On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 7:47 AM, Ron Kita <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Why don t people realize that Ni-H LENR ..has intrinisc merit. > Because people like to see evidence before they accept extraordinary claims. > > Also, I think the Dennis Bushnell is quite knowledgeable on this topic. > What makes you think that. In his interview with EV World, he seemed to have most of his facts wrong: 1. BUSHNELL: Back in 2005, 2006, [Allen] Widom [and Lewis] Larsen came out with a theory that said, no it’s not “cold fusion,” it’s weak interactions using the Standard Model of quantum mechanics, only the weak interaction part. Well, W&L suggest weak interactions are involved, not that it's just weak interactions. The energy comes mostly from strong interactions. And loosely speaking, the neutron capture could be called fusion, but that's just semantics. 2. BUSHNELL: "If you set this up you produce an electron – proton connection producing ultra-weak neutrons and if you have the right targets out there you produce beta-decay which produces heat." According to W&L they're ultra low momentum neutrons, not ultraweak neutrons. And the bulk of the energy does not come from beta decay, it comes from strong nuclear reactions involving neutron capture. In the Li-Be-He cycle, the beta decay basically returns the energy required in the electron capture in the first place, providing very little net energy. Likewise for Ni, if it were capturing neutrons, that's where most of the energy would come from. Not from beta decay. Anyway, evidence from the isotope ratios contradicts nuclear reactions of any kind. 3. BUSHNELL: Then, as you mentioned, in January of this year [Andrea] Rossi, backed by [Sergio] Focardi, who had been working on this for many years, and in fact doing some of the best work worldwide, came out and did a demonstration first in January, they re-did it in February, re-did it in March, where for days they had one of these cells, a small cell, producing in the 10 to 15 kW range which is far more than enough to boil water for tea. And they say this is weak interaction, it’s not fusion. That contains multiple errors. None of the experiments, not even the secret one, went on for days. Most were a few hours, and the secret one was 18 hours. In the March experiments, only a few kW were claimed. Only the Jan and Feb experiments claimed 10 - 15 kW. Of course, the evidence for these claims is entirely absent, but that's another argument. Finally, "they" (presumably meaning Rossi) *don't* say it's weak interactions. They explicitly say it's *not* W&L. 4. BUSHNELL: It produces heat and did so for days and was in the 12 or 14 kW range and they [will be] producing, with a large number of these devices, a 1 MW power plant. ...and he repeats his error with confidence. Bushnell may well be losing it. Which is too bad, because it weakens his endorsement of climate change science.
