Arpa E seems to be quick-footed and open-minded!

I like that! To better understand what Arpa E wants to do, watch this.

ARPA-E funds high-risk energy projects.

Highlights

04.45

12.50

Jennifer Gerbi, acting director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for the Department of Energy (ARPA-E), discusses the process of evaluating and funding high-risk, high-reward energy projects and getting the technologies to market

ARPA-E Selects 8 Projects to Apply Scientific and Rigorous Approach Focused on Specific Type of Nuclear Energy:

Press Release | U.S. Department of Energy Announces $10 Million in Funding to Projects Studying Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions

Press and General Inquiries:[email protected] WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $10 million in funding…

arpa-e.energy.gov

Description about ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit from March 22-24, 2023,

Quote from teppo

ARPA-E Selects 8 Projects to Apply Scientific and Rigorous Approach Focused on Specific Type of Nuclear Energy:

I am uneasy about some of these projects. I don't know what some of them mean. Neutrons crop up a lot. The first description says:

"University of Michigan will provide capability to measure hypothetical neutron, gamma, and ion emissions from LENR experiments."

I read that and thought: "What neutron, gamma and ion emissions do you have in mind? There aren't many, and they probably do not mean much."

Ed Storms thinks these people are stuck in a time-warp in 1989. (Okay, that's not how he put it!)

I hope these researchers know what they are doing. If this program goes badly, it will make cold fusion look even worse than ever. That's hard to do! It would be an accomplishment of sorts. A suspicious person might wonder whether that is the DoE's goal. To bury cold fusion once and for all. I am not a suspicious person. I am naive; trusting; uncritical. So I suppose the DoE has our best interests at heart.

Quote from JedRothwell

I hope these researchers know what they are doing. If this program goes badly, it will make cold fusion look even worse than ever. That's hard to do! It would be an accomplishment of sorts. A suspicious person might wonder whether that is the DoE's goal. To bury cold fusion once and for all. I am not a suspicious person. I am naive; trusting; uncritical. So I suppose the DoE has our best interests at heart.

Having knowledge of what the Brillouin proposition was, I can tell you it was orders of magnitude more interesting than what's on that list. I think the work will be done in any case but it won't be made public until much later.

Quote from LCC

Having knowledge of what the Brillouin proposition was, I can tell you it was orders of magnitude more interesting than what's on that list. I think the work will be done in any case but it won't be made public until much later.

You mean Brillouin's work will be done and reported later. Right? Not these 8 projects.

Quote from JedRothwell

You mean Brillouin's work will be done and reported later. Right? Not these 8 projects.

100%

Some guesses:

The two University of Michigan projects are for Igor Jovanovic's lab. The first is for a general capability, the second is to test a specific experiment, from an unknown group.

The Texas Tech project is Rob Duncan.

The LBNL project is Thomas Schenkel.

The MIT project is Peter Hagelstein.

The Stanford project is John Dodaro / Matteo Cargnello / Aquarius.

The ETI project is an outgrowth of HIVER / SPAWAR work.

Amphionic - ?

It all looks pretty reasonable, and encouraging, to me.

i have thought exactly the same however i didn't say that previously to not appear once again as a bad boy.

Quote from Curbina

I had not said anything because I was trying to stay positive, but I think the focus on most of these projects is so classic that is doomed to fail. I only identify one that I suspect is the continuation of the work that was presented at ICCF 24th by Erick Ziehm, and the one by MIT is probably led by Florian Metzler. But I was rather dissapointed when reading the list, to be honest.

I uploaded this announcement to the LENR-CANR.org news section:

News

Today I added this note of caution:

Some cold fusion researchers feel that these eight projects were poorly chosen. The goals are framed as if cold fusion is the same as plasma fusion. People made this mistake in 1989. For example, several projects focus on neutrons. The first one says, “University of Michigan will provide capability to measure hypothetical neutron, gamma, and ion emissions from LENR experiments.” Some cold fusion experiments have produced neutrons, but most do not. It seems likely that neutrons are a secondary effect with a prosaic cause such as fractofusion, rather than being a primary signature of the reaction. Excess heat correlated with helium, or tritium production, can occur without neutrons, so looking for neutrons is not a fruitful way to detect or analyze a cold fusion reaction.

