Document: Isotopic Composition of Rossi Fuel Sample (Unverified)

  • Hi Dewey!


    I'm surprised that you were unaware that Rossi took a sample from the ash. He has written about it months ago on his blog IIRC, and confirmed it recently.



    However he hasn't confirmed that the leak is from his sample.



    I am however looking forward to analysis of samples by IH! I don't expect them to happen anytime soon unfortunately.

  • Dewey, are you still here?


    Rossi just said...


    Frank Acland
    July 15, 2016 at 7:19 AM
    Dear Andrea,


    You have stated that during the 1MW plant test that you took your own measurements with your own instruments that were the same models, in the same locations as the ERV’s, and that your data matched that of ERV report within the margin of error for the instruments.


    Have you shared your own data with anyone from Industrial Heat, or anyone affiliated with IH?


    Many thanks,


    Frank Acland


    Andrea Rossi
    July 15, 2016 at 8:34 AM
    Frank Acland:
    I was every day in the plant with somebody of IH and I told them now and again that my data were reasonably coherent with the data from the instrumentation of the ERV. All the officers and the operators of IH did read the displays of the instrumentation installed by the ERV from the first to the last day of operation, but not my personal instrumentation, because the sole instruments valid for the test were the ones installed by the ERV.
    Warm Regards,
    A.R.



    Can we see the info that IH recorded from the test if IH took the effort to record it?

  • I just read Takahashis JCMNS 19 (p. 298 ff.) paper about dd cluster-fusion.


    I also find the multiple deuteron explanations, where for example several deuterons somehow enter a Bose Einstein condensate, uncompelling. In Akito Takashi's case, having deuterons come together in a tetrahedron seems to be a big reversal of entropy. I have heard a counter-argument invoking statistical mechanics, but it rings hollow to my ears. My sense is that Takahashi has simply found some equations that he's worked through which he believes will explain a small subset of the LENR results he's focused his attention on, ignoring in the process a number of other things he needs to explain as well as the inherently low likelihood of his mathematical exploration.

  • Why don't you answer your own questions then, and we'll continue from there?


    Ok. How about this:

    • Do we already know of something that produces helium, and helium correlated with heat?

    Yes. Alpha decay.

    • Do we already know of a nuclear process that generally favors stable daughters over unstable ones, all else being equal?

    Yes. Fragmentation (fission), to a first order approximation. The heuristic is not perfect. But in the case of spontaneous fission, one presumes that the daughters will tend to be more stable than the parent, and the more so the lighter the parent is.

    • Do we already know of cases where the chemical environment has an influence on nuclear processes?

    Yes. As you mention, 7Be and 187Re. In addition, there are 89Zr, 85Sr and 99mTc. Influences include pressure and chemical bonds. The effects observed so far are small. But isn't that how it always starts? Here we're talking about EC and beta decay. About alpha decay and fragmentation, the author I link to goes on to write:


    Quote

    Alpha decay and spontaneous fission might also be affected by changes in the electron density near the nucleus, for a different reason. These processes occur as a result of penetration of the "Coulomb barrier" that inhibits emission of charged particles from the nucleus, and their rate is very sensitive to the height of the barrier. Changes in the electron density could, in principle, affect the barrier by some tiny amount. However, calculations show that the magnitude of the effect is very small. For a few alpha emitters, the change has been estimated to be of the order of 1 part in 107 or less (!), which is unmeasurable given that the alpha emitters' half lives aren't known to that degree of accuracy to begin with


    Ok, so he's seen some calculations that make him pessimistic about the possibility of increasing the rates. Presumably he hasn't been following the LENR research. What are the assumptions that go into those calculations, one very much wants to know. Note as well that there's a controversy looming in the background about creationism and the reliability of carbon-14 dating and similar methods that lends the author's general conclusion about influencing decay rates some unspoken urgency.

    • Do we already know of processes that produce x-rays at energies far above any applied voltages?

    Yes. As you mention, radioactive decay.


    What's the common denominator of the answers to these cleverly leading questions?


    Eric, if someone made sufficient lateral thinking, which did indeed create a unified explanation for most observations, do you think it would be appropriate to publish it for the first time here?


    Sadly, I very much doubt it.


    1) Any polyneutron finding itself in a heavily deuterated environment (such as D2O) would start growing indefinitely producing heat and fast protons. This would have been observed by now. It would not easily correlate with 4He production.


    Indeed. I don't see how to start up and stop the polyneutrons. They just sort of come into being, run into stuff along their path and create more polyneutrons. There is no on and off switch that I know of.


    2) Many of the expected interactions of these neutral particles will produce penetrating gammas from beta decay, which again we don't see.


