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NASA's Basement Nuclear Reactor
cylonlover writes "If Joseph Zawodny, a senior scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center, is correct, the future of energy may lie in a nuclear reactor small enough and safe enough to be installed where the home water heater once sat. Using weak nuclear forces that turn nickel and hydrogen into a new source of atomic energy, the process offers a light, portable means of producing tremendous amounts of energy for the amount of fuel used. It could conceivably power homes, revolutionize transportation and even clean the environment."
"But what about the terrorists?"
Government: Approval Denied.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
While I think technically this is possible, IMO it will never happen. Imagine the following tagline:
"Have enough electricity for 20 years"
Do you really think any power plant company will want this? Of course maybe somebody will sell for 20 years, and 35K, thus making it not that useful. The only reason why we are not using our own generators right now is because they are too tedious and twiddly factor. If you could produce reliable energy without the twiddle factor we would not be in this mess we are.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
There have been quite a few news reports about LENR lately. There seems to be a revival in legitimate scientific research into this area. University of Missouri is running a 5.5 million USD research project, and scientists at other institutes like Purdue, Illinois-UIUC, NASA, MIT, SRI, NRL are all looking into it.
A couple of days ago the Nuclear Energy Institute was talking about it on their facebook page and the American Nuclear Society posted a similar story on their "nuclear cafe".
The University of Missouri will host a cold fusion conference in July this year and George Miley from Illinois (UIUC) will discuss his research results in a talk at the upcoming "Nuclear & Emerging Technologies for Space (NETS-2013) organized by the ANS starting coming Monday. (http://iccf18.research.missouri.edu/)
On a ANS meeting in November 2012 Mitsubishi Heavy Industries reported about their transmutation experiment and successful replications of the experiment at Toyota lab.
Absolutely, there will be copper inside that thing. Your fusion central heater will be stolen in no time.
"...is called Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions or Lattice Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR). In the late 1980s, it went by the name of “cold fusion.”
This claims you can harness the power of the weak nuclear force while turning nickel to copper without releasing ionizing radiation.
And: "In past years, several labs have blown up while studying LENR and windows have melted".
Seriously?
Maybe NASA will let other scientists play with it to prove it's not a scam, unlike Rosi's device. We don't even hear about that one anymore, where's the mass produced fusion generator for every home ?
" In past years, several labs have blown up while studying LENR and windows have melted – showing that if it really works, it can produce an impressive amount of energy." I wanna play too.
Three comments:
1) Not everything scales up at linear-or-better rates;
2) Better distribution of anything reduces the impact of failures; and
3) Who the hell said anything about no more power stations anyway?
If you read the article, the reactions only work if you subject it to THz wave EM energy. So damaging this type of reactor would only ever have one kind of effect... it would stop working and go back to being a big lump of inert metal. Assuming it works in the first place after all.
If something can be done on a small scale, it can be done better on a large scale This is why we have power stations.
... and brothels?
Yes, it's a white good, and it'll be disposed of just like other white goods. Although considering that this is a cold fus... I mean LENR reactor, you may have to drain the snake oil first.
"Brought to you by the knights who say NiH!"
There was a colloquium at CERN last year, see http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=177379
you will find the presentation about the Widom-Larsen-Srivastava that TFA talks about.
