Shanahan is responding to
http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/EM/article.asp?doi=b915458m,
Krivit and Marwan, A new look at low-energy
nuclear reaction research, J. Environ. Monit.,
2009, 11, 1731 - 1746, DOI: 10.1039/b915458m,
copy at
http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/library/2009/2009Krivit-S-ANewLookAtLENR.pdf
Contrary to my first impression, Shanahan's paper
does not yet appear to have been published. I'm
guessing that Krivit is referring to negotiations
with the editor of JEM, having been asked about
Shanahan's response. Thus Krivit's response is
disclosing these negotiations, which might be, at
this point, outside normal academic practice. I
wonder what Marwan has been doing, it would be
interesting to have his take on this.
Krivit's response is
http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/35/3566shanahan-jem-response.pdf.
However, I will here only look at Shanahan's
submission from
http://sti.srs.gov/fulltext/SRNS-STI-2009-00825.pdf.
Unless otherwise stated, quotations here are from that.
Abstract
Cold fusion researchers have accumulated a large
body of anomalous results over the last
20 years that they claim proves a new,
mysterious nuclear reaction is active in systems
they study.
Strictly, researchers *report* results that are
anomalous, i.e., unexpected under existing
theory, and which appear to be explicable only
under a hypothesis of nuclear reaction. It should
be noted that there may exist more than one
previously unknown nuclear reaction; the research
in general is exploring new territory, possible
nuclear reactions influenced by the condensed
matter environment, which is normally considered
to be irrelevant, based on assumptions that
nuclei are so spatially isolated that the
approximations of two-body quantum mechanics can
be used. It was already known that exceptions
existed; for example, chemical environment can
affect the half-life of unstable isotopes.
Indeed, it is not likely that a single reaction
can explain all the experimental findings.
Krivit and Marwan(1) give a brief and wholly positive view of this body of
research.
The paper is an overview. It's not particularly
brief, but it covers so much territory that each
part of it is necessarily relatively shallow. As
to "wholly positive," that's from a highly
negative perspective. The paper was really
written by Krivit, and may, as such,
overemphasize certain controversies in the field.
Krivit ignores, in his discussion of theory,
cluster fusion, which seems to be the most
prominet general theoretical apporach at this
time, and which is not simple D-D fusion, but
Krivit is a proponent of Widom-Larsen theory
which proposes unexpected cold neutron formation
from the p+e or d+e reaction, which would then
allow transmutations from neutron absorption to
take place. His general point is correct, that
there would seem to be other possible nuclear
reactions than "fusion," but the difference
between neutron fusion and other nuclear fusion
is largely semantic. The fundamental issue, first
of all, is whether or not there are anomalies requiring a nuclear explanation.
For those active in the field, that issue was
resolved long ago, and Shanahan is practically
unique in being a critic of that conclusion who
actually reads the literature and attempts to
criticize it. Whether or not his criticisms are
cogent is another matter. Being practically
unique, they are important. If there are better ones, where are they?
Unfortunately, cold fusion researchers routinely ignore conventional
explanations of their observations, and claim
much greater than real accuracy and
precision for their techniques.
This is vastly overstated. He is effectively
slandering an entire body of researchers, many of
whom very much do consider, and test and control
for, conventional explanations. As to a claim of
"greater than real accuracy and precision," he
is, again, impeaching some very competent
researchers, about whom independent (and
skeptical) reviewers have concluded that they are
indeed qualified in their fields. For example,
Hoffman, in his skeptical but balanced view of
the field in about 1994, published by the
Electric Power Research Institute, elected to not
examine in detail the calorimetric work, focusing
almost exclusively on direct nuclear evidence; he
noted that the calorimetry was competently done.
In 2004, half of the U.S. Department of Energy
reviwers considered the evidence for excess heat
to be "conclusive." It's not clear that the
remainder had any other objection to the
calorimetry than "It's impossible, therefore the
calorimetry must be wrong," and that is what
Huizenga himself wrote about it. We'll see if
Shanahan establishes this general claim. It
should be understood that, as of last year, the
Dieter Britz database contained 153 peer-reviewed
papers confirming excess heat in the palladium deuteride system.
Shanahan generally ignores, in my experience, the
fact that accuracy becomes irrelevant when there
are controls or correlations of results.
Establishing absolute accuracy for calorimetry
can be very difficult, though it's possible.
However, when there are controls, such that one
is looking at the effect of variation in a single
condition, and when results are repeatable --
statistically, not necessarily in each experiment
-- accuracy fades in importance. Precision
likewise fades, but when variation in conditions
takes place, precision is adequate to establish
an effect. I.e., if the variable is heavy water
vs light water, and if we have good precision, we
can see the *increase* in heat that happens when
deuterium is substituted for hydrogen with other conditions remaining the same.
This paper attempts to equally briefly address those
aspects of the field with the intent of
providing a balanced view of the field, and to
establish some criteria for subsequent publications in this arena.
