Cold nuclear fusion

From the Journal of Nuclear Physics: Cold nuclear fusion
The article is illustrated with several diagrams - go to the original link to see them.

Abstract
Recent accelerator experiments on fusion of various elements have clearly demonstrated that the effective cross-sections of these reactions depend on what material the target particle is placed in. In these experiments, there was a significant increase in the probability of interaction when target nuclei are imbedded in a conducting crystal or are a part of it. These experiments open a new perspective on the problem of so-called cold nuclear fusion.

PACS.: 25.45 – deuterium induced reactions
Submitted to Physics of Atomic Nuclei/Yadernaya Fizika in Russian

Introduction
Experiments of Fleischmann and Pons made about 20 years ago [1], raised the question about the possibility of nuclear DD fusion at room temperature. Conflicting results of numerous experiments that followed, dampened the initial euphoria, and the scientific community quickly came to common belief, that the results of [1] are erroneous. One of the convincing arguments of skeptics was the lack in these experiments of evidence of nuclear decay products. It was assumed that “if there are no neutrons, therefore is no fusion.” However, quite a large international group of physicists, currently a total of about 100-150 people, continues to work in this direction. To date, these enthusiasts have accumulated considerable experience in the field. The leading group of physicists working in this direction, in our opinion, is the group led by Dr. M. McKubre [2]. Interesting results were also obtained in the group of Dr. Y. Arata [3]. Despite some setbacks with the repeatability of results, these researchers still believe in the existence of the effect of cold fusion, even though they do not fully understand its nature. Some time ago we proposed a possible mechanism to explain the results of cold fusion of deuterium [4]. This work considered a possible mechanism of acceleration of deuterium contaminant atoms in the crystals through the interaction of atoms with long-wavelength lattice vibrations in deformed parts of the crystal. Estimates have shown that even if a very small portion of the impurity atoms (~105) get involved in this process and acquires a few keV energy, this will be sufficient to describe the energy released in experiments [2]. This work also hypothesized that the lifetime of the intermediate nucleus increases with decreasing energy of its excitation, so that so-called “radiation-less cooling” of the excited nucleus becomes possible. In [5], we set out a more detailed examination of the process. Quite recently, a sharp increase of the probability of fusion of various elements was found in accelerator experiments for the cases when the target particles are either imbedded in a metal crystal or are a part of the conducting crystal. These experiments compel us to look afresh on the problem of cold fusion.

Recent experiments on fusion of elements on accelerators
For atom-atom collisions the expression of the probability of penetration through a Coulomb barrier for bare nuclei should be modified, because atomic electrons screen the repulsion effect of nuclear charge. Such a modification for the isolated atom collisions has been performed in H.J. Assenbaum and others [6] using static Born-Oppenheimer approximation. The experimental results that shed further light on this problem were obtained in relatively recent works C. Rolfs [7] and K. Czerski [8]. Review of earlier studies on this subject is contained in the work of L. Bogdanova [9]. In these studies a somewhat unusual phenomenon was observed: the sub-barrier fusion cross sections of elements depend strongly on the physical state of the matter in which these processes are taking place. Figure 1 (left) shows the experimental data [8], demonstrating the dependence of the astrophysical factor S(E) for the fusion of elements of sub-threshold nuclear reaction on the aggregate state of the matter that contains the target nucleus 7Li. The same figure (right) presents similar data [7] for the DD reaction, when the target nucleus was embedded in a zirconium crystal. It must be noted that the physical nature of the phenomenon of increasing cross synthesis of elements in the case where this process occurs in the conductor crystal lattice is still not completely clear.

Figure 1. Up – experimental data [8], showing the energy dependence of the S-factor for sub-threshold nuclear reaction on the aggregate state of matter that contains the nucleus 7Li. Down – the similar data [7] for the reaction of DD, when the target nucleus is placed in a crystal of zirconium. The data are well described by the introduction of the screening potential of about 300 eV.

The phenomenon is apparently due to the strong anisotropy of the electrical fields of the crystal lattice in the presence of free conduction electrons. Data for zirconium crystals for the DD reactions can be well described by the introduction of the screening potential of about 300 eV. It is natural to assume that the corresponding distance between of two atoms of deuterium in these circumstances is less than the molecular size of deuterium. In the case of the screening potential of 300 eV, the distance of convergence of deuterium atoms is ~510ˆ12 m, which is about an order of magnitude smaller than the size of a molecule of deuterium, where the screening potential is 27 eV. As it turned out, the reaction rate for DD fusion in these conditions is quite sufficient to describe the experimental results of McKubre and others [2]. Below we present the calculation of the rate process similar to the mu-catalysis where, instead of the exchange interaction by the muon, the factor of bringing together two deuterons is the effect of conduction electrons and the lattice of the crystal.

