Mark Prelas Studies Neutron Production at MU
| October 30, 2012 | Posted by admin under Mark Prelas, University of Missouri - SKINR |
University of Missouri professor, Mark Prelas, has resurrected studies that he conducted in the early 1990s on neutron production in palladium loaded with deuterium. A local newspaper from Columbia, Missouri, reports that thanks to donations from Sidney Kimmel, and the establishment of the Sidney Kimmel Institute for Nuclear Rennaisance at MU, professor Prelas gets a second chance to study something that he had begun to investigate.
Two decades ago, a University of Missouri research team conducted a fusion experiment that emitted a burst of millions of neutrons.
But Mark Prelas, now a professor in the Nuclear Science and Engineering Institute, was forced to stop the work when his then-supervisor cut off his funding. By 1991, when Prelas made the observation, Utah researchers Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons’ claims of cold fusion had been dismissed as junk science. Prelas moved on to other things.
With SKINR funding, he’s re-created the experiment this year. Modern-day equipment has allowed for a better counting system, and in one run, his research team saw neutron emissions at similar levels to the 1991 observation.
Prelas — who presented his findings at the 17th International Conference on Cold Fusion in Korea in August — has theories but doesn’t know yet exactly what’s causing the presence of the neutrons. He’s now testing various types of titanium to identify the metallurgical properties in which this neutron production phenomenon occurs.
This research is basic science, focused on understanding more about what is taking place. This is very much needed as part of what is holding back LENR, is an adequate theoretical understanding. Mr. Kimmel’s generosity is doing a lot to aid the scientific objectives of LENR, and I look forward to seeing more results from the group at MU in the coming years.
On Dr. Prelas’ website, the following is noted:
Professor Prelas and his group began work on LENR a few days after the Pons and Fleishman announcement on the possibility of room temperature fusion reactions. The focus of the work was based on gas loading while varying pressures and temperatures as well as ion loading. Several finds resulted. The first was the emission of 8.1 MeV gamma rays in 1989 from an ion loading experiment. The second was the observation of very high neutron emission rates (at a rate greater than 1,000,000 neutron per second over an extended period of time) using a thermal shock method on saturated metal deuterides.
See also: Dr. Prelas’ presentation from ICCF17.
That’s great news, maybe the NITINOL has the right titanium and nickel mix to be a perfect fuel to start with in the LENR wire experiments.
It is apparent that after all the listings of scientists performing the MF cold fusion experiments and the time claimed to have been spent researching with results as seen today that; we need new young scientists not clouded by limitations as the old researchers seem to be plagued with in the attempts to re produce CF.
This also holds true from the Hot Fusion researchers, obviously the “correct” person with sufficient IQ has not been found. That’s it in it’s entirety, not enough brain power to succeed. With the reality of how research is done and funded it will be unlikely that “more” progress will be made due to lack of funding, lack of brainpower, and lack of wanting to go forward. This is a sad state of affairs but could develop into a good thing if limitations were removed from humanitarian progress.
The point is that in order to bring forward such a technology as cold fusion there needs to be a change in human intention from destruction to others to removing the people that “start” conflicts with others.
There are many productive people that are really fun to be with and make things roll in a free spirited way. Others bombard negativity just to translate to others their limitations, these are the people that need to go, “permanently” and that’s why we have gotten into such a state of affairs with others.
Until this changes and we start eliminating certain types of people from our society that simply cause conflict in whatever they do, we can expect to further live in chaos and fear going anywher because of the evil people causing deception wherever they go.
Stand up all you people that want to live a good life free of murderers, stand up if you want clean energy instead of wars and pumping oil. Enough is enough let’s get this world back on track again. Remove agression from society or all of us will be in the same state of mind in the near future.
The chief advantage of using other metal than Ni is their higher m.p. (Ti, Zr, Pt, PD) allowing working on higher temperatures. Production of neutrons, while pesky in power production could however be invaluable for transmutations.