LENR and Transmutation: It is going to happen sooner than you think

Change one element into another using a fission reactor is a fact. Nuclear transmutation inside a fission reactor produces some really valuable elements.

For instance, “In 1972, Russian scientists found that the lead shielding of an experimental nuclear reactor near Lake Baikal in Siberia had unexpectedly turned to gold!

Unfortunately such gold is likely to be radioactive, and would decay back to stable lead, whilst releasing dangerous radiation.

A possible route to gold would be from mercury. If mercury of its various naturally occurring isotopes could be made to capture neutrons, the resulting nuclear decay chains would eventually yield gold-197, the most common naturally occurring gold isotope, and perfectly stable.

The neutrons used in this process would need to have an energy of at least 9 MeV in order for a complete transmutation of the mercury to occur. These energies are well within the capabilities of nuclear reactors.” ( http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/webprojects2002/crabb/modern.html ).

One way to avoid the transmuted elements from being radioactive is to use a LENR reactor:

Analyses of the nickel powder used in Rossi’s energy catalyzer show that a large amount of copper is formed.

“For copper to be formed out of nickel, the nucleus of nickel has to capture a proton…Both measurements show that the pure nickel powder contains mainly nickel, and the used powder is different in that several elements are present, mainly 10 percent copper and 11 percent iron. The isotopic analysis through ICP-MS doesn’t show any deviation from the natural isotopic composition of nickel and copper.” ( http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3144827.ece )

Sorry to subject you to this physics lesson, but it is necessary to proceed:

“Atoms are comprised of negatively charged electrons whirling around a relatively small nucleus of neutrons and positively charged protons. Protons have a mass 1836 times the mass of electrons. A neutron is a combination of an electron and a proton with zero net electrostatic charge. An atom’s number of protons and its equal number of electrons determine its type of element. Only when a positive ion (such as a proton or nucleus of a helium atom) penetrates an atom’s nucleus does the atomic nucleus become another element (or another isotope of the same element) or becomes unstable and splits (fissions) into two or more elements.” ( http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/2010/02/low-energy-nuclear-transmutationl.html ).

In other words, an element becomes another element when neutrons bombard it. Inside a fission reactor, it comes out radioactive, but inside a LENR reactor, in comes out non-radioactive. This is what happens inside a LENR reactor:

“A tiny amount of hydrogen protons are converted into neutrons. These newly produced neutrons are soon captured by hydrogen ions or other atoms in a metallic (e.g. nickel) lattice near to where the hydrogen ions were converted to neutrons. The captured neutrons generate heat because the new atoms that are one neutron heavier shed excess binding energy as heat to the lattice…” ( http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/New-LENR-Machine-is-the-Best-Yet.html )

This bears repeating: hydrogen is consumed by emitting neutrons (remember, a neutron is a proton and an electron). Everything near is bombarded by these neutrons. Some is absorbed by the remaining hydrogen, and some is absorbed by nearby nickel atoms, and some could be absorbed by any element we choose to place nearby, transmuting it into a much more valuable element.

That was the science, but this is the analysis: LENR can easily be used for transmutation. This means that there is very little lead up time before we are going to see the market flooded with rare earth minerals and other valuable elements like platinum or gold.

The real gem is that this rather simple application of a LENR reactor doesn’t need the normal years of certification and commercialization – companies are just going to be creating tons of valuable minerals and putting them on the market! Wow – every LENR company can have an additional revenue stream.

28 Replies to “LENR and Transmutation: It is going to happen sooner than you think”

  1. Before you start selling all your gold because the price will go down consider how much gold would be produced. Rossi’s eCat alledgedly produced 10% copper from 50 grams of nickel over a 6 month period. As far as we know, mercury is not the “catalyst” in Rossi’s eCat. So even if we assume a similar transmutation rate and there were a thousand eCats working for 6 months, we are looking at a production rate of around 5 kilograms of gold from mercury in six months of operation. I don’t think this will seriously affect the price of gold.