I support the effort, and, indeed, I hope that
Shanahan gives it his best shot. Whether or not
this work is of adequate quality for publication,
it may be the best there is. As to criteria for
subsequent publications, however, the field has
moved on. It no longer considers it necessary to
prove that nuclear reactions are taking place;
that's only important in publications targeted
for general audiences, particularly scientists
who are holding an impression that cold fusion --
or LENR, to give a nod to Krivit's position --
was "disproven" in 1989. Shanahan, at best, in my
experience, raises questions about results being
proof of nuclear reactions, but has never, as far
as I've seen, shown how they were artifact, he
only raises possible reasons to remain skeptical.
In some cases, I've seen him raise non-nuclear
hypotheses that were ruled out by controls in the
experiments he was discussing. Nevertheless,
given the magnitude of the implications from LENR
research, a certain stubbornness in skepticism is
useful. Indeed, I wish there was a Nobel Prize
for being maximally stubborn and coming up with
every possible skeptical criticism of new
theories, even if it turns out that the theory is
sound. However, this crosses a line when the
integrity of researchers and their sanity for
thinking some new science is required is
questioned, as it was in 1989. So, the body of the paper begins:
Krivit and Marwan(1) (referred to hereafter as
'K&M') present a wholly positive view of
so-called Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) research. The history of LENR
research, more commonly known as cold fusion
research, is dominated by one prevailing
fact, irreproducibility. From the very
beginning, this has caused consternation and
frustration in all those who have attempted to
research and/or study the field. Without
reproducibility, no significant scientific
progress can ever be made. However, K&M
gloss over this problem while attempting to
promote the idea that significant progress has
been made.
Bad start, I'm afraid. LENR results were not
irreproducible. Rather, reproduction was
difficult, and individual cells, for a long time,
would produce inconsistent results. This kind of
phenomenon is not unusual or unexpected when the
precise conditions which produce an effect are
not understood, or when the effect is, for some
reason, chaotic. Hoffman points out, in response
to an argument like this, that residents of San
Francisco or Japan must be reassured that
earthquakes don't happen reliably, that, since
they cannot be reproduced on demand, they must not exist.
What happened in 1989 was that, with the
announcement, many researchers set out to
immediately reproduce the experiment, but in the
absence of sufficient knowledge of the conditions
and techniques. Miles initially had negative
results. Later, he had positive results, and
attempted to contact the DoE reviewers to report
this, before they published their conclusions,
but, according to his account, they did not
return his phone calls. Now, what does a
"positive" result mean. Does it mean that every
cell produced excess heat? Certainly not.
However, it does mean that some cells produced no
excess heat, according to the calorimetry, and
some produced excess heat. Negative heat was rare
or very low, thus validating the calorimetry. As
far as could be controlled at that time, the
cells would be the same. This kind of result has
been replicated by many labs, and is, in fact
replication of the effect. Not, typically, of
each specific cell design or protocol.
Miles went on to show a correlation between
excess heat and helium. Helium is difficult to
measure in the quantities expected if the
reaction is deuterium -> helium and with the
excess heat findings, but he showed that helium
was being produced in quantities within about a
factor of two from those expected from the heat
measurements. If there was no excess heat, there
was no helium. If there was excess heat, there
was helium. This kind of approach completely
bypasses the objections about accuracy, whether
of measurement of heat, or measurement of helium.
Perhaps there will be more about this covered by Shanahan.
Shanahan's argument about reproducibility is
philosophically bogus, ignoring that there are
other kinds of reproducibility. He mistakes
reliability for reproducibility. Reliability is
very important if cold fusion is ever to find
commercial applications. It won't do to have a
cold fusion battery, for example, that only works
a third of the time. Or a cold fusion hot water
heater that, occasionally, decides to melt down.
This confusion is, in fact, common among the
skeptics. Cold fusion, it is possible, may never
find practical applications because of the
apparent sensitivity of the reaction to
difficult-to-control conditions. In the early
research, it was the microstructure of the
palladium that was difficult to control. Lack of
reliability, however, has no bearing on the
reality of an effect, if it can be statistically verified.
While some limited progress has been made in the
20 years since cold fusion was first
announced, seemingly by simple trial-and-error
methodologies, in general the only thing
that has actually occurred is a mutating
diversification of what was once the simple
Fleischmann and Pons (F&P) electrochemical experiment.
Given that unexpected physics -- or chemistry --
was involved, and that the effect wasn't
reliable, trial and error was indeed an
appropriate approach. At the recent ACS
Conference the importance of theory and testing
of theory was noted: if what is going on can be
understood in detail as to mechanism, it then
becomes possible to much more efficiently design
the conditions to make the effect more reliable,
as well as to increase it in amplitude. However,
Shanahan is repeating an old error, that the F&P
experiment was "simple," and that, somehow, the
other approaches are more complex. Some of them
are simpler, indeed. An F&P cell *seemed* simple
at the time, but, in fact, the environment in
that call, what was happening in and on the
palladium, was extremely complex, and dependent
on less-than-obvious conditions.