Calculation of the DD fusion rate for “Metal-Crystal” catalysis
The expression for the cross section of synthesis in the collision of two nuclei can be written as

where for the DD fusion

Here the energy E is shown in keV in the center of mass. S(E) astrophysical factor (at low energies it can be considered constant), the factor 1/E reflects de Broglie dependence of cross section on energy. The main energy dependence of the fusion is contained in an expression

that determines the probability of penetration of the deuteron through the Coulomb barrier. From the above expressions, it is evident that in the case of DD collisions and in the case of DDμcatalysis, the physics of the processes is the same. We use this fact to determine the probability of DD fusion in the case of the “metal-crystalline” DD-catalysis. In the case of DDμ- catalysis the size of the muon deuterium molecules (ion+) is ~5×10ˆ13m. Deuterium nuclei approach such a distance at a kinetic energy ~3 keV. Using the expression (1), we found that the ratio of σ(3.0 keV)/σ(0.3 keV) = 1.05×10ˆ16. It should be noted that for the free deuterium molecule this ratio [ σ(3.0keV)/σ(0.03keV)] is about 10ˆ73. Experimental estimations of the fusion rate for the (DDμ)+ case presented in the paper by Hale [10]:

Thus, we obtain for the “metal-crystalline” catalysis DD fusion rate (for zirconium case):

Is this enough to explain the experiments on cold fusion? We suppose that a screening potential for palladium is about the same as for zirconium. 1 cmˆ3 (12.6 g) of palladium contains 6.0210ˆ23(12.6/106.4) = 0.710ˆ23 atoms. Fraction of crystalline cells with dual (or more) the number of deuterium atoms at a ratio of D: Pd ~1:1 is the case in the experiments [2] ~0.25 (e.g., for Poisson distribution). Crystal cell containing deuterium atoms 0 or 1, in the sense of a fusion reaction, we consider as “passive”. Thus, the number of “active” deuterium cells in 1 cmˆ3 of palladium is equal to 1.810ˆ22. In this case, in a 1 cmˆ3 of palladium the reaction rate will be

this corresponds to the energy release of about 3 kW. This is quite sufficient to explain the results of McKubre group [2]. Most promising version for practical applications would be Platinum (Pt) crystals, where the screening potential for d(d,p)t fusion at room temperature is about 675 eV [11]. In this case, DD fusion rate would be:

The problem of “nonradiative” release of nuclear fusion energy
As we have already noted, the virtual absence of conventional nuclear decay products of the compound nucleus was widely regarded as one of the paradoxes of DD fusion with the formation of 4He in the experiments [2]. We proposed the explanation of this paradox in [4]. We believe that after penetration through the Coulomb barrier at low energies and the materialization of the two deuterons in a potential well, these deuterons retain their identity for some time. This time defines the frequency of further nuclear reactions. Figure 2 schematically illustrates the mechanism of this process. After penetration into the compound nucleus at a very low energy, the deuterons happen to be in a quasi-stabile state seating in the opposite potential wells. In principle, this system is a dual “electromagnetic-nuclear” oscillator. In this oscillator the total kinetic energy of the deuteron turns into potential energy of the oscillator, and vice versa. In the case of very low-energy, the amplitude of oscillations is small, and the reactions with nucleon exchange are suppressed.

Fig. 2. Schematic illustration of the mechanism of the nuclear decay frequency dependence on the compound nucleus 4He* excitation energy for the merging deuterons is presented. The diagram illustrates the shape of the potential well of the compound nucleus. The edges of the potential well are defined by the strong interaction, the dependence at short distances Coulomb repulsion.

