On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 11:43 AM, Bob Cook <frobertc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Ni-62 and Ni64 are not a big constituents of natural Ni--Ni-58 is the > largest at about 68.3%. However, they both provide about 4.5% of the > natural Ni isotopes. Both Ni-62 and Ni-64 would transmute to stable Cu -63 > and Cu-65 upon absorption of a proton. There may be no gammas emitted. On > the other hand transmutation of Ni-58 to Cu-59 would likely involve gammas > (maybe as high as 1.3 Mev associated with Cu-59 decay to Ni-59 which itself > is radioactive with no direct gamma emission, only positron emission with > its subsequent annililation with an electron producing the .51 Mev back to > back gammas. > I'm wondering about three things that might mitigate the detection of penetrating radiation. First would be successful enrichment to 62Ni and 64Ni to a high degree. Second would be the possibility that 62Ni and 64Ni are special and participate in the reaction in a way that other isotopes of nickel do not (recall that this was a topic of discussion for many weeks at one point). Third is the possibility that in recent cases where there was a vigorous NiH reaction and someone there to detect radiation (e.g., the recent Elforsk test), perhaps the detector was not configured to detect at levels that would have been relevant. Eric
