen (deuterium) over time. Second, it provides a booster of sorts when the fast protons ejected from the Ni(d,p)Ni reactions collide with the 7Li. Note that the isotope analysis shows that nearly all of the 7Li was consumed. I find it unlikely that there is any direct reaction between 7Li and nickel. There was a significant amount of iron in the fuel, prior to the experimental run. Note that Elinvar is an iron-nickel alloy that does not expand or contract with temperature [1]. To my mind, the preceding analysis is consistent with what Yoshino, Igari and Mizuno's slides show, and it's interesting to note that they include slides at the end that give neutron capture cross sections for 58Ni and 60Ni (slides 56 and 57) [2]. In this regard they seem to be obliquely hinting at a deuterium stripping reaction. One question that is somewhat of a mystery to me is why no radiation is observed. As far as 58Ni is concerned, there will be a miniscule beta plus decay after the transition to 59Ni that has a half-life of thousands of years, but I would assume this would be seen in the ash assay, had there been enough 59Ni. Beta plus decay leads to electron-positron annihilation photons, which will be detected by the devices used by David Bianchini. Presumably what 59Ni is produced is then consumed sufficiently that there is not enough at any given point in time to detect radiation above the normal noise in the background. But note that even if 59Ni lingered around, I suspect there would be few enough annihilation photons that it might be hard to detect them as something separate from background in any event. Eric [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinvar [2] http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/YoshinoHreplicable.pdf
