Supporting the Josephson Interpretation of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions and Stabilization of Nuclear Waste

Abstract

Brian Josephson appealed at the meeting of the Nobel Laureates July 2004 against the ignorance of physicist to the phenomenon of cold fusion. Though there are good reasons against many publications on this topic but not for all what was reported. It seems to be indicated to summarize the following serious, reproducible and confirmed observations on the reactions of protons or deuterons incorporated in host metals such as palladium, nickel and other metals. We underline the confusing discovery by Cockroft and Oliphant with the anomalous low energy for nuclear reactions which was hundred times lower than in the usual cases when smashing nuclei against their Coulomb potential. A similar unexpected result was that of Otto Hahn’s-the chemist!-Discovery of fission that had changed the world. A significant result of cold fusion was seen in gaseous atmosphere or discharges between palladium targets, rather significant and fully reproducible, e.g. From the “life after death” heat production of such high values per host atom that only nuclear reactions can be involved. This supports the earlier evaluation of neutron generation in fully reversible experiments with gas discharges hinting that a reasonable screening effect-preferably in the swimming electron layer-may lead to reactions at nuclear distances d of picometers with reaction probability times U off about mega seconds similar to the K-shell capture radioactivity. Further electrolytic experiments led to Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) where the involvement of pollution could be excluded from the generation of very seldom rare earth elements. A basically new theory for DD cross sections is used to confirm the picometer-mega second reactions of cold fusion. Other theoretical aspects are given from measured heavy element distributions similar to the standard abundance distribution, SAD, in the Universe with consequences on endothermic heavy nucleus generation, magic numbers and to quark-gluon plasmas. One application may be the elimination of long lived nuclear waste by transmutation into stable nuclei.