E-Cat aka LENR

[Paul and Rona]

I saw an email about the E-cat system on the forum sometime back....Claims aboiut "Cold Fusion" always make me cringe, however looks like NASA are also looking into this one...

However seems like they call it LENR

http://technologygateway.nasa.gov/media/CC/lenr/lenr.html

Any Comments

Regards Paul...

Question ? is it Fusion or Fission ?

[Ivan]

I think firing neutrons at things isn't easy, and getting them to stick isn't that easy either. So although everything stated is plausible, You'd need a neutron source (aka radioactive material) to produce the neutrons in the first place of which a small percentage would be absorbed by the target element and transmuted to an unstable element which then decays. So it might be quicker just to make power from a radioactive source material without using it to inefficiently generate a secondary unstable material. The only potential advantage would be 1)use of a much commoner precursor radioactive material and 2)maybe the production of lower total radioactive emissions or no long half-life daughter products? I'm only guessing

[pdf27]

Two possible Neutron sources:
1) Radioactive decay - so needs what is essentially nuclear waste
2) Compact fusion source (Deuterium - Tritium fuelled). This is being looked at as a possible method to destroy long-lived nuclear waste by transmutation to short-lived waste.

Big problem - both need shielding. We use the latter at work (only site in the world capable of it at the moment) and we need ~2m of concrete, which probably has a lot of Boron in it to scavenge waste neutrons.

The bit I don't get is the source elements they were suggesting - Carbon is pretty stable and as such the actual energy released by using it in a nuclear reaction is minimal - making it a bad choice.

Oh, and so far as I can tell (not very far - it was a very poor explanation) this wasn't anything to do with the E-cat system.