Radiochemical Comparisons on Low Energy Nuclear Reactions and Uranium

Abstract

The discovery of nuclear fission by Otto Hahn and Friedrich Strassmann was based on a very rare microanalytical result that provided the first realization that neutrons could fission uranium. However, this was only the beginning of many discoveries about this complex process. An analogy related to the discovery of low energy nuclear reactions (LENRs) is noted here. It is remarkable that the reaction product distribution measured in LENR experiments using thin-film palladium/nickel electrodes heavily loaded with either hydrogen or deuterium has a strong similarity to the element distribution from uranium fission. Thus, the LENR reaction process is hypothesized to pass through a heavy complex nucleus similar to the fission process in uranium. Further, a detailed structure is observed in the LENR distribution corresponding to the Maruhn-Greiner local maximum of the distribution within the large-scale minimum of the fission product distribution curve. This observation leads to the proposed explanation that the fissioning compound nucleus in the LENR case is element 306X126 with double magic numbers. A major difference, however, is that in uranium fission the compound nucleus arises after single-neutron absorption, whereas in LENR a multi-body process is needed to create the heavy complex nucleus. Indeed, subsequent analysis of the various observations associated with these LENR experiments suggests that the multi-body reaction involved follows from the formation of Bose-Einstein condensed clusters formed in dislocation void regions in the electrode. Consequences and proposed future studies based on this cluster conjecture are discussed.