It is an utter distortion to claim that "nutating
diversification" is all that has happened. For
example, Miles in the early 1990s published his
heat/helium findings. Huizenga noticed this and
commented on it in the last edition of his book,
Cold fusion: the scientific fiasco of the
century. He wrote that if Miles' findings were
confirmed, this would explain the mysteries of
cold fusion. And then he added that "of course,"
it has not been confirmed. Huizenga later, we can
be sure, noticed the confirmations, and
eventually the heat/helium ratio was measured
with much higher accuracy, and it confirms
exactly what Huizenga implies, that the ash is
helium and, as well, that the fuel is likely
deuterium. (Krivit is dead set against this, his
own quirk). This does not prove, however, that
the reaction itself is d+d -> He-4. There may be
some black box in the middle, but by conservation
of energy, if the fuel is deuterium and the ash
is helium (and there are no other reaction
products), the energy must be 23.8 MeV/He-4. What
the researchers report is that the energy found
is "consistent with" deuterium fusing to helium.
Because it is difficult to collect and measure
all the helium, most findings are above that
figure, in amounts roughly consistent with what
might be expected to be missed helium.
In addition, there has been much more accurate
and extensive work on nuclear transmutations.
Krivit thinks that these are direct evidence of
neutron activation, though there are, of course,
some problems with that. Most researchers think
that they are generally a byproduct of fusion, if
it produces hot products that can cause
transmutions some small percentage of the time,
which is what is generally implied by the
transmutation work, the largest transmuted product being helium.
In addition, neutrons have now been found, at
very low levels, levels so low that they cannot
be a normal reaction product, but are the result
of some relatively rare side-reaction. Neutrons
had always been found from these experiments,
when the detectors were sensitive enough and when
the experiments was carefully shielded from
cosmic rays, but in bursts, and at such low
levels that suspicion of cosmic-ray bursts
remained. Thus these results, while interesting,
remained inconclusive for overturning skepticism.
However, the SPAWAR finding of triple-tracks
(spectacular but actually a bit of a red herring)
and proton knock-on tracks (the substance) on
CR-39 placed in contact with a codeposition
cathode has iced this. Something is producing
neutrons in these cells, and neutrons mean
nuclear reactions. Again, perhaps we will get back to this.
In addition, recently, a Chinese review of the
field concluded that research groups, as of about
2007, were starting to report 100% reliability,
in that every cell was showing the effect. As I
understand it, most of these reports are still
quite variable in terms of how much heat is
shown. This includes F&P-type cells and other
approaches. Generally, it appears, with
gas-loading, the heat is reliable if the same
materials are used. Co-deposition has the
reputation for being reliable. This is an aspect
that I'm investigating myself. Some within the field are skeptical about this.
But nobody in the field is, any more, skeptical
about there being nuclear reactions. The evidence
simply became overwhelming. Shanahan must be
quite frustrated, unless he is aware of an
accepts his position as devil's advocate, and
doesn't allow himself to get attached to it. The
evidence is convincing, as shown by Robert Duncan and others.
The debate in the field is over the exact nature
of the reaction and the best ways to create it.
There is debate over the light water results,
some approaches seem to generate excess heat with
light water. There is debate over various
experimental approaches and results. Kowalski
published a critique of the SPAWAR work that
asserted that some of what they were showing
could be -- or was likely to be -- chemical
damage. I agree with Kowalski as to some of the
findings. But, note, this wasn't relevant at all
to the neutron results, which absolutely could
not be from chemical damage. Again, I have not
yet read the complete Shanahan paper, I'm writing
and responding as I read it. Any review for
publication would, of course, be completely revised and edited down.
Thus K&M provide lists of
experimental methods, triggering methods, and
effects and products. Unfortunately,
simply providing lists of anomalies without providing compelling reasoning to
interconnect these methods and results is a logical flaw.
The field is vast and K&M were writing a summary
report. The main topic is anomalous effects in
palladium deuteride, but because their focus is
wider than that, they include some other reports.
The broader topic is reported nuclear effects in
condensed matter. When F&P announced, such
effects were considered impossible, that the
condensed matter environment had no effect on
nuclear reactions, it was believed that they
didn't exist. Because of that belief, it's quite
likely, evidence for them was overlooked or
dismissed as due to unknown artifact. Mizuno, for
example, twice observed major anomalies with
palladium deuteride he was making for use as
nuclear targets, that, had the possibility of
nuclear reactions been known, he'd have
immediately recognized as such. (He saw major
heat-after-death that evolved an incredible
amount of heat, and he saw radiation accidentally
at a different time. He assumed something must
have been wrong with the detector.)
K&M are writing about an entire field, and, for
reasons which are mysterious to me, they included
bubble fusion, which is hot fusion, the only
similarity being two-fold: small apparatus,
table-top, and greeted with skepticism and accusations of fraud.
