jeff: Celani-Type Replication

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I wouldn't fully discount it, but it seems unlikely that this dust would accumulate right around the cell in a more concentrated manner than it would be otherwise in the immediate environment. Should be easy enough to rule out with further testing.

It would not - but convection currents can alter dust content in air. In any case that was one mechanism. There are others, and the best way to show this is something about the experiment is to run a control which is physically as identical as possible to the original but with no active material.

I would borrow detectors that measure specific types of radiation, gamma, beta, neutrons etc or find screens that block certain types of particles to break down the types of particles by a process of elimination

I wonder if this not some variant of a Crookes tube, or vacuum tube effect.

Good grief.

Radiation is not some mysterious entity that we should have to wonder if it's there or not. It's not 1895 anymore, and even then they were more systematic and effective at identifying the source with primitive electrometers.

If you can make this elevated GM signal come and go by the flick of a switch, then you are in a position to identify the source and the nature of the radioactivity, although the nature will require more than a GM tube.

Someone already recommended lead shields around the detector, but even better, place a cm or 2 of lead near the wire, but between the wire and the detector. The signal should decrease and increase as you move the lead in place and withdraw it. Compare what happens when you do it with the same thickness of aluminum (which will block em interference as effectively, but not gamma rays).

Use 5 wires at the same temperature and see if you get 5 times the signal.

As others have suggested, use controls with other metals or other gases. Yes, LENR could be happening everywhere, but surely not with the same intensity with completely different elements.

(And by the way, an exponential decay (if that's what it is) is characteristic of things other than radiation, such as capacitor discharge or thermal cooling.)

If these simple experiments show that indeed what you are seeing is coming from the wires, and only when they are heated, then it's time to get a gamma ray spectrometer. You can probably borrow one from a university physics department if you also borrow a graduate student to accompany it. Or better still, take the reactor to a university lab, and test it there. Then you will also have access to calibrated sources that you can place in the location of the wire, and see how the detector reacts to them and to the same shielding experiments.

This ain't rocket science. Freshman physics experiments measure lead half-thicknesses with similar strength sources. If you avail yourself of some existing expertise, you will either put this to bed quickly, or become world famous.

And as always, keep in mind that if the same reaction that produces radiation also produces measurable heat, then the corresponding decay rate will be a billion times higher than background -- not 10 times or less.

[ETA: Marie Curie found that isolated radium remained warmer to the touch than its surroundings. She died of aplastic anemia caused by exposure to radiation.]

Also, quickly pass the detector very near the reactor to see if the signal increases dramatically (as it should) before there is time to cause any heating. This would be especially interesting after the reactor is shut down, but the signal is still observed.

You can also do experiments with photographic film to detect shorter wavelength x-rays.

Just to reiterate what Josh has said:

Lead shields between the reactor and the GM would be nearly definitive if you had a reactor-shaped shield that allowed most of the background through but stopped stuff from the reactor. However you have your GM very close to the reactor so you will also need to try a ceramic shield etc which would not stop hard radiation but would stop IR. The advantage of such shields is that they are easy to try and the response would be visible immediately.

A control experiment in every way identical except the magic LENR stuff absent (maybe no H) would give added validation.

The motivation for doing this stuff carefully is as follows:

(1) If the result persists you are in line for a Nobel Prize. OK, it would take time, but glory would be yours.
(2) If the result is shown to be an artifact you have helped all other amateur experimenters by increasing the store of knowledge about this type of LENR experiment.

Best wishes, Tom

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Also, quickly pass the detector very near the reactor to see if the signal increases dramatically (as it should) before there is time to cause any heating.

I think this is probably safe, but not guaranteed. There could possibly be some internal structure that heated with low time constant or some direct effect of high level IR on the GM.

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And as always, keep in mind that if the same reaction that produces radiation also produces measurable heat, then the corresponding decay rate will be a billion times higher than background -- not 10 times or less.

That would of course mean you had two independent physical quantities with extraordinary measurements and a theoretically predictable connection between the two. The history of LENR observations has avoided that - except for the highly contentious claims (leakage, result selection, etc) of He/excess heat correlation.