The lifetime of the excited 4He* nucleus can be considered in the formalism of the usual radioactive decay. In this case,


Here ν is the decay frequency, i.e., the reciprocal of the decay time τ. According to our hypothesis, the decay rate is a function of excitation energy of the compound nucleus E. Approximating with the first two terms of the polynomial expansion, we have:

Here ν° is the decay frequency at asymptotically low excitation energy. According to quantum-mechanical considerations, the wave functions of deuterons do not completely disappear with decreasing energy, as illustrated by the introduction of the term ν°. The second term of the expansion describes the linear dependence of the frequency decay on the excitation energy. The characteristic nuclear frequency is usually about 10ˆ22 sˆ-1. In fusion reaction D+D4He there is a broad resonance at an energy around 8 MeV. Simple estimates by the width of the resonance and the uncertainty relation gives a lifetime of the intermediate state of about 0.810ˆ22 s. The “nuclear” reaction rate falls approximately linearly with decreasing energy. Apparently, a group of McKubre [2] operates in an effective energy range below 2 keV in the c.m.s. Thus, in these experiments, the excitation energy is at least 4×10ˆ3 times less than in the resonance region. We assume that the rate of nuclear decay is that many times smaller. The corresponding lifetime is less than 0.3×10ˆ18 s. This fall in the nuclear reaction rate has little effect on the ratio of output decay channels of the compound nucleus, but down to a certain limit. This limit is about 6 keV. A compound nucleus at this energy is no longer an isolated system, since virtual photons from the 4He* can reach to the nearest electron and carry the excitation energy of the compound nucleus. The total angular momentum carried by the virtual photons can be zero, so this process is not prohibited. For the distance to the nearest electron, we chose the radius of the electrons in the helium atom (3.1×10ˆ11 m). From the uncertainty relations, duration of this process is about 10ˆ-19 seconds. In the case of “metal-crystalline” catalysis the distance to the nearest electrons can be significantly less and the process of dissipation of energy will go faster. It is assumed that after an exchange of multiple virtual photons with the electrons of the environment the relatively small excitation energy of compound nucleus 4He* vanishes, and the frequency of the compound nucleus decaying with the emission of nucleons will be determined only by the term ν°. For convenience, we assume that this value is no more than 10ˆ12-10ˆ14 per second. In this case, the serial exchange of virtual photons with the electrons of the environment in a time of about 10ˆ-16 will lead to the loss of ~4 MeV from the compound nucleus (after which decays with emission of nucleons are energetically forbidden), and then additional exchange will lead to the loss of all of the free energy of the compound nucleus (24 MeV) and finally the nucleus will be in the 4He ground state. The energy dissipation mechanism of the compound nucleus 4He* with virtual photons, discussed above, naturally raises the question of the electromagnetic-nuclear structure of the excited compound nucleus.

Fig. 3. Possible energy diagram of the excited 4He* nucleus is presented.

Figure 3 represents a possible energy structure of the excited 4He* nucleus and changes of its spatial configuration in the process of releasing of excitation energy. Investigation of this process might be useful to study the quark-gluon dynamics and the structure of the nucleus.

Discussion
Perhaps, in this long-standing history of cold fusion, finally the mystery of this curious and enigmatic phenomenon is gradually being opened. Besides possible benefits that the practical application of this discovery will bring, the scientific community should take into account the sociological lessons that we have gained during such a long ordeal of rejection of this brilliant, though largely accidental, scientific discovery. We would like to express the special appreciation to the scientists that actively resisted the negative verdict imposed about twenty years ago on this topic by the vast majority of nuclear physicists.

Acknowledgements
The author thanks Prof. S.B. Dabagov, Dr. M. McKubre, Dr. F. Tanzela, Dr. V.A. Kuzmin, Prof. L.N. Bogdanova and Prof. T.V. Tetereva for help and valuable discussions. The author is grateful to Prof. V.G. Kadyshevsky, Prof. V.A. Rubakov, Prof. S.S. Gershtein, Prof. V.V. Belyaev, Prof. N.E. Tyurin, Prof. V.L. Aksenov, Prof. V.M. Samsonov, Prof. I.M. Gramenitsky, Prof. A.G. Olshevsky, Prof. V.G. Baryshevsky for their help and useful advice. I am grateful to Dr. VM. Golovatyuk, Prof. M.D. Bavizhev, Dr. N.I. Zimin, Prof. A.M. Taratin for their continued support. I am also grateful to Prof. A. Tollestrup, Prof. U. Amaldi, Prof. W. Scandale, Prof. A. Seiden, Prof. R. Carrigan, Prof. A. Korol, Prof. J. Hauptmann, Prof. V. Guidi, Prof. F. Sauli, Prof. G. Mitselmakher, Prof. A. Takahashi, and Prof. X. Artru for stimulating feedback. Continued support in this process was provided with my colleagues and the leadership of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, and I am especially grateful to Prof. R. Parkey, Prof. N. Rofsky, Prof. J. Anderson and Prof. G. Arbique. I express special thanks to my wife, N.A. Tsyganova for her stimulating ideas and uncompromising support.