Anomalous results are typical
occurrences in scientific research. Without
knowing why each individual anomaly
occurred, i.e., without knowing the cause of the
anomaly, it is impossible to relate that
anomaly to any other anomaly by anything other
than coincidence. Essentially, one must
resolve causes before anomalies can be used as proof of any thesis.
When a consistent anomaly is observed, it
properly becomes an object of investigation.
There is, here, a consistent cause (for most of
the experiments): high loading of deuterium into
palladium (typically greater than 90%, which is
not easy to achieve), and a consistent class of
effects: excess heat in a certain percentage of
experiments, no excess heat in the rest. It is
asserted, sometimes, that this is reporting bias.
That's an error. It would be a cogent explanation
of each report was of a single cell. But
typically, researchers run a series of cells, and
normally they report all the results. And what is
seen is that the heat generation is flat for
"inactive" cells, and positive in active ones.
This is a consistent result, if the experimenters
have learned how to set up the necessary
conditions to get some reasonable level of active
cells, and they do run more than a few.
Excess heat in palladium deuteride is an anomaly,
from the point of view of classical theory. An
approach that considers each report as of
"another anomaly" is pedantry. Does excess heat
occur with some reasonable frequency when we make
highly loaded palladium deuteride and stimulate
it in some way? And if we measure helium at the same time, what do we find?
Shanahan has it backwards. Knowing the "cause"
requires that theory precede discovery. That's
such a bankrupt approach that I'm surprised it is
still advocated. It basically denies the experimental basis for science.
There is more than one thesis. First thesis: is
excess heat found in palladium deuteride that
cannot be explained by known chemistry? The
attidude of those who know the literature, now,
is almost entirely that Yes, there is. It's
reversible. Very simple: show that the
experimental results on which this conclusion is
based are defective, in such a way that the
defect reproduces itself over the large range of
approaches taken to set it up and measure it, or
show that there is a chemical reaction producing this heat.
Second thesis: the excess heat is of nuclear
origin. The evidence for this comes from entirely
different approaches and tests. From the excess
heat, it's purely theoretical, and based on lack
of knowledge. I.e., if it's not chemistry, it
must be nuclear physics. That's a logical
fallacy, of course. For example, what about
hydrino chemistry? That requires some new
chemistry, for sure, as well as some new physics.
But it could produce heat, if hydrinos are real,
without nuclear reactions. Or it could,
alternatively, catalyze nuclear reactions,
hydrinos might do that. But we don't know. What
do we know? And that's the real question, not "What's the cause?"
The process of resolving anomalies is what
science is all about, since all known processes
and effects began as anomalies or unexplained
observations to the researcher of that
time. In the case of K&Ms lists, conventional
explanations are readily brought up that
have the potential to explain how the anomalous
event(s) occurred. But K&M do not
bring any of these to light, instead focusing on
the presumed nuclear explanation favored
by cold fusion researchers, who also generically fail to consider conventional
explanations adequately.
We'll have to look at specifics. At this point,
Shanahan is merely asserting that there are
alternative explanations, and he's basically
repeating himself, leading with his very personal conclusions.
The only appropriate way to discuss the methods
and results presented by K&M is
individually. However, this produces an
excessively long article if attempted to
completeness, and this author is not skilled
enough in many of the areas needed to
address the complete listings. Therefore, we
here will address some selected areas in
detail, some we will comment on in passing, and
others we will not address, all the while
attempting to limit the length of this paper,
which necessarily may not bring out all the
details the reader may have preferred to see.
The problem may be, we'll see, that there are
evidences from differing approaches that produce
an interlocked conclusion. For example, Shanahan
has generally focused on his Calibration Constant
Shift theory, which he uses to impeach the excess
heat results. But excess heat is correlated with
helium, and, in addition, with radiation
findings. No excess heat, no helium, no
radiation. Likewise with tritium, an apparently minor reaction product.
Calorimetry
The largest single block of results claiming to
support the nuclear thesis is measurements
of what is commonly known as excess heat. Cold fusion researchers construct
calorimeters and place various types of
experiments in these calorimeters in attempts to
detect the heat released by these purported
unexpected nuclear reactions. Many positive
results have been reported with very high signal
to noise ratios as normally computed,
and therein resides the problem.
Again, "purported nuclear reactions" is betraying
his bias. How about, instead of "the heat
released by thse purported unexpected nuclear
reactions," he'd simply have said "excess heat,"
meaning heat not expected to be produced from the
chemical reactions taking place, or that could be
taking place, in the cells, or introduced to the
cell by electrolysis power and not leaving the
cell as potential energy in evolved deuterium and oxygen?
Calorimetry is going to measure heat, period. So
the question with calorimetry is always, "how
much heat is being generated? Then there is the
interpretive question of "how much heat is going
into other sinks?" Let's see what Shanahan does with this.