316 alloy Stainless Steel contains 10-14% Ni and 16-18% Cr (wt). So it's not surprising it might be LENR-active.
Even mild steels contain lots of trace elements, primarily Mn at up to 1.5%, but very low amounts of Ni.

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That would of course mean you had two independent physical quantities with extraordinary measurements and a theoretically predictable connection between the two. The history of LENR observations has avoided that - except for the highly contentious claims (leakage, result selection, etc) of He/excess heat correlation.

If the same reaction produces heat and radiation, then the radiation should be much more intense. Of course, some large fraction could be absorbed, but it's not plausible that in all the various reports of measured radiation, with wildly different geometries, with and without shielding, with detectors inside the cells, etc, that only a few parts in a billion get to the detectors.

The alternative is that there are at least two different reactions, neither of which anyone has been able to characterize in 27 years, even the one that produces measurable radiation. That seems inconceivable to me in a day and age when we can identify isotopes in the US produced at Fukushima 5 years ago at levels 3 orders of magnitude *below* background intensities (of K-40 e.g.).

"If the same reaction produces heat and radiation, then the radiation should be much more intense. Of course, some large fraction could be absorbed, but it's not plausible that in all the various reports of measured radiation, with wildly different geometries, with and without shielding, with detectors inside the cells, etc, that only a few parts in a billion get to the detectors."

so: heat with no to low radiation is not plausible?

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so: heat with no to low radiation is not plausible?

Heat with no radiation: Well known not plausible. It is the second big implausibility of LENR, how can you take those large nuclear energies from a single reaction and spread them over hundreds of thousands of particles.

Heat with 1/1000000000 the radiation expected. The same problem. Worse, because if whatever mechanism does this is imperfect, why should it always be 1000000000 times imperfect.

Nickel Hydrogen systems have been subject to thorough study for more than 150 years. It seems remarkable that this observation has eluded catalytic chemists, nuclear engineers, metallurgists and electrochemists until now. What makes this protocol so special?

how can you take those large nuclear energies from a single reaction and spread them over hundreds of thousands of particles.

Quote from Thomas Clarke

Heat with no radiation: Well known not plausible. It is the second big implausibility of LENR,

Heat with 1/1000000000 the radiation expected. The same problem. Worse, because if whatever mechanism does this is imperfect, why should it always be 1000000000 times imperfect.

how can you take those large nuclear energies from a single reaction and spread them over hundreds of thousands of particles.: Hawking radiation from a dark mode body that has absorbed the nuclear radiation.

@H-G Branzell
Like UV light emitted during a Coulomb explosion caused by Li,K, and Rb being dropped into water?

Quote from hendersonmj

Nickel Hydrogen systems have been subject to thorough study for more than 150 years. It seems remarkable that this observation has eluded catalytic chemists, nuclear engineers, metallurgists and electrochemists until now. What makes this protocol so special?

Producing metalize hydrogen has been under development for many years and the catalysts to produce it are newly discovered.

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so: heat with no to low radiation is not plausible?

In fact, heat with low radiation is used in radioisotope thermoelectric generators. Pu-238 decays almost exclusively by alpha decay, which is extremely easy to shield against. The alpha decay thermalizes in the fuel or in thin shielding and is used to make electricity, and little to nothing gets out.

But even this alpha decay is dead easy to detect if you want to detect it, and of course it has been exquisitely characterized. Far weaker alpha decay in your smoke detector can be detected with an inexpensive GM tube.

But the reaction that produces the heat (alpha decay) does not produce gammas.

If there are gammas produced, either directly by the heat producing reaction, or as secondary gammas from beta decay in the heat producing reaction, then the count rate would be unmistakeable, and dangerous.

So, a single extraordinary radiationless reaction associated with LENR, while extremely unlikely, is far more likely than two extraordinary reactions, both of which contrive to prevent the discovery of their nature, while one of them actually produces measurable radiation.

The likelihood that these alleged, very low level, emissions (that no one can characterize) are somehow associated with another unlikely reaction (that no one can characterize) that produces measurable heat is extremely remote.