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@Eric Walker
That was a normal thing. The lead was probably mostly from the natural decay of uranium over nearly 2 billion years.

Regarding Earthly circumstances, there is a huge amount of data available, and no sign of the changes occurring that you suggest. This does not mean what you suggest never happens, just that it may happen, if it does at all, so rarely and in such small volumes that it is insignificant.

Various isotopes are used for dating geological formations. Not just U-Pb in zircons. These do not get scrambled very much in ways that are not consistent with normal (chemical and time) geological processes. There are tens of thousands of such laboratory results, mostly freely available. I have yet to see anyone find evidence in that data for unknown nuclear reactions occurring. It is a great place to look, though. Almost none of that data is considered to be secret or proprietary.

Geological consistency, ie the physical evidence of the order of relationships of cross-cutting intrusions compared to their isotope dates confirms the isotope decay rate data. There is this sort of consistency world-wide.
Large variances of isotope decay rates relative to the physical evidence would certainly be interesting.

I don't know much about natural helium isotope ratios, so I won't comment on those.

Regarding uranium, from the previous inappropriately used thread, oil and uranium go together often because uranium in the soluble and very mobile +6 charge state is readily stabilized to (fixed by) the fairly insoluble +5 charge state by carbon. Carbonates also do a good job of this. I have seen highly radioactive fossil trees and even dinosaur bones.

The most fascinating case was where a fossilized piece of wood lay across the contact of two geological units, a mildly radioactive tuff (the source of much of the region's mobile uranium), and a sandstone layer. The part over the tuff was radioactive, but not the sandstone part. The fossilized wood seemed to have soaked up the local uranium. You could see the sharp change, because the uranium mineral was a bright yellow coating of carnotite and bright green meta-autunite.

Another neat thing was that the fossil trees almost all were lying down parallel to each other in each area where they occurred. These were big trees, 10 to 15 m long trunks sometimes, almost a metre in diameter. Mapping occurrences of these fossil trees out over a very large area (hundreds of thousands of square kilometers), you could determine the approximate position of the volcanic center responsible for knocking the trees all down and burying them in the ash (tuff). It must have been an incredible explosion. The tuff was responsible for preserving the trees by nearly instant burial, the mineralizing part of the solutions that fossilized them, and the uranium that soaked into them.

Paradigmnoia wrote "Regarding Earthly circumstances, there is a huge amount of data available, and no sign of the changes occurring that you suggest."

It depends on what you mean by Earthly circumstances.

The conditions in the mantle are completely different from those at the surface of the Earth

There are no decay rate data conducted in a combination of high hydrogen concentrations, in the presence of nickel and iron lattices under conditions of cavitation, crystallisation and recrystallization from molten silicates, varying electrochemical currents and magnetic fields, as far as I know

However there is some indication that nuclear decay rates can change.. unfortunately you'll need a subscription to access these 4 articles and I have no idea how reliable the data is.

Phenomenological Rules for Nuclear Metabarysis
Riccardo Capotosto and Francesca Rosetto
J. Adv. Phys. 5, 80-83 (2016)

Deformed Space-Time Reactions: Towards Nuclear Metabarysis
Gianni Albertini and Riccardo Capotosto
J. Adv. Phys. 5, 84-89 (2016)

Isotopical Changes in Piezonuclear Iron
Fabio Cardone, Monica Lammardo, Andrea Petrucci, Alberto Rosada, and Emilio Santoro
J. Adv. Phys. 5, 90-96 (2016)

On the Possibility of Induced -Decay of Uranium
L. I. Urutskoev, D. V. Filippov, A. A. Rukhadze, K. A. Alabin, and A. A. Levanov
J. Adv. Phys. 5, 97-103 (2016)

The proper examination of zircon U-decay rates in mantle circumstances is a major undertaking.
We need to mimick the journey of the uranium ions into the zircon crystal and its subsequent tortuous passage to the Earth's surface. Along the way we might examine the following questions

What are the permeabilities for H2, H in silicate melts and crystals?
What are the concentrations for H2, H in silicate melts and crystals?
What is the role of Zirconium.?Can it act as an catalytic generator of protiums from hydrogen
as nickel is postulated by Piantelli to do in Ni/H2 LENR? Will it be converted to heavier atoms?
What isotopic reactions are generated for a range of different keV protiums, alpha particles?
What ash might be left? Can full isotopic analysis of zircons yield clues to isotopic reactions.
What Helium isotopes are expected to be generated. Can these be detected in Zircons.
W hat is the effect on zirconium isotope ratios?
What is the role of and isotopic effect on silicon and oxygen?
What alternative pathways to Pb for Thorium, U-235. U-238 might be possible under LENR conditions.

Before this major undertaking a few simple experiments to show that LENR does provide quicker, alternative pathways for decay might be useful starting with less dangerous Beta emitters such as
Sr-90 Cs-137.