In 2002, this author published a reanalysis2 of
laboratory data claimed to have shown
unequivocal excess heat3 (or more correctly,
power), wherein a previously unrecognized
systematic error was demonstrated to have the
capacity to explain the observations
without invoking a nuclear reaction. This error
was termed the 'Calibration Constant
Shift' (CCS). This explanation was challenged
twice(40(5) and responses published(6)(7)
although the first challenge was non-specific.
The second challenge focused on the
proposed speculative mechanism for how the CCS
might have occurred in F&P type cells
rather than on the CCS explanation itself. The
responses clarified the issues and left the
CCS unchallenged as a potential explanation of apparent excess heat signals.
That's his conclusion. To examine by looking at
those sources is beyond the scope of what I can
attempt today. However this explanation leaves a
lot unexplained, I'll get to that.
The CCS is a fundamental problem that can
actually occur any time a calibration
equation is used to interpret experimental data,
and thus is actually widely applicable and
not just limited to cold fusion calorimetry. The
basic requirement for being able to
successfully calibrate an analytical device
(such as a calorimeter or voltmeter) is for that
device to be stable for a reasonable period of
time. If a calibration is established on a
device, and then it changes its condition, the
previously determined calibration expressed
via a calibration equation with constants is
suddenly made invalid. If this shift is not
recognized, the experimentalist will apply the
prior calibration equation with currently
invalid calibration constants to compute the
experimental result(s), giving an error. What
should have been done was to recalibrate under
the new steady state and use the new
calibration constants, since the constants have
now shifted to new values. This is the
genesis of the term calibration constant shift.
In the reanalysis2, a simple assumption was
made, namely that the systemfs steady state
had changed due to the onset of what was called
the non-nuclear Fleischmann-Pons-
Hawkins Effect (FPHE). This change in steady state was assumed to have been
accomplished without the introduction of a new
excess heat source. The data was then
reanalyzed under that assumption and the enewf
calibration constants determined for each
individual run. The calibration equation used in
this case was a simple linear one (y = mx
+ b) and the slope term was explicitly examined,
with the result that the variation in that
term of +/- 1% (1 ó) was found. This is a common
precision level for a good analytical
technique, yet it was adequate to explain an
excess power signal of 780 mW, which was
~100 times the commonly assumed error level
determined by baseline noise fluctuation.
This is why the CCS is such an important
realization regarding these experiments. It
increased the quantitative measure of system
noise by a factor of 100. And there is no
reason to believe this one case developed with a
top-line calorimeter (98%+ heat capture
efficiency) limits that factor in any way. The
CCS is a systematic error, and it is an
unfortunate fact of systematic errors that they
tend to invalidate all prior work since the
error was not recognized before the point where
they are delineated. Thus it becomes
imperative to evaluate the sensitivity of the
calorimetric results to potential changes in the
calibration constants in a process knows as
sensitivity analysis. To date, no cold fusion
calorimetric study has done this, even though
this revelation was published 7 years ago.
Let's assume for the moment that Shanahan's
analysis is correct. However, he is completely
missing something. Calibration of calorimeters
is, first of all, sometimes done mid-experiment
and at the experimental conclusion, so his claim
that this has never been done is simply false.
Some experiments, for example, are designed to
evolve heat from running a current through the
cathode wire, and this is used, mid-experiment,
to calibrate the calorimetry, some of McKubre's
work shows this. Further, there is no special
reason to assume that the shift would always
occur in one direction but not in another, but,
while some CF experiments show enormous heat
generation, none show significant heat
absorption. In order to explain some kind of
consistent shift, Shanahan invents the "FPHE."
What's that? Well, an unknown anomaly!
If CCS produced "noise," it would not explain the
results. Noise would show up as negative heat, if
the true signal was no heat. But, in fact, the
signal found is in the range of no heat to very significant heat.
Because of the fact that many different kinds of
calorimetry have been used, including calorimetry
that is insensitive to the location of heat
evolution within the cell, and that all forms
show similar results, Shanahan's work has been
rejected, which is why there is little reference
to it or concern over his suggestions. Certainly,
the possibility of calibration shifts should be
considered, which is almost certainly why some
experiments have done calibration at various
times. But CCS cannot explain correlations, and
without the sleight-of-hand of a new effect,
invented for the purpose, it can't even explain any consistent findings.
What is required of cold fusion calorimetric
reports is the clear inclusion of the
calibration equation and constants used, and
some measure of their variability. As well,
some sensitivity analysis of the impact of this
variation on the results is required, since it
was shown in the reanalysis(2) that less
efficient calorimeters could be expected to show a
greater CCS effect. This is consistent with the
idea that the function of the calibration
equation is to 'eadjust' the signals up to
equate to the actual input power (upwards
adjustment is required since some heat is always
lost). In a less efficient calorimeter this
adjustment is larger than in a more efficient
one, and thus variation in those constants will
have a larger impact on the computed result. In
principle, such data exists in laboratory
records, but none has been presented to date.