References
1. M. Fleischmann, S. Pons, M. W. Anderson, L. J. Li, M. Hawkins, J. Electro anal. Chem. 287, 293 (1990).
2. M. C. H. McKubre, F. Tanzella, P. Tripodi, and P. Haglestein, In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Cold Fusion. 2000, Lerici (La Spezia), Ed. F. Scaramuzzi, (Italian Physical Society, Bologna, Italy, 2001), p 3; M. C. H. McKubre, In Condensed Matter Nuclear Science: Proceedings Of The 10th International Conference On Cold Fusion; Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA 21-29 August, 2003, Ed by P. L. Hagelstein and S. R. Chubb, (World Sci., Singapore, 2006). M. C. H. McKubre, “Review of experimental measurements involving dd reactions”, Presented at the Short Course on LENR for ICCF-10, August 25, 2003.
3. Y. Arata, Y. Zhang, “The special report on research project for creation of new energy”, J. High Temp. Soc. (1) (2008).
4. E. Tsyganov, in Physics of Atomic Nuclei, 2010, Vol. 73, No. 12, pp. 1981–1989. Original Russian text published in Yadernaya Fizika, 2010, Vol. 73, No. 12, pp. 2036–2044.
5. E.N. Tsyganov, “The mechanism of DD fusion in crystals”, submitted to IL NUOVO CIMENTO 34 (4-5) (2011), in Proceedings of the International Conference Channeling 2010 in Ferrara, Italy, October 3-8 2010.
6. H.J. Assenbaum, K. Langanke and C. Rolfs, Z. Phys. A – Atomic Nuclei 327, p. 461-468 (1987).
7. C. Rolfs, “Enhanced Electron Screening in Metals: A Plasma of the Poor Man”, Nuclear Physics News, Vol. 16, No. 2, 2006.
8. A. Huke, K. Czerski, P. Heide, G. Ruprecht, N. Targosz, and W. Zebrowski, “Enhancement of deuteron-fusion reactions in metals and experimental implications”, PHYSICAL REVIEW C 78, 015803 (2008).
9. L.N. Bogdanova, Proceedings of International Conference on Muon Catalyzed Fusion and Related Topics, Dubna, June 18–21, 2007, published by JINR, E4, 15-2008-70, p. 285-293
10. G.M. Hale, “Nuclear physics of the muon catalyzed d+d reactions”, Muon Catalyzed Fusion 5/6 (1990/91) p. 227-232.
11. F. Raiola (for the LUNA Collaboration), B. Burchard, Z. Fulop, et al., J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part. Phys.31, 1141 (2005); Eur. Phys. J. A 27, s01, 79 (2006).

Not Such a Stretch to Reach for the Stars

From New York Times: Not Such a Stretch to Reach for the Stars
ORLANDO, Fla. — A starship without an engine?

It may seem a fantastical notion, but hardly more so than the idea of building a starship of any kind, especially with NASA’s future uncertain at best.

Yet here in Orlando, not far from the launching site of the space program’s most triumphant achievements, the government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, drew hundreds this month to a symposium on the 100-Year Starship Study, which is devoted to ideas for visiting the stars.

Participants — an eclectic mix of engineers, scientists, science fiction fans, students and dreamers — explored a mix of ideas, including how to organize and finance a century-long project; whether civilization would survive, because an engine to propel a starship could also be used for a weapon to obliterate the planet; and whether people need to go along for the trip. (Alternatively, machines could build humans at the destination, perhaps tweaked to live in non-Earth-like environs.)

“The space program, any space program, needs a dream,” said one participant, Joseph Breeden. “If there are no dreamers, we’ll never get anywhere.”

It was Dr. Breeden who offered the idea of an engineless starship.

A physicist by training, he had most recently devised equations that forecast to banks how much they were going to lose on their consumer loans.

From his doctoral thesis, Dr. Breeden remembered that in a chaotic gravitational dance, stars are sometimes ejected at high speeds. The same effect, he believes, could propel starships.

First, find an asteroid in an elliptical orbit that passes close to the Sun. Second, put a starship in orbit around the asteroid. If the asteroid could be captured into a new orbit that clings close to the Sun, the starship would be flung on an interstellar trajectory, perhaps up to a tenth of the speed of light.

“The chaotic dynamics of those two allow all the energy of one to be transferred to the other,” said Dr. Breeden, who came toting copies of a paper describing the technique. “It’s a unique type of gravity assist.”

Darpa, by design, pursues out-of-the-box projects without immediate military use. (In the 1960s and 1970s, for instance, the agency laid the groundwork for the Internet.)

