Eric, I think that tritium naturally undergoes beta decay to form helium-3. This process does not release any neutrons but it has a very slow decay rate which might not demonstrate much helium-3 during our time frame.
Helium-4 is a strange acting element. It has an incredible amount of binding energy and it appears that the only way to end up with it as a fusion product is to simultaneously release a heavy nucleon or two when the source nuclei combine. I suspect that the released heavy nucleon allows the large binding energy to be released as kinetic energy keeping the helium intact. I have been reviewing the behavior of helium-4 recently as related to possible LENR paths. I saw somewhere that two deuterium nuclei can fuse into either tritium or helium-3. The helium-3 path releases a dangerous neutron while the tritium path ejects a proton. The ratio is about equal for the production of these items. I suspect that this particular fusion reaction is not active since few neutrons are seen. We do need to consider this expected behavior in light of the fact that it is true for hot fusion and may not apply to LENR. Dave -----Original Message----- From: Eric Walker <eric.wal...@gmail.com> To: vortex-l <vortex-l@eskimo.com> Sent: Thu, Jul 12, 2012 12:31 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:Cell resistance drop at initiation of XP burst in the Fleischmann-Pons Heat Effect I wrote: In my ignorance I am not able to get from p+p or p+D to tritium or helium-3, a decay product of tritium, without electron capture or something even more mysterious. I should clarify that what I'm hoping to find is an aneutronic reaction to get to tritium or helium-3. If you allow (high energy) daughter neutrons, then it's not difficult to get to helium-3. I think you can get tritium from deuterium via electron capture, but I don't know if that reaction can be influenced; and, anyway, you would not expect to see deuterium above background since it's already being produced by the deuterium. If you allow 6Li or 10B to be present, I think you can get tritium without daughter neutrons. Or perhaps the level of tritium is on the order of that of detected neutrons -- that would be an interesting correlation to look for. EXFOR is telling me that you can get tritium via proton capture with helium-4 and with carbon and other nuclei. So the mystery is perhaps not as mysterious as I was making it out to be. Since helium-3 is a decay product of tritium, Ed Storms has proposed that it is tritium production that precedes helium-3 production, and any explanation would need to address tritium. Eric
