NASA’s Lattice Confined Fusion (LCF)

Repetita juvant - a paper just out from NASA Glenn Research Center

Results and Discussion [NASA 2020-220458]

By all monitored means, all tests proceeded similarly regardless of the hydrogen-isotope test gas. No

evidence characterized anomalous heat production or uneven heating on the disk surface. It remains

possible that such exothermal phenomena can occur, however, the set of conditions described herein did

not produce measurable results. Test samples analyzed by a Mirion Technologies (Canberra), Inc., Series

5 XLB counting system for alpha and beta emissions returned no evidence of continuing nuclear

activity. Furthermore, the continued lack of an identifiable positive test condition prevented further

development of any explanatory theory.

Good luck for your cherry picking.

Quote from Eric Walker

the activity will be traced back to some natural impurity, and (2) pure erbium will be boring

rather than boring it is rather interesting to observe the strong Er171 emissions .. since Er171 is not a "naturally" stable isotope... was Er171 produced from Er167??

Quote from Curbina

a null excess heat result in LENR experiments is hardly shocking.

The authors conclude in 2020 on their 2014 results

'

To offer the best opportunity to identify heat production, future iterations of this experiment should

involve development of a calorimeter. It seems unlikely that thermocouples and infrared cameras are

sensitive and precise enough to make concrete declarations regarding nuclear-scale based heat production.

Maybe they can report on this in 2026?

Climbing mirrors - I repeat here for the last time:

A) ... "counting system for alpha and beta emissions returned no evidence of continuing nuclear activity"

B) bubble detectors [that is INTEGRATING ones] show a DOUBLED background signals - only a whisper, and we are well aware of this palladium-deuterium systems behaviour from two decades now

C) neutrons from Forsley style lattice fusion are very few and drowned in Dynamitron noise

"FUNNY", that is entire castles built on a small and peculiar class of phenomena in the condensed matter - your engine don't succed to start up, two strokes and stop - ask "Assisi nel Vento" for a miracle - it's your last chance for a good trip.

Quote from RobertBryant

rather than boring it is rather interesting to observe the strong Er171 emissions .. since Er171 is not a "naturally" stable isotope... was Er171 produced from Er167??

An important column in the Wikipedia table of erbium isotopes is the natural abundance (two columns at the far right). These columns show that only observationally stable isotopes of erbium are found in nature. 171Er, with its half-life of ~ 7 hours, will only be found in unusual circumstances, as you allude, e.g., by neutron activation of 170Er, which is a natural isotope. If someone reported the gamma lines for 171Er, that would be interesting, for sure. Out of curiosity, do you have a link to the paper with the graph showing the 171Er gamma lines?

But one imagines the 171Er in this case is just a "witness" to whatever else is going on, and erbium would not necessarily be driving whatever is going on. I.e., perhaps it's a side effect of some other process. If I had no other context, I'd start with neutron activation of 170Er as the initial hypothesis and work from there to confirm it or rule it out. We've already seen evidence of neutrons in the context of the NASA bubble dosimeter experiment, which unfortunately didn't impress Alhfors.

Basing an experiment around pure erbium would still be boring, I imagine.

um.. how do you tell the difference between vanadium and erbium?

is this erbium?

Quote from Eric Walker

I imagine

imagination is wonderful

Quote from Eric Walker

f someone reported the gamma lines for 171Er, that would be interesting, for sure. Out of curiosity, do you have a link to the paper with the graph showing the 171Er gamma lines?

Quote from Eric Walker

If I had no other context, I'd start with neutron activation of 170Er

it is interesting.

indeed>

If you track back a tad

in the thread.

you will find that someone includes somebodies Forsley. Steinetz...>et al

RE: NASA’s updated Lattice Assisted Nuclear Fusion revamped site (Have Fleischmann and Pons been finally vindicated?)

Someone wrote"

Gamma-n processes: Photoneutron reactions were also considered. Classic photoneutrons are not the cause of the activation of the Hf, Er, or Mo in the deuterated cases. First, the gamma energy is several MeV too low to cause photoneutrons in these materials. Second, if photoneutrons were at work they would have occurred in both the hydrogenated and non-gas-loaded materials, but these reactants did not show activation

Quote from DnG

is this erbium?

this is Palermo erbium

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/1-…al-/231875242382#shpCntId

RobertBryant thank you for the reference. I'll take a look.

Quote from Eric Walker

whatever else it might be

this whatever else would appear to be specific to deuterated erbium and not just hydrogenated erbium

Wyttenbach has suggested that in the case of Sm151..an odd unstable isotope..

which appears to have formed with deuterium plus samarium..

the "Sm151" is actually " Sm147+ D* + D*"

.. of course the NASA expts involves bombardment of erbium with high energy whereas the samarium

expt doesnt't.. and the similar formation of an odd unstable isotope Er171 may have no common mechanism.. but it is interesting..

..

The paper by Steinetz et al. is interesting. They set up a beam of gamma photons emitted from a LINAC with energy <2 MeV pointed at a target of one of erbium hydride, erbium deuteride, halfnium hydride or halfnium deuteride. When deuterium was used, gamma lines for short lived isotopes of Er and Hf were observed, and neutrons were seen in integrating bubble dosimeters and CR-39, and gamma lines were seen for activated Gd and Cd, the latter two materials present as a "witness" material for neutron activation. When hydrogen was used, there was no evidence of any activity above background.