you will also find the slides about the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries transmutation experiment (and the Toyota replication of it) http://indico.cern.ch/getFile.py/access?resId=5&materialId=slides&confId=177379
As mentioned above it was also presented at the American Nuclear Society's winter meeting in Nov 2012:
"Replication experiments have been performed in some universities or institutes mainly in Japan. T.Higashiyama et al. of Osaka University observed transmutation of Cs into Pr in 2003[7]. H.Yamada et al. performed similar experiments using Cs and detected increase of mass number 137 by TOF-SIMS. They used a couple of nano-structured Pd multilayer thin film and observed the increase of mass number 141 (corresponding to Pr) only when 133Cs was given on the Pd sample [8]. N. Takhashi et al., the researchers of Toyota Central R&D Labs, presented that they detected Pr from the permeated Pd sample using SOR x-ray at Spring-8 and the detected Pr was confirmed by ICP-MS and TOF-SIMS [8]." http://newenergytimes.com/v2/conferences/2012/ANS2012W/2012Iwamura-ANS-LENR-Paper.pdf
All kinds of information nuclear reactions and decay is available in "Nuclides and Isotopes", a chart of the nuclides published by KAPL (Knowles Atomic Power Laboratory). I recommend the "chart" in book form as it comes with a bunch of nuclear physics discussion. Based on the description in the article Ni+n=Cu+e. There is only one stable isotope of Ni that has a chance of going through this process and resulting in a stable isotope of copper and that is Ni62. Ni62 is only 3.63% of naturally occurring nickle. The most abundant isotope is Ni58 (68.07%) and it will go to Ni59 with addition of a neutron and will beta decay to Co59. Ni59 has a 7600 year half life so you could continue to change it to Ni60 then Ni61 then Ni62, but all of this wouldn't happen instantaneously as stated in the article (I guess you could start an enrichment plant so you are only using Ni62, but that cost a lot of money and energy and would have to be factored into the energy balance of the final "reactor"). These types of reactions don't take place in nature because the stable isotopes are already at the bottom of the "valley of stability" (have a minimum mass or maximum binding energy, see pages 27-28 of the 16th edition of the "Nuclides and Isotopes"). I guess it is possible that the 30THz vibrations change the local laws of physics, but I will remain skeptical until there is more than speculation. The article states, "LENR is a very long way from the day when you can go out and buy a home nuclear reactor. In fact, it still has to be proven that the phenomenon even exists, but hundreds of experiments worldwide indicate that heat and transmutations with minimal radiation and low energy input do take place with yields of 10 to 100 watts." TFA states that they are not even sure if the phenomenon exists and it doesn't provide the total energy input to the system so you can't tell if 10-100W is noise or error in the measuring equipment (this is one of the things that was going on in the cold fusion of years past).
GENERATION 27: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
After reading the article, it appears that the magic formula is subjecting a nickel metal hydride to T-waves. Perhaps all the existing NiMH batteries out on the market can be somehow re-purposed to last forever if someone can invent a portable terahertz wave generator.
What? Stolen with a copper inside? Can you imagine the thieves surprise when opening the box and getting arrested on the spot?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
From the article:
This sets off a reaction in which one of the neutrons in the nickel atom splits into a proton, an electron and an antineutrino. This changes the nickel into copper, and releases energy without dangerous ionizing radiation.
So l do not really see a recycling/upgrading/replacing process.
Thanks for quoting that particular bit. This illustrates a point about trying to "dumb down" theories for the general public to understand.
I love how they describe beta decay in the same breath as they say "without dangerous ionizing radiation" in that quote.
More from TFA:
Instead of using radioactive elements like uranium or plutonium, LENR uses a lattice or sponge of nickel atoms, which holds ionized hydrogen atoms like a sponge holds water.
A bit misleading there, since there may be no radioactive fuel sitting around, but they supposedly produce a radioactive nickel isotope in the process. (Nickel and copper are naturally slightly radioactive, but it's so weak I'll cut them some slack on that point) Still, I'd like to see some numbers to back up the idea that all slow neutrons would immediately react with the nickel, with none escaping into nearby materials.
At this point, I'm thinking the author is trying too hard to simplify his explanation. Or I might be giving him too much credit since he seems to be whitewashing the subject just a little bit.
Still more from TFA:
In past years, several labs have blown up while studying LENR and windows have melted – showing that if it really works, it can produce an impressive amount of energy.
Or, this could have nothing to do with LENR, and simply indicate that some LENR researchers are ignorant of the fact that nickel (along with palladium and platinum, if the LENR experiment used one of those instead) are commonly used as catalysts for reacting hydrogen with unsaturated molecules like oxygen, and promptly blew up the experiment by not removing/excluding said element from the apparatus.
OK, forget what I said about the author oversimplifying this for the public. He's clearly either trying to share his kool-aid, or hopelessly ignorant. Probably both.
For the purpose of this post, I'll accept that they can convert protons to neutrons as described, although I'm very dubious about this.
Here is a table of nickel isotopes.
Here is the first source I found for neutron cross sections of nickel isotopes (pdf). (See figure 12, look at the left hand side of each 'destruction channels for ??Ni' plot for what low energy (thermal) neutrons will do.)
Cross sections are in barns, and are approximate as I'm eyeballing them off a logarithmic scale.
