Interesting point from M.C. : > With all this talk about ethanol and hydrogen, let me take note of the water > bath calorimetry experiments of Mills which showed a heat release from > hydrogen 100 times greater than by combustion of the same amount of > hydrogen.
The only obvious drawback to the Mills process, assuming his published results hold up under closer scrutiny is *energy density* which is a term that we are not used to hearing much about. As best I can tell, this lower energy density is due to the requirement of needing a rather thin plasma, which is irradiated with the RF but mildly so, and requiring a great deal of spatial volume relative to the energy produced. One thought occurs here in the context of a nuclear reactor. Reactors are just the opposite - having extremely high energy density. Can some of the best features of each technology be combined? Lets consider the Mills microwave Everson [sp] tube which uses hydrogen and helium, irradiated at the common oven frequency of 2.45 Ghz. It just so happens that those two gases, mostly He with about 10% H2 are both easily accommodated and usable within a reactor for several purposes - either neutron moderation or heat removal and especially conversion of heat into electricity, or for all of these. But the best thing is... once a hydrino reaches a certain level of shrinkage according to Mills, it will become more and more neutron-like so that near the final 137th stage, we have in effect a virtual neutron. This feature could allow hydrinos to become the "makeup" virtual-neutrons in a subcritical reactor scheme. This proto-hypothesis (fresh off the mental press, consequently the details may change drastically, even within the hour) is based upon combining the Mills hydrino reaction within a subcritical fission reactor using only natural unenriched uranium. We would need to have a high volume, unpressurized reactor with many tubes, each tube composed of unenriched uranium probably in the form of a dielectric carbide, so that microwaves can be propagated down each tube. BTW the price of Uranium recently hit rock bottom with new supplies from Asia. Its cheaper than many common metals like nickel and some stainless steels now so the cost of refueling is almost nothing compared to the energy released. Since the reactor is only nominally subcritical, with a high multiplication ratio, it would still need plenty of control equipment, but probably not all the costly containment of the normal situation. Side note: Granite has a fairly high U content and granite buildings, like the Capitol in D.C. have so much granite that the U content is almost enough to be usable in the type of reactor this idea refers to. Also... I would argue that the contents of that building are often more toxic than those of the reactor which is being described here. Every tube in this reactor will have its own microtron for RF, but that parasitic drain is small, and as it is the common variety used in ovens, they are almost disposable items. The He+H2 mix will be irradiated within a starting tube and recirculated through every tube, never leaving the reactor. External to each fuel tube will be collection grids to collect thermionic electrons, which represents the power output (by direct conversion, of course - no steam cycle). After enough hydrinos are created in situ, the neutron flux will rise enough to heat the tubes to thermionic temps. Reactivity is controlled by how much hydrogen is admitted using computer control. The neutron flux could be a factor of 10-50 less than in a conventional reactor, but with a much larger volume space and no conductive heat removal, the tubes will reach several thousand degrees for efficient thermionic conversion. Needless to say, there are a few other details which need to be worked out... Stay tuned. Jones
