Continuing my response to Shanahan's submission
from
http://sti.srs.gov/fulltext/SRNS-STI-2009-00825.pdf.
Unless otherwise stated, quotations here are from that.
In the 1989 DOE review of the cold fusion field,
contamination was mentioned as a
problem to be addressed, with specific reference
to He detection since at that time only
He results were being claimed. Today as pointed
out by K&M, additional elements are
being detected and used to support the nuclear hypothesis. Unfortunately, the
contamination question applies equally well to
these claims, a fact that was recognized in
1989(9). This author does not dispute the
findings of new elements on electrode or
membrane surfaces after use, simply the claim
that they arise from transmutation. There
are clear cases of data misinterpretation
resulting in misassignment of contaminant
identities and a couple of cases where possible
contamination pathways were actively
identified by additional research that bear consideration.
Whatever reactions are causing the excess heat
and the appearance of unexpected elements, it
should be understood that by inference from the
excess heat, any reaction product is going to be
found only in minute quantities. It is now
possible to find almost anything anywhere,
because analytical techniques have become so
sensitive, but the question is always "how much,"
as well as searching for possible sources of contamination.
Significant amounts of unexpected elements are
found in LENR experiments, some of which might be
explainable by phenomena such as transfer from
other materials in the cell. That a particular
finding turns out to be a contaminant like that
does not impeach other findings. It does mean
that we need be specially careful, and, in
particular, to see if controls have the same
contamination. The variability of CF results in
P-F cells actually makes this fairly simple: some
cells show the excess heat, some do not.
Otherwise, generally, the conditions in the two
kinds of cells should be the same.
(However, complicating this is the fact that most
researchers are attempting, not to prove nuclear
reactions, but to make the effect more reliable
and more robust, so often they are not bothering
with true controls, and they are attempting, by
hit or miss, to find the gold. Literally. If
someone can figure out how to make the effects,
at the same time, robust, reliable, and cheap,
and can patent it, there could be tremendous
profit. It's a problem if we are concerned about
the science, but in the absence of public funding
for LENR research, where is the funding going to come from?)
One of the earliest examples of this was the
unpublished work of S. Little of Earthtech
International(14) on the RIFEX kit sold by
Patterson and Miley in the mid-1990s (details
of the business arrangements are not discussed
here). The RIFEX kit was a modified
F&P cell that used a packed bed of Pd/Cu coated
plastic beads as the cathode in a flowing
electrolyte system that ostensibly generated
significant excess heat. Miley reported(15),(16)
heavy metal transmutation detected via of a
cornucopia of elements found on the bead
surfaces after use (one of Miley's Figures is
reproduced as Figure 51 in the Storms book).
Little replicated Miley's finding using
different analytical methods, but then went further.
Little first computed what concentration of
contaminants in the cell materials (primarily
electrolye) would represent the detection limit
of his techniques. Then he concentrated
on locating a potential contamination source of
those elements that did not fall below that
line. In his search, he found several of the
'new' materials had been leached out of parts
used to manufacture the RIFEX cell, thus
strongly suggesting that transmutation was not
their source.
Notice how Shanahan converts a finding by Little
of a new material into a blanket impeachment of
all findings. The RIFEX approach is one that
could be singularly vulnerable to contamination.
I've looked at Little's paper. First of all,
anyone who is interested in experimental details,
and who is frustrated by what is often lacking in
many papers, will appreciate Little's thorough
and careful descriptions. The Patterson bead
experiments were complex and not for the faint of
heart. There were lots of things that could go wrong.
Actually, I loved reading this report. It appears
that Little discovered a serious problem with the
titanium anode and that this information wasn't
welcomed by CETI. Further, I'd thought of trying
titanium. Now I know, definitely not straight
titanium! I just received some information in
email today that may explains why Little found so
much platinum all over stuff. His first run had,
as an effective anode, a short piece of platinum
lead to a titanitum disc that was supposed to be
the main anode. The titanium becomes coated with
oxide which insulates it, so only the lead is the
real anode, and the current density is high. The
high current density will cause the platinum to
dissolve and transfer to other surfaces in the
cell at a much higher rate than with a larger
anode, and even in his last run, the anode was
very small, 2 cm of wire, I think.
I can say this. If I were Scott Little, and I'd
spent that much time and money on trying to
reproduce an experiment that was such a dud, I
might never look at anything like it again! But
this must be understood. This was the CETI RIFEX
kit, not a technique used by anyone else. If
anything about the experiment caused the nuclear
effect to disappear, one would see exactly what
Scott Little, with so much trouble, found. I.e.,
nothing. Little was able to explain the
appearance of Pd, Pt, Zn, and some of the Fe.
Little ends with a discussion of a much more
accurate SIMS analysis provided to him by Miley,
and I generally agree with his conclusions. The
last words in this appendix to his report: "If we
can confirm the excess heat phenomenon, we will
eagerly reopen our search for evidence of nuclear
reactions." He wasn't getting excess heat (in
other tests with the beads), so we don't know at
all if the reaction was taking place. He was just
looking for transmuted elements and he found so
little that he could ascribe to transmutation
that it might as well have been nothing.
The problem with an absolute, uncorrelated search
is that it depends on very difficult to prove or
contrive initial conditions. Electrolysis will
concentrate impurities in the electrolyte onto
the cathode in a thin film that will then show
these elements ever if they don't show up in the
electrolyte. It may even leach them out of the
electrolyte; i.e., if some element is leaking
into the electrolyte from a material in the cell,
and these cells were complicated, containing lots
of materials, it might entirely transfer to the surface of the beads.
However, there is one aspect of this that Little
did not examine, and he knows it, he's explicit
about it, because he had no means of doing the
measurments: isotopic ratio. Transmutation
processes will often produce new elements that
are different in isotopic ratio than the
naturally occuring element. Chemically, these
elements will behave identically to the naturally
occuring element, but mass spectroscopy will
reveal the anomalous isotopic ratio.