Surface circumstances are much easier than mantle circumstances. We already know that at the surface zircon U-decay rates are constant, and that is what is used for rockdate calculations. But rocks are not made on the surface... they are made in the mantle

Whosover may visit the center of the Earth may collect data from There.
Otherwise deal with whatcha got.

paradigmnoia wrote glibly "Whosover may visit the center of the Earth may collect data from There. Otherwise deal with whatcha got"

If Newton had been dominated by a superficial paradigm I fear that he would never had extrapolated from the apple to the moon, and Einstein would never have predicted gravity waves from blackholes..,,

Scientists do visit Hell in spirit if not in body using what they've got which is intelligence and ingenuity.. as below and make valid deductions about it.
http://www.nature.com/nature/j…190/full/nature06918.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/j…?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20130314

As a first start in studying the possible accelerated decay of radioisotopes in the mantle, I would subject radioisotopes to LENR conditions here on the surface. In fact Dash had the audacity to do this with uranium and has deduced accelerated decay already
as abstracted below

Changes in the Radioactivity, Topography, and Surface Composition of Uranium after Hydrogen Loading by Aqueous ElectrolysisDash, J.; Chicea, D.
CONDENSED MATTER NUCLEAR SCIENCE. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Cold Fusion. Held 24-29 August 2003 in Royal Sonesta Hotel, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Edited by Peter L Hagelstein (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA) & Scott R Chubb (Naval Research Laboratory, USA). Published by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., 2006. ISBN #9789812701510, pp. 463-474
Hydrogen loading of 99.98% pure natural uranium foils (0.18mm thick) was performed by aqueous electrolysis in order to compare with glow discharge results. The alpha, beta, and gamma specific radioactivity were measured after hydrogen loading and compared with the control. Some of the samples revealed an increase of the specific radioactivity of up to 20%. Gamma-ray spectroscopy was also performed on the samples. Results reveal an increase of the specific counts for the peaks of Th234 and U235 and a decrease in the U Kalpha1 characteristic X-ray peak. The surface topography changed from granular before electrolysis to pitted afterward. The thorium concentration increased slightly after electrolysis compared with the original material. In summary, this work in progress reveals that loading hydrogen into uranium increases the uranium decay rate, in agreement with the glow discharge results

It is a great idea to look at examples of the mantle that occur on the surface, where it is accessible.
Now if you can find some pure natural uranium foil on the surface, things are going your way.

It would have been good of them to do more than one control, so we can estimate the variability of the control material, as well as a couple of controls that were submerged in electrolyte but not powered.

I also have issues with the idea that hydrogen has been shown to induce the change instead of electrons (assuming in this case that the process does induce decay rate changes).

I'm not really advancing an either-or argument. The case for electrons is as almost good as that for H. It seems that uranium does make a good hydride. Perhaps that is the unstated assumption.

The experiment is neat, and maybe some more work on it would be a good idea.

There are many questions raised by this experiment.
Why are no two of the experiments even close to being the same as another? Even the area of the U foil seems to change considerably, based on dividing the current into the mA/cm^2. How big then was the control piece? Even though the foils are normalized to c/g*s, this is not best practice when the foils could as easily be made the same size for comparison. (Am I screwing that up? Is DC4 actually 0.36 cm^2? Adding the pieces up, they may have had one 4 cm^2 piece of foil that was cut up (weighing about 13.6 mg, so I hope they had a very good scale (or the masses of the pieces were perhaps calculated by area and thickness?)).

Why does the experiment with the longest electrolysis period have not much change in decay products relative to the others?
Why is is supposed that the decay rates have changed, and not a reaction (even chemical, given the acid) that has caused changes to the equilibrium decay rates?
Why is the neutron absorption path considered a good/preferred fit? This would seem to imply a version of an electron capture theory, based on the reference supplied. This referenced Duetex-Hydrex paper is interesting, and suggests X or gamma rays are produced in their experiments. I'll have to go over that paper a bit more to get a better idea of what it claims exactly. It does include the possibility of Li being synthesized from deuterium and helium, so the claims are many and seemingly at odds with many other experiments.

Paradigmnoia said "There are many questions raised by this experiment."

My guess is that this was a low budget experiment that formed part a PhD student's portfolio. Actinide cold fusion was a low priority in an era which was focussed on palladium.
Uranium foil is not cheap- something like a 1000 GBP per square inch.. so perhaps this explains the use of different areas in the expt.
The surprising thing is that the observed increase in radiation was coming from the dry foil above the liquid electrolyte which suggests
that any particle causing it is mobile.. perhaps an electron .. perhaps a hydride ion... transition metal hydrides are electrically conductive.. but perhaps a neutron.

Kozima attempts to explain the nexus between the inside nuclear arena and the outside chemical drama . which according to a century old paradigm, are mostly independent by his trapped neutron cold fusion (TNCF) model here, in 2013

https://www.researchgate.net/p…d_Hydrides_and_Deuterides

and in the process cites a few other actinoid cold fusion results, apart form Dash's.
He finds some consistency within these according to his TNCF model.

His latest publication on TNCF attempts to explain the Rossi Ecat Lithium/Nickel isotope changes here. in 2015

http://www.e-catworld.com/2015…l-and-e-cat-hideo-kozima/

However he provided no mechanism for neutron production after twenty years of TNCF to justify his assumption
"neutrons are assumed to exist in the CF materials (materials such as PdDx, NiHx, TiDx, – – where observed the CFP) play catalytic roles to induce nuclear reactions resulting in excess energy".

Rather than neutrons I would tend to go with Piantelli's idea of capture of a proton derived form hydride capture within the transition metal
orbitals

". This way, orbital capture reactions are caused of H- ions by the primary material of the cluster crystal nanostructures and then nuclear capture reactions of the proton H+ deriving from the H- ion due to the loss of two electrons, as described hereinafter, by the atoms of the metal of such clusters, which causes a subsequent fall on inner orbitals and allows a nuclear capture by the nucleus of the metal and a generation of thermal energy.

as detailed in his patent application WO 2013008219 A2
http://www.google.com/patents/WO2013008219A2?cl=en.

Piantelli is saying that the go-between connecting the outside chemical drama to the internal nuclear arena is this hydride ion, and not the neutron.