Rossi-Blog Comment Discussion

Quote from Adrian Ashfield

That's not "speaking hypothetically", it is illogical , unless you changed you mind and are no longer certain.

As you can't see the obvious difference in danger levels between a nuclear fission plant and an SK LENR reactor, there is no point in continuing this discussion.

You couldn't come up with a single example of how the SK presents a potential danger.

Adrian: please pay attention.

Safety is not about knowing a specific issue will happen. It is about being sure no issue will happen.

For Rossi to sell heat his kit will need safety validation as a boiler. you are surely aware of the many ways steam can be dangerous. Since the heat source is unconventional that will, unless Rossi lies, create issues. How can he prove there is no possibility of runaway excess heating?

In addition, if claims are believed, this is a NUCLEAR reactor. The first unconventional one ever one delivering (what did you suggest?) GW of power. Certification for anything nuclear is extraordinarily difficult, even proven designs.

Since no-one currently understands how LENR works there is no way to be sure it is safe. It is clearly manipulating nuclei and Rossi is not exactly good at letting people measure his stuff. Remember, the well-,measured devices have all not been working for one reason or another.

The very high energy density and the fact that high energy particles are toxic in themselves and (neutrons) create difficult to dispose of radionuclides mean that anything nuclear is very carefully inspected for safety (actually more so than I personally think is needed).

I suggested above that the SK/QX/anything from Rossi would fail this.

You seem not to have much imagination over how a novel nuclear device would be dangerous. Under unusual conditions it could generate high energy neutrons which are a big no-no especially when not expected (Rossi does not expect these since no lead shielding). It could create other high energy toxic particles. It could lead to toxic waste.

You perhaps hope that a working LENR device would not do any of these things. But you, and safety authorities, cannot know this. In fcat no-one can know this since working high power LENR devices do not currrently exist, and no theory predicts how they work. Neither experiment nor theory confers safety.

Why has this not been a problem for Rossi so far? Easy. No-one believes he has a working nuclear device. And Rossi states this to authorities when they come round.

Should his devices be seen to work, with energy density obviously beyond anything non-nuclear, that belief would quickly change and the Nuclear safety guys will no longer be dismissable by Rossi saying he has no nuclear devices.

Quote from Bob

First some points about certification.

To my knowledge, the government does no testing. They write laws that operations / equipment must be certified, spells out which certifications must be met and then the government polices or enforces those regulations.

The government does not do direct certification, but they do a lot of standing around and watching. That's what I was told by my late father, who worked at NIST. They do all kinds of testing at NIST! You name it, they test it. But as you say, not for certification per se. They establish standards.

I visited a NIST facility during ICCF-21. It was very impressive.

Generally speaking, a manufacturer is not allowed to test or certify its own product. It has to pay an independent company to do that. Automobile crash testing is not done by car companies, but by independent corporations, such as:

https://www.calspan.com/servic…utomotive-safety-testing/

Quote from Bob

UL is not a government agency. UL is a for profit company (since 2012). They are a registered certification company that tests products to given standards. They do not themselves develop those standards in most instances, but simply follow the testing protocols set forth by standards using their own equipment and personnel.

UL is "Underwriter's Laboratory." An underwriter is an insurance company. They mainly certify consumer products, I believe. You don't have to get UL certification, but if you don't get it, UL members will not insure the product. UL members include every insurance company, as far as I know, so you will not be able to insure it, and no retail or wholesale company will sell it. It is a de facto requirement, not a law.