    But there are recurring reports of short-lived radiations with short half-lives following LENR experiments. Ed Storm reported something along these lines in an informal paper that was passed around two or so years ago (I think this is the one, but I'm not sure). Piantelli saw all kinds of activity for several hours when he put the metal bar he was using in a cloud chamber. There are other reports. In addition, the apparatuses that are used in LENR experiments often make it difficult to measure beta decays and their sequelae. And using your argument about excited levels that are populated after low-energy fragmentation events, I think similar reasoning will apply to low-energy beta decays. And there is the IC mechanism I have raised elsewhere as a possibility to take care of any gammas. Conclusion: significant EC/beta decay can NOT be ruled out yet. :)


    Another benefit of including weak-interaction processes: perhaps they provide an answer for the conservation of momentum problem confounding people trying to understand the EM drive. (The connection here is that energetic neutrinos that anisotropically exit the apparatus will not violate conservation of momentum, providing seemingly propellantless thrust.)


    3) Experimental and theoretical studies show that poly-neutrons are not bound, so they do not exist.


    Yes, indeed.


    So I don't believe in poly-neutron theories Having said that, any theory which can survive 24 years of criticism obviously must have some redeeming features. So the question is, can we apply some major lateral thinking to improve it? I am quite certain we can. Encouraging work is in progress.


    Perhaps John Fisher has simply failed to confront the implications of his theory with sufficient vigor. I also don't find erzions very promising.

  • The effects observed so far are small. But isn't that how it always starts?


    But these studies are not starting now. We have a good theoretical understanding of nuclear reactions and extrapolating expected enhanced decay rates to extremes of electron density are not likely to provide measurable heat.

    I also don't find erzions very promising.


    Eric pl;easejustify such an opinion scientifically. Otherwise nobody learns anything. I gave you 3 of my objections to poly-neutrons. Objection number 2, namely the expectation of beta radio-active products, also applies to Erzion theory. To this can be added the problem of the negativly charged Erzion which would catalyze d-d fusion (as if it were a long lived muon) producing unobserved hot fusion products. Because the negative Erzions bind inertly to positive nuclei, for most purposes they are removed from the system until and unless they decay. Continuous removal of catalyst seems like a recipe for a very short lived anomaly!!


    It seems to me that both poly-neutron and Erzion theories could be substantially repaired. In this case the major objection might be prediction of radio-active products. But this is also a strength not a weakness. A verified prediction of the charactaristics of a series of gammas would prove the model beyond doubt (in stark contrast to inconclusive and tedious calorimetry).

  • Sorry guys - super busy these days. I don't have time for the repeated circular logic bias in the circular questions from the Planet Rossi types. IH had no notice or indication of any ash sample by Rossi which I find odd after the question marks around the Lugano ash sample. The information that Rossi shutdown and refueled the reactor the day before inspection day is laughable and impossible if true. Based on the original refueling of the 1MW system in Raleigh, refueling is a grueling process and would take days based on the design. There is a port for access in the units that IH modified. I'm sure there will be a legal skirmish over IH taking possession of it's property in Doral. The good news is that the ash samples from the 1MW unit will be resolved with integrity. If there is isotopic change that can be confirmed with a secure link back to the original fuel loading, then Rossi possibly has new life as a LENR inventor.


    The Uppsala folks now appear to be concentrated on replication - they still believe in Rossi somehow. Not so sure about Mats - he is probably working on feeding his family.

  • There is a port for access in the units that IH modified.

    $


    Thank You for the confirmation that the modules in fact were built by IH!


    If You also could confirm, that the latest progress of Swarz/Hagelstein with their NANOR modules has let to the whole AR mess, that would be nice!


    We all feel with You that a big junk of investors money "possibly went to a lucky winner" ... (and not into promizing future!)

  • Wyttie - you are one of the reasons why it is such a huge waste of time to follow the Rossi threads on this forum. Where do you deduce that IH built the reactors? How about rebuilt / modified?


    I have no idea about the rest of your message. It will be years before there will be a "lucky winner" in LENR. Even then, I think there will be multiple winners and none of it will be luck.

  • Eric Walker and I seem to favour fragmentation as a method to explain helium production and to suppress penetrating radiation. But there is a problem - the so called Hagelstein limit - we do not see expected neutrons in deuterated systems from secondary / tertiary reactions. I may be clutching at straws but I would like to see this limit experimentally verified. After all, Peter Hagelstein has been proposing several incompatible models over the last decades. Maybe the limit is not relevant?


    What do you mean by fragmentation? Is it what we call spallation? If yes, it will cost a lot of energy and you would have reactions with negative Q-value. Not very useful since they consume energy.


    Why is fragmentation more promising? Why should it not produce penetrating radiation? Notice that high-energy (fast moving) particles (protons and heavier) produce gammas (typically 100-2000 keV) by Coulomb excitation. And what about neutrons? They are penetrating.

