The tritium story seems to have world-wide acceptance now
World-wide? Doubtful. Within the LENR community. Of course.
Which is why I was bringing up the method for detecting tritium. The 'industry standard' is the method described in:
"Tritium Analysis in Palladium with an Open System Analytical Procedure", K. Cedzynska, S. Barrowes, H. E. Bergeson, L. C. Knight, and F.G. Will, Fus. Tech., 20, (1991), 108
In fact, the paper above was recommended to me by a colleague for some work we were doing jointly. In the conclusions, they mention this is the method used by Wolf, one of the first to claim T detection in F&P cells.
They also say: "Unfortunately, in evaluating the applicability of this analytical procedure for reliable tritium determination, we find the open-system technique to be sometimes subject to artificially high count rates (due to color effects in the solution and, possibly, to metal contaminants in the palladium), and also to artificially low count rates (due to possible loss of gaseous tritium during the various steps involved in the open-system procedure)."
Elsewhere in that section they note that "improper analytical procedures" could introduce tritium contamination. They go on to say; "the use of reliable techniques should be mandatory" and "A reliable technique ... has been developed and will be described in the near future".
IOW, the 'industry standard' method has some issues, at least according to Will, et al.
Will later published this:
"Closed-System Analysis of Tritium in Palladium", K. Cedzynska and F. G. Will, Fus. Tech., 22, (1992) 156,
that describes the improved method. However, that method uses a microdistillation, which is a real pain to do, very labor intensive. Plus, it also incorporates a catalytic gas recombination to catch lost tritium. As such it isn't normally used, since most samples in the nuclear business are well above the T limits where problems can arise with the interferents Will lists in his 1991 publication. The last sentence of the paper is: "Application of the closed-system procedure...is advisable to ascertain that there is no possibility for tritium contamination." IOW, "the best technique is this one". But the 'best' is not the 'standard', because of the work load of the best technique.
The 'standard' technique requires the use of quench compensation to offset the sample coloring by dissolved Pd in these analyses. This is why contaminants can alter the results. But everyone knew from the earliest days that Pt could be found on the Pd cathode, i.e. the electrolyte was dissolving some of the anode and depositing it on the cathode. The reverse of that was never investigated to my knowledge, an interesting omission. Dilute enough Pd won't show visible color but can still affect the tritium
measurement. Other elements or particles can do that to, especially nanoparticles. For ex., solutions of gold nanoparticles are red-colored. If you have nanoparticles floating around, the quench correction would need to be adjusted. When might that happen? How about during codep, when sometimes macroscopic chunks break off (as per comments made in this forum recently). Nanosized deposits forming in solution or breaking off the cathode are clearly possible.
The point is, the CF researchers never talk about this. They just say, as Ed did, "We used LSC." There's a lot more to it than that.
Oh BTW, Will was the director of the National Cold Fusion Institute that was set up in Utah after the F&P announcement when he published these papers.
