From: Eric Walker
Jones Beene wrote:
Two things. Deuterium stripping – if that is one of the
operative gain mechanisms would still release lots of neutrons to be
detected external to the reactor. Notice that the nickel cross-section for
neutrons is basically rather low.
I take it that deuterium stripping is an all-or-nothing
thing.
Oppenheimer-Phillips may be all-or-nothing - but not the other four methods
of deuteron disintegration (aka stripping): photofission, beta decay,
spin-flipping and spallation. IOW there are five ways to skin this cat, and
most of them were mentioned before the end of 1989 in the context of cold
fusion (as an alternative explanation to avoid the big gamma ray of helium
fusion).
Either the neutron is stripped off and added to the large
nucleus, or it is not, in which case you get the equivalent of an inelastic
collision. I.e., there are no messy, partial stripping reactions.
There is plenty of mess. The proton and neutron in deuterium are
comparatively *loosely bound.* In fact, if you flip the spin of only one of
the nucleons, not both – then the deuteron falls apart. On paper this could
be done magnetically. That is part of the allure of nanomagnetism.
Only one other stable isotope in the entire periodic table is as loosely
bound as deuterium, and the “tail” of the distribution for stripping or
disintegration (inverted tail) is very long. Many reference say that
deuterium can beta decay directly (~1.5 MeV), but is so statistically rare
that it is seldom mentioned. The real difference from all other nuclei is
that the enormous distance between the two nucleons, not to mention the low
electric charge. Heisenberg's door is open wide for weak and EM interactions
to supply the missing energy (recoverable) to induce a "stimulated" but
seemingly "spontaneous" decay of the deuteron. But nanomagnetism is the most
alluring prospect.
Whether or not this assumption is correct, I'm guessing that
this is the angle that Yoshino and Mizuno are pursuing.
Maybe it is, as the slides have a purpose - but I doubt that it can be the
end-of-story, because even if it is true and the other four ways to
disintegrate the deuteron are absent, O-P does not explain the doubling of
gas molecules. More likely, it could be both partly true and incomplete.
This subject is most interesting in light of the inclusion of those slides –
which give one the impression that Yoshino put them into the document to
entice readers to come to the big show-and-tell in November.
Jones
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