And now a word from our sponsor:
The RIFEX kit was an early attempt to do what I'm
doing, but my work is designed in a very
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or I won't be able to replace it. I'm not looking
for ordinary charged particle radiation; in my
first runs, I would not be able to detect it,
because I have the detectors outside the cell,
where they would only be able to detect secondary
effects from energetic neutrons, mostly protons
and, if I'm lucky, some triple-tracks; except I'm
not using CR-39, I'm using LR-115, a much cleaner
detector to use, with much higher resolution
(tracks per unit area). Anyone who wants some
LR-115, I can sell it at less than the cost of
Landauer CR-39, and in small quantities, so contact me.
Back to Shanahan:
K&M cite Iwamura's, et al(17) 2002 report on the
transmutation of Sr into Mo and Ca into
Pr in a process where deuterium was diffused through a complex Pd/CaO sandwich
structured membrane. Furthermore, the Mo so
detected supposedly had an anomalous
isotope distribution. Subsequently, it was
reported that the 'Mo' contaminant was
actually S(18), and that a Pr contamination was
found in Iwamura's laboratory(19). It is
worth noting that MoS2 is a common thread
lubricant used in ultrahigh vacuum systems
(UHV) to prevent thread galling during system
bakeouts needed to reach UHV and that
the two major techniques used by Iwamura, et al,
were X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy
(XPS) and secondary ion mass spectrometry
(SIMS), both techniques based in UHV.
The apparent detection of Mo by SIMS is probably correct. The primary isotopic
anomaly reported for the Mo was a large
overabundance of the mass 96 isotope, which
could be derived either from an S3 ion (S is 95% mass 32) or an FeCa20 ion.
Notice the two contradictory approaches. The
detection of Mo is ascribed to sulfur, and this
is attributed to Hioki, N. Takahashi, and
Motohiro, in a paper presented at ICCF-13 in
Russia. I've been unable to find a copy of that
paper, but the same authors (with others)
presented a report at ICCF-14, and there is
discussion of sulfur, and the effect is not
ascribed to sulfur, and it appears that they
actually show why sulfur is ruled out. But
without the text, it's diffcult to understand.
The slides:
http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/conferences/2008/ICCF14/Pres/31-Hioki-InfluenceD-Gas-Permeation.pdf.
The conclusion: "The existence of 96 Mo exceeding
the amount of natural 96 Mo has been suggested."
"Since the amount of excess 96 Mo depend[s] upon
the amount of 96 X (X:possibly GaAl or Ca2O), further studies are required...."
What Shanahan doesn't point out is that the XPS
results can't be fooled by ions with the same
mass, it only detects the eletron shell, i.e.,
electronic structure, which depends only on
atomic number, not on nuclear mass. However, that
was just my first impression, and I looked at the
slides from Grabouwski et al at
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/GrabowskiKevaluation.pdf,
who present results that lead to a reasoanbly
convincing result. The Iwamura results were
possibly artifact, caused by a series of events.
Krivit comments on this same work in his response to Shanahan:
Shanahan does this with a reference to a conference presentation by David
Kidwell6 (Shanahan ref. 19) of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in which
Kidwell insinuates that a researcher at
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries used "lucky
tweezers" contaminated with praseodymium, which, according to Kidwell,
accounts for the LENR transmutation results reported by Iwamura.
Shanahan does a tremendous disservice to readers by omitting to mention
Iwamura's rebuttal to Kidwell, which immediately
followed Kidwell's presentation.7
The Iwamura presentation reveals that Kidwell's speculations defy logic and
show Kidwell's (and Shanahan's) comments for what they are: pathological
skepticism.
Pathological skepticism? Kidwell and colleagues,
like Scott Little at Earthtech before him, went
to extraordinary lengths to try to confirm the
Iwamura results. Kitamura did likewise, coming to
somewhat different conclusions.
Krivit's comment is radically unfair to Kidwell
(who was presenting for Grabowski). Nagel wrote a
report on ICCF-15, which covers this a little:
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/NagelDJscientific.pdf
These conflicting reports on attempts to replicate the MHI
results are important to the field. Both those reporting replication
and those unable to replicate are experienced scientists,
who work at well-equipped laboratories. It will be interesting
to see if this collaborative line of research continues to
be followed in the future, given the current stalemate.
We must remember the early days of cold fusion.
At the time, charges were flying back and forth
of sloppiness and error. In hindsight, we can
look at the early replications as *confirmations*
that if certain conditions are not obtained,
there is no reaction. (Such as failure to pay
attention to loading ratio, which may not have
exceeded 70% in those experiments, when over
about 90% appears to be necessary.) Krivit always
goes for interpersonal drama, what Kidwell
labeled clearly as "speculation" is turning into
"insinuation." If we look at what Kidwell
actually found, the speculation is reasonable. It
does not prove that Iwamura's results were wrong,
and it should not stop further investigation. It
merely raises some very reasonable doubt. In
1989, the basic error the scientific community
made was to equate the raising of doubt with "We
dodged that bullet, we can go home now, secure
that we know what needs to be known, and that
these imposter chemists who know nothing about
nuclear physics have been put in their place."
That was pseudo-skepticism, not careful
investigation like that of Grabowski and Kidwell
and others who have done experimental work and reported negative results.
and now another word from our sponsor:
I want to assure anyone reading this that if I
come up with negative results, I'll report them.
I will not conclude from them that the whole
field is bogus because I make some mistake,
possibly. I'll just report them, and I expect I
would keep working until I get consistent and
positive results, or I'm satisfied that every
base has been covered, and that will include
consultation with those whose work I'm
replicating -- which I haven't done yet. I'm
deliberately starting out with a published
protocol, not with lots of explanations and extra
details. I'll be selling kits, and they'd better
all be the same, once the design settles! I don't
want to be having to refund people's money....
