Tritium fuel cycle in ITER and DEMO: Issues in handling large amount of fuel
USEFUL PAPERS THREAD
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LOW-EXPOSURE TRITIUM RADIOTOXICITY IN MAMMALS
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nd the structure, as well as the walls of the large room that contains it, will be screaming (as the saying goes) due to them being activated by all the flying neutrons,
However, the occurrence of 14C and 94Nb, through activation of structural steels and alloys has some commonality. From a radiological perspective, it is reasonable to consider that, conceptually, wastes from a nuclear fusion power programme should be compatible with geological disposal, however, they may prove challenging for disposal in a near surface facility, given the long half life and potential mobility of 14C and 94Nb.
..the 830 Kev gamma from Nb94 decay screams a bit more than any Beta..
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From a radiological perspective, it is reasonable to consider that, conceptually, wastes from a nuclear fusion power programme should be compatible with geological disposal,
Cobalt is often troublesome. Unless they were able to used cobalt-free aggregates for the concrete, they will have a long term hazard just from the building wall materials. Other sand activation products (e. Scandium) are shorter lived. See LONG-LIVED RADIOACTIVITY PRODUCED IN NORTHERN OHIO CONCRETE MATERIALS BY NEUTRON ACTIVATION (NASA)
Often you only find out that there were troublesome materials exposed to neutrons after it is too late. e.g. there was one old prototype fission reactor in the UK that had been built using stainless steel valves from the petrochemical industry. Unlike nuclear-grade valves, these had Stellite seats, which became activated - spreading cobalt-60 wear debris through the entire cooling system...
Although there is meant to be a strict audit of all materials that will be placed within the flux zone, sometimes stuff slips through the net - and sometimes (especially for a prototype reactor) decisions are made to just live with it (especially if the disposal headaches are expected to arrive after the decision-makers have retired).
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LOW-EXPOSURE TRITIUM RADIOTOXICITY IN MAMMALS
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimphone
QuoteThe Trimphone is a model of telephone designed in the late-1960s in the UK. ... The luminous dial or betalight contained the mildly radioactive element tritium, which later caused some concern about safety. In June 1991 the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority at Harwell was fined £3,000 by Wantage Magistrates Court for accumulating radioactive waste, having collected several thousand Trimphone luminous dials in a skip.
Back in the 1980s, it was customary at UK sites like Harwell to simply abandon old contaminated facilities, rather than try to "dispose" of them. There was a school of thought that said that the most compact form of any radioactive waste tends to be its original one - i.e. the facility itself. Trying to dismantle it, and cut bits up, only creates more radioactive dust and contaminated water, which also needs to be safely captured, transported, and stored - and is inevitably of a much larger volume than the original.
Hence there were whole labs that had been covered in plastic sheeting, and left for decades - just with a warning notice outside the door. And if you walked around the site, you would occasionally pass things such as old 1950s cooling ponds, where the Health Physics dept had erected a notice stating "Radiation in Excess of 25 mrad/hr - Do Not Loiter".
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Direct Electrical Production from LENR
David J. Nagel*
Abstract — This paper reviews various approaches to the direct production of electrical power by using excitations from Low
Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR). Some of the methods only provide low voltages, currents and powers. Efforts are underway to
understand and improve the outputs of those techniques. One recent report by Egely describes a device that magnifies electrical
energy by as much as a factor of 10. That technology requires both independent testing and commercialization -
Chiral catalysis of nuclear fusion in molecules
At low energies, nuclear fusion is strongly affected by electron screening of the Coulomb repulsion
among the fusing nuclei. It may thus be possible to catalyze nuclear fusion in molecules (i.e.,
to fuse specific nuclei in situ) through quantum control of electron wave functions in intense laser
fields. The circularly polarized (chiral) laser field can effectively squeeze the electron wave functions,
greatly enhancing the screening in the spatial region relevant for the fusion process. We estimate
the corresponding fusion probabilities, and find that the proposed chiral catalysis of nuclear fusion
in molecules may be observable, potentially with important practical applications.
6 Nov 2023
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Electron screening in the 2H(19F,p)20F reaction
Abstract. The dependence of electron screening potential on the position of the target nucleus
in host-material lattice was investigated by measuring the rate of the 2H(19F,p)20F reaction in
zirconium, titanium and palladium targets containing deuterium. Very different values of the
screening potential were measured, thus showing the link with the valence electron densities
around deuterium nuclei.
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"From this we can conclude that the screening effect is not linked to the static electron densities around interacting nuclei and that probably, a dynamic approach should be applied"
Display MoreElectron screening in the 2H(19F,p)20F reaction
Abstract. The dependence of electron screening potential on the position of the target nucleus
in host-material lattice was investigated by measuring the rate of the 2H(19F,p)20F reaction in
zirconium, titanium and palladium targets containing deuterium. Very different values of the
screening potential were measured, thus showing the link with the valence electron densities
around deuterium nuclei.