    1. The eCat reaction chambers are very small. Predicably, LENT (low energy nuclear transmuation) reactors will be larger. Frankly, I am more weirded out that we simply can’t know how much gold (or any transmutation product) is being produced. What I’m trying to say in the article is that it could be sooner than you think, because it could be a low-hanging technology fruit (or not).

      I wouldn’t underestimate gold fever.

  2. LENR Soon ?
    I hope so but
    Where is just one 5,000 watt E-Cat or Defcalin running long term or even unsubstanciated claims that one is ??
    Please advise
    T Lee Buea, Miami, l
    Home of the secret Rossi factory ?!

  3. The quantity of transmuted element produced, seems to be too small to be used on a practical scale. Even if the process could be scaled up to produce useful quantities, wouldn’t it still create vast quantities of heat? This just seems like a novelty with little practical application

    1. Yeah, I haven’t crunched the numbers, but there is a direct relationship between the heat produced and the amount of transmutation that occurs. Perhaps, our transmutation LENR reactors ought to be ran outside of the Earth’s gravity well.

    2. You’ve got the tail by the dog. After major heating units are a well established business the engineers will keep tweaking, trying to get a market edge for their products. One of these gimmicks might be to encourage transmutation (in safe ways) so the periodic core “clean and replace” can include harvesting various rare elements, for a net reduction in cost to the consumer. And/or more profit!

      Ol’ Bab

  4. Fascinating Brad, thanks! Looks like LENR will have to break out of the black hold put on it if only to quell the HUGE rush to publish new discoveries. Aside from confirming transmutations LENR just made another breakthrough in the Blacklight Power CIHT cell:

    http://www.cnbc.com/id/47515855

    CIHT has advantages in direct conversion of hydrino transitions to electricity – without need for heat to steam first. This simplifies the structure of home CHP products which will likely be developed by major appliance makers during the next three years.

    Along with Rossi/Focardi e-cat, the Defkalion Hyperion, 4-5 other energy making devices coming to market – the future looks well powered at much lower cost.

    Bravo.

      1. It will be very interesting seeing Dr Mills and BLP’s product. I do not subscribe to the “Hydrino” theory, but wish the venture well – New Jersey rules!

  5. Potentially, the heat issue could be irrelevent if one used an element that absorbed heat when taking on the neutron. If you could balance the exothermic reaction with a countering endothermic reaction, it would work great.

    But it will require a lot of research not only to get that balance, but to find a way to speed up the process. I doubt if a few grams of platinum or gold will pay for 6 months of conversion effort.

    But I believe someone will figure it out, and we’ll have cheap transmutation.

  6. A couple of clarifications:

    “In other words, an element becomes another element when neutrons bombard it. Inside a fission reactor, it comes out radioactive, but inside a LENR reactor, in comes out non-radioactive. This is what happens inside a LENR reactor:”

    It is not entirely true. Neutrons can bombard an element, creating an isotope of that SAME element, which then can decay into different elements.

    LENR reactors do not use “neutron bombardment”. That is a fission and hot fusion process. No neutrons in the amount needed to produce the high excess heat have been detected or measured. Neutrons are detected occasionally, in small bursts. There is no experimental correlation with either excess heat or transmutation and neutron measurements.

    Also, you write “A tiny amount of hydrogen protons are converted into neutrons. These newly produced neutrons are soon captured by hydrogen ions or other atoms in a metallic (e.g. nickel) lattice near to where the hydrogen ions were converted to neutrons. ”

    This statement is a re-wording of a theory that has not been verified. LENR produces transmutations, yes, but whether neutrons have anything to do with it is unknown. No neutrons have been detected beyond small, short bursts of very low-energy neutrons.

    And, the statement “hydrogen is consumed by emitting neutrons (remember, a neutron is a proton and an electron). Everything near is bombarded by these neutrons.” begins incorrectly and ends with speculation.

    Hydrogen does not “emit” neutrons, and neutrons are not “bombarding” nearby atoms. There is no high-energy physics occurring until the nuclear mechanism takes place.

