This discussion focuses on the evaluation of neutron detection techniques presented in a paper affiliated with the China Institute of Atomic Energy, Beijing, concerning low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR). Key points include the challenges of detecting low-level neutrons, the necessity for careful evaluation of neutron bursts to distinguish legitimate signals from noise, and the importance of observing nuclear products like neutrons and tritium. Critics emphasize the need for clearer explanations of detector design and performance, as well as the inclusion of control samples to validate findings.
PREREQUISITESResearchers in nuclear physics, experimental scientists focused on LENR, and professionals involved in neutron detection technology will benefit from this discussion.
Infrequent? Are there nuclear reactions which produce neutrons sometimes, and sometimes not?Because of the difficulty of detecting low-level neutrons and the infrequent neutron-production from nuclear reactions
Not really convincing. If you try, you can find positive results for every crap. The question is how many (sensitive) negative results there are.However, positive results were also reported.
Are there any scientific measurements which do not require that?Measurement of neutrons in low-energy nuclear reaction
(LENR) requires a particular care and expertise.
Trivial, if done automatic or with statistical methods. If not, it is problematic and you should explain this.Therefore, each individual
neutron burst must be evaluated to determine
whether its origin was electronic noise, environmental
gamma-rays, cosmic-ray background, environment
neutrons, accidental artifact noise or a legitimate signal.
Helpful? I think the observation of nuclear products is required to observe nuclear reactions.Observation of nuclear products, such as neutrons,
protons and tritium in metal hydride (deuteride)[7−9]
will be helpful to study the mechanism of LENR
I think you should introduce the detector design first before talking about performance details.The detector has a high neutron detection efficiency
and a good ability to reject ��-ray background
and eliminate electrical noise.
Where are the neutron detectors, and how do they work? You did not explain this. Just filling 3He in a tube is not enough.The neutron detection efficiency
Pure U-238?Uranium (238U) metal machine-chips (about 10 g) were used to prepare the uranium deuteride sample.
Cycles of what?Each run lasted about 20 to 50 h, or about 2500 to 6500 cycles. The period of a cycle was 30 s.
I think that should be 0.088 counts/s.the neutron production rate is calculated to be 0.16 neutrons/s, or 0.88 counts/s
If you calculate the difference between two values with 0.03 uncertainty, the resulting uncertainty is not 0.03 unless you have some correlation (which I would not expect here, if you have that you should explain it).The average random count rate for the uranium oxide sample was measured to be (1.971±0.03) counts/s; a value of (0.26±0.03) counts/s greater than the background value.
The position of that text at the bottom of the page is a bit unfortunate - probably TeX-induced, and might change with text edits.The results of time-correlated neutron counts versus
Obvious for cosmics-induced background.in two background runs are given in Fig. 3. The results show that the intensity and frequency of neutron bursts have irregular variations.
1-05?The frequency of the large bursts (neutrons
larger than 30) is about 1-05 bursts per day
Why? I don't see a reason why cosmic rays could not give several bursts within two hours. It is rare, so what?and the time intervals between two individual bursts are larger than 2 h.
Both in figure 6a and 6b I can see bursts which are very close together. They seem to consist of 2 or maybe just 3 bursts each, but they are so close that they look correlated in some way.No cascade neutron-burst emissions are observed for either of the control samples.
Where did you do that?After accidental artifact noise and cosmic-ray sources are ruled out
Based on what?and may originate from a nuclear reaction occurring on the metal surface with a micro-nanometer size,[7,17] but do not occur in the bulk materials and the whole surface
Random in which way?On the other hand, random neutron emissions are not observed in this work.