Talk about splitting hairs. Nuclear is part of the name. Whether it is fusion, neutron capture (which could be considered as fusion), or fission or decay , etc. This does not change the fact that the mechanism is presumed to be nuclear rather than electron/ chemical reactions. Of course there are endless refinements that can be used to split hairs. Hydrinos for example seem to be an attempt to claim a lower ground energy state for electrons within atoms (though it has never been seen by obvious spectroscopic means).ScottL wrote:LENR is all about neutron capture, fusion is not. The term cold fusion was a misnomer because they didn't have an adequate way to define it. We really should get our terms straight, this is not cold fusion. There is no overcoming of the CB nor any form of additional charge.JoeP wrote:LENR is CF re-branded and is likely the same reaction (whatever that is, assuming there is anything actually happening that is non-chemical and nuclear).ScottL wrote:LENR and Cold Fusion aren't really the same thing at all. LENR requires no fusion process while cold fusion most certainly does.
http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/12/ ... rsus-lenr/
For a brief explanation.
My primary point was that these labels mean nothing, they are only convenient catch phrases without the meat and potatoes of experimental results. Another appropriate acronym might be LEPEEBUM (Low Energy Possible Excess Energy By Unknown Means)
PS: I might add that thermal neutron capture is a well studied field. A stable isotope may be changed into an unstable isotope, which releases energy upon decay. The problem is that you have to account for the source of the short lived free neutron. Except for a few exceptions (like 235U) the energy out is less than the energy necessary to create the free neutron. These are indeed low energy nuclear reactions- or cold fusion if you are using the initiating neutron absorption into the nucleus ("fusion") as the defining step, but they generally do not produce excess heat (they are endothermic from a system standpoint. Remember that a cold neutron doesn't have very much KE (perhaps even below room temperature), but it began life hot, perhaps in the many thousands or few millions of eV. It slowed as it was moderated- giving it up its' KE as heat in the moderator. Now if you had a thermal conversion scheme that converted this moderating waste heat into useful power at 99.99999...% efficiency the story changes.
In a way, the challenge is not so much obtaining energy from a specific nuclear reaction (even a low energy nuclear reaction), it is that this reaction is only one step in the total system. Precursors have to be accounted for as does conversion efficiency. This has to be considered for hot fusion, or cold fission/ decay also. The only reason that we can extract energy from uranium fission is that the uranium was first produced in dying Stars- an endothermic process. And that energy surplus came from the earlier fusion of light elements (up to Fe or Ni depending on the mechanism you are talking about). Gravity plays a role in that also. And even the source of the light elements have to be considered. Where did the energy for making them come from? Eventually we have to go back to the Big Bang as the only purely exothermic reaction in the whole chain. But, you might ask, where the energy for the Big Bang came from? Was it the Vacuum energy? Where did that come from?...
Eventually we have to admit that free energy is real, or at least that the source cannot be found. The dodge is that we accept that the Laws of Physics are only applicable in a special situation, which happens to be the Universe since the Big Bang.
Dan Tibbets
Nevertheless, Rossi is right about the market being the ultimate arbitrator.