Basically, I won't be making enough profit to be
able to do that more than rarely. And then once I
have a cheap and reliable kit, sure, Shanahan and
Scott Little will be welcome to buy one and try
it, or they can make it themselves from the
fully-documented and published design. It will be
cheaper for small quantities to buy it from me, once labor is considered....
back to our regularly scheduled programming:
Note: Iwamura's work was considered important
because it was so striking. However, elemental
transmutation other than helium production from
deuterium (probably) is not a major feature of
the originally discovered effect. Fleischmann's
work caused people to start looking for all kinds
of similar phenomena, and over 3000 papers have
been published in the area. Many of the results
might well be artifact, and, yes, there is
publication bias. Not everyone is like Scott
Little, who reported his 'failure." Or like
Grabowski et al, who did likewise. But that
doesn't mean that all the work is artifact, and
we should not be distracted by the existence of
such, just as Fleischmann's early neutron
reports, in the end, meant nothing but that they
made a mistake doing work in a field where they
were not experts. But they were experts at
measuring heat, and later helium work was done by experts in that, as well.
Krivit points to Iwamura's rebuttal. I'm afraid I
find that rebuttal defective. For example,
Iwamura's slide in his rebuttal says, "If Pr is
riginated from balance contamination, then Pr
should have been detected every time." No, not
true. This is a reference to Grabowski et al
finding Pr in the lab balance, by wiping the
inside of the balance to take a sample. Pr wasn't
found anywhere else, as I recall. So... whether
or not a sample would be contaminated might
depend on the exact handling that took place. It
would not be every one, necessarily. If there
were a large number of runs and blanks, this
could rule out contamination, if the runs and
blanks were all handled (as an attempt) in the
same way, so that runs and blanks would be
unlikely to be segregated in contamination.
Grabowski's speculations are not definitive, they
merely raise reasonable suspicion that
contamination is possible, which then indicates
that more work needs to be done, which is exactly
what Grabowski et all concluded.
These are scientists, quite like they are
supposed to be. Iwamura himself may have been a
little touchy.... but that's understandable.
Iwamura's defense, again, raises reasoable doubt
about the contamination theory. And that's how
science progresses. The only danger here is that
premature leapiing onto "Aha! I knew this was
fraud!" could so poison the environment that
further research is greatly inhibited. That's the
mistake that was made in 1989, and it should not
be repeated. But, of course, we should not jump
from Scylla to Charybdis, from pseudoskepticism to naive belief.
Passing on to CR-39 issues:
Pits in CR-39 plastic
K&M present two more major experimental areas, one being the so-caller 'bubble
fusion', which they admit is peripheral.
Nevertheless, they spend considerable time on it.
This is a typical tactic used by pro-cold fusion
advocates, namely the uncritical listing of
anomalies that, even though clearly unrelated,
are presented as supporting evidence.
... or it was simply Krivit writing on something
he considered might be interesting to the
readership of the periodical. Shanahan is a
long-term anti-CF warrior, I saw that he was
active in the early 1990s, on-line. Almost
everyone I know in this field would know that
bubble fusion has nothing to do with cold fusion,
that it is, if it's real, hot fusion, not cold
fusion; what's offensive here is that Shanahan
turns this into a blanket indictment of everyone
in the field over something that is completely
irrelevant to what they believe and what they do.
What Shanahan is doing, in fact, is cobbing
together every possible hypothesized artifact and
presenting them as if they impeach overall
results obtained by hundreds of researchers.
Basically, if a researcher in some place or in
some publication makes a mistake, why, surely
this means that all cold fusion researchers are
sloppy and careless and simply blinded by visions
of vast wealth or enduring fame. Now, what does
this have to do with CR-39 in plastic?
Nothing. My point.
Presumably they wish to convince readers of
their primary thesis by a mass of evidence
approach, but this is an invalid tactic. We here
will neglect the bubble fusion section and
move on to the other major block of evidence
discussed as proof of neutrons and/or
charged particles (nuclear ash), pits in CR-39 plastic.
He did not "neglect" the bubble fusion section,
he attempted to use it to increase the "mass of
evidence" that cold fusion supporters are all
blinded fanatics. In any case, he's now getting into my Favorite Topic.
CR-39 has elsewhere been used as a radiation
detector in situations where radiation is
expected. The basic process by which this works
is that a nuclear particle such as a
neutron or alpha particle strikes the CR-39
material, which is a polymeric hydrocarbon.
The hydrocarbon is damaged by the collision with
the particle. The CR-39 is then
developed by etching (heating the CR-39 in an
etchant solution for varying time). The
damaged material with its broken chemical bonds
serves as a nucleation site for more
rapid etching. Etching removes some of the
undamaged material, but the nucleated
damage points suffer faster etching. This causes
a pit to develop, which becomes large
enough with a long enough etch to be seen and
counted microscopically. Use of the CR-
39 material in controlled situations where only
nuclear radiation is expected to expose the
CR-39 has proven to be reasonably reliable.
That's correct. His implication is not exactly
correct. The real issue is the use of the
detectors in environments where their behavior is
not characterized, such as immersed in
electrolyte or exposed to contact with corrosive
active ionic species, or possible physical
damage. Some of these could produce phenomena
that might resemble, in some ways, radiation damage. But we will get to that.
There are some known interfering effects.
Background cosmic radiation can induce
pitting, but this is normally handled by
exposing controls at the same time as the live
plates. Bartlett26 discussed several
environmental factors that can produce or alter
background pit size, shape, and number
distributions. Factors affecting this include,
presence of oxygen, heat, humidity, and possible
plasticizer affects (originating from
storage cases, etc.). Duranni27 implies these
(and other) factors are still important to this
day in his section discussing the lack of a
theoretical framework for understanding what
is to be expected in CR-39 plates after a given
exposure, where he discusses the variety
of factors routinely studied phenomenologically
to measure such effects. Calmosca and
Penzo recently published just such a study28 in
the same Proceedings as Duranni. It is
reasonable that if such problems exist in the
comparably well-defined cases studied by
those authors, the CR-39 use in an experimental
situation with large unknowns present is
somewhat uncertain.