David L. Neyland, the director of tactical technology at Darpa, who orchestrated the one-year starship study, noted that his agency was founded more than 50 years ago as a response to Sputnik, the Soviet Union’s cold war satellite coup.

And the research and development of technologies that could lead to a starship, he said, would likely create useful military spinoffs.

“At every step along the way in the space business, the Department of Defense has benefited,” Mr. Neyland said.

In the talks, speakers laid out challenges that, while herculean, did not seem out of the realm of the possible, even without resorting to exotic physics like “Star Trek” warp drives.

Still, the sheer distances are daunting. “The problem of the stars is larger than most people realize,” said James Benford, a physicist who organized sessions on starship propulsion.

Richard Obousy, president of Icarus Interstellar, an organization of volunteers that has already spent several years on starship designing, gave an analogy. If Earth were in Orlando and the closest star system, Alpha Centauri, were in Los Angeles, then NASA’s two Voyager spacecraft, the most distant manmade objects, have traveled just one mile.

Another way of looking at the challenge is that in 10,000 years, the speed of humans has jumped by a factor of about 10,000, from a stroll (2.6 m.p.h.) to the Apollo astronauts’ return from the Moon (26,000 m.p.h.). Reaching the nearest stars in reasonable time — decades, not centuries — would require a velocity jump of another factor of 10,000.

The first steps, however, are easy to imagine. Even in the 1950s, rocket scientists realized that the current engines — burning kerosene or hydrogen and spewing flames out the nozzle — are the rocket equivalent of gas guzzlers. They designed nuclear engines that use reactors to heat liquid hydrogen into a fast-moving stream of gas. NASA had such engines ready for a hypothetical manned mission to Mars to follow the Moon landings.

Today, the space agency has revived that work, beginning with studies on an ideal fuel for a space reactor, and new nuclear engines could be ready by the end of the decade.

As for radioactivity concerns, the reactors would not be started until they reached space. “Space is a wonderful place to use nuclear power, because it is already radioactive,” said Geoffrey Landis, a scientist at the NASA Glenn Research Center in Ohio (and a science fiction author).

More advanced nuclear engines could use reactors to generate electric fields that accelerated charged ions for the thrust. Then fusion engines — producing energy through the combining of hydrogen atoms — could finally be powerful enough for interstellar travel.

The British Interplanetary Society put together a concept for a fusion-powered starship in the 1970s called Daedalus, extrapolating from known physics and technology. Dr. Obousy’s group, Icarus Interstellar, is revisiting the Daedalus design to see if 30-some years of new technology can produce a better starship.

Daedalus dwarfs the Saturn 5, the rocket that took astronauts to the Moon. “However, it’s no bigger than a Nimitz aircraft carrier,” Dr. Obousy said. “We have the ability to create big things. We just don’t have the ability to launch big things.”

Dr. Benford advocated another approach, harking back to the era of sailing ships. Giant sails on the starship could billow from photons beamed from Earth by lasers or giant antennae. “Here’s a case where we know the physics, and the engineering seems doable,” he said.

By contrast, no one has yet built an energy-producing fusion reactor.

Some of the questions posed at the symposium seemed almost mundane: What kind of lights should a starship have? How do you pack enough spare parts for a 50-year trip when there’s no Home Depot along the way? Other talks ruminated on theological and philosophical questions. “Did Jesus Die for Klingons, Too?” was the title of one.

“Vision without execution is daydreaming,” Mr. Neyland said in his introductory remarks, paraphrasing a Japanese proverb.

“And what we’re trying to inspire with the 100-Year Starship Study is that first step in establishing a bar that’s high enough, with challenges that are hard enough that people will actually go start tackling some of these really hard problems.”

For Dr. Breeden, discussions with other attendees affirmed his underlying idea and calculations, but it seems unlikely that asteroid flinging would be sufficient by itself. Still, it could prove a useful and cost-effective supplement for other propulsions systems.

The $1.1 million study — $1 million from Darpa, $100,000 from NASA — will culminate with the awarding of a $500,000 grant to an organization that will take the torch for further work.

Darpa would then exit the starship business, sidestepping interrogation by Congress during the next budget hearings of why it was spending taxpayer money on science fiction dreams.

“They want to get people thinking about a topic and propagate it very subtly,” said Gregory Benford, a physics professor at the University of California, Irvine, who is also a science fiction author (and the twin brother of James Benford). “They want it out of the budget by early next year.”