58Ni [stable, 68% abundant] (0.006 barn) -> 59Ni [-> 59Co, 76000 yr half life]
59Ni [unstable but long lived] (0.02b) -> 59Co [stable] or (0.005b) ->56 Fe [stable] or (0.004b) -> 60Ni [stable]
60Ni [stable, 26%] (0.006b) -> 61Ni [stable]
61Ni [stable, 1%] (0.002b) -> 62Ni [stable]
62Ni [stable, 4%] (0.006b) -> 63Ni [->63Cu, 100yr]
63Ni [unstable] (0.001b)-> 64Ni [stable]
64Ni [stable, 1%] (0.004b) -> 65Ni [->65Cu, 2.5 hr]
None of the cross sections are hugely larger than the others, so all these reactions will occur with reasonable frequency. So irradiating nickel with thermal neutrons, you are going to produce radioactive 59Co (76000yr), 63Ni (100yr) and 65Ni (2.5hr). The 65Ni isn't a problem - turn off the reactor, wait a couple of days, and it will all be gone. The 59Co is only a bit of a problem - with such a long half life, it isn't very radioactive. The 63Ni however is nasty. Like 137Cs (30yr) from the Fukashima reactors, the half life is short enough to be quite radioactive but long enough that you can't just wait it out. Finally, the nickel won't be 100% pure, so you have to worry about what neutron irradiation will do to the impurities.
The 65Ni means when you turn off your reactor, it will continue to produce residual heat for hours.
The article gives the impression that weak nuclear reactions aren't dangerous, but this is not so. If it were, nuclear reactor waste wouldn't be dangerous.
This reactor will be producing ionizing radiation when running (mostly gamma rays, some beta rays mostly from 65Ni decay, and a tiny amount of alpha particles from 59Co(n,a)56Fe.) This will require some pretty heavy shielding to stop it. (A good sized water bath should work, every 7cm of water halves the radiation and you want hot water anyhow. But concrete is less prone to leak away.) You'd also need to worry about stray neutrons, although I expect that can be fixed with a thin layer of something that has very high thermal neutron cross section and no dangerous daughter products.
In short, I don't think I want this in my basement.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Yes, NASA Langley Research Centre, those famous cranks. While I really don't think it's true, it's certainly newsworthy that a NASA group of all people are proposing it.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
A nice link explaining the science which intrigued NASA: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Widom-Larsen.php
...getting the landlord to fix the nuclear reactor.
It's hard enough to get him to fix the water heater.
This cold fusion device has not been shown to produce any electricity.
The first line of the article "If Joseph Zawodny, a senior scientist at NASAâ(TM)s Langley Research Center, is correct" is misleading. Zawodny hasn't stated that it works or that he thinks it's definitely a real effect.
Let's look at what Zawodny actually has stated before:
http://joe.zawodny.com/index.php/2012/01/14/technology-gateway-video/
That he still holds this opinion is consistent with the quotes in the gizmag article:
4) Producing electricity far away from where it is used is inefficient since transporting electricity is quite inefficient.
Whereas transporting hydrogen is easy and loss free.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Fusion is actually about 80 billion dollars away. Funding has asymptotically gone down since the 70s, so considering it in that context (i.e. a certain amount of equipment and researchers are generally needed to develop it) it's not surprising it's always 50 years away.
If something can be done on a small scale, it can be done better on a large scale This is why we have power stations.
... and brothels?
In this country we call a large scale whore house Congress.
"In fact, it still has to be proven that the phenomenon even exists...." When you see this in an otherwise-gushing piece, the bells should go off.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Cold Fusion sounds like snake oil but low energy fusion potentially could be real. People can debate energy and gamma releases all they want but for me if they are finding copper where there wasn't copper before the only way for that to happen is some form of fusion. The beauty of the system is if it works you just have to shield from the gamma release while the reactor is operating. Shutting off the reactor stops the release of gamma radiation. The bi-product when you reprocess the core is copper, a useful element. The problem seems to be creating stable reproducable conditions for a process that's poorly understood. Ironically they may be closer to LENR as an energy source even though hot fusion is far better understood. This could be one of those eureka moments when science changes through a single discovery. People forget such things were commonplace in the 1800s up through the early 1900s. Now the eureka discoveries have to come from more obscure things like LENR since most obvious discoveries have been made.
what the fuck is gizmag?