Sure. But note that CR-39 as a radiation detector
material is in common use for dosimetry and for
radon detection. I.e., it is routinely considered
reliable as used in those applications. What is
much more difficult is the behavior of this
material when exposed to a possibly damaging
chemical environment. Outside that, its behavior
is quite well known. Note, as well, that the
*type of radiation* that produces a particular
track can be difficult to determine, and a great
deal, with CR-39 depends on how the material has
been handled, how long it has been stored, the
conditions it has been exposed to when stored,
and how long it is developed and how hot and how
concentrated the etching solution is. Absolutely,
you have to have some idea of what you are doing.
I found, myself, that you need special CR-39,
there is available polycarbonate which is
absolutely unusuable. I thought that I might be
just seeing surface damage from storage, but I
ultimately concluded that the commercial material
I started with was structurally unsuited, it
shows massive surface irregularities even before
being exposed and etched. Small loss, and I know
how to proceed in spite of this.
One other important pit inducing process is
mechanical damage. It is well known by the
cold fusion researchers that scratches can
produce strings of pits in developed CR-39
plates. Oriani29 notes that gWe rejected etch
pits that occurred in clusters and those that
formed linear arrays fearing that they may have
arisen from surface scratches.h Little
(unpublished30) says gWe quickly discovered
that mechanical damage often leads to
round, track-like marks after etching.h and
gWe were able to create various marks with
sandpaper, needle points and simply by carrying
around a chip in a pocket for a day.h
This is misleading. Yes, strings of pits are
found, apparently caused by mechanical damage,
though there are other possible causes, such as
something happening during manufacturing. "Simply
by carrying around a chip in a pocket?" I'd
expect such a chip to be completely unusable!
CR-39 has a protective plastic cover, thin
polyester I think it is, to protect the surface,
and this is peeled off, normally, just before
use. The surface should be protected from contact
with anything that might mar it, obviously. And
this makes the wet configuration, with the CR-39
in direct contact with the cathode, problematic.
We'll get to that. But it was definitely worth
trying, and it led to further discoveries.
Sometimes a Bad Idea is actually a good one.
Also noted by cold fusion researchers is a vague
'chemical attack'. In 2007, Little(31)
posted a document entitled "Initial Report of
EarthTech's PACA Experimentation",
where PACA stands for Protected Against Chemical
Attack. (Kowalski(32) attributes this
to Oriani) This author first suggested O2 attack
as a possible pit cause in 2001 on the
Internet Usegroup sci.physics.fusion. The SPAWAR
group supposedly eliminated this as
a cause, along with attack by H2 or Cl2(33,34)
(however, see below for more discussion).
All of these factors can affect CR-39 results in
the best situations, but in cold fusion
research new conditions are added that aggravate the problem.
Well, this is the problem. There are two kinds of
radiation that might be coming from cells, unless
there is some new, unknown, form of radiation
(there is a little evidence for that, but, hey,
one mystery at a time!): charged particle
radiation and neutrons. I originally thought that
charged particle radiation might be copious, but
that it would be alpha particles, hot helium
coming from the decay of Be-8 formed by cluster
fusion. There are other reasons to think that the
levels of such radiation are not high, i.e., an
absence of bremmstrahlung radiation that should
be seen if the alphas are very hot when emitted.
However, lower energy alphas remain a
possibility. The problem with alpha particles is
that they are low penetration. They would not
make it through the cell wall. If they make it
through even a little mylar, it would be at
greatly reduced levels. So the idea in the wet
configuration was to put the detector right next
to the presumed radiation source, the
electrolytic cathode, where the palladium
deuteride is formed. That way the radiation would
be able to reach it, perhaps, if it's being
generated at the cathode surface. Bury it a little, no.
Neutrons are much more penetrating. But even
then, the closer the detector can be to the
source, the greater the flux of neutrons for a
given rate of emission from the source. Neutrons
are not directly detectable, though, so if there
was a neutron source and then a detector surface,
nothing would be seen. However, put some
hydrogen-rich material in between the source and
the detector, proton knock-on tracks will be
observed. It is also possible to put a Boron-10
converter on top of a detector, and Boron-10 has
a high capture cross-section for neutrons and
will produce alpha particles from neutron capture.
Bottom line: in the wet configuration, any tracks
on the front side are either not from neutrons
but are from direct charged particle radiation,
though it remains possible that some
neutron-caused tracks would exist due to
conversion (knock-on deuterons?) in the
intervening material. But that doesn't apply to
the back side. We learned this from SPAWAR, cover your back side!
There are two basic ways CR-39 plates have been
employed in cold fusion research.
First, the plates have been placed in the
electrolyte (or in very close proximity, sometimes
separated only by thin layers of materials) of
modified P&F type cells, and second, they
have been placed out of the electrolyte. Pits
have been detected in both conditions, but
many more pits per square centimeter are
detected in plates that have been in the
electrolyte. The pits in plates located outside
of the electrolyte have led researchers to
believe they are primarily caused by neutrons,
since charged particles, like alpha
particles, would not have the range to have
reached the plates. Likewise then, the
additional pits in the plates placed in the
electrolyte or near the electrodes are thought to
be formed primarily by charged particles like
alpha particles or tritons. Plates placed out
of the electrolyte include those that are
separated from the cell and those that have been
suspended in the gas space of a working cell
(Oriani and Fisher35). Extensive studies
were conducted recently by cold fusion
researchers in what is referred to as eThe Galileo
Projectf, of which only partial publication of
results has occurred. Most of the recent
publications on CR-39 tracks by the SPAWAR group
seem to have arisen from that study
or have been strongly impacted by it. The recent
literature debate between the SPAWAR
group and Kowalski also come out of this32,34.