    Finally, while it is true that a proton can “capture” an electron, forming a neutron in the process, it isn’t quite right to say that a neutron *is* a proton and electron. They are two different nucleons with a relationship between them.

    LENR will be able to be used for transmutations. It is a low-energy process that may or may not involve neutrons. But to be clear, there is no bombardment of neutrons occurring, and certainly no high-energy neutrons have ever been detected.

    1. I am surprised Ruby.

      How do you imagine that transmutation is occuring inside the LENR reaction chamber if not from bombardment by neutrons?

      Furthermore, what do you suppose happens to a hydrogen atom when it give up a proton and an electron?

      You may disagree with the “Neutron Exchange” theory forwarded by Godes ( http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/New-LENR-Machine-is-the-Best-Yet.html ), but it explains best what is happening inside the LENR reactor (i.e. A tiny amount of hydrogen protons are converted into neutrons).

      1. Brad, I don’t know if the Quantum Fusion Hypothesis or WLT is correct or not.

        I only know that no large amounts of neutrons have ever been measured in cold fusion experiments.

        Question: How does the electron acquire 782 keV without destroying the lattice structure?

        I have read Edmund Storms’ Students Guide. He is proposing hydrogen and deuterium entering cracks that are just the right size and shape such that resonance begins a nuclear reaction. In his model, transmutation would occur at the ends of the cracks where hydrogen meets other atoms.

        I don’t know if he is right either. I am only trying to follow along! But, the proposal does not involve neutrons, which are not observed experimentally.

        I’m not sure what you mean when a hydrogen atom “gives up a proton and electron”.

        1. I know why I’m so picky about the words! Because I had to make this Talking Points for Candidates and be really picky about all the words!

          I am folding it into convenient mailers. Have to get more printer ink……

  7. Ruby,

    If a proton and electron collide in an intense magnetic field which is roughly constant over a large enough volume, they will both have nearly equal, but opposite, momenta. So, if they actually combine to form a neutron, it will have the sum of their momenta – which will be very low. High energy neutrons would not result. The capture rate should be very high.

    Also, I believe, a strong linear (magnetic) vector potential will squeeze the normally large, rarefied electron and proton wavefunctions into coaxial small radii ellipsoids which, if they collide head-on, have a much larger chance of forming a neutron, due to large overlap. (A large, coherent electron current produces an intense vector potential in its direction.)

    And, I also believe that due to very long range (1/r) of the vector potential (usually designated by ‘A’ in E-M textbooks) the effective momentum of these collisions is far higher than in a vacuum due to backreaction – i.e,, the field coupling of the colliding electron and proton to millions of electrons with parallel momenta.

    Several authors claim significant transmutations occur in ‘exploding wires’ and when intense electron beams impact some metals. For example, see –
    “A Review of Transmutation and Clustering in Low Energy Nuclear Reactions”
    http://newenergytimes.com/v2/library/2009/2009Prelas-UM.pdf

    1. Yes, I am being nit-picky about vocabulary I suppose. “bombardment” is a code word for hot fusion and not cool and peaceful LENR! A low-energy neutron does not ‘bombard’ to me.

      There are many ways two hydrogen nuclei can become one when they are close together and moving in a Superwave or a Q-pulse. I don’t know enough to choose the correct theory. I can only learn what I can from them, and wait for experiment to confirm. I can only ask, what do the experiments say to us?

      1. Could you suggest an alternative word for “bombard.” When the hydrogen proton and electron collide and form a neutron, the neutron strikes a neighboring atom. Describe many neutrons hitting many other atoms. I would call it bombard – but perhaps barrage, fusillade, or cannonade?

        On a equally nitpicky subject, you say “two hydrogen nuclei becoming one,” but the neutron that is formed from a hydrogen atom’s electron and proton could hit any nearby atom.

        1. I don’t know! I guess ‘hitting’ is OK! Maybe “hey, I just slid by and I think I hang for a while” is cool…

          I dunno. I’ll drop it. Bombardment it shall be!