Quote from Bob

Could it be certified to a gas burner? No, there is no gas. How about electric? No, because the heating element is not primarily electric. There is no standard set. So UL could not certify it. (Nor SGS)

Exactly right. See, for example, these procedures, which call for a "Combustion analyzer (for testing combustion efficiency or O2 trim controls):"

http://www.ftguide.org/ftg/Sys…l_Testing_for_Boilers.htm

Or these procedures, which include inspecting the combustion chamber:

• Cool and clean furnace and combustion chambers
• Remove grates from internally fired boilers
• Remove brickwork insulation to determine the condition of the boiler, headers, furnace, supports, and other parts

https://www.mpofcinci.com/blog…er-inspection-procedures/

There will have be some equivalent procedures that ensure the Rossi reaction is occurring correctly with no unexpected radiation. Rossi himself claimed that in some cases it goes out of control and that it produces radiation. If he was telling the truth (which I doubt) an inspection will have to confirm the boiler does not have these problems.

Quote from Adrian Ashfield

Really? If you can't see what is a potential danger haw can you possibly address it?

1. Rossi says there is danger! He claims the reaction has gone out of control, and that it has produced radiation. Why do you believe everything else Rossi says, but not this?

Again, if you do not think this is a nuclear reaction, what do you think it could be? And how do you know this mystery reaction cannot cause harm?

2. You can always test for non-specific danger. For example, you expose rats and others species to the reactor and see if they get sick or die. You put radiation detectors in place. Or you deliberately run the reactor at high power with the first level of safety devices disabled, so that it overheats. This is similar to automobile crash testing.

Quote from Adrian Ashfield

Use in industry is different from domestic and Rossi has a piece of paper saying it is safe for industrial use.

Does he now! Have you seen it? Who wrote it? What agency certified it?

Why do you believe him when he says he has this paper, yet you do not believe him when he says his reactors go out of control and they are dangerous? Your faith in him is selective.

For that matter, why do you believe him when he said he had a customer, yet you do not believe him when he admitted that he himself was that customer, with a dummy corporation with no employees and no business conducted, or any income?

Quote from Adrian Ashfield

That [danger] was with a much earlier design.

Rossi claimed the Doral system was in danger of going out of control. That can't be true, because that system produced no heat according to Rossi's own report. But suppose, for the sake of argument, it did produce heat. Rossi claimed many times that it was out of control, and dangerous. Why do you think his present systems are not dangerous? Has he told you they are not? If he told you, is that the only evidence you have: RossiSays?

You should realize that safety regulators and the people who write safety standards at the ASME will not simply take Rossi's word for it. That is not how they work. They will demand years of extensive testing costing hundreds of millions of dollars. Rossi does not have that kind of money. I doubt he has any investors, but if he does, I doubt they have that kind of money. No factory, company, apartment, school, or any other organization in the U.S., Europe, Japan or any other first-world county will install equipment that is not certified and inspected. People would go to prison for doing that. It is completely out of the question. So there is no chance he will be installing megawatt scale equipment anywhere in the first world, anytime soon.

Also, as I noted, if his claims are true, this is either a nuclear reaction or something unknown to science. You refuse to say what you think it is, but Rossi says it is nuclear. As I noted, the NRL is not going to stand aside and do nothing if they discover this thing really does produce megawatts of heat from a nuclear reaction. See:

Rossi-Blog Comment Discussion

Again, your faith in him is selective. You believe him when he says he has heat, but you don't believe him when he says it is nuclear, and you yourself refuse to say what you think it might be. This is intellectually dishonest, to say the least.

This is reality. This is not your pretend world where regulators and boiler inspectors will stand aside if you tell them "I'm an engineer and I assure you there is no danger." That never happens here on planet earth. Everything you have described about Rossi is a preposterous fantasy, as anyone who can read the boiler inspection laws will see.

Quote from Bob

Alan,

I cannot state with certainty about UK law, but I can US. I also think you might be mistaken about "commercial premises". In the US, if people, even if employees are exposed or around equipment, the regulations are in total effect.

I thought Alan was referring to the U.K. furniture safety laws that I cited.

