US Defense Threat Reduction Agency Releases LENR Report — "Investigation of Nano-Nuclear Reactions in Condensed Matter"

Thanks to Joseph J for posting about a report that has been published by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agencey (DTRA) titled “Investigation of Nano-Nuclear Reactions in Condensed Matter”. The report is written by Pamela Mosier-Boss of SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific, Lawrence Forsely of JWK International and Patrick K. McDaniel of the University of New Mexico.

According to Wikipedia the DTRA “is an agency within the United States Department of Defense and is the official Combat Support Agency for countering weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high explosives). DTRA’s main functions are threat reduction, threat control, combat support, and technology development. The agency is headquartered in Fort Belvoir, Virginia”

It is not clear to me exactly when the report was written, but the final page of the document shows a form which shows when various approvals have been given. The most recent references listed in the report are from 2012, so it appears that it has been circulating within the agency for a few years prior to this release. This paper was given approval for public release on Jun 7 2016 by the Public Affairs department of the DTRA.

The report itself is very lengthy and from a cursory reading is an analysis of the scientific evidence for nuclear reactions occurring in the metal lattice in LENR systems. The report focuses on the palladium-deuterium systems which were introduced in 1989 by Pons and Fleischmann.

The report can be accessed at the LENR-CANR site here: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MosierBossinvestigat.pdf, and I have uploaded it to ECW here: https://www.e-catworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/MosierBossinvestigat.pdf

There is a lot of detail in the report that will be no doubt interesting and useful to researchers and replicators, and I would imagine important to the work that the MFMP is doing at the University of Aarhus now. Below are some excerpts of points I found to be of particular interest.

“At the time of the [Pons and Fleischmann] announcement in 1989, SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific scientists were involved in developing batteries for torpedo propulsion. The lead scientist in those torpedo propulsion efforts, Stanislaw Szpak, was aware of the Fleischmann–Pons experiment prior to the press conference and knew about the long incubation times needed to fully load bulk Pd with D. To reduce the incubation time, he developed the Pd/D co-deposition process as a means to initiate low energy nuclear reactions (LENR) inside the Pd lattice. In this process, working and counter electrodes are immersed in a solution of palladium chloride and lithium chloride in deuterated water (p. 1).

[. . .]

“The Pd/D co-deposition process has been shown to provide a reproducible means of manufacturing Pd-D nano-alloys that induce low energy nuclear reactions (LENRs). Cyclic voltammetry (2,3) and galvanostatic pulsing (4) experiments indicate that, by using the co-deposition technique, a high degree of deuterium loading (with an atomic ratio D/Pd>1) is obtained within seconds. These experiments also indicate the existence of a D2+ species within the Pd lattice. Because an ever expanding electrode surface is created, non-steady state conditions are assured, the cell geometry is simplified because there is no longer a need for a uniform current distribution on the cathode, and long charging times are eliminated. (5)

“By using the Pd/D co-deposition technique and co-depositional variants (6) (based on flux control(7,8)), solid evidence (i.e., excess heat generation,(7,9,10), hot spots, (11) mini-explosions, ionizing radiation, (12) near- IR emission, (13) tritium production, (14) transmutation, (15) and neutrons (16)) has been obtained that indicate that lattice assisted nuclear reactions can and do occur within the Pd lattice. (p. 2) . . .

“Besides LENR, the Pd/H(D) system exhibits superconductivity. Palladium itself does not superconduct. However, it was found that H(D)/Pd does and that the critical temperatures of the deuteride are about 2.5 K higher than those of hydride (at the same atomic ratios).(19) (p. 2)

[. . .]

