Oak Ridge Nuclear Cavitation Confirmation

July 20, 2013 – By Steven B. Krivit –

This is Part 3 of “2001 Oak Ridge Nuclear Cavitation Confirmation Uncovered.”

This is a New Energy Times Special Report. The first part of this series published on July 18, 2013.

Nuclear Cavitation Evidence
The Taleyarkhan group’s criteria for the successful observation of nuclear cavitation was based on its analyses of tritium, as well as neutrons, above background. In one of the internal ORNL reviews, a member of the management staff referred to the tritium evidence as the smoking gun. The reason for this is that tritium is unambiguous evidence of a nuclear reaction. It is unstable, and because of its short half-life, any measured tritium can have come only from a man-made device.

The Taleyarkhan group measured excess tritium and excess neutrons only when cavitation was on and only during experiments that used chilled deuterated acetone, thus clarifying the cause-and-effect relationship. In their Feb. 20, 2002, document, Shapira and Saltmarsh glossed over the measured excess tritium and neutrons and instead created a new criterion. Neither Shapira nor Saltmarsh had any experience in any aspect of cavitation, including sonoluminescence.

According to Shapira and Saltmarsh’s new criterion, the valid test for nuclear cavitation should confirm that, for each neutron detected, researchers should be able to match the coincidences of each neutron, within a few nanoseconds, to each associated sonoluminescence (SL) flash for each bubble implosion. This is the time a 2.45 MeV neutron would take to reach the detector from the center of the flask.

Shapira and Saltmarsh, by ignoring the valid criteria, creating a dubious criterion, and inflating and promoting the importance of their new criterion, succeeded in convincing most people that the Taleyarkhan group’s experiment failed.

According to Shapira and Saltmarsh, confirmation of the coincidences was required to prove that the neutrons were coming from the reactions. Shapira and Saltmarsh implied that the Taleyarkhan group lacked the ability to discern the precisely timed bursts of neutrons emitted from the pulse neutron generator (PNG) from the neutrons created and emitted from the nuclear cavitation reaction. Despite the fact that the PNG was on during all runs, active as well as control runs, excess neutrons were detected only when cavitation was on, only when deuterated acetone was used, and only when it was chilled.

The Taleyarkhan group’s experiment used multi-bubble sonoluminescence rather than single-bubble sonoluminescence. Neutron-nucleated MBSL, as opposed to SBSL, produces hundreds of neutrons at a time as they collectively implode over many microseconds. Additionally, light flashes from inside the bubble cloud may not even emanate because of absorption or scattering. The Taleyarkhan group looked for general time-correlated signals but never relied on nanosecond coincidences as an essential part of its success criteria. Coincidence measurements were possible but unrealistic, as Richard T. Lahey and Colin West explained to New Energy Times.

“The timing issue is a red herring,” Lahey wrote, “because, in our bubble fusion work, we do NOT have a single bubble collapsing, as [other researchers have in [their] sonoluminescence experiments. Rather, we have a cluster of bubbles collapsing where the interior bubbles can emit … neutrons at different times.”

Despite the valid tritium and neutron singles counts (singles are neutron counts alone as opposed to neutron and SL flash coincidence counts) in the Taleyarkhan group experiment, Shapira and Saltmarsh made it appear in their Feb. 20, 2002, and March 1, 2002, critique of the Taleyarkhan group’s work that the group’s claim wasn’t real.

“We conclude that there is no evidence of any real coincidences in this experiment,” Shapira and Saltmarsh wrote.

Shapira and Saltmarsh Knew (Spring 2002)
At that time, Feb. 20, 2002, most of the insiders knew that the Taleyarkhan group had measured statistically significant excess tritium and/or neutron singles. Most outsiders did not. Outsiders also knew nothing about the checks and controls the Taleyarkhan group had used. They also had no idea that the Taleyarkhan group’s claim was not primarily based on coincidences. With the exception of specialists, most outsiders had little, if any, awareness of the crucial distinctions between the neutron singles data and the neutron coincidence data.

Under these circumstances, Shapira and Saltmarsh’s premature release of their paper — which was supposed to publish concurrently with the Taleyarkhan group’s paper in Science — successfully accomplished the mission of its authors.

In their documents, Shapira and Saltmarsh wrote that the Taleyarkhan group’s experiment showed “no evidence of any real coincidences.” In talking with the media, however, Shapira and Saltmarsh said that the Taleyarkhan group’s experiment showed “no real neutrons.” Non-specialists would not have recognized the difference. It was a crucial distinction, as important as, for example, the difference between speed and acceleration.