Skeptics often accuse cold fusion researchers of
being uncritical about the work. It's not true.
Kowalski believes that LENRs are taking place,
but he found reasons to suspect error in some
SPAWAR reports, and he was one of the Galileo
replicators, and he wrote a paper and it was published under peer review.
That is actually an old debate. It's been totally
trumped by the neutron announcements. At the time
of the Galileo project, SPAWAR had realized they
were seeing neutron evidence, but had not been
allowed to release it. See, neutrons start to
make people nervous, there are national security
implications. But shortly after Galileo, they
were allowed to publish this evidence, and it changed the whole picture.
Oriani's work is something completely different, I won't examine it here.
However, what tends not to get published is the
negative results that do not support the
nuclear conclusion. In 2007, S. Little
reported31,36 that in attempting to replicate results
reported by R. Oriani29, a radioactive
contaminant was discovered in and on the O-rings
used to seal the Oriani apparatus. So once
again, the issue of contamination has been
raised. Prior to 2007, adequate testing for such
contamination was not conducted, thus all
results reported prior to that point must be
deemed inconclusive. Any observed pits
could have come from an undetected radioactive
contaminant. That contaminant could
have been introduced as a fixed component of a
cell part, such as with the O-rings
mentioned above, or it could have been leached
out of such a component and then
transferred to another locale within the cell.
Post-2007, some reports have continued to
filter in on this, but none of them so far has
given anything but passing mention of
checking for this problem, primarily as
assertions that such checks have been made.
Viewed in the light of the Clarke paper13, such
assertions are unacceptable at this point in
time. Actual protocols used must be discussed
openly and freely to convince scientists
that the contamination issue has been properly
handled, which requires publication to
reach all potentially interested parties.
In the SPAWAR work, they describe checking all
cell materials for radiation by placing them
against CR-39. Radioactive materials are not
normally lying about, and what would have to be
specifically radioactive would be the cathode
material or what is deposited on the cathode, or
there would not be the radioautograph of the
cathode that is observed. Obviously,
contamination remains a possibility, but it would
not explain one major phenomenon: extensive
tracks on the back side of the CR-39 in the wet
configuration, or outside the cell when it's a
windowed cell (i.e., 6 micron mylar window).
If I find radiation in my cells other than from
the cathode (or perhaps in the electrolyte or
outgas), I'll be astonished. There is one
possible radiation source in my home, a piece of
Cf-247 I tore out of a smoke detector. That is
fabricated to make it very difficult to remove
the Cf-247, supposedly I could swallow it without
harm, except that it's mounted on a piece of
metal about one inch long! I've have to try
hard.... If I dissolved it with an acid and then
swallowed it, well, I'd need to be sure I bought
the life insurance first. There is a reason,
though, why they allow these little pieces of
nuclear waste to be sold in common smoke
detectors with the whole thing costing $6.
Again, Shanahan is demanding absolutely
conclusive, bulletproof evidence, and that's
absolutely the wrong standard. The standards for
what's important (funding and effort in further
research) is preponderance of the evidence and
Occam's Razor. Given that quantum field theory
has finally been used to show that, indeed, there
are reasons to anticipate that if certain
physical conditions, not so far from the norm as
to think them utterly impossible, come to exist,
even transiently, in palladium deuteride, two
deuterium molecules *will* collapse and fuse,
simultaneously. Given the initial condition
maintained (not disturbed to break up the
physical arrangement) for about 1.4 femtoseconds,
full collapse can take place and is then
predicted to fuse, 100%, to form Be-8. That does
*not* mean that this is what is happening, but it
does mean that no longer can we say that physics
predicts this is impossible and that therefore
excess heat and other evidence *must* be
artifact. That was simply a failure of the
imagination, nobody thought of the possibility
and did the math, until Takahashi. And, of
course, it was also an error to allow theory to
trump experiment. The unlikelihood of fusion was
a reason to personally refrain from pursuing
reports that might be mere artifact, but not to
reject those reports and discourage others from
following up on them. It was enough to say that it *appeared* to be impossible.
With regards to pits on plates located in the
electrolyte, a couple of novel and interesting
conventional explanations come to mind that have
not been seriously examined. First is
the idea of oxidative attack on the plates by
oxygen bubbles, i.e. 'chemical attack'. The
argument that F&P cells are well mixed by
bubbling action has been presented by
Fleischmann and others and was used in the
development of the speculative chemical
model of what occurs in an F&P cell2,6,7. If so,
then O2 bubbles generated at the anode
reach everywhere in the cell, including the
CR-39 plates (front and back sides). Pure O2
is highly reactive, and it can be postulated
that contact between bubbles and the CR-39
leads to oxidation at the contact point. That
oxidized contact point could serve as a
nucleation point of a pit. This thesis may have been disproved by cold fusion
experiments where thin Mylar sheets were placed
over the front of the CR-39 in the
electrolyte (ostensibly to modify the energy
profile of the alphas striking the CR-39).
Pits are still detected but they are modified in
nature. Presumably the Mylar would stop
the O2 bubble, but that is also a speculation that would need to be tested.
Eh? Oxygen going through polyester? Is Shanahan
kidding? That's gas-tight, and it doesn't get
oxidized easily. The stirring of cells depends on
cell design. SPAWAR cells are designed such that
evolved gas will rapidly rise to the surface and
leave the cell. The electrolyte circulation is
not between the cathode and anode, but from the
bottom to the surface. In this design, oxygen
bubbles would have to be very small to manage to
make it somehow to the cathode, and they would be
generally entrapped in the evolving deuterium gas
and taken to the surface, if they approached the
cathode side of a wet configuration detector.