Perhaps tellingly, no high-level NASA officials spoke at the symposium other than Pete Worden, director of the Ames Research Center in California, whom Mr. Neyland described as a “co-conspirator” and who is often regarded as a maverick in the space agency.

“If we’re lucky, it will change NASA,” the science-fiction-writing Dr. Benford said of the starship research.

Some speakers said they thought the first goal over the next century should be colonizing the solar system, starting with Mars.

Dr. Obousy, for one, made his preference known in a couplet:

On to the stars!

Cowards shoot for Mars.

Israel Reportedly Considers Pre-Emptive Attack on Iran

From FoxNews: Israel Reportedly Considers Pre-Emptive Attack on Iran

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly trying to rally support for an attack on Iran, according to government sources.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman are said to be among those backing a pre-emptive strike to neutralize Iran's nuclear ambitions, Sky News reports.

A "narrow majority" of ministers currently oppose the move, which could lead to retaliation.

In response to reports of an effort to gain cabin approval on Netanyahu's proposal, Lieberman said: "Iran poses the most dangerous threat to world order."

Lieberman added that Israel's military options should not be a matter for public discussion.

In response to Netanyahu's proposal, Iran's military chief warned that an Israeli attack on the Islamic nation's nuclear development sites "will inflict heavy damages," according to the Iranian ISNA news agency.

"The U.S. officials know that the Zionist regime's military attack against Iran will inflict heavy damages to the U.S. seriously as well as the Zionist regime," said Hassan Firouzabadi, Iran's chairman of the joint chiefs of staff of Iran's armed forces.

Israel successfully test-fired on Wednesday a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and striking Iran. An Israeli defense official told The Associated Press that the military tested a "rocket propulsion system" in an exercise planned long ago. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of security restrictions, and declined to give further information.

Further information about the test was censored by the military. Foreign reports, however, said the military test-fired a long-range Jericho missile -- capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and striking Iran.

Israel considers Iran its most dangerous threat. It cites Tehran's nuclear program, its ballistic missile development, repeated references by the Iranian leader to Israel's destruction and Iran's support for anti-Israel militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

Iran, meanwhile, has said its nuclear program is meant only to produce energy for the oil-rich country. It has blamed Israel for disruptions in its nuclear program, including the mysterious assassinations of a string of Iranian nuclear scientists and a computer virus that wiped out some of Iran's nuclear centrifuges.

Israel has repeatedly said that it hopes economic sanctions will persuade Iran to halt its nuclear program. Israeli diplomats have been lobbying the international community for tougher sanctions.

Blue Castle Nuclear Project Status Presented at Nuclear Construction Summit

From MarketWatch: Blue Castle Nuclear Project Status Presented at Nuclear Construction Summit
PROVO, UT, Nov 02, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- Blue Castle Holdings Inc., an energy infrastructure development company, presented the status of the Blue Castle Nuclear Project at the 2nd Annual Nuclear Construction Summit in Charlotte, NC, on October 25th. The presentation included the progress on its Early Site Permit Application which will be submitted to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Nuclear Construction Summit was attended by electric utility executives, major nuclear developers and companies deploying new nuclear plants.

Tom Retson, Chief Operating Officer of BCH, gave the attendees a close look at the company's current structure, its innovative business and financial strategy, and the status of licensing activities currently underway at the project site near Green River, Utah. He noted that his presentation charts can be viewed at the Company's website.

Mr. Retson described the company's current assets, including the land and water leases essential for plant operation, as well as the milestones achieved over the last five (5) years. He then detailed the company's site characterization activities, including meteorology, geology, hydrology, seismology, demographics and emergency planning. The conference attendees were also shown graphs and pictures of the activities taking place at the project site. The importance of the significant support received from state and local governments for the deployment of the two-unit nuclear power plant was recognized as essential to the project success.

The company's nuclear infrastructure development efforts are aimed at having a fully-licensed, ready to construct nuclear plant site in 2016. After four (4) years of preparation, BCH initiated its licensing activities in January of this year and has completed about 30% of the pre-ESP (Early Site Permit) activities. BCH is expecting to submit a completed ESP application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in early 2013. The Company's expectations of success are based on executing a business model that focuses on the option value of the plant at the conclusion of licensing.

In his concluding remarks, Mr. Retson summed up the company's status, "Led by a committed management team, significant value has been added and project risks reduced with every successful activity. We expect to obtain a license for the construction of two nuclear power plants in Green River, on cost and on schedule."

