[Free Vulcan]

Long and a couple of days old but interesting.

[martin_fierro]

Not only cheap to run, but it always gets me to the office on time.

[The Free Engineer]

Hmmmm, Nickel Futures....

[rokkitapps]

how cheap is nickel? I read that a nickel coin (1945-2011) contains 7 cents of nickel. (pre-1945 is silver and worth $2+ ? )

[rpierce]

Thanks for posting this. Although I am completely unqualified to weigh in on the scientific aspects of this, what did catch my attention was the use of nickel. It seems like demand for it could increase significantly in the years ahead if this pans out (along with even the even more significant, game-changing aspects of the energy equation.)

[PapaBear3625]

I found an article "Special report: cold fusion is neither", which discusses a theory behind what's really happening in the e-cat, in case anybody's interested. In a nutshell, the theory is that a sufficiently intense electric field can cause a reverse beta decay (electron merging with proton to form neutron), with the resulting neutron having sufficiently low momentum to be readily absorbed by a nickel nucleus, forming an unstable isotope which decays into copper.

I'm still trying to digest the physics discussed in it, with side-trips into surface plasmon and the Born–Oppenheimer approximation

[dblshot]

As gramps used to say, “don’t take any wooden nickels boy.”

[Christian Engineer Mass]

writer needs to read up the difference between kW & kWh.

[GraceG]

But using Nickel as a fuel will eventually require the mining of it in outer space as it is somewhat rare here on earth....

[sten]

very interesting.

i’ll take 5

[MrEdd]

Rossi Ping.

[bert]

One of these tiny reactors could be used to power a wind turbine when the wind is calm

[ctdonath2]

Starts well, but then its first scientific expression is a show-stopping “Groupthink + Denial = Environmental Disaster + Expensive Energy + Wars” BS. Downhill from there.

If it’s serious, just give the science as science. Wandering off into the weeds of “science justice” (to coin a stupid phrase) goes nowhere.

[JimRed]

Powdered nickel and a catalyst are simply heated to about six hundred degrees centigrade in a stainless steel chamber filled with pressurized hydrogen.

I have no science or physics background outside of a college geology course, but maybe someone who does can clue me in. You can heat something to 600C with existing power sources, but what happens when the power goes off? It sounds like this is not a self-sustaining reaction, and even if the input can be backed off, it can't be totally removed; or can it?

[Paisan]

Global warming deniers do this every day.

The author decries the ‘group-think’ mentality of the scientific community. Then, he asserts his membership with this comment...

[Pan_Yan]

Sounds great.

I’d love to see things like this or microreactors or a decentralized power grid become our future.

I hope these boys know who all is lined up against them.

[B4Ranch]

ping

[Pontiac]

Biological processes have been found to produce transmuted isotopes without radiation.

Someone is going to have to point me to a scientific journal somewhere it this biological process is described that transmutes isotopes with or without radiation.

I am extreme skeptical of this article because of this one sentence in the article.

Either this author is a liar or a fool.

[Hemingway's Ghost]

Interesting thread bump to the top. Thanks for posting it, my friend.

[mad_as_he$$]

ping

[cynwoody]

The reactor is enclosed in a lead shield because some radiation is, unpredictably, produced during operation. However, the spent fuel is not radioactive but contains copper that has transmuted from nickel in the nuclear reaction.

If that's really happening, it's huge. Chemical reactions do not transmute elements. Chemical reactions do not produce the kind of radiation that needs lead shielding.