Yes, they could hit the other side, but they
would not be specially attracted to the surface
of the detector that was opposite the cathode
wire (which is in contact, generally, with the
other side of the CR-39). They would attack the
whole surface, or perhaps differentially across
the surface, perhaps fewer pits at the bottom and
more at the top. But not in a strong line oppostie the cathode.
Note, however, that chemical damage in contact
with the cathode is not only possible, I believe
that the images show it. That is one reason I'm
not even trying, immediately, to use a wet
configuration. I want clear, reasonably
conclusive results. Not proof, exactly, but a
demonstration of an effect. If I were going to
use a wet configuration, I'd have to find some
way to protect the detector surface, even if this
will almost necessarily reduce the radiation. For
neutrons, though, it doesn't matter so much.
Shanahan is here making arguments that pertain
almost entirely to the front-side damage reports.
The SPAWAR group does claim that O2 does not
impact the CR-39 plates based on an
earlier set of results33,34, but it is unclear
if that study fully tested the O2 theory. In that
study, electrolysis with Cu and Ni mesh cathodes
was attempted without plating out the
normal surface coating of Pd, and no pits or
hollows were observed. The actual runs
purported to produce cold fusion-derived pits
ran for a total of ~11-1/3 days, with the last
three days of this being at the current used in
the control runs or higher. However, the
publication fails to mention the duration of the
control experiment which is likely an
important factor. Until such important details
are published, any conclusion remains
elusive.
They have done many different kinds of controls.
Perhaps Shanahan should try some experiments
himself. Get some results that match those
reported and then show that they were caused by a
non-nuclear effect. Scott Little already did some
of that, I'd say he was successful in all but how
he interpreted his results. He saw chemical
damage, and why he saw it remains a bit of a
mystery, since what he saw was different from
what others reported in certain ways. He naively
called what was almost certainly chemical damage
"SPAWAR pits," when, photographically, they did
not look like the important pits reported by
SPAWAR, only like what the Russians called
"hamburger" and what Krivit called "caviar."
Caviar is not an appropriate name for chemical
damage, which is very much what that stuff looks
like. The whole surface is pitted, continuously,
and there is a crisp edge to it. If it were from
radiation, merely too many tracks in one place,
the edge would not be crisp -- unless there were
a crisp shield, which there wasn't.
Fortunately, all
of this could be potentially tested by bubbling
fine O2 bubbles from a glass frit over CR-
39 under otherwise identical experimental
conditions but without ongoing electrolysis
and developing it normally. This remains to be done at this date.
Lots of things could be done. Shanahan probably
does not realize how much is involved in setting
up and doing an experiment, he shows no signs of
having gotten his detectors wet, so to speak. My
plan is to make it easy, and if one of my cells
were used in the wet configuration, it would be
easy to place a detector above the anode, where
oxygen would indeed bubble over it. The extra
cost? About a dollar or less, plus a little time.
It's not what I think of as the first thing to
test! And it's irrelevant to the dry
configuration results, as well as to the wet back-side results.
A second argument is a little more intriguing
and difficult to prove. Both this author and
the SPAWAR group conclude that hot spots
photographed by the SPAWAR group37,38,39
on an operating cold fusion co-deposited Pd
electrode represent eexplosionsf. The
hallmark of an explosion is a shockwave. In
fact, Dr. F. Gordon reported40 at a 2009
conference that such pressure spikes had been
recorded, so clearly, said shockwaves
exist. This author claims such explosions are
chemical in nature while the SPAWAR
group claims they are nuclear. However, in
either case, the resultant shockwaves are
potentially capable of doing physical damage
which would produce nucleation points for
etch pits.
The pressure spikes are so small that they were
detected by using a piezoelectric detector as the
cathode, they plated it (with silver, I think),
then used it for codeposition. The explosions
themselves might produce damage, but probably
from heat. I fail to see a possible non-nuclear
mechanism for mini-explosions, oxygen bubbles
would not cause explosions, they might cause, if
they reach the cathode, a slow burn. Very small
oxygen bubbles would release a very small amount
of heat, in an environment not conducive to major
heat build-up from a chemical reaction unless
it's very fast. To get an explosion from oxygen,
one would have to mix the oxygen and deuterium
first to form an explosive mixture, and then
ignite it. Oxygen reaching the cathode as a
bubble, if it contacted the cathode in spite of
currents taking deuterium from the cathode to the
surface, might start to "burn" in contact with
the deuterium, but that would release energy only
slowly. Quite simply, that these bubble burns
could, underwatner, melt palladium, which is
what's seen, is preposterous. There is nowhere
near the energy available from what little oxygen
is available there, and then concentrating that
energy (from a bubble of oxygen at normal
atmospheric pressure) to melt a 10 micron circle
in the surface of the cathode, is, shall we say,
stretching it. Really stretching it.
The Mylar covering mentioned before would not
stop all the shockwaves, but would
modify the number with enough remaining energy
to damage the plastic, and perhaps
even the shape of the shockwave. (It is to be
expected that there would be some
anisotropy to these shockwaves since they are
produced by an explosion in a bubble that
would ignite at the metal surface and travel to
the far end, giving the resultant shockwave
a directionality.) Also, the shockwave would
further disperse as it travels through the
CR-39 to the back side of the plate, where upon
exiting, if it still had adequate energy, it
would also make pits (via etching of damaged
plastic, not by explosive expulsion of
material), which has been observed41. Thus, the
shockwave postulate seems to fit the
observations as well as the emitted particles hypothesis.
Basically, he's postulating truly major
shockwaves, capable of propagating through 1/16
inch of CR-39 to the back side and causing
fracture of the material. Those are shock waves
that would have to be many orders of magnitude
larger than what are observed. Shanahan, to
explain away the neutron results, is making up
fantastic phenomena never before observed. Is it
possible. Sure. Anything is possible. Is it
likely? Absolutely not! Why would one think so?