Anyway, I am 100% certain that in the U.S., the U.K. and the rest of first world there are no exceptions granted for boiler safety laws. Absolutely none. You cannot operate a boiler -- or anything else -- in the middle of the Mojave Desert a hundred miles from the nearest person, unless it is certified for safe operation. Okay, people do that sort of thing. There is a photo of some guy who made his own hydrogen powered automobile. It exploded and destroyed his house. He was in violation of various laws.

There are exceptions for experimental devices that go boom. Uncle Sam -- who makes the rules -- is allowed to test unsafe devices in the desert. Ed Storms tested some large nuclear powered rockets that blew sky high. A NASA Antares rocket exploded recently. The SpaceX Falcon rocket tried to land on a barge and exploded. Perhaps Boeing and other companies are allowed to test large gadgets that go boom, in appropriate places. But there is absolutely, positively, no way you could install an non-certified 40-MW nuclear reactor in a populated area without certification and safety testing. Or worse, a 40-MW device that produces heat from a totally unknown source. Even if Adrian Ashfield assures the authorities it isn't nuclear, they are going to want to know what it is, in that case. "Don't worry, be happy" will not satisfy them. The NRC will not say: "Adrian and Axil say it isn't nuclear? Oh. Okay. Fine with us. Not our problem. Carry on."

If someone did install and operate something like that, once the authorities found out, everyone involved would be arrested, and it would be front-page news worldwide. I will grant, that would be one way to convince people it is real. Sort of like the Twilight Zone cold fusion episode, "Final Exam."

It is curious that when discussing a device whose every aspect is secret and about which we know nothing other than vague claims of wondrous properties by its inventor, several of our local characters can state confidently that the device poses minimal risks. While one might naively think that this sort of thing might not fly with regulatory agencies, one is surely forgetting that at least according to "Director", the device operates using sphermak-like plasmoids. That should be sufficient to quell any concerns, I imagine.

Quote from Director

I think that the best route to take is to admit that there could be some risk, but compared to even traditional devices (such as gas tanks) they are minimal.

Minimal or maximal, admit it or deny it, the authorities will not allow this until is is proven safe. You don't get product certification because you "admit" something, or because you have an attitude, or an opinion. Or because some anonymous person named "Axil" or "Director" on the Internet has a theory. It doesn't work that way. An independent testing agency and or a company has to do extensive testing, including stress testing and test-to-failure (similar to crash testing). You have to have thousand of hours and thousand of pages of test results. The ASME has to write large books full of specifications and tables which boiler inspectors and others must then use as a guide. I say they must. That's not a choice. It is not an option. If inspectors don't do that, they will lose their license at least, and possibly end up in prison. They are not going to look at a reactor and say: "well, this is not covered by any regs in my book; there are no procedures to ensure safety, so I guess you can operate it all you like. You don't need a certificate." That's actually the opposite of what any sane inspector would say.

This is the 21st century, not 1650. You can't just go around operating potentially dangerous untested machines in populated areas. Actually, you couldn't do that in 1650 in London either -- they had laws regulating boilers back then. You sure as heck could not do it anytime after the ASME was established in 1880, when state governments started writing ASME specifications into regulations. Such as:

https://www.myfloridacfo.com/D…tWEBEffective04102016.pdf

"Where are the boiler Administrative Rules (regulations)?

In 1989, rules were written and adopted to regulate boilers in the state. The Boiler Safety Rules are found under Chapter 69A-51, Florida Administrative Code. They include definitions, codes adopted, administration, requirements for new and existing installations, among other topics. The ASME Heating and Power Boiler Codes, ASME CSD-1 (Controls for Automatically Fired Boilers), and the National Boiler and Inspection Codes have all been adopted under this rule."

(This was not first done in 1989. That was the date this law was revised.)

That is the sort of thing the regulations say, in every state, in every country on earth. It has been that way for over a century, and it not going to change because Rossi or A.A. says, "we don't have to follow any laws we disagree with." Try driving at 90 mph on the highway and see if the police let you off because you don't agree with the traffic laws. Try telling them: "I'm an engineer, and I am sure this is safe."