When someone mentions cold fusion, they are explicitly referencing a net energy-producing process that operates at room temperature. That isn't what you are referencing.
It can not ever produce net energy in this setting, so no, it doesn't do the job.
It is in a room, but the temperature inside that vessel is anywhere north of 35,000 C. Unless you have a very hot room that isn't 'room temperature' by any stretch of the definition. Note that room temperature is about the temperature of the process not the temperature of the building containing that process.
Look, call 35K cold if you want. It's relatively easy to make some fusion at home [1] at even colder temperatures.
However, the real issue here is __producing__ energy (edit: more than you put in). This has never been done in a sustained way (H-bombs produce net energy, there were some promising inertial confinement and tokamak results recently, but never for sustained periods of time).
And in the chain, it's pointed out quite clearly that everybody understands "cold fusion" as referring to "net positive energy".
I am old enough to remember "The Storm in a Glass". Back then, there was a discussion about excessive heat, because the scientific community doubted the possibility of nuclear fusion reactions at such low temperatures and energy costs. My own hypotheses were: a) the reaction is caused by cosmic radiation (muons), and the deuterium filled lattice only amplifies natural high-energy cosmic radiation; b) the reaction occurs through contamination of samples with radioactive materials, and the matrix only amplifies natural decay reactions; c) cracks in the material create resonance with alternating electric current, and as a result, a natural particle accelerator is formed.
In the video, researches use lattice to boosts fusor performance by few orders of magnitude. Why you think that they cannot boost it further?
I have not tried, but my idea (more than 10 years ago, before the war) was to cover the lattice with atom-thin blanket of depleted Uranium, then to shine at it with radiation from hot mix of radioactive isotopes, with hope that lattice will boost performance of Uranium by 1k-10k. The obvious problem for practical use of this idea is small cross-section of the Uranium blanket, so maybe thousands of thin layers of Nickel-Uranium will be required to make it work, or Nickel-Uranium alloy at 98%-2%.
PS.
The purpose for of the device is to heat homes, to avoid need of Russian gas, not to generate electricity.
Your comment makes it sound like you don't understand the physics of it at all.
What does Uranium have to do with this? What does "performance of uranium" means? What do you think will happen when you bombard it with "radiation"? What kind of "radiation"?
For heating, you'd be better off using a heat pump. Or I guess you could take some radioactive material and shield it. Or even a breeder reactor, but that's fission.
I do not want to come across as disrespectful, but what you're saying sounds like alchemy, or the kind of "science" they show in superhero movies.
I could understand using a layer of metal to produce x-rays, and concentrate these to heat a sample (a bit similar to H-bombs, BTW), but I am not a nuclear physicist either. Real physicists have thought about this much more than we did, and if there was a simple pathway to practical fusion, we'd know about it by now. I think you underestimate the complexity of all this (kind of a "Dunning-Kruger" effect), go watch the "MIT's pathway to fusion[1]" videos for an introduction to the problem and modern approaches :)
Do you know how LENR works? Basically, deuterium is dissolved in palladium or nickel (the lattice), until metal starts to crack, to create high concentration of deuterium. Then muons are used[0] to start some fusion. Higher concentration of deuterium means that single muon can accelerate more nuclear fusions, so yield is better. However, artificial muons are expensive to produce, while cosmic muons are rare, so reactor may run fine on one day and fail on other just because of bad or good cosmic weather. If we will have cheap source of muons, then LENR will be practical.
My idea is to try to accelerate fusion by banging Uranium in the lattice, instead of bombarding it with muons. It's just an idea with little chance that it will actually work as-is. Many iterations of research and fine tuning are required to make it work.
I'm not saying it is 35K, I'm saying it is at least 35K and probably much higher.
Whether it is closer to room temperature or not is not relevant, when someone says 'room temperature' they are talking about 21 degrees Celsius plus or minus a couple, not above the temperature where any kind of solid matter exists. Even tungsten, which melts at 3422 degrees C and boils at the magic number of 5555 C is just vapor at that point. Closer isn't relevant, at all.
It didn't evaporate because it is constructed carefully not to, but that doesn't mean it isn't blazing hot, just like the gas burner on your stove can be made out of aluminum which would be melted by the flame if it ever became mis-aligned.