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Neutrons from Ti at low temperature
I often say cold fusion does not produce neutrons. Not many, anyway. Ed thinks they may have a prosaic origin. There is one kind of experiment that produces them fairly reliably. Titanium chips are cooled down and loaded with D2 gas. As they warm up, they often produce neutrons. I cannot judge whether this is cold fusion, or whether it has some conventional explanation, similar to the way neutrons are generated with scotch tape.
Anyway, there are several papers about this. Yesterday I uploaded one by Zhu et al. They worked with Howard Menlove of LANL, who pioneered this technique. See:
https://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ZhuRmeasuremen.pdf
See also:
https://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/NCFIthefirstan.pdf#page=269
https://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MenloveHOreproducib.pdf
https://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MenloveHOlowbackgro.pdf
Here is one with Pd loaded with gas:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ClaytorTNtritiumgen.pdf
I have uploaded some other new papers lately:
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neutrons are generated with scotch tape
Neutrons?
Scotch Tape Unleashes X-Ray Power (Published 2008)In a tour de force of office supply physics, researchers have shown that it is possible to produce X-rays by simply unrolling Scotch tape.www.nytimes.com -
Neutrons?
Yeah, neutrons. Ed told me that, and I read it somewhere. X-rays and neutrons.
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Ed thinks the Ti D2 gas loading experiments produce neutrons from fractofusion. That is a form of plasma fusion. It has nothing to do with cold fusion.
If he is right then you might say these papers are unrelated to cold fusion. I would say they are related because they show that some plasma fusion effects such as neutron production can occur at room temperature, or close to it. They are prosaic. So, the neutrons in conventional electrochemical cold fusion might also be prosaic. They might also be from fractofusion, because cathodes are stressed. The reaction might be a combination of cold fusion and plasma fusion. That complicates things. If it is true we need to sort out which effects are caused by which reaction. That is why we should study this, and why it contributes to understanding cold fusion.
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JedRothwell this is one of the reasons I get annoyed by the blithe use of the "conservation of miracles" maxim. It is a form of hubris, where some scientists assume that they have almost all relevant phenomena covered in their models - and that there couldn't possibly be more than a single mysterious one left to find and solve.
A useful paper (available via the raven-themed archive):
Fractofusion revisitedFractoemission, an intense and prolonged emission of charged particles of both signs and electromagnetic radiation subsequent to the mechanical creation of fracpubs.aip.orgBut what about the sticky tape?
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Ed thinks the Ti D2 gas loading experiments produce neutrons from fractofusion. That is a form of plasma fusion. It has nothing to do with cold fusion.
If he is right then you might say these papers are unrelated to cold fusion. I would say they are related because they show that some plasma fusion effects such as neutron production can occur at room temperature, or close to it. They are prosaic. So, the neutrons in conventional electrochemical cold fusion might also be prosaic. They might also be from fractofusion, because cathodes are stressed. The reaction might be a combination of cold fusion and plasma fusion. That complicates things. If it is true we need to sort out which effects are caused by which reaction. That is why we should study this, and why it contributes to understanding cold fusion.
Would fractofusion obtain in codeposition experiments?
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Would fractofusion obtain in codeposition experiments?
Reminds me of this post.
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Li–Pd–Rh-D2O electrochemistry experiments at elevated voltageIn 2013, the U.S. Navy disclosed an electrochemistry procedure intended to produce MeV-energy nuclear particles, based on eV-energy electrical inputs, which maypubs.aip.org
Interesting paper on Pd/D electrolysis using a higher voltage/current regime than has been typical. The effect of voltage/current changes is certainly important, but it would be wrong to think that more is always better, as it was shown to be in this case. I have performed experiments using fairly dilute electrolytes with the particular aim of running at higher voltage, only to be dissapointed with the results. But that was with Ni/H using potassium carbonate electrolyte. Better results were more easily obtained using stronger electrolytes and lower voltage. But it occurs to me that the high voltage/current method used results on the cell running hot. And I know from experience and a few references to this in the literatirre that cell temperature is generally a positive factor -basically the higher the better.
Intro...