About Blue Castle Holdings
Blue Castle Holdings Inc. (BCH or the Company) is an energy infrastructure development company based in Utah and Colorado. It is presently developing the leading new nuclear plant project site in the Western U.S. Through its wholly owned subsidiary, Willow Creek LLC (WC), the Company is also engaged in the construction, replacement and repair of natural gas, crude oil pipelines and fuel storage facilities for its customers located in Intermountain West.

More information about Blue Castle Holdings can be found at: www.bluecastleproject.com

San Onofre nuclear plant in California returns to normal after ammonia leak triggers alert

From the Washington Post: San Onofre nuclear plant in California returns to normal after ammonia leak triggers alert
IRVINE, Calif. — Officials at a Southern California nuclear plant searched for the cause of a non-radioactive ammonia leak that triggered an unusual emergency alert and precautionary evacuation of some workers before it was contained.

Officials stressed there was never any danger to the public.

Workers stopped the leak by 5 p.m. Tuesday, about two hours after it was detected in a storage tank in the water purification system of San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station’s Unit 3, said Todd Adler, the plant’s engineering manager.

The emergency alert was required because fumes could prevent access to certain areas of the plant, Adler told reporters at a media information center in Irvine, Calif.

The alert, the second lowest of four federal classifications for emergencies at commercial nuclear power plants, was canceled at 6:07 p.m. and evacuated workers were allowed to return.

“It’s a chemical spill that could happen at any industrial facility,” Adler said.

The leak was in the non-nuclear section of the plant, which is operated by Southern California Edison. No radioactive material was released, no injuries were reported and there was no danger to the public, the company said.

Approximately 25 gallons of leaked ammonia were collected in a basin underneath the tank that was designed for that purpose, Edison spokeswoman Lauren Bartlett said.

Exposure to high levels of ammonia can cause irritation, serious burns, lung damage, and even death.

It is used at the plant to treat water that is turned into steam, which runs the turbines that produce electricity. The treated water also is used to remove heat from the reactor’s cooling system.

The leak did not affect electricity production at the plant, and other units remained fully operational, Adler said.

The plant is located about 45 miles north of San Diego, just south of San Clemente, and is jointly owned by Edison, San Diego Gas and Electric and the city of Riverside.

While not dangerous for the public or plant workers, an emergency alert at the power plant is an unusual occurrence.

“This is not normal,” Edison spokesman Chris Abel said. “The last time we had one (alert) declared was May 1999, because of a suspected pipe bomb on the freeway.”

In July, an “unusual event” was declared at the nuclear plant when one of several redundant security systems used to monitor the grounds stopped working, utility officials said. The system was restored within 45 minutes.

Japan's Fukushima reactor may have new problem

From CBS News: November 2, 2011: Japan's Fukushima reactor may have new problem
(AP)

TOKYO - Radioactive particles associated with nuclear fission have been detected at Japan's tsunami-damaged atomic power plant, officials said Wednesday, suggesting one of its reactors could have a new problem.

The fresh concerns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility came as a reactor in southern Japan was restarted and brought back online, marking a first since the March 11 disaster created an outcry over the safety of Japan's nuclear power sites.

Utility officials said gas from inside the Fukushima plant's No. 2 reactor indicated the presence of radioactive xenon, which could be the byproduct of unexpected nuclear fission. Boric acid was injected through a cooling pipe as a precaution because it can counteract nuclear reactions.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, said there was no rise in the reactor's temperature or pressure. The company said the radioactive materials had not reached the point when nuclear reactions are self-sustaining and the detection of the xenon would have no major impact on workers' efforts to keep the reactor cool and stable.

Because the half-life of the isotopes detected is short, the xenon was likely created recently. But officials said the level was so low that further tests would be required to confirm the measurements were not an error.

"We have confirmed that the reactor is stable and we don't believe this will have any impact on our future work," said TEPCO spokesman Osamu Yokokura. He said no radiation leaks outside the plant were detected.

Hiroyuki Imari, a spokesman with the Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency, said the detection of the gas was not believed to indicate a major problem, but its cause was being investigated.

The plant is the site of the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. A 12-mile exclusion zone has been in effect since the earthquake and tsunami crippled the facility northeast of Tokyo, sending three of its reactors into meltdowns, touching off fires and triggering several explosions.

TEPCO had reported significant progress toward stabilizing the facility, saying that it has essentially reached a "cold shutdown," meaning the temperatures at the reactors are constant and controlled.

Even so, a Japanese government panel says it will take at least 30 years to safely decommission the facility.