There is only one reason: a deep-seated belief
that the approximations of quantum mechanics are
adequate to analyze the complex conditions of
condensed matter. As a babe, sitting on daddy
Feynman's knee being bottle-fed, I learned that
the math to apply QM to condensed matter was
horrific and that we basically didn't know poop,
except that it mostly seemed to work. To a
degree. And this is exactly what Pons and
Fleischmann set out to test, since nobody else
had done it. They were surprised, they thought
that the deviation between theory and measurement
would be below what they could measure. They were gloriously wrong.
An interesting side point can be made based on
an observation presented by Williams41.
In his presentation, one slide stated that
gBefore etch, electrolyzed CR-39 showed
SMALL [authorfs emphasis] amounts of apparent
Pd deposition on the CR-39 plastic
track detector.h (These were apparently
unprotected CR-39 plates.) So the concerns
about dissolution and transfer of electrode
material noted in the prior section have also
been confirmed from the CR-39 studies. What form
(ionic, metallic) this Pd is in on the
CR-39 is unknown, but if it were in the metallic
form it could also serve as bubble
explosion nucleation points. Such explosions
would be physically proximate to the CR-
39 and thus would have a large impact with
respect to damaging the plastic. Note that the
Pd could also deposit on Mylar and if
metallicized could foster the same proximal
explosions.
Basically, more rank speculation, it's getting
worse. This completely fails to explain dry configuration results.
More evidence for this thesis is the copious
pits detected on CR-39 plates that were
immersed in the electrolyte, whose geometric
distribution mimics the physical shape of
the co-deposited electrode. In the conventional
FPHE explanation, bubbles of mixed
hydrogen and oxygen have to form on the
electrode surface so that the electrode surface
can initiate the explosive reaction. Thus only
bubbles on the surface would ignite and
emit shockwaves and their impingement on the CR-39 would mirror their physical
distribution as controlled by the electrode
configuration. In the end, this mechanism for
pit nucleation will be quite difficult to prove
out independently. However whenever a
rational alternative explanation can be provided
for a phenomenon, the issue necessarily
remains undecided until one or the other of the
alternatives is excluded, irregardless of
the difficulty associated with obtaining such evidence.
Who decides what is rational? I'll give you my
answer: whoever is paying for the experiment! Let
me say that I wouldn't pay much to run the
experiments to disprove this hypothesis of mixed
O2/D2 bubbles (how do they get that way?)
igniting and causing anything more than a little
burble. Basically, a little water vapor. Not very
hot. (But I'd like to see an energy analysis.)
Remember, the evidence for hot spots includes
*melted palladium.* Try to figure out how to get
that much heat from a 10 micron diameter bubble of D2 and O2.
A further issue involving CR-39 pits is the
claim to have observed etripletsf which K&M
bring up. Figure 12 presents one such triplet (three nearly coincident pits).
Unfortunately, these images do not look very
much like the triplets that they are supposed
to be. Pictures of triplets in references42-45
cited by the SPAWAR group46 clearly show
shape and spatial features absent from the
picture in Figure 12. Instead the three pits in
Figure 12 seem to be accidentally coincident
pits. It is unclear how one could distinguish
between the real and accidental 'triplet' cases.
In fact Oriani and Fisher29 report
Recognizing that there is an element of
judgement in applying criteria for the acceptance
of an etch pit as representing a true track, all
measurements were made by one of us
(RAO) to achieve consistencyh for regular pits.
If the pits in Figure 12 are in fact from a
triplet event, the etching procedure used by the
SPAWAR group needs to modified to
show structures developed that mimic those in
the references arising in controlled
experiments with known radiation sources.
You really have to look at more than one triple.
Shanahan clearly hasn't done much. SPAWAR
publishes dual-focus images; they photograph the
pit with the microscope focused on the top, image
in red, and on the bottom of the pit, image in
green. In triple-track pits of the right depth,
i.e., my guess, the originating C-12 breakup
occurred at the right distance under the surface
that the original breakup site is just barely
exposed and the bottom detail is not etched away,
you can see three grooves coming from a common
point, leading out to the centers of the three
pits. There is no way for these to be formed by
mere statistical coincidence of random pits.
Sure, there is a certain probability of seeing
three pits in association. But the triple tracks
don't seem to fit into a statistical distribution
like that. Triple tracks are, though, mere
frosting on the cake. The real story is the
single tracks that are almost certainly from
proton knock-on. Compared to them, triple tracks
are rare events, there has to be a carbon atom
hit at just the right depth, from a neutron
coming from below the material up to the surface being observed after etch.
Little30 has also attempted to replicate the
SPAWAR-type experiments, which use CR-39
plates in the electrolyte (or very near the
cathode in one publication46-48). While
observing pits, Little found a variety of claims made by the SPAWAR group were
inaccurate, one even being admitted to during
the experimentation with a resultant
change in protocol recommended by the SPAWAR group30. It is of note that this
particular SPAWAR claim was reproduced in their
2009 publication (submitted Jan.
2009) with no indication of the possible
inaccuracy. In the end, Little concluded his
experiments gdo show that chemical origin is a
distinct possibility and therefore that
nuclear origin is not a certainty.h
Unfortunately, this point was apparently lost on the
SPAWAR group, as their most recent publication46
on this topic goes into extensive
detail on the analysis of the observed pits
assuming their nuclear origin without proof,
and mentions no serious attempt to test conventional origin theories.
Shanahan is referring to an irrelevancy. At one
point, the SPAWAR group had seen an enhanced
effect with nickel electrodes using magnets, and
the original SPAWAR protocol prescrubed a
magnetic field be set up. That was an error, Pam
Boss realized that she had simply assumed that
this would continue to be a help with the silver
electrode experiments. It wasn't. So?
