Edward Tsyganov forwards a report Cold Nuclear Fusion on his research presented at the Russian-speaking Academic Science Association (RASA) meeting held 8-10 November 2013, Clearwater Beach, FL.
RASA: Cold Nuclear Fusion presentation .pdf slides [5.5M]
Currently, humanity has reached a stage of development at which the struggle for energy resources is particularly important, because all the known sources of energy in the near future will not be able to provide our needs. Chemical energy, in addition, is limited on account of the so-called greenhouse effect. Nuclear energy is based on the use of fissile materials, and is not a solution, because the stock of these materials is limited. The initial optimistic expectation of the transition to the process of controlled nuclear fusion has not yet materialized. Technical difficulties in obtaining sustainable superhot plasma and the damaging effects of the enormous neutron flux arising as a result of fusion reactions back down the solution to this problem on a more distant and uncertain future.
Recently there was the belief that the problem of controlled nuclear fusion could be solved in a completely different way. It has been shown experimentally that the cross-barrier synthetic processes depend greatly on the physical state of the matter that reactive atoms are placed in. Distance convergence of two deuterium nuclei through the mechanism of the Rydberg crystal cell in metals occurs by an order of magnitude smaller than the size of a free atom of deuterium. Coulomb barrier permeability in this DD fusion process increases greatly (by the 50–60 orders of magnitude) as compared with a permeability barrier to free molecules of deuterium. In this recent work, we discuss the possibility of detecting the “cold” DD fusion process experimentally by detecting low-energy electrons resulting from the fusion reaction of two deuterons in palladium crystals with very small (thermal) excitation energies of the intermediate compound nucleus 4He*. This process is made possible by the exchange of the excited compound nucleus with electrons of the crystal lattice that results from virtual photons.
It happens historically that the process of DD cold fusion was studied in more detail than other, similar processes. In this regard, we have restricted ourselves to this particular process. Presented below is a summary report of the situation that has now developed, in a cold DD fusion.
Accelerator experiments have shown that the value of screening potential for the impurity atoms in metallic crystals reaches up to 300 eV or even more. This means that, during DD reaction occurring in the medium of the metal crystal, impurity atoms are excited, and deuterium has not circular but elliptical electron orbits, which are oriented relative to each other a certain crystallographic manner. In this case, the nuclei of these atoms can approach each other by a distance substantially less than the size of the unexcited atom, yet still without Coulomb repulsion. Such processes are known in the art and are the cause of chemical catalysis. The processes were first quantitatively described by Johannes Rydberg in 1888.
1. The existence of the phenomenon of cold fusion is now conclusively proved by experiments, including experiments on low-energy accelerators.
2. The observed absence of nuclear products for cold fusion can be explained by the decay of a compound nucleus 4He* slowing through nuclear channels as its excitation decreases in energy. The release of energy in this connection is mediated by virtual photons.
3. Prejudice of many nuclear experts to the phenomenon of cold fusion is due to the unusual nature of the nuclear process, in which cold fusion forms an intermediate compound nucleus 4He* in a metastable state.
4. The accumulated empirical rules of nuclear physics seem indisputable to the nuclear community, while the range of their application is merely limited.
English version of the RASA 2013 report is here:
RASA: Cold Nuclear Fusion
Russian version of the report is here: