In reply to Frederick Sparber's message of Fri, 15 Dec 2006 07:04:06 -0700: Hi Fred, [snip] >http://groups.google.co.uk/group/sci.skeptic/tree/browse_frm/month/1990-08/6f8e760842199985?rnum=11&hl=en&_done=%2Fgroup%2Fsci.skeptic%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fmonth%2F1990-08%3Fhl%3Den%26 > >" The problem with the amount of energy per gram of radioactive material >implied by the 1989 Peripheral Systems Annual Report is on page 4. It >says that 70 watts of electricity was produced from 1 gram of strontium-90 >and 50,000 watts from 2 lbs of stuff (55 watts/gram). This is far above >the amount of energy available in the radiation. Here are my calculations >which have been checked by 3 different Nuclear engineers (two point out >that I should really use only 0.535 Mev/decay since the energy in a >neutrino can not be used, but even with this generosity Brown is way off): > >Specific activity of Sr-90: 139 curies/gram >Curie: 3.7e10 decays/sec >Max energy per decay: 2.8 MeV/decay >Energy equality: 1 MeV = 1.6e-13 joules >Power: 1 joule/sec = 1 watt > >A good source for the above is "CRC - Handbook for Radioactive Nuclides"
While it's possible that it was all a fraud, or a mistake, it's also possible that Brown had a means of accelerating nuclear decay which he improperly understood, and therefore couldn't engineer into a commercial product. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://users.bigpond.net.au/rvanspaa/ Competition provides the motivation, Cooperation provides the means.