  • It is easy to take the route of looking at the strange jumble of LENR experiments, balking at the apparent inconsistencies and variable quality, and giving up and tuning it all out. But try some lateral thinking:


    Yes, but not too lateral! (Italics is Eric W):

    Do we already know of something that produces helium, and helium correlated with heat?
    Yes, of course! Bu they produce penetrating radiation directly or indirectly!
    [*]
    [*]Do we already know of a nuclear process that generally favors stable daughters over unstable ones, all else being equal?
    [*]Not consistently. But reactions and decays usually like high positive Q-values. This would favour stable nuclides, but it is no guarantee.
    [*]
    [*]Do we already know of cases where the chemical environment has an influence on nuclear processes?
    [*]Very small effects have been seen in electron capture.
    [*]
    [*]Do we already know of processes that produce x-rays at energies far above any applied voltages?
    Of course, but the energy has to come from somewhere. Takin it in small portions from several sources is in violation with the second law of thermodynamics.


    Edit: Sorry about the ugly looking quotes! The system does not like bullets.

  • @Dewey - I think you are right: the plant wasn't refueled before getting shut down.


    IIRC, Rossi said, a day before announcing the test ended, that the plant was shut down for refueling.


    The next day, *surprise*, the test is actually over.


    I thought it was clear that it was decided to end the test a bit early rather than refuel. Or maybe it's one of Rossi's white lies.



    Since Rossi had access to the fuel at the end of the test, how can IH be sure that he didn't spike it then or at anytime before?

  • Dewey Weaver:


    Didn't mean to imply that Rossi did indeed refuel--only the possibility that it may have occurred. All information from Rossi's Blog. Here's a comment on ECW by LuFong that gives the timeline and raises some interesting questions. It all seemed to happen within a day or so. No doubt IH has video to verify this?


    https://disqus.com/home/discus…ified/#comment-2772942956


    I believe Rossi has stated before that it is a non-trivial process to change the fuel. Based on all the people vouching for the isotopic analysis, it appears to me that at least the ash was sampled at some point. I cannot imagine any time other than here at the end. I think you must realize that the fuel analysis could be the smoking gun for Rossi OR IH depending on what it shows assuming the analysis was properly done (chain of custody of fuel and ash).


    Thanks for the information and keep us posted!


    Peter Metz

  • Based on all the people vouching for the isotopic analysis


    Alan Smith has mentioned a contact of his who has vouched for the isotopic analysis that was put up on E-Cat World. The attestation was couched in the most generic of terms on Alan's part, and we know nothing of the details for which this contact vouches, and have only a vague impression that the isotopic analysis comes from something related to Rossi, perhaps the 1MW unit? (Alan can clarify.)


    Is there anyone else who has vouched for this isotopic analysis? Do we know they're not the same as Alan's contact?

  • Could you expand this thought a little bit? What is for You a low likelihood ?


    With regard to Akito Takahashi's theory, the feeling is that the assembling of a large number of those tetrahedrons of deuterons in the midst of a hot metal/gas is a bit like watching a video of a drinking glass shattering on the ground, but in reverse. A glass shattering on the ground is something that going in one direction is very easy to imagine, but going in the other (seeing the shards of glass spontaneously assemble into a nice drinking glass) is very hard to imagine. This is what I mean by his theory seeming to require an unlikely reversal of entropy. I have not read anything in his papers that would make this assembling of deuterons intuitive.

  • But these studies are not starting now. We have a good theoretical understanding of nuclear reactions and extrapolating expected enhanced decay rates to extremes of electron density are not likely to provide measurable heat.


    The phrase "expected enhanced decay rates" is key here. It points to one or more theories of some kind, e.g., the Gamow theory, which incorporate a set of parameters. Has the full parameter space been explored sufficiently to work out the bugs in those theories? Can much trust be put in those extrapolations? In college, they teach math students to recoil at the word "extrapolation." Has a critical parameter been missed, or its importance in the different operating regime been overlooked? Is there some experimental evidence in a fringe area of science that suggests the expected enhanced decay rates might be significantly off from the observed ones?


    Eric pl;easejustify such an opinion scientifically. Otherwise nobody learns anything. I gave you 3 of my objections to poly-neutrons.


    Why give objections when perhaps you will give them, and I like yours much better? It is great to be self-taught, as in my case, but perhaps 75 percent of what I say will either be completely wrong or grossly misleading. But if I let you say something, I can then quibble with the details on safer ground.


    The main reason I don't like Erzions is that two new baryons are proposed (or are they baryons? Perhaps they're quasiparticles or something). Consider how difficult it was to get the Higgs boson through. Since I see other promising avenues for explaining LENR, I am not drawn to a theory that starts from new particles. It's a weak argument from intuition.


    It seems to me that both poly-neutron and Erzion theories could be substantially repaired. In this case the major objection might be prediction of radio-active products. But this is also a strength not a weakness. A verified prediction of the charactaristics of a series of gammas would prove the model beyond doubt (in stark contrast to inconclusive and tedious calorimetry).


    I look forward to seeing the anticipated revision.


    By the way, you let my speculation about the EM drive through without a complaint.

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