No explanation is provided of why this effect
would not occur with light water experiments, or
with experiments that substitute copper for
palladium, or the like. For some experiments, we
have much more detailed reports, but most
peer-reviewed publication does not and cannot
include all experimental data, it is voluminous.
And even the voluminous McKubre reports prepared
for EPRI are missing some of the calculations,
only the results of the calculations are given,
but some of the variables needed in the
calculations are missing (such as the volume of
the cell, needed to understand helium results.)
What has been done, generally, is to trust the
skill of those doing calorimetry. And the issue
largely disappears when we have statistically
significant results, given that the same approach
and equipment and calculations were used with
each individual cell in a series. Shanahan is
completely overrating the importance of his own
critique, which was narrow, and there is *no*
experimental evidence to back up his assertion.
What he's done is to speculate about a possible
source of error, and the common use of flow
calorimetry is precisely to avoid that possible
source. But even without that, there is so much
interrelated evidence supporting that the
calorimetry is at least reasonably accurate, that
researchers aren't much concerned about this.
In my own work, I won't be doing calorimetry at
all, beyond monitoring cell temperature in a
control and experimental cell, and ambient
temperature. The current will be the same in the
control (light water) cell and the experimental
cell (heavy water), because they will be in
series. What I'm looking for is neutrons, and if
I find neutrons, I'm not going to care a great
deal about how much heat was evolved. I'm taking
a very different approach from most, reproducing
a SPAWAR design but scaling it down. If I were
looking for heat, I'd want to be scaling it up.
But for looking for neutrons, there being just a
few neutrons is a little like being just a little
bit pregnant. The *only* issue to worry about if
I find neutron evidence is background from cosmic
rays, which, in fact, with SSNTDs, is
presumptively ruled out if the neutron tracks
spatially correlate with the cathode wire, which
they do in the SPAWAR reports. But, of course,
I'll attempt radioautographs with cell materials
and will have control detectors scattered about,
as well as in the same positions on the light water cell.
Calorimetry is tough, and I have a great deal of
respect for those who have done it. Shanahan
hasn't done it. He is apparently an armchair
critic. What if he actually found out how to get
results like those of the researchers, following
one of their protocols and nailing it down? And
*then* shows that this is from CCS, which should
be simple, right? Just recalibrate! This is the
kind of work that was done to debunk N-rays and
polywater. The skeptics got their hands dirty,
and thus truly served science. Maybe I'll show
with my work that the SPAWAR results are bunk. Or
someone buying the cells I'll be selling will do
that. If it's actually done, that would be a
service to science. But I rather doubt it will
happen. CF experiments are difficult, and it can
take quite a bit of patience and attention to
detail to get them to work. The trick is to get
similar results, *then* show the source of the
artifact. That won't work if there are no
results, if the reports are fraudulent, but it is
not necessary to go there with this field. There
may have been some attempted frauds, here and
there, but none of the important work was fraudulent.
Thus it would seem that cold fusion calorimetry
is currently near or at its limits of
accuracy and precision. But these limits still
allow for large apparent excess power
peaks, and thus excess heat measurements must be
carefully scrutinized to insure that
they are not caused by a CCS. To date this
author knows of only one instance of this2
and that case rejected the claim of true excess
power. In the response of 2005(6) this
author pointed out that the claims of excess
heat in the paper(4) preceding the response
could likewise potentially be explained by a
CCS, but actual data that would allow such a
determination was missing.
He's going on about this. What has been seen with
the caloriimetry data is calorimetry sensitivity
that was apparently sufficient to see an effect
from the concentration of deuterium in ordinary
water; in general, the calorimetry can be seen to
be quite sufficiently sensitive, and the
stability of the data under control conditions
shows this. You can see the noise in the plots.
K&M go on to discuss a specific type of
calorimetric result obtained by F&P commonly
known as heat-after-death (HAD). In the HAD
experiment, a F&P electrolysis cell is
allowed to lose enough electrolyte via
evaporation, entrainment, and electrolysis that
electrical contact is broken and current flow
stops. Such an event is shown in K&Ms
Figures 4 and 5, where an excess power signal is
observed for approximately 3 hours
after this point is reached.
Actually, that's only one kind of HAD experiment.
In a report of what was later understood as HAD,
Mizuno did not have boiloff. He was not doing
calorimetry, but he had turned off the current,
and he saw that the cell was evaporating the
heavy water. He kept restoring it, and needed to
continue to do this for days. As I recall, he saw
a similar phenomenon later, where he was cooling with ordinary water.
HAD is often a *lot* of heat.