The Fukushima disaster has severely impacted Japan's nuclear power supply.

Forty-three of Japan's 54 reactors are now suspended for inspections or mechanical troubles and public opposition to restarting them since the disaster has cast doubts on the nation's overall nuclear future.

Before the tsunami, Japan relied on nuclear power for about one-third of its electricity. If power companies cannot win local approval, which is required to restart reactors shut down for glitches or inspections, all of Japan's plants could be offline by next May.

But, in a first since the disaster, a nuclear reactor in southern Japan has resumed operation after a monthlong shutdown for a technical problem. A reactor in Hokkaido, northern Japan, was brought back online in August, but it had not been completely shut down and was out of commercial service only for a regular inspection.

The Kyushu Electric Power Co. says No. 4 reactor at the Genkai nuclear power plant in southern Japan restarted late Tuesday and was generating electricity Wednesday. It automatically shut down Oct. 4 following an abnormality in a steam condenser, but that didn't cause any radiation leaks or injuries.

The reactor will be closed again in January for routine inspections.

Faster than light particles? Not so fast, some say

From Science@MSNBC.com: Faster than light particles? Not so fast, some say
By Natalie Wolchover
OurAmazingPlanet
updated 10/19/2011 8:57:14 PM ET 2011-10-20T00:57:14

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Three weeks ago, a group of Italian scientists announced that they had measured objects moving faster than light, violating the fundamental laws of physics. Since then, their work has been met by a barrage of criticism. Physicists claim to have found flaws in the group's method of recording the speed of the neutrinos, and they say that correcting for these flaws slows the neutrinos to less astonishing speeds.

The researchers who conducted the OPERA experiment (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tracking Apparatus) stand by their work, which found neutrinos to be traveling from Switzerland to Italy at 1.000025 times the speed of light.

They invited the rest of the scientific community to scrutinize their startling finding, and that is exactly what has happened — a classic example of science in action, shouldering its way toward a consensus one way or the other on a controversial topic.

The current debate includes a series of exchanges between the OPERA scientists and Ronald van Elburg of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

In a paper posted to the physics pre-print website arXiv.org, van Elburg argues that the Italian scientists failed to account for the fact that the GPS satellite they used as their timekeeping device is moving. If they had corrected for the motion of the satellite as Einstein's theory of special relativity requires, they would not have measured the neutrinos traveling at a superluminal speed, van Elburg asserts.

The OPERA scientists used the clock on a GPS satellite to time the departure of neutrinos from CERN, Europe's high-energy physics lab in Geneva, and the arrival of the neutrinos at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory near Rome, about 451 miles away.

Famously, they found that neutrinos arrived at Gran Sasso approximately 60 nanoseconds before a light beam would have.

But their timekeeping was flawed, van Elburg says, because the GPS clock was moving along its orbit from west to east above CERN and Gran Sasso, roughly parallel to the west-east line between them, and special relativity shows that this motion of the clock ever-so-slightly changes the distance between it and each of the two ground locations. When radio signals from the GPS are detected and recorded at each location to mark the neutrino departure and arrival times, the OPERA scientists needed to subtract the time it took for the signals to travel that distance. Van Elburg said they weren’t using the right measure of the distance, because they weren't considering the distance-shortening effect of the GPS clock's motion.

If they had applied the right correction to the neutrino departure time at CERN, the OPERA scientists would have recorded it as being 32 nanoseconds earlier, van Elburg said. Similarly, they would have calculated the neutrino arrival time at Gran Sasso as being 32 nanoseconds later. Adding up these changes, the neutrinos' travel time was actually 64 nanoseconds longer than the scientists thought it was, van Elburg said, making the particles 4 nanoseconds slower than light.

OPERA responded to van Elburg's accusation. "The author [van Elburg] is not really taking into account special relativity (SR), but he is trying to compose the speed of the satellite with the speed of the radio waves, which makes no sense in SR," spokesman Pasquale Migliozzi told Life's Little Mysteries. "Composing speeds" is a special way of adding them together in special relativity.

Van Elburg countered that Migliozzi has not correctly understood his argument. "I am not composing velocities but adding two distances in a single reference frame," Van Elburg said. A reference frame can be thought of as the point of view of a moving object — in this case, the GPS satellite.

Migliozzi also asserted, "The author does not know that relativistic effects are accounted for in the GPS system." To this, van Elburg said he is checking his facts and will follow up with additional details soon.

Stay tuned. The fate of Einstein's theory of relativity — and indeed, most of modern physics —hangs in the balance.