When I were a lad, we spelled it jizz mag, and we were happy.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
So the mechanism to get the reaction to happen is thought to involve the weak force, the end result is Ni + H -> Cu which is just plain fusion. You can compute the energy output based on the mass difference of the inputs and outputs. The problem is that people are finally reproducing the old Cold Fusion work and getting a better understanding, but they face the problems caused 20 years ago. Problems like the DOE deciding it was all a crock and putting policy in place not to fund any research in that area. Problems like the physics community lashing out saying "it can't be fusion, it must be a chemical reaction" (saying that to chemists working with 4 elements in a jar). Now it has to go by the name LENR, but places like NASA and MIT and (allegedly) some folks in industry are working on this.
Sounds like you live in a pretty shitty town. I can dispose of used motor oil and filters at any number of auto shops, auto parts stores, or the county recycle center. They are all more than willing to take it as it has value, either to be reused for industrial purposes like with cutting machines, as fuel for heaters, or as base stock for new motor oil. The recycle center even has shelves of stuff you can take for free that people dropped off and because of this I haven't bought solvents, caustic cleaners (muritic acid especially), tung oil, polyurethane, shellac, or spray primer in years. Some times I get some really good finds like unopened containers of the deck stain I use or unopened containers of automotive fluids. Also white goods like you mention are easily recyclable as they are mostly metal and many contain a decent sized electric motor. There are places that will even pay me if I bring them in or they will come and pick them up for free because there is money to be made by recycling them. As far are repairing and replacing parts I recently got my dryer repaired (new drum seal) and it is the original one for the house that was put in 41 years ago. A couple years ago I needed to have the agitator in the similar aged washing machine repaired and that wasn't a problem. I doubt that there will be repairable problems with these reactors if they fall in the same category. Of course they may be like water heaters where the tank fails after a while and then you just replace the whole damn thing but even then it is still recyclable.
Time to offend someone
Completely agree!
the article says that "he electrons in the metal lattice are made to oscillate so that the energy applied to the electrons is concentrated into only a few of them" How??? How does the energy get concentrated at the required MeV level - that energy is WAY above anything involving lattice interactions. If you did have MeV electrons in the lattice they would scatter and create showers and loose that energy very quickly.
The fundamental problem with all cold fusion type schemes is that nuclear reactions involve MeV scale energies, and chemical reactions involve eV scale energies. There just isn't a credible way to use chemical effects to get the energy concentration that is required. There can be bulk effects (pyroelectricity for example) that can produce energetic particles, but they are no more efficient that accelerators.
Even if you did produce MeV electrons, very few of those electrons will create the reactions you want, most will just scatter back to lower energy and thermalize.
Fission is a very special case because neutral particles (neutrons) mediate the reaction, chemistry really isn't involved at all
what the fuck is gizmag?
When I were a lad, we spilled it jizz mag, and we were happy.
FTFY
This sets off a reaction in which one of the neutrons in the nickel atom splits into a proton, an electron and an antineutrino. This changes the nickel into copper, and releases energy without dangerous ionizing radiation.
A proton and an electron moving with nuclear decay energies are precisely what "dangerous ionizing radiation" is. The used fuel from nuclear reactors is dangerous because it is rich in beta emitters which produce high energy electrons. High energy protons are even more dangerous because, for the same energy, they will move more slowly and so be more heavily ionizing.
The article is also extremely vague about how the electric field forces the electrons and protons to convert in neutrons. Typically giving an electron more energy causes it to move into a higher energy orbital which have even less overlap with the nucleus. It is also exceedingly unlikely that they can give it enough energy that the nuclear cross-section is significantly enhanced. The mass of the W boson which mediates the reaction has an energy roughly 10 orders of magnitude higher than the electron energy (~10 eV vs. 80 GeV). Increasing the energy will certainly help to some degree but it seems unlikely that they can do this by the many orders of magnitude required to have a significant effect. So, if it does indeed work, there is going to need to be some research to figure out exactly how.
If it was that simple, we would just run lines straight from the power station to peoples houses and connect them up in parallel. There is a reason why transmission lines use 200kV and up to transmit power. If there was no loss, then there would be no need, we could just cram 120 (or 240) volts down the line at 100 000A and be done with it.
Instead, power is sent our of the station at high voltages, and stepped down to the appropriate power (for commercial, 380V 3 phase, for housing 120 to 240V) to account for losses along the way, amongst other reasons.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
NASA article on LENR if anyone is interested.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once