Not only did most science journalists miss the distinction, but so did the ORNL science writers who produced a press release on the Taleyarkhan group’s forthcoming Science paper.

Shapira and Saltmarsh’s pre-release of their critique went out before Science published the Taleyarkhan group’s paper. According to Shapira and Saltmarsh, they had disproved the Taleyarkhan group’s claim.

Not only was there excess tritium production in the Taleyarkhan group’s experiment, checked by a resident ORNL expert, but also Shapira and Saltmarsh knew it.

Not only were there excess neutrons in the Taleyarkhan group’s experiment, but also Shapira and Saltmarsh knew it.

Not only was there excess neutron production only when cavitation was on and only during experiments that used chilled deuterated acetone in the Taleyarkhan group’s experiment, but also Shapira and Saltmarsh knew it.

Not only had the Taleyarkhan group measured excess neutrons with its detector, but so did Shapira and Saltmarsh, independently with their own detector.

Several months after the Taleyarkhan group’s paper published in Science, Shapira and Saltmarsh published their own peer-reviewed paper in Physical Review Letters. They wrote that they had “repeated the experiment of Taleyarkhan et al.” and that their experiment didn’t work. As New Energy Times learned last year, they never performed their own experiment. Rather, they took measurements – in fact only neutron measurements – from one of the Taleyarkhan group’s experiments during a two-hour period in Taleyarkhan’s lab on July 24, 2001.

Even if Shapira and Saltmarsh had performed their own experiment and failed to obtain positive results, one failure to replicate does not negate another researcher’s positive claim. Only specific findings of experimental or analytical error of an originator’s experiment can negate a positive claim.

Next Part: The Discovery Team

Oak Ridge Nuclear Cavitation Confirmation

July 18, 2013 – By Steven B. Krivit –

This is Part 1 of a New Energy Times Special Report

This report discusses the scientific research and associated conflict experienced by a team of six researchers, led by Rusi Taleyarkhan, a nuclear engineer and a professor in the Purdue University School of Nuclear Engineering. This phase of the group’s research took place between 1999 and 2002, while Taleyarkhan was a research scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Taleyarkhan’s group was part of the Oak Ridge Engineering Technology Division.

Since 1982, when inventor Hugh Flynn was issued a U.S. patent for a “Method of Generating Energy by Acoustically Induced Cavitation Fusion and Reactor Therefor,” researchers have been attempting to create conditions with sonoluminescence to achieve nuclear reactions. In the past, this research has also been called acoustic inertial confinement fusion, bubble fusion or sonofusion. Some researchers hope that eventually nuclear cavitation can lead to a new source of clean nuclear energy.

The Taleyarkhan group got there first, but between 2001 and 2002, two researchers in the Oak Ridge Physics Division, Dan Shapira and Michael Saltmarsh, discredited the Taleyarkhan group’s discovery.

Shapira and Saltmarsh ignored the two scientific criteria – excess tritium and excess neutrons – used by the Taleyarkhan group. Instead, the two researchers made up their own criterion, called “coincidences.” Unlike the data obtained by the Taleyarkhan group, the data available for Shapira and Saltmarsh’s criteria did not support the Taleyarkhan group’s claim. The two researchers then told the scientific community and the public that they had disproved the Taleyarkhan group’s claim.

Dan Shapira and Michael Saltmarsh

Continue reading »

Oak Ridge Nuclear Cavitation Confirmation

July 17, 2013 – By Steven B. Krivit –

Tomorrow, New Energy Times begins publishing the first of a 12-part series of articles that compose the New Energy Times special report “2001 Oak Ridge Nuclear Cavitation Confirmation Uncovered.”

Our report turns part of the history of nuclear cavitation on its head. What has been reported — until now — as a failure by Dan Shapira and Michael Saltmarsh to confirm the nuclear cavitation work of Rusi Taleyarkhan and his group at Oak Ridge National Laboratories was actually a confirmation.

In 2012, New Energy Times obtained the full set of internal ORNL technical reports that reveal the events that took place behind the scenes. We also obtained live video footage of nuclear cavitation experiments performed at Oak Ridge in 2003. (A previously released video is shown below.) Together with a brief telephone interview we conducted with Shapira, the facts shed new light on one of the most heated science controversies in the past decade.

We will publish each part over the next 12 days. Part 1 will be viewable for free; the remaining parts will be for subscribers only.