But that doesn't mean the flame has a temperature lower than the melting point of aluminum, it just means that whoever designed it knew enough to ensure that the aluminum is never exposed to more than that it can handle in spite of being in close proximity to something that is able to melt it instantly. The biggest factors there are flame shape, stand-off and cooling effect of the gas supply itself.
Note that when you casually write 'plasma' that you are talking about material that is so hot that it has shed all of its electrons, it is just the nuclei that you're looking at and if it so much as touches anything at all it will waltz right through it as if it isn't there. See also: plasma cutters[1] for a nice demonstration of what happens when you use these facts to your advantage. But for things like plasma based fusion they are a very tricky problem because you have to maintain the plasma while simultaneously extracting energy from it.
The device shown in the video is very, very nice and well engineered, it is amazing that they got it work as well as they did with such simplicity but the process is eminently unsuitable for energy generation as far as I understand this stuff, keeping the plasma stable and cooling the whole thing uses many kilowatts. It's an improvement over a linear accelerator or a tokamak for the production of short lived nucleotides it is not an energy generating device.
[1] Plasma cutters also don't instantly disintegrate the cutting tip, that's because they blow copious air through the nozzle to keep the hot plasma away from the tip itself and to direct it onto the workpiece that you are cutting. But woe to you if your air pressure unexpectedly drops.
Although the plasma cutter creates extremely hot flames, it operates at room temperature and does not require powerful radiation protection, except for protective goggles, and it is easy to turn on and off. This sets it apart from the blast furnace. Similarly, a cold reactor may require a source of high-energy particles with very high temperatures to start, but they operate at room temperature, are easily turned on and off, and cannot be used to create a bomb. Note that heat is the problem for an isotope breeder because the reactor will require more powerful cooling. It's not designed to generate heat or electricity. This doesn't mean that it's not possible to create a cold reactor that generates a lot of heat, but it also doesn't mean that such a reactor will be economically viable. We don't know.
I mean that it is time to stop stigmatizing Cold Nuclear Fusion because a reactor for isotope breeding could have been created 30 years ago, saving many thousands of lives. The hating of Cold Fusion has cost many people their lives. It would be better to allocate a small fraction of a budget for other nuclear power plants and direct them towards CF, because the cost of CF iteration is orders of magnitude lower, and a few million dollars or euros could significantly advance science.
Can you explain why you continue to say things that make no sense after it has been pointed out to you multiple times by multiple people? It's a bit strange, normally you'd realize your mistake and adapt, but you seem to persist in purposefully misunderstanding what it means when people talk about 'room temperature fusion'.
Let me spell it out once more and then as far as I'm concerned we're done here. Room temperature as a qualifier for a process means that the entire process operates at room temperature. Boiling an egg does not take place at room temperature, even if it takes place in a room. Superconduction - for now - does not take place at room temperature but far below it (this may change shortly, the jury is still out on that). Plasma, aka the fourth state of matter can in very extreme cases be created at low temperatures but we're talking about a couple of nuclei worth at best ( https://www.livescience.com/64422-plasma-cooled-with-lasers.... ) but normally only does so at thousands of degrees.
This means that the term 'room temperature' simply does not apply.
> This doesn't mean that it's not possible to create a cold reactor that generates a lot of heat
You really should read that sentence again. Cancel out the double negative and see if it makes sense to you.
> The hating of Cold Fusion has cost many people their lives.
This is complete nonsense.
> It would be better to allocate a small fraction of a budget for other nuclear power plants and direct them towards CF, because the cost of CF iteration is orders of magnitude lower, and a few million dollars or euros could significantly advance science.
Science budgets are limited and tend to be directed to areas that are suspected to be fruitful. This makes it hard to get funding for what is - charitably - called crank science (or, more precisely, pathological science), which includes cold fusion. If you are a strong believer in the concept you should fund it yourself rather than to put the burden of your beliefs on others.
Temperature is statistics. Our bodies are penetrated by high-energy cosmic rays, but they do not change the room temperature. Cosmic muons can accelerate tens of thousands of nuclear fusion reactions in a deuterium-filled lattice, melting the metal, but it does not change the room temperature a lot. So, at what temperature do these reactions occur? On one hand, high energies are required to overcome the Coulomb barrier, and on the other hand, the reaction does not require heating of materials to 1MK or higher.