“Once understood, LENR has the potential to be a paradigm-shifting, ‘game-changing’ technology. Nuclear energy systems have power densities six orders of magnitude greater than chemically-based energy generation or storage systems. The ability to harness a new nuclear energy source for either thermal or electrical conversion, without the generation of penetrating energetic particles, would have a profound commercial and military impact ranging from small footprint power systems to mobile systems to larger stationary power systems. Depending on how the technology scales, it could be used as a power source for expeditionary warfare and military bases as well as surface ships/submarines; nuclear battery for autonomous C4I operations (communications, computers, satellites); and long duration UAV and USV ops (propulsion). Such a technology would have a profound effect upon one of the U.S. and DoD’s largest financial and environmental costs: burning hydrocarbons from imported oil and gas with their attendant CO2 footprint. Indeed, many U.S. military actions this century, and the most costly in the 1990’s, have been driven by, or consequences of, the geopolitics of oil. Decreasing the use of foreign oil would result in both an energy savings and a reduction in US military presence, and fleet costs, in maintaining access to foreign oil and natural reserves.

“The natural uranium witness material experiments suggest that LENR can be used to create a hybrid fusion-fast fission reactor. Fusion is neutron rich but energy poor while fission is neutron poor but energy rich. Figure 3-1 illustrates the concept of behind a hybrid reactor that combines rich fusion neutrons with rich fission energy. A hybrid fusion-fast fission system capable of fissioning fissile, or fertile, actinides has an impact on nuclear power systems and the remediation of nuclear waste.

“The 23 years of LENR research at SSC Pacific has resulted in 33 publications, 42 presentations/posters/conference proceedings, three technical reports, and one patent. A complete bibliography can be found in Appendix I. (p. 83)

[. . .]

“There are indications that the field of LENR is slowly gaining acceptance. The Environmental Division of ACS has hosted five New Energy Technologies symposia between 2007 and 2011 and published two symposium books. Katherine Sanderson of Nature reported on the March 2007 ACS symposium that was held in Chicago, IL. She reported that the program chair for the session (not a cold fusion scientist) was impressed by the results that were presented
and was ‘keeping an open mind on the matter.’ As for herself, she said she was initially skeptical. After seeing the presentations, she indicated, ‘Cold fusion? I don’t know, but the evidence that something weird is happening is there. Maybe it’s time to think about this again…’

“On March 26, 2012, Mosier-Boss and Forsley were invited by Dr. Michael Adams of Xavier University to speak at the ACS Undergraduates Technical Symposium on “Nuclear Power Generation – Lessons from Fukushima Daiichi and Future Directions.” These presentations are included in Appendix III. (p. 86)

[. . .]

On November 2011, the LENR research at SSC-Pacific was terminated. The official reason given by SSC-Pacific’s PAO, Jim Fallin, to Steve Krivit of New Energy Times for the termination the LENR work at SSC-Pacific is:

“In response to your recent query,” Fallin wrote, “while I won’t discuss details of our internal decision-making processes, I will confirm SPAWAR plans no further low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) research. There are other organizations within the federal government that are better aligned to continue research regarding nuclear power. We have taken initial steps to determine how a transition of low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) research might occur.

“The implications of this statement are that both SPAWAR HQ and SSC-Pacific say that the phenomenon is real and that it is nuclear in nature. (p. 87)

“Initial criticism of the purported Pd/D low energy nuclear reactions centered upon the phenomena’s reproducibility. Many years later this was understood to be due to the long incubation times required to fully load the Pd with deuterium. However, early on, Dr. Stanislaw Szpak, an electrochemist at the Naval laboratory in San Diego, developed an alternative method of initiating low energy nuclear reactions using Pd/D co-deposition. In this process palladium metal is plated out in the presence of deuterium gas. The advantages of this approach are that the palladium metal loads instantly with deuterium, the experiments can be done faster, there is a great deal of experimental flexibility, and the experiments are reproducible. Other groups from SRI, UCSD, Texas A & M, the Navy Laboratory in China Lake, and Berkeley have obtained positive results using the co-deposition process.” (p. 96)

I am not sure what the internal protocols are within the DTRA regarding public release of documents, but its interesting to me that this report should have been given clearance for public release this summer.