LENR back to academic science?

[F6FLT]

I just found this new (difficult) paper: "Forbidden Nuclear Reactions"

I quote:
"It is found that any perturbation may lead to nonzero cross section and rate of nuclear reactions forbidden in the "ε → 0 limit. Since this statement applies to every nuclear process forbidden in the "ε → 0 limit it concerns low energy nuclear physics with charged participants in general.
These findings have important bearing on energy production. It is commonplace that nuclear fusion reactors need to be heated to very high temperature to overcome the Coulomb repulsion between nuclei to fuse and it is also assumed that in some (e.g. tokamak-like) devices the presence of impurities during the heat up and working periods is undesirable because of high power loss generated by them. However it is shown here that spectator nuclei can allow new types of reactions for which both rate and power densities are temperature independent. What is more remarkable, the mechanism found does not need plasma state to work at all which bring up the possibility of a quite new type of apparatus working at much lower temperature than the temperature of fusion power stations planned to date."

It is rare to see the issue of LENRs on academic sites since the discredit of the cold fusion of Pons and Fleishmann. Would it be a return?

[muDped]

There seems to be ample evidence that Cold Fusion
LENR is for real.

[F6FLT]

I agree with that.
Nevertheless, one question remains: why has no useful technology emerged since the Pons and Fleishmann paper, so for 30 years?

[PhysicsProf]

I agree with that.
Nevertheless, one question remains: why has no useful technology emerged since the Pons and Fleishmann paper, so for 30 years?

30 years this March.  They claimed deuteron-deuteron (d-d) fusion inside palladium, occurring with heavy water (D2O) electrolyte, as the source of measurable HEAT.  Heat from d-d fusion without neutron production. That is just wrong, and set the field back.
 
   The latest involves light water H2O and H2 gas (the "control" in P-F experiments), so protons interacting with metal nuclei. (It is true that d-metal-nucleus reactions also appear to occur.)
  Proton-metal-nucleus reactions.  This is completely different from d-d fusion and appears to work - I have quoted on this forum results from Takahashi and Celani.

[F6FLT]

My astonishment at the lack of useful technology related to the LENRs was not limited to one type of reaction or another. Hundreds of papers have been published on the subject, and yet nothing really spectacular has come out of it in terms of practical realization. A simple experiment with really extraordinary and reproducible excess heat still does not seem to be found.

[F6FLT]

A new paper published in Nature:
                        Revisiting the cold case of cold fusion

We learn interesting things, for example:
"Merely 120 mV in overpotential produces the thermodynamic equivalent of approximately 100 atm of pressure"
This means that it is easier to create a hydride by electrolysis than by high hydrogen pressure. This is what they did with palladium. They obtained PdHx with x around 0.8 and reached a COP = 1.0825. Not much, but measured with great caution.

They encourage to continue :
"Our experience affirms that the materials science aspects of deuterated metals merit further study, as concluded in the 2004 US Department of Energy review. If loading metals with exceptionally high concentrations of hydrogen is indeed a necessary precursor for cold fusion, then more work is required to produce stable samples of PdHx where x ≥ 0.875 to comprehensively evaluate these claims. We also remain intrigued by what properties could arise from PdHx samples where x ≥ 1"

and they call for action in their conclusion and use the term "cold fusion", not LENR:
"Call to action
Fusion stands out as a mechanism with enormous potential to affect how we generate energy [...] Simultaneous research into alternative forms of fusion, including cold fusion, might present solutions that require shorter timelines or less extensive infrastructure."

[PhysicsProf]

A new paper published in Nature:
                        Revisiting the cold case of cold fusion
{snip}

Thank you for citing this new publication, dated 27 May 2019 - and today is 29 May 2019.
Here is the abstract of the paper (my emphases)"

Nature (2019) | Download Citation

Abstract

The 1989 claim of 'cold fusion' was publicly heralded as the future of clean energy generation. However, subsequent failures to reproduce the effect heightened scepticism of this claim in the academic community, and effectively led to the disqualification of the subject from further study. Motivated by the possibility that such judgement might have been premature, we embarked on a multi-institution programme to re-evaluate cold fusion to a high standard of scientific rigour. Here we describe our efforts, which have yet to yield any evidence of such an effect. "

    Pause there - and note their emphasis that the "1989 claim of 'cold fusion'" (for which they reference Pons and Fleischmann)  has " yet to yield any evidence of such an effect."
This, after 20 years of research - with regard to the 1989 claims of P&F.

But they go on - and this gets very interesting:

Nonetheless, a by-product of our investigations has been to provide new insights into highly hydrided metals and low-energy nuclear reactions, and we contend that there remains much interesting science to be done in this underexplored parameter space.

Yes!   Just as I and others among us have been arguing for several years.


I would like to get ahold of the entire paper - does anyone have access to it?

[F6FLT]

...
I would like to get ahold of the entire paper - does anyone have access to it?

Hi PhysicsProf,

You can use: https://sci-hub.tw/ ,  you will have to enter either the DOI number or the URL from Nature.
This site is blocked in some countries. In this case a VPN is needed. The Chrome extension "Hola VPN" is the best way to get a free VPN just for the browser. Then you must choose the country of a server. Mine is "Taïwan" but others work too.

A high concentration of hydrogen seems to be the key. Is the metal only a catalyst to obtain this much higher hydrogen concentration in such a hydride than in the same gas volume even under pressure, I don't know.
If this is the case, it is finally possible that overcoming the Coulomb barrier (always possible by tunnel effect but unlikely question of probability of quantum mechanics) really occur and it is only the hydrogen concentration that allows it to be significant and observable. Just a hypothesis.