Quote from JedRothwell

I uploaded this announcement to the LENR-CANR.org news section:

https://lenr-canr.org/wordpress/?page_id=522

Today I added this note of caution:

Some cold fusion researchers feel that these eight projects were poorly chosen. The goals are framed as if cold fusion is the same as plasma fusion. People made this mistake in 1989. For example, several projects focus on neutrons. The first one says, “University of Michigan will provide capability to measure hypothetical neutron, gamma, and ion emissions from LENR experiments.” Some cold fusion experiments have produced neutrons, but most do not. It seems likely that neutrons are a secondary effect with a prosaic cause such as fractofusion, rather than being a primary signature of the reaction. Excess heat correlated with helium, or tritium production, can occur without neutrons, so looking for neutrons is not a fruitful way to detect or analyze a cold fusion reaction.

Display More

The UofM team specifically mentions calorimetry in their second project. It reads to me like they’re simply making their expertise available to other projects in the first of their two announced projects.

Quote

The Applied Nuclear Science Group (ANSG) at the University of Michigan is led by Prof. Igor Jovanovic and has an extensive experience in the detection of most forms of ionizing radiation, including the highly penetrating types: neutrons, gamma rays, and neutrinos. The group operates Michigan’s Neutron Science Laboratory, which provides outstanding infrastructure for detector development, testing, and scientific experimentation with a variety of neutron sources. The laboratory sources include DD (2.45 MeV) and DT (14.1 MeV) generators, spontaneous fission source (Cf-252), and (alpha,n) neutron sources. The group’s experience spans modeling using codes such as Geant4, Fluka, and MCNP, custom detector design and characterization, and complex experiments in low-signal, high-background environments, such as active interrogation and detection of antineutrinos from nuclear reactors. ANSG intends to submit a capability proposal that will offer a sophisticated, well-characterized neutron detection and spectroscopy system with exquisitely characterized backgrounds that will be available for unbiased measurement of the radiation production from various LENR experiments. The capability will be augmented by state-of-the-art modeling to account for experiment-specific shielding conditions. We are interested in partnering with LENR performers interested in the detailed measurement and characterization of neutrons produced in their experiments

Quote from orsova

The UofM team specifically mentions calorimetry in their second project. It reads to me like they’re simply making their expertise available to other projects in the first of their two announced projects.

Where did you find that text?

Quote from Curbina

My concern is about the approach, none of these projects seem to acknowledge LENR is not Hot Fusion at lowet temperatures.

Exactly! They may be setting up experiments that are bound to fail, like the 1989 experiments that only looked for neutrons, without first finding heat. As Fleischmann said, heat is the principal signature of the reaction. No heat means there is no cold fusion, and there is no point to looking for anything else.

Quote from Curbina

My concern is not with the technical abilities, at all. In this regard, a microwatt resolution calorimeter

The problem with a microwatt calorimeter is that it makes you think microwatts are what you are looking for. Microwatts might be caused by a tiny chemical effect. You have to find milliwatts or watts, or there is probably no cold fusion reaction.

Gordon's LEC produces only microwatts, and that makes me nervous. It might be a chemical battery effect. I know the reasons why this is unlikely, but it makes me nervous. It is electricity, and you can slowly charge up a capacitor with it. That is better than heat, which vanishes away. Heat cannot be made to produce a cumulative high power effect the way a trickle charge of electricity can. I get that, but it still makes me uneasy.

Quote from JedRothwell

Where did you find that text?

The text I quoted below my comment?

Teaming Partners

The Teeming Partners are not only the ones who got the grants from the DoE moola.

I will add this list to the News item.

Quote from JedRothwell

The Teeming Partners are not only the ones who got the grants from the DoE moola.

I will add this list to the News item.

I know. In my defence, I did say I was guessing.

Quote from JedRothwell

They may be setting up experiments that are bound to fail, like the 1989 experiments that only looked for neutrons, without first finding heat.

To be specific, suppose the neutrons are caused by fractofusion. This is prosaic. Suppose you are doing a bulk-Pd experiment. Fractofusion indicates the material is fracturing from high loading, which means it probably will not produce the cold fusion effect. The neutrons are telling you that the experiment is not working. The only way you can tell it is working is to detect heat or tritium, and if you do, it is likely there will be no fractofusion and no neutrons.

I hope the 8 groups of people doing these experiments realize that.