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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
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?
" 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?
"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.
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.
Ummm... I recently installed PVes on my roof. Tedious? I don't think so. Expensive? It was 1.5 month worth of my wage. Warranty for 25 years, I guess they'll last at least 12 without degrading in performance too much. Reliable? Well, as reliable as the Sun is... would I be able to invest in an 15K buffer system, I'm sure I could live "off power grid" even in winter time (summer time, I'm pushing on the grid twice as much as I'm consuming).
What point I'm trying to make? I'm less dependent know on the power producers than I was 1 year ago and I didn't need to sell my first born for it.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
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.
About 20 years ago a friend and I were discussing hard disks. My first PC had a 300 MB hard drive, and he had just gotten one with a 1 GB drive. I noted how capacity was growing, and some day we would have 1 TB drives. He said no, the hard drive manufacturers would never allow it. According to him, 1 TB was so much storage you could buy one and never have to buy another drive for the rest of your life. No way the hard drive manufacturers would ever sell something which put themselves out of business.
Well, we all know how that turned out. If you build it, people will find a use for it. For energy, off the top of my head I can think of a few tremendously high-power applications which will probably become feasible with the advent of cheap power. You can desalinate all the drinking and irrigation water the entire planet needs. You can atomize toxic compounds like dioxins, decomposing them into their constituent elements. You can convert CO2 back into O2 gas and carbon (soot), reversing a century of greenhouse gas emissions. You can power railguns to launch large quantities of fuel and other supplies into orbit to construct spacecraft for manned interplanetary missions (currently the energy cost is $5k-$10k per kg put into low earth orbit).
So the power companies may not be making as much money selling household power. But they'll certainly be making money selling power for other uses. Probably a lot more money than they're making now.
I doubt the "all over the world". China for instance is unlikely to bow to US lobby demands.
So if LENR turns out to be real, I expect the following sequence of events to happen: ;-)
1) Western energy industry giants badmouth the technology and lobby against it.
2) China, Russia and maybe India will use it anyway.
3) Above countries have considerable economic advantages, get stronger in comparison to USA.
4) US politicians panic. Having LENR is declared a matter of national security, opposition from energy industry giants is overruled
C - the footgun of programming languages
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?
Actually, newer HDD drives tend to be much more reliable.
...getting the landlord to fix the nuclear reactor.
It's hard enough to get him to fix the water heater.
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:
Also born of ignorance: conspiracy theories depend on every allegedly greedy company acting with surprising benevolence for it's community of allegedly greedy companies.
They all fall down where they simply assume that all these companies unanimously feel they'll be better off if they collaborate and suppress something. They never manage to explain why every individual conspirator wouldn't be working as hard as they can to eliminate the others, which gets especially murky when you consider that the individual companies aren't companies but people, and people get concerned about things like legacy and principles and whatever (which simultaneously leads to good things - tech companies building spaceships - and bad things - the Koch brothers believing they're still fighting communism or something).
I agree that this will never happen, but for very different reasons. It's the NIMBY's that will be the death of this, because NUCLEAR SCARY. I used to live near Indian Point, widely argued to be the most dangerous nuclear power plant in the U.S. I actually had a chance to tour the plant (if you have a chance to do this, jump at it, I'm sure most slashdotters would enjoy it) and see how it operates and all the safeguards. I'm also an engineer and I have a brain, so I understand the population density is a concern, but people have this horrible fear that it will explode or that it will kill fish. Yes, this is a real concern; the Hudson River Sturgeon may be at risk. If you're not familiar with the plight of the Hudson River Sturgeon let me put this in context: the Hudson River is so polluted that some government agency recommends you do not eat more than one fish per month from the river and no one is eating Sturgeon anyway. Why does this matter? It doesn't. Even if it did, the fish are not actually in danger, there is an extensive screening system around the water inlets that protects the fish. However, these are the kinds of arguments people come up with to combat something that they're afraid of. These people can't live without electricity, but refuse any and all forms of power generation. They don't want wind turbines because it will disrupt the landscape and kill birds. They don't want solar because it's too expensive. Why not put new technology into the old coal-fired plant? No. Too dirty. Drill for natural gas (even without fracking)? No. We don't want those big trucks driving all over. We have been reduced to importing electricity from Canada, but wait! Stop! I don't like that! There is a plan to run a large cable down the Hudson River to NYC (literally an extension cord from Canada). It will be underwater most of the way. For the small stretch it will have to come onto land it will be buried under railroad tracks. There are people fighting this because... well, I don't really know why. This is what I hear day in and day out. If some technology like this was allowed, I'm sure my local newspaper will create a map of people with nuclear reactors in their basement.
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
Interesting theory, and that may actually be the case.. however, lets look at the cable industry, specifically Comcast, in my neighbourhood.
When FIOS was released, about 80% of the people in my little corner of the neighbourhood switched in an instant (for obvious reasons being service sucks, as does customer service and it was over priced). I live in a part of the area where we have around 30 or so houses, and no through street, around 25 or so of those houses now have FIOS.. the remaining few people all have Comcast, and its dirt cheep, they (Comcast) have been throwing freebies and discounted services at those few remaining customers, because if they switch, they lose their foothold in our part of the community.
So in this instance, the exact opposite of what you propose would happen actually occurred. And they have similar costs when it comes to easement maintenance.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
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.