Steinetz et. al rule out photoneutrons from the dissociation of deuterium on the basis of (1) the gamma photons from the LINAC being below the deuterium dissociation energy of 2.225 MeV, and (2) the presence of energetic neutrons, which would not be yielded by photodisintegration of deuterium. They rule out a gamma-n process in which neutrons are removed from one of the heavier elements because (1) this would require more energy than the <2 MeV photons from the LINAC and (2) you'd see this happening with the hydride samples as well as the deuteride samples, which wasn't the case.

I want to draw the following conclusions from this paper:

• They might well be seeing something interesting
• The 171Er and other short-lived isotopes are due to neutron activation of the erbium, halfnium, etc.

I question their ruling out photoneutrons from deuterium. First, their LINAC source is capable of producing 2.4 MeV photons, and they had to modify the system to reduce the beam energy. Did they do that correctly? If they did not, you'd have photons of sufficient energy. Second, the presence of fast neutrons shown by the CR-39 and bubble dosimeters does not rule out photodissociation of deuterium. There are various (n,2n) reactions, and beta-delayed neutron emissions in some cases when a daughter nuclide is unstable, in which one (perhaps slow) neutron is absorbed, and one or more fast neutrons are yielded with enough energy to be picked up in the bubble dosimeters and CR-39 chips.

One thing that stood out in my mind as I read through the paper is that with the presence of MeV gamma photons, this seems to be more in the realm of normal nuclear reactions than LENR.

Quote from Eric Walker

The 171Er and other short-lived isotopes are due to neutron activation

So you might expect a variety of Erbium activated producs if the 2.4 Mev neutrons are present..

if you have reaction data for 2.4 Mev neutron activation .. that would be good to see..

perhaps Steinetz and al looked for typical products.... and did not find any..

I may ask them about that..

the only data I find is for ~13.5 /14.8 Mev..

https://www.researchgate.net/p…-with-erbium-isotopes.pdf

Some products of 170Er +n are Dy167..Holmium

The two most likely reactions are..Er (n,2n) producing Er161/Er 163 and the least likely ..

the 168/170 Er ones..

Perhaps Er161 would show up as Er161m with a 396Kev gamma ?

The crosssection for 2.4 Mev activations is shown to be much lower than for 14 Mev activation//

I think there should be some 207 kev gamma emission from Er167m as well.., for a few seconds

https://www.nature.com/articles/188052a0.

So maybe Steinetz at al did not see expected activation products?

Quote from Eric Walker

I want to draw the following conclusions from this paper

One cannot conclude .about neutron activation because there is little evidence.. but one can speculate..

eg Mo 99 Mo101 peaks from Mo95 +DD, Mo97 +DD...... and hence Technetium peaks.

Er163 peak???... no idea,

Erbium (and the other rare earths ) are indeed highly interesting.. there are many questions to answer.

Maybe I shall buy some and co-deuterate with Nickel Pd..or something..

"real fusion is ion collisions and neutrons tell it is real fusion..."

Quote from David Nygren

Steven Chu limited knowledge

True...maybe Nobel hero needs education....any volunteers?

RobertBryant interesting analysis. The primary cross sections to look for would be for the slow neutrons from the (hypothetical) deuterium photodissociation, whose maximum energy Steinmetz et al. give at 0.087 MeV. Slow neutron capture, as you know, has a large cross section. It's from these neutrons that I'd expect to see most of the activation. Activation of Er and Hf is reasonable to conclude, given that Gd and Cd, the witness materials that were used in the experiment, were also activated, and given that they picked up neutrons in the CR-39 and bubble detectors.

There appear to have been a range of neutron energies present. In the CR-39, triple pits were observed, implying some neutrons with energy >10 MeV.

Although (n,2n) reactions with something in the setup might be possible (I'm not sure how likely), other possibilities include prompt and beta-delayed neutron emission from unstable daughters following slow neutron capture. The following reactions are energetically possible, although I don't have the neutron capture cross sections and branching ratios (and hence likelihoods).

n + 167Er → 81As + 87Br + 91206 keV                     →β-, →β-n
n + 170Er → 84Se + 87Se + 90336 keV                     →β-, →β-n
n + 168Er → 84As + 85Br + 89510 keV                     →β-, →β-n
n + 168Er → 83Ge + 86Kr + 89323 keV                     →β-, →β-n
n + 166Er → 80As + 87Br + 89252 keV                     →β-, →β-n

In each of these cases, there is a beta-delayed neutron emission in one of the unstable daughters (e.g., 87Br). My little helper program produced 340,369 of reactions like these that lead to beta-delayed neutron emission. These ones have energies in the range of ~90 MeV, which seems implausible and hence unlikely, but among 340k reactions, perhaps a few are likely. I also see that prompt neutron emission from an unstable daughter is energetically possible:

n + 166Er → 25O + 142Nd + 1746 keV                      →n
n + 170Er → 25O + 146Nd + 1538 keV                      →n
n + 168Er → 25O + 144Nd + 1479 keV                      →n, →α
n + 167Er → 25O + 143Nd + 1433 keV                      →n

Again, no cross sections or branching ratios to weed out the unlikely reactions, unfortunately, but you get the idea.

Given the vast permutations of energetically possible reactions of these kinds and others, and my lack of familiarity with gamma spectra, I would hesitate to speculate about individual lines in the spectra.

Quote from Eric Walker

It's from these neutrons that I'd expect to see most of the activation. Activation of Er and Hf is reasonable to conclude,

the word 'conclude' is ambitious withour further evidence..

I would tend to use the word speculate.. as in

"Activation of Er and Hf is reasonabe to speculate"

Activation of Pd and Ag is simpler (and slightly cheaper!). Metal prices being very volatile! In the present crisis........but WHO knows,,,,what's next??????