I think that Little saw only, or mostly, chemical
damage. There is no particular reason to think
that he succeeded in getting a reaction. However,
his work caused me to really become even more
cautious and to not attempt wet configuration to
start. SPAWAR now has plenty of nuclear evidence,
and they really aren't interested any more, as
are practically none of the researchers, in
*proving* nuclear origin. It's a waste of time.
If someone like Shanahan wants to come along and
replicate work and then show how the results are
artifact, great. That's what was done with
polywater. But the rest of us are going to follow
preoponderance of the evidence and not waste our
time chasing the ghosts of 1989.
He's right. They assume nuclear orgin, but it's
not because they have no evidence for it. They
have plenty, but it is possible to question and
requestion every piece of it. At some point, one
says, "Enough! Go test your own crazy hypotheses!"
The claims to have detected neutrons and perhaps
other charged particles emitted from
cold fusion experiments thus remain
unsubstantiated. The issues and speculations raised
above simply illustrates that pits observed in
CR-39 are not conclusive of nuclear particle
emission at this point, and may never be. A
conclusive experimental protocol aimed at
disproving one or the other putative sources is
as yet unavailable. Until such a separation
can be accomplished, the CR-39 pits are not
compelling proof of nuclear events.
What Shanahan has done is to neglect the bulk of
the evidence and to focus on only what he can
imagine some other explanation for, no matter how
far-fetched and unsupported and unsubstantiated it is.
Here is why I'm convinced that the SPAWAR results
are conclusive for neutrons. The neutron-caused
tracks are found, wet configuration, on the back
side of the CR-39 in association with the
cathode. That's a place where the chemical damage
or little pneumatic jack-hammer theories can't
cut it. It's also a place where charged particle
radiation, specifically alpha particles, from the
cathode, could not reach. Shanahan should look at
the recent SPAWAR (Pamela Mosier-Boss)
publications that show dry configuration results.
Specially look at the gold cathode results, and
then guess why I'm using a gold cathode instead
of the cheaper silver. The published image (of
results from automated track identification)
shows a cell with three cathodes, platinum,
silver, and gold). These are results outside the
cell, on the other side of a 6 mil mylar window.
These are copious tracks, and they are clear, distinct pits.
I'm dumping the window, too much hassle. The
thickness of the acrylic cell is 1/16 inch or so,
i.e., the same as the CR-39 used in the wet
configuration. So I'm using the cell wall as my
proton-rich material, it's richer than
polycarbonate. And I'm not using CR-39, I'm using
LR-115, because it can handle, crisply, much
higher track density. The active material is only
6 microns thick, so it is etched entirely away,
leaving a clear spot in the red cellulose acetate
that is very easy to see and identify. And this
is clean, fresh material, routinely used for
radon surveys, but also recommended for
specifically for neutron detection through proton
knock-on, or, with a Boron-10 n,alpha converter
(I have some) to detect slow neutrons.
Basically, I've putting my money where my mouth
is. Maybe Shanahan should as well, or perhaps he
likes sitting back, dreaming up preposterous
scenarios. It would be *great* if someone
published some really killer criticism of this
field, back with prediction and then experiment.
I'm interested in the science, not in Free
Energy. As nice as cheap energy might be, I'm even fonder of the truth.
I'm going to skip the rest of Shanahan's piece,
you won't be missing much, and cut to his final statement:
It should be said
however that there remains one way to
conclusively prove cold fusion is true, and that is
to bypass all the scientific debate about questionable data, experiments, and
interpretations, and just jump to a working
device powered by cold fusion. As Douglas
Morrison was wont to say (in paraphrase),
Wheres my cold-fusion-brewed cup of tea?
If I could brew a cup of tea with a cold fusion
cell, would I invite Shanahan to drink it? Why?
This is a fundamentally stupid comment that
Shanahan thinks clever. The reality of cold
fusion is not dependent on the ability to
commercialize it, to generate, reliably, enough
heat to reliably brew tea. From what I understand
from McKubre's work and Energetics Technologies,
tea could indeed be brewed, most of the time. But
the researchers have better things to do than try
to prove to Shanahan and Morrison what is already
obvious to those who have been working in the
field for years, who know the evidence
intimately. Now, if Shanahan wants to put some
money in escrow for a Cold Fusion Tea-Brewing
Prize, that might change. Might even do some
good. Until then, it's a pointless demonstration.
The funding authorities are already moving. Hey,
Dr. Shanahan, wasn't your writing of this paper
funded by the U.S. DoE, at least in part?
Do you realize what that implies?
Bob Dylan: "... your old road is rapidly aging,
please get out of the new one if you can't lend a
hand, because the times they are a-changing."
I rather doubt that the Journal of Environmental
Monitoring is going to publish this paper, which
is a pile of thin speculations, for the most
part. Maybe with a lot of editing.... or maybe
just because this crap is the best that the
skeptics can come up with. In any case, I thank
Dr. Shanahan for writing it. Sincerely. Maybe he
-- and we -- needed to get this out of our system.
and a final word from our sponsor:
http://lomaxdesign.com/coldfusion/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=5&zenid=6bb6c57591ca5db0f2ac2e24f223632e
is a prelimary storefront page for LR-115
detectors, which are 6 microns of red cellulose
acetate on 100 microns of polyester. The prices
are real. But orders would have to be placed by
email to me. The storefront is not set up yet.
The detectors are not yet serialized, so anything
sold now is just blank material. I'd recommend
buying a whole 9 x 12 cm sheet for $27.80, and
I'll ship it anywhere in the U.S. for $5
postpaid. This is material from the company in
France that sells it for detector purposes, it
was purchased at the end of last year. I have not
yet tested it, so it's sold as-is. The French
company would only sell a full package, I'm the
only one I know of who is reselling sheets. Be
the first on your block to buy cold fusion
research material from Lomax Design Associates.
In fact, at this point, you can be the first in
the world. I've only had donation income and an
interest-free loan so far. (Thanks!)