I have used the term Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (low relative to High Energy Nuclear Reactions in thermonuclear fusion). LENR allows for the creation of a cold fusion reactor, that can be started at room temperature and operated at low temperature, unlike thermonuclear fusion reactor. Please, see the difference between «nuclear reactions» and a «nuclear reactor».
> You really should read that sentence again. Cancel out the double negative and see if it makes sense to you.
Not a native speaker. It makes perfect sense in my native language. :-/
> This is complete nonsense.
I mean that delay or absence of medical treatment caused lot of premature deaths in these 30 years. Progress saves lives. Delaying of progress reverses the process.
> Science budgets are limited and tend to be directed to areas that are suspected to be fruitful. This makes it hard to get funding for what is - charitably - called crank science, which includes cold fusion.
As you see, private capital is not afraid about loss of scientific reputation. IMHO, it will easier to get funding for LENR reactors when they break the ice. I was unable to find a funding for similar idea before the war.
> If you are a strong believer in the concept you should fund it yourself rather than to put the burden of your beliefs on others.
I will try that after the war. However, I may pursuit a different goal - a bluster (photon streams with watts of energy per single photon), to kick Russian drones out from the sky.
Temperature is a measure of the kinetic energy of the molecules in a substance, a measure of velocity.
> Our bodies are penetrated by high-energy cosmic rays, but they do not change the room temperature.
They in fact do. Every time a high-energy cosmic ray interacts with a particle in the room the room temperature goes up. The chances of that happening are small because from the perspective of such a ray space is very much empty. But some substances (such as water) are pretty good at absorbing those rays and that's part of the reason why hard radiation is risky for organisms.
> So, at what temperature do these reactions occur?
Those reactions, when they occur are more like traffic accidents. The impact results in the transfer of kinetic energy and will result in a 'shower' of particles emitting from the point of impact and some of those particles in turn will fragment (but slightly later). They will typically spray out from the impact point. Cloudchamber photographs can show you in nice detail what such interactions look like. So the question at which temperature those reactions occur doesn't really have meaning, each particle has it's own velocity and the end result is some photons emitted by the electrons of the excited particles and probably some new particles (think of them as fragments spraying out from a traffic accident).
> Cosmic muons can accelerate tens of thousands of nuclear fusion reactions in a deuterium-filled lattice, melting the metal, but it does not change the room temperature a lot.
I can't parse any of this. But you're going to have to trust me on the physics of electostatic confinement fusors: the losses are such that there is no known path to producing net energy through that method. You can fuse nuclei, and your link above is interesting but it doesn't change the fundaments at all, it is an optimization and a good one but it doesn't get you closer to 'net out' any more than being able to run the 100 meters in 5 seconds would get you closer to breaking the lightspeed barrier, or like how piling up bricks gets you closer to the moon with every brick but you will never get there.
> So, at what temperature do these reactions occur?
This is again not a very meaningful question, the answer is 'much higher than room temperature'. The interesting question would be: does it produce more energy than you put in and if not can it be improved so that it does and I'm afraid the answer is simply 'no'.
> LENR allows for the creation of a cold fusion reactor, that can be started at room temperature and operated at low temperature, unlike thermonuclear fusion reactor.
That's a novel interpretation of the words 'cold fusion', and uses 'low temperature' in a way that I'm not comfortable with, even if it stops short of getting into the millions of degrees.
> I mean that delay or absence of medical treatment caused lot of premature deaths in these 30 years. Progress saves lives. Delaying of progress reverses the process.
Nobody is delaying progress. Well, maybe except for those that would siphon off budget from legit science to pursue their pet fringe science subjects.
> As you see, private capital is not afraid about loss of scientific reputation.
And that's perfectly fine. Whoever manages to do this in their garage will win a Nobel anyway. But if you don't have an advanced physics degree the chances of you discovering a novel principle for fusion that leads to net energy out on your table top are nil, and if you do have that degree you are probably not much better off. If there was so much as a theoretical path to net energy out fusion that does not require many billions of $ you can bet that there would be people all over it, in fact I would wager that we would have already found it.
