In the past week a report of Jeff Morriss on a distinct radiation signature during a Cellani style lenr wire experiment created much interest. Jeff has now found the bugs in the data, radon fleas! Dang it this got me itching to see a break-through and all I got was a break-out. Some of we 'cold fusioneers' have been running Aware-electronics Geiger counters along with their recommended 'radon flea' capture and measurement methods for many years, I bought my first Aware GM in the early 1990's.
Here's what Jeff has written on another forum, "Here is what I believe is happening but I will not be able to prove it until gamma spectrometer measurements become available. Radon and its decay products may be entering the basement and sticking to dust particles. Most of the time the dust is fairly dilute, but under certain conditions (fans, filters) the dust can become concentrated. That would account for the monotonically increasing radiation levels observed in the airflow calorimeter. Dust was being pulled into the chamber at a faster rate than the Rn decay products were decaying. Once the fan was turned off no new Rn entered the chamber (or furnace air filter) and the radiation level returned to normal. The tricky part is that the half lives of Rn decay products have half lives measured in minutes, so 6 hours is many half lives. That would explain the apparent "activation" that I reported earlier. It was most likely radioactive dust with short lived isotopes of Po, Bi, Pb that I was observing. Look up the Rn decay diagram; half lives and decay products are listed. It would also explain why testing of dust on the floor and in a vacuum cleaner not used for weeks would return background levels. Bottom line: I may not have observed LENR and almost certainly did not observe neutron activation. However, other Celani-type experiments have reported radiation and excess heat, so the experimental approach is still worth pursuing. Note on the high radiation level measured on the air filter. The GM detector was enclosed in a polyethylene bag to prevent dust contamination, so some alphas would be stopped. Inserting 3 mil thick Al foil reduced the level by ~50% indicating that some of the radiation was alphas and betas. Inserting a 1.75 cm lead shield in front of the detector stopped almost all radiation. So it is likely that alphas, betas, and gammas were all present."