It is instructive to review this result with the
prior discussion of the CCS in mind. Once
current stops, the driving force to load the Pd
electrode with hydrogen is removed, and
the system seeks to obtain equilibrium under the
new state by releasing gas, converting
the situation from an electrolysis cell to a gas
unloading experiment. At the point where
electrical contact was broken, the cell gas was
very nearly a stoichiometric mixture of
hydrogen and oxygen. Significant hydrogen
release will occur because the electrolytic
loading was equivalent to many atmospheres of
hydrogen gas pressure exposure, but the
hydrogen present will inhibit complete Pd
unloading. The equilibrium plateau pressure
of Pd-D at ~70-100 C is ~300-1000 mbar8, and
that the cell pressure is ~1000 mbar since
it is an open cell, with at least 2/3 of that
consisting of D2. Thus initial unloading to ~0.6
D/M units should occur, and not much more,
leaving plenty of hydrogen in the electrode
as hydride.
I don't think that F&P were doing closed-cell
work, so the "stoichometric mixture" claim is
wrong. Rather, oxygen is released and leaves the
cell, but dueterium is absorbed by the cathode,
until it is loaded sufficiently and then what is
being evolved will be stoichometric, but at
atmospheric pressure. I don't know about their
design, but mine, being open-cell, and being
designed to run at people's homes, perhaps in a
kitchen, is designed to conduct the evolved gases
to the outside in separate sections of the cell
so that mixing is only what happens in solution
in the heavy water. He's talking "hydrogen." The
cell involved was in heavy water, I'm sure. But
I'll just talk hydrogen, and I'll ask why this
reaction doesn't occur with ordinary water, and it doesn't.
The absorption of deuterium or hydrogen by
palladium is exothermic. Release of the gas by
the cathode is therefor endothermic, not
exothermic. It will only be exothermic if the
released gas oxidizes. As you might realize, a
stoichiometric mixture of hydrogen and oxygen
does not react, it takes a trigger, some
combusion, to get it to explode, and explode it
will if triggered. In any case, analysis of the
gas remaining in the cell would show if
oxidization took place. The palladium cathodes
don't apparently act as recombination catalyists.
With the Pd and Pt electrodes exposed, a metal
surface is presented which will catalyze
the recombination of hydrogen and oxygen. That
process does three things; a) it reduces
the hydrogen pressure, causing the Pd to unload
further, and b) it reduces the overall
pressure, causing air to be drawn back into the
cell, resupplying the oxygen content of the
cell gas somewhat, and c) it produces heat,
which will presumably be detected by
temperature sensing devices in the cell.
Clearly, the steady state is now radically
different and the system would have to be
recalibrated under the new steady state to
translate those temperatures into heats.
However, K&M report that the energy detected
was 'far beyond the quantity of possible stored
chemical energy'. No recalibration was
reported in the 1993 F&P paper, so one wonders
how this was determined accurately
The amount of heat generated in these experiments
was so great that they weren't terribly worried
about calibration.... Shanahan is basically
assuming here that the world's foremost
electrochemists made a bonehead mistake. It's
possible, I suppose, but irrelevant. HAD
experiments are pretty unreliable, as far as I
know. The field is not based on HAD, it is merely
a phenomenon that is cited to show that it's
possible that, if this can be engineered to occur
reliably, there may be significant commercial
possibilities. Note that it's not some minor
calibration shift that would be required here, it
would have to be huge. I'm now skipping more of
his analysis of this, but one phrase:
Thus the HAD event was
completely predictable by conventional chemistry.
The analyses that I've seen on this show that if
the entire contents of the cell underwent all
possible chemical reactions, it would not have
generated the heat observed. Shanahan is ignoring
that. He's simply proposed a mechanism that might
generate some heat, then he avoids doing the
actual calculations of potential heat. To be
fair, he might not have enough data. He goes on
into a more or less personal dispute with Storms. Shanahan has no balance.
Transmutation or Contamination?
As noted by K&M, once calorimetry discussions
are over, what is left is an accumulation
of results from a variety of methods that
purport to show nuclear products, i.e. 'nuclear
ash', have been detected, thereby proving the
nuclear hypothesis. The earliest of these
was detection of classical nuclear
particles/radiation (alpha, beta, gamma, neutron). This
author is not skilled enough in those areas to
do more than generally comment that much
doubt remains as to the validity of those
techniques when sophisticated counting
electronics are employed.
Sure. But this doesn't apply to the use of
SSNTDs, which include CR-39 and X-ray film.
Some comments can be made about the early use of X-ray film
regarding a technique from photography known as 'hypering' combined with heat
sensitivity of the films. These two things
basically cast all X-ray film based detection
techniques into doubt. But with regards to
techniques and methods that purport to detect
new elements arising from nuclear reactions such
as fusion or fission, much can be said.
If cell materials laid upon X-ray film are
generating heat, that alone would be remarkable.
X-ray film was basically the technique first used to study nuclear radiation.
Storms' book shows the second most populous type
of nuclear ash results is He detection
results.