> IMHO, it will easier to get funding for LENR reactors when they break the ice.
Possible, but not likely, see above bit about breaking the speed of light.
> I was unable to find a funding for similar idea before the war.
That's not surprising, really. Investors tend to evaluate the risks.
> However, I may pursuit a different goal - a bluster (photon streams with watts of energy per single photon), to kick Russian drones out from the sky.
I wish you all the best with that. But do be aware that a single photon carries no more than 10^-19 Joules and that Watts are a measure of power, not of energy...). This makes me suspect that you know a lot less about this stuff than the confidence with which you present yourself warrants.
This doesn't looks like a healthy discussion. I will reply to healthy bits only.
> That's a novel interpretation of the words 'cold fusion', and uses 'low temperature' in a way that I'm not comfortable with, even if it stops short of getting into the millions of degrees.
I'm aware that many scientist are interpreting cold fusion as «room temperature nuclear reactions», then immediately discard the baby with the bath. It takes lot of energy to explain that «Low Energy Nuclear Reactions» doesn't mean «No Extra Energy Nuclear Reactions». It just LENR guys are trying to lower the Coulomb barrier or boost performance, to make reaction happen in cooler environment, while ITER guys are trying to make hotter environment.
> But do be aware that a single photon carries no more than 10^-19 Joules and that Watts are a measure of power, not of energy...).
I'm obsessed with ideas of reproduction of quantum effects at macro scale, so macro-photon is my goal №1. Of course I have no knowledge required to do that, because it will be for the first time, but I have an idea for the starting point.
It doesn't work anywhere near room temperature. Fusors operate at 10-30 keV, which is about 100 Million to 300 Million C. The plasma is extremely low density so there is very little power to heat things, and thus these units can safely run on a table top, but the temperature of the ions is enormous.
You are right, nuclear reactions requires enough enormous energy to overcome the barrier OR a heavy particles (muon). However, fusor works at room temperature. It doesn't require preheating to 150MK to start operation, like ITER do.
No, the Fusor does not work at room temperature, the same electric coils that contain the ions also heat the ions. It actually runs substantially hotter than ITER.
Aye, it produces neutron isotopes, but not at room temperature and not with a net excess of energy.
It's the difference between going on a Sunday walk and a Monday commute. Yes, technically, your body is physically moving places, but the similarities don't extend much beyond that point nor would we encourage mistaking one for the other.
35 thousand Kelvin in a "cold" nuclear fusion reactor is much closer to room temperature than the temperature in a "hot" nuclear fusion reactor. Both types of reactors do not produce excess energy, but the cold reactor has already found application while the hot reactor will be ready in 25 years. Which kind of reactor is hoax?
The cold reactor fuses nuclei by virtue of energy input, the other tries to extract energy from a fusion reaction larger than its input. On a complexity level you're looking at 1:10000 difference or worse.
Cold Fusion doesn't work because we are exchanging high-energy particles, which are expensive to produce, for low grade heat in bulk of material.
If we will have cheap source of muons, we can change equation. We can drop a tiny bit of Nickel lattice filled with Deuterium, and then strike it with muons from all angles, to create implosion. This will allow us to create tiny blast of hot plasma, which is much easier to extract energy from.
Sadly, we have no such cheap source of muons, AFAIK.
> If we will have cheap source of muons, we can change equation.
You can make them but the cost in energy is exactly the problem: you will be spending money on energy to make muons at a considerable loss due to the inefficient ways in which we know how to make them (proton beams, which require a huge amount of energy to create), resulting in an insignificant number of particles. If your goal is to get net energy out it would be good to keep an eye on process efficiency from the beginning. Starting off with a billion to one or so conversion loss for step one raises the bar for the subsequent steps considerably.
> Sadly, we have no such cheap source of muons, AFAIK.
We have tons of free high-energy radiation in space. LENR can be impractical on Earth, but be practical on Mars, or on a space station, or in Van Allen belts. Mars is very cold, but constantly bombarded by cosmic rays, because it lacks magnetic shield. Thin atmosphere allows much larger flux of particles with lower energies to reach ground. It may work, if lattice will be exposed to the cosmic rays. LENR can be used here as lightweight source of heat for domes.
