Does anybody know
of a sensible counter-argument (or maybe even a peer
reviewed refutation) to the idea that the anomalous heat
of cold-fusion/LENR might just be due to a
Wigner-(like)-Effect?
I had never heard of the
Wigner Effect until a couple of
days ago when I was reading about the
Windscale fire (sorry about the
use of Wikipedia links).
It got me thinking about whether the documented swelling
of palladium during loading could lead to a similar
Wigner (like) Effect deformation of the palladium
lattice which could then release stored energy abruptly
- as happened in the graphite moderators in the
Windscale fire.
Following up on this, I found
Douglas R.O. Morrison's Cold Fusion
News article on NET
which includes the
following paragraph:
"Prof. Bockris of Texas A&M give a talk
entitled "Seven Chemical Explanations of the
Fleischmann-Pons effect" where he estimated the heat
excess produced but always got values much less than the
early claims of F-P and of Huggins of the order of 10
Watts - the highest he calculated was 0.9 W for the
Pauling suggestion of PdH2 formation. He was asked about
the Wigner effect, but had not considered it
[
comment - this is a favourite explanation of many
people. It was responsible for a large release of
radioactivity in about 1957 at Windscale - the
neutrons absorbed by the graphite had stored a lot of
energy in the graphite by changing its structure and
the subsequent release of this energy caused the
trouble. It had previously been predicted by Wigner.
Similarly the absorption of hydrogen or of deuterium
by palladium causes the palladium to swell and this
stores a lot of energy in the cathode. When the
loading stops (e.g. the current is switched off or the
level of the electrolyte falls and exposes part of the
cathode), then this Wigner energy can be released]."
Obviously I missed out on part of the cold fusion
story.
So, counter-arguments?
Andy.