Li–Pd–Rh-D2O electrochemistry experiments at elevated voltage
Carl Gotzmer; Louis F. DeChiaro Kenneth Conley Marc Litz Marshall Millett; Jesse Ewing; Lawrence P. Forsley Karen J. Long William A. Wichart, Pamela A. Mosier-Boss John Sullivan Efrem Perry, Jr; Oliver M. Barham
APL Energy 1, 036107 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0153487In 2013, the U.S. Navy disclosed an electrochemistry procedure intended to produce MeV-energy nuclear particles, based on eV-energy electrical inputs, which may be indicative of a new scientific phenomenon. This work is based on the 2013 disclosure and shows initial evidence validating the prior claims of nuclear particle generation. Additionally, several variations on the 2013 electrochemical recipe are made in order to find a highly repeatable recipe for future replications by other teams. The experiments described here produced dense collections of tracks in solid-state nuclear track detectors, radio frequency (RF) emissions, and anomalous heat flux, which are indicative of potential nuclear, or unusual chemical, reactions. Experimental results include tracks in solid-state nuclear track detectors similar in size to tracks produced by 4.7 MeV alpha particles on identical detectors exposed to radioactive Th-230; RF pulses up to 6 dB above the noise floor, which indicate that these signals were likely not background noise and not caused by known chemical reactions; and heat flux of 10 s of kJ, measured to 6σ significance, over and above input electrical energy, indicative of unknown exothermic reactions. Six out of six nuclear track detectors, utilized in experiments and interrogated for tracks post-experiment, produced positive results that our team attributes to thousands of individual particle impacts in dense clusters, likely with energies between 0.1 and 20 MeV. Similar nuclear particle, thermal, and RF results have separately appeared in prior reports, but in this work, all three categories of anomalous behavior are reported. Results indicate that the 2013 procedure may be a useful guide toward a set of highly repeatable reference experiments, showing initial but not overwhelming evidence of a new scientific phenomenon. Repeatable recipes are shared so that other groups may replicate and extend the present work....continues.
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Display More
https://pubs.aip.org/aip/ape/a…ochemistry-experiments-at
Interesting paper on Pd/D electrolysis using a higher voltage/current regime than has been typical. The effect of voltage/current changes is certainly important, but it would be wrong to think that more is always better, as it was shown to be in this case. I have performed experiments using fairly dilute electrolytes with the particular aim of running at higher voltage, only to be dissapointed with the results. But that was with Ni/H using potassium carbonate electrolyte. Better results were more easily obtained using stronger electrolytes and lower voltage. But it occurs to me that the high voltage/current method used results on the cell running hot. And I know from experience and a few references to this in the literatirre that cell temperature is generally a positive factor -basically the higher the better.
Intro...
Li–Pd–Rh-D2O electrochemistry experiments at elevated voltage
Carl Gotzmer; Louis F. DeChiaro Kenneth Conley Marc Litz Marshall Millett; Jesse Ewing; Lawrence P. Forsley Karen J. Long William A. Wichart, Pamela A. Mosier-Boss John Sullivan Efrem Perry, Jr; Oliver M. Barham
APL Energy 1, 036107 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0153487In 2013, the U.S. Navy disclosed an electrochemistry procedure intended to produce MeV-energy nuclear particles, based on eV-energy electrical inputs, which may be indicative of a new scientific phenomenon. This work is based on the 2013 disclosure and shows initial evidence validating the prior claims of nuclear particle generation. Additionally, several variations on the 2013 electrochemical recipe are made in order to find a highly repeatable recipe for future replications by other teams. The experiments described here produced dense collections of tracks in solid-state nuclear track detectors, radio frequency (RF) emissions, and anomalous heat flux, which are indicative of potential nuclear, or unusual chemical, reactions. Experimental results include tracks in solid-state nuclear track detectors similar in size to tracks produced by 4.7 MeV alpha particles on identical detectors exposed to radioactive Th-230; RF pulses up to 6 dB above the noise floor, which indicate that these signals were likely not background noise and not caused by known chemical reactions; and heat flux of 10 s of kJ, measured to 6σ significance, over and above input electrical energy, indicative of unknown exothermic reactions. Six out of six nuclear track detectors, utilized in experiments and interrogated for tracks post-experiment, produced positive results that our team attributes to thousands of individual particle impacts in dense clusters, likely with energies between 0.1 and 20 MeV. Similar nuclear particle, thermal, and RF results have separately appeared in prior reports, but in this work, all three categories of anomalous behavior are reported. Results indicate that the 2013 procedure may be a useful guide toward a set of highly repeatable reference experiments, showing initial but not overwhelming evidence of a new scientific phenomenon. Repeatable recipes are shared so that other groups may replicate and extend the present work....continues.
The first publication from HIVER?
https://arpa-e.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2021LENR_workshop_Barham.pdf
Whether Cold Fusion or Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions, U.S. Navy Researchers Reopen CaseSpurred on by continued anomalous nuclear results, multiple labs now working to get to bottom of storyspectrum.ieee.org
