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Re: [Phys-l] Navy Cold Fusion



Kevin was giving the regular Friday Colloquium at ANL (not BNL) which is a more-or-less general interest colloquium hosted by the physics division. You can find the schedule of talks dating back sever years at
http://www.phy.anl.gov/div/col/index.html

The essence of this talk, as I recall, consistent with the news articl I referenced, was that all of the Palladium samples at TeX A&M were radioactive.
I agree that reproducible evidence of cold fusion would be of interest.
Jack


On Mon, 20 Nov 2006, Ludwik Kowalski wrote:

On Nov 19, 2006, at 1:29 PM, Ludwik Kowalski wrote:

On Nov 18, 2006, at 11:58 PM, Jack Uretsky wrote:

Back when cold fusion was hot we had a speaker from Texas A&M who had
been
investigating some local experiments. As I recall the talk, one of
the
main points was thet there is practically no Palladium available that
has
not been used in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor. Investigation of
the
local Palladium supplies confirmed that all of itw was hot, we were
told.
Regards,
Jack

Jack, assuming you would not object, I quoted the above on the
restricted list for CMNS researchers, and asked for comments. The
acronym stands for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science; it is a new name
for "cold fusion." What follows is a reply that came, from France, this
morning. The author of the message is usually very critical about CMNS
claims. By the way, traces of beta radioactivity, accompanied by gamma
rays, if Pd was recycled from fission products, would be from 107Pd.
That isotope is not alpha radioactive. The CR-39 chips are totally
insensitive to beta and gamma rays.

Ludwik Kowalski
Let the perfect not be the enemy of the good.

Hmmmm.

Well, now I have survived in this field long enough to see the old
lies (or caltrops) recycled.  Maybe this is a good sign.

The mischievous misinformation reposted by "Jack" below was offered
originally to defuse any excitement caused by various autoradiographic
and low level charged particle evidence of cf.  Having scrutinized A
LOT of Pd (before, after and during electrolysis) in a very high
sensitivity gamma detector I can assure this group that Pd as received
from a variety of sources is not normally (in our case ever)
radioactive.  This is as expected.  The mischievous part of the post
is that Pd IS NOT normally found or used near reactors*.  The bold,
bald and false assertions by the unnamed TAMU speaker were simply
intended to disconcert.
Mike

I want to make a correction. In my reply to Jack I confused a French
researcher, Michel, with an American electrochemist Mike. I know that
nobody cares about who the author of the message was. But mistakes
should be corrected. Jack wrote: "I have accurately reported my
recollection of a talk by Kevin Wolff (or wolfe?) given, as it turns
out, on 28 Sept. 1990." I know who Kevin was; unfortunately, he died
prematurely. Was he speaking to BNL scientists on that day? K.L.Wolf
was a real pro; he was initially reporting positive CF results. But he
also reported negative results. I believe he rejected the CF claims
before dying. I was not aware that he was already sharing his doubts
with others as early as September 1990. That was less than one year
after the discovery of CF was announced. i know that he would love to
perform San Diego experiments -- either to confirm or refute them.

Jack does not want to waste time on reading what I think about Pd. So I
will not bother to write about this. But Jack seems to be open-minded
on many topics; I count on him being interested again IF the
Frpastanila effect is confirmed. In unit #314 I will refer to the
SPAWAR discovery as Frapastanila in honor of Frank, Pamela, Stanislaw
and Larry. Be patient; it might take a while before the unit #314 is
posted. I will let you know.

Ludwik Kowalski
Let the perfect not be the enemy of the good.
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