He meant "popular." In fact, he's showing that he
doesn't understand the evidence. Helium is the
only broadly-accepted "ash." The radiation
findings he mentions first show levels of
radiation that are way too low to be connected
with whatever is producing the heat. This, in
fact, was frequently used to claim that it must
not be fusion, though that was a tad wrong-headed
itself. The question should have been "what the
hell is causing radiation where it's not
expected?" There were early Chinese results with
CR-39, which show charged particle radiation. The
Indian work showed X-rays. Early gamma and
neutron reports were almost certainly artifact,
some of these reports were immediately shown to
be such, which might explain why Shanahan leads
with this. Neutrons have only recently been shown
in a convincing manner, and the levels are very,
very low, but detected in a manner that does show
conclusively that they are coming from the cathode.
Both isotopes of He (3He and 4He) have been supposedly detected at levels that
would seem to validate the nuclear hypothesis.
However, the issue in detecting the
moieties is always: were they generated by a new
nuclear reaction or did they arise via a
contamination pathway? K&M note the Paneth and
Peters incident but did not clarify
that it was with regards to He detection. Paneth
and Peters originally claimed to have
detected He formation but then retracted. The
basic problem is that normal air has about
5 ppm He in it, and thus air inleakage or just
He diffusion through glass can produce trace
amounts of He in any experiment. Thus the perennial question noted above.
When all you are doing is detecting helium,
contamination is certainly a huge issue. However,
when you have a series of cells, and the only
difference between the cells is that some
produced excess heat and some did not, and the
helium correlates with the excess heat, then you
have something entirely different. In the Miles'
work, the helium measurements were done by a lab
that did not know which cells they came from,
they did not know if those cells had excess heat
or not. The correlation is very tight.
Further, in later work by SRI, we have seen the
helium levels, measured during the experiment,
rise, they don't slow their rise as they approach
the ambient level, they continue to rise
correlated with the excess heat being measured.
And they rise well above ambient. Shanahan is
raising an obvious objection that is often made
by those who have no comprehensive understanding
of the actual experiimental conditions and
results. Contamination would not cause
correlation unless there is some correlated
cause. The most likely one is fusion in the
cells. Can Shanahan think of any others? If so,
why didn't he mention it. I did, in fact, raise
this issue with him on Wikipedia and he simply
got angry and denounced me for my ignorance.
Storms and K&M try to use reports of He
detection as proof of the nuclear hypothesis,
but Storms (and K&M) again fails to report
crucial negative results. In 2001-3 Oliver
and Clarke and coworkers reported a series of
papers in Fusion Science and Technology.
One paper in particular13 deals with a situation
where cold fusion researchers submitted
four experimental Arata and Zhang eDouble
Structuref cathodes that were purported to be
hydrogen loaded cells where cold fusion had
occurred producing 4He to W. Clarke via B.
Oliver for trace level He analysis. Clarke was a
well-qualified expert in trace level He
detection and discrimination from atmospheric
leaks. What Clarke found was that the
samples had massive air inleakage, and the He
present came from that. Storms fails to
mention this paper in his book at all.
In other words, there was a single experiment
where something went wrong. There are *many*
experiments from many research groups that show
the heat/helium correlation. Shanahan is trying
to impeach them by point to an experiment where
*nothing* could be concluded because of air
leakage, introduced at an unknown point. And this
utterly fails to cover experiments where there
was correlation, as mentioned, and where helium
continued to rise above ambient.
Obviously, the problems that plagued Paneth and
Peters in 1926 still plague us today. In
order to prove reported He results are
legitimately assigned to a nuclear origin, the other
potential origin (contamination) must be
excluded. This is done by reporting on the
experimental protocols used to eliminate that
option, which must include both proof that
the instrumentation used to detect the He is in
working order and that the process of
running the experiment did not allow for air
inleakage. While some information is often
presented on the first point, routinely no
information is provided on the second. This
leaves cold fusion researchers technically
unable to conclude the nuclear hypothesis is
true, which of course does not seem to impair
them at all from doing so, as evidenced by
K&M in particular.
Shanahan is showing that he doesn't understand
the published material, for he's not raising
cogent objections to it, he's repeating old
objections that applied, perhaps, when the first
helium results started coming in. As an example
of what's done, the mass spectrometry used to
detect helium frequently also analyzes for trace
gases also found in air, precisely to understand
if leakage is occuring. (This wouldn't apply to
leakage through glass, which is slow. Miles
worked with glass, and leakage would mean that
his accuracy was lowered, but there wasn't enough
time for major leakage to occur.) Some
experiments don't exclude the ambient air, what
they are looking for is increases over ambient,
which are found. Shanahan is simply making up
objections that sound cogent to him, and that can
raise doubt with people who don't know the whole body of evidence.
Paneth and Peters may have indeed observed helium
as a fusion product, but did not have adequate
equipment and procedures to show that. It's an
intruguing possibility; at some point a thorough
analysis of that very old work should be done,
for historical interest. Offhand, my guess is
that it's just a coincidence, that they probably
didn't get a high enough loading ratio to cause fusion. But maybe!
I need to stop here at this point, perhaps I'll return this evening.