  8. One of the more useful applications that I have heard for LENR transmutation, is in the remediation of radioactive waste from Nuclear reactors. This is an urgent and growing problem which has been illustrated recently by the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant. Many people are not aware that the spent nuclear material in reactor 4 at Fukushima has not been secured. An explosion has blown of the roof and most of the walls from this building exposing the numclear material to the elements. They are currently perched precariously in a water tank, which is in danger of collapse. Just one more strong aftershock could bring the whole thing down. The tank contains enough nuclear waste to devastate Japan and beyond, ten times more than Chernobyl. It would be an ecological disaster

    1. Yet ANOTHER reason to urge guv’ment to move this technology out of the shadows and into the daylight where it can HELP humanity! The ability to halve radioactive half life was demonstrated on ABC Television with the Patterson Power Cell in June 1997 by Norman Olsen a scientist from the most radioactive storage site on Earth – Hanford WA. The cell reduced the uranium sample radioactivity by half in three hours.

      It’s time to wake up people.

  9. pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/cf/406bio_alchemy.pdf

    Try Ludwik Kowalski’s link to bio alchemy.

    Joseph

  10. Brad, Ruby,

    My earlier comment was bombarded by the other messages. Or I didn’t post properly.

    Below, please see the link posted by New Energy Times (excerpted from Lewis Larsen of Lattice Energy). Steve Krivit and Andrea Rossi have some history, but the Larsen information is relevant here.

    Also see my previously posted link on Biological Transmutations courtesy of Ludwik Kowalski.

    http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2012/05/21/fascinating-reading-larsens-latest-on-lenrs-and-gold/

    Joseph Fine

  11. Actually , the coolest use of the transmutation effect will be for making alloys for 3D printing.
    Is tough to get powdered materials to make the best alloys for each application. Here you will be able to split open an old nicad or alkaline battery, pull out the materials, and use them to make more exotic materials for blending.

    Will be VERY helpful for the environment, without the damage of mining and processing the rare earths.

    I also think you folks are missing the boat on the neutron generation here.
    There was an Indian scientist that proposed that neutrons are actually only an interference pattern in the entanglement of protons and electrons.
    Since this energy producing effect is only seen when an external voltage sweep is applied, it is looking like he was actually correct. By raising the vibration level of the resonance, it automatically kicks the orbits up, forcing a new isotope, until they hit something unstable enough to collapse in less time than the vibration.

    Anyone put an AM radio near one of these thing to see if we are getting Alfven wave reconnections on the quatrium collapse?

    Was an Arvix paper, lost it on last hard drive collapse.

    1. Yeah, I plan my next paper on LENT and 3D Printing.

      My question on if neutrons are actually only an interference pattern in the entanglement of protons and electrons. We are talking about somehow a proton getting into another atom – isn’t that a locality issue (i.e. a proton somehow getting into another atom) rather than a vibration issue?

      Furthermore, doesn’t LENR work even without a hit of external voltage:

      In the ebook “Secrets of E-Cat,” (Consulente Energia Publisher, 145 pages, 68 illustrations, Pdf format, 7 €, http://www.consulente-energia.com/cold-fusion-book-secrets-e-cat-by-mario-menichella-secret-ecat-andrea-rossi-focardi-energy-catalyzer.html ) author Mario Menichella says:

      “The probably better experimental work…carried out in Siena since the early Nineties, by a group of physicists composed by Sergio Focardi (University of Bologna), Francesco Piantelli (University of Siena), Roberto Habel (University of Cagliari), but it did not lead to a system capable of generating useful amount of excess energy for normal industrial or domestic applications. In Siena, in fact, the three scientists – using hydrogen and nickel as the two only “ingredients” of the reaction, plus an appropriate amount of heat supplied to the system – managed to get out a double thermal energy than the electrical energy provided in input.”

      They got a COP of 2 without any external voltage being applied.

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