Transmutation patented by Mitsubishi

[blazespinnaker]

http://www.google.com/patents/EP1202...ed=0CDUQ6AEwAA


BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Field of the Invention
[0001]
The present invention relates to a nuclide transmutation device and a nuclide transmutation method associated, for example, with disposal processes in which long-lived radioactive waste is transmuted into short-lived radioactive nuclides or stable nuclides, and technologies that generate rare earth elements from abundant elements found in the natural world.

Patent was published back in december, but still. There's been a lot of advances in transmutation lately. How long before we can transmute into Gold?

http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2013/03...ten-into-gold/

Going backwards is hard (splitting atoms), but using neutron capture you can move up the periodic table. Tungsten which is much more common than gold, for example is 74 on the periodic table while platinum and gold are 78 and 79.

[charliebrown]

Re: Transmutation patented by Mitsubishi

Isn't adding a proton what is needed to change elements? Adding a neutron adds atomic weight such as moving from carbon 12 to carbon 14.

[FrankL]

Re: Transmutation patented by Mitsubishi

a patent is one thing, having a device that fits the description is another.

For example, there are plenty of patents describing perpetuum mobile.

[ASH]

Re: Transmutation patented by Mitsubishi

Isn't adding a proton what is needed to change elements? Adding a neutron adds atomic weight such as moving from carbon 12 to carbon 14.

That is basically correct. Elements are determined by their atomic number (number of protons), but isotopes of a given element vary in the number of neutrons. However, you can get transmutation by addition of neutrons if the resulting isotope is unstable and subsequently decays. (Decay could involve fission into two or more nuclei whose atomic numbers sum to that of the original nucleus, or one of its neutrons may decay into a proton, releasing an electron and an anti-neutrino in the process, but also increasing its atomic number.)

Transmuting radioactive waste from stuff with a long half-life to stuff with a shorter half-life is not a new idea (the background section of the patent is actually pretty good). It doesn't seem particularly relevant to producing, say, gold in quantity. One difficulty is that you need a really high flux of neutrons over a really long time to transmute much material, given the very large number of nuclei in a macroscopic lump of matter. This is pretty much the same problem as making plutonium in a breeder reactor... it can be done industrially, but very large-scale facilities are required to make very little of the transmuted product.

The patent purports to offer a much more compact way of doing this, but the proposed mechanism doesn't sound very plausible to me. They are claiming that deuterium nuclei are capturing electrons by inverse beta decay, resulting in a bound state of two neutrons. (Their sole citation that this is even possible is to a paper from 1998 in what appears to be a defunct journal, that nobody on the web -- except LENR enthusiasts -- mention. Since the mechanism runs contrary to some pretty basic physics, I don't think this is promising.) Then those dineutrons are supposedly fusing with other nearby atomic nuclei, resulting in transmutation. Many of the nuclear transmutations they are claiming happen this way require addition of multiple of these two-neutron units (the prototypical reaction mentioned in the patent requires four of those suckers). The thing is, there is no bound state of two neutrons; dineutrons have been observed as a distinct state mixed in with others within larger nuclei where the presence of other protons and neutrons stabilizes them, but they aren't stable as independent units (as would be the case for a deuterium nucleus converting into a dineutron). For that matter, inverse beta decay of deuterium is very improbable, because it isn't energetically favored. The deuterium nucleus has lower energy than a dineutron, which means a deuterium nucleus is stable against radioactive decay whereas a free dineutron is not. Hypothesizing that the proton in a deuterium nucleus will capture a nearby electron and convert to a neutron spontaneously is like expecting water to flow uphill. That said, stuff like this is temporarily possible in quantum mechanics... just not probable. One of the most basic rules about nuclear reactions -- and any kind of particle interaction in general -- is that the probability of the reaction drops by the power of the number of pieces that have to come together simultaneously. Free dineutrons don't exist, but if they did, they would be highly unstable due to a positive binding energy. A very short lifetime would make the probability of four dineutrons simultaneously interacting with a single atomic nucleus to be transmuted a very rare occurrence. So my guess is we won't see technology that uses this patent.

[jiimbergin]

Re: Transmutation patented by Mitsubishi

Thanks ASH, I was hoping you would post on this!

[Chris Coles]

Re: Transmutation patented by Mitsubishi

Perhaps of even greater importance is that patents are issued on the basis that they describe a solution that someone "reasonably skilled in the art" can produce from reading and acting upon the description. If those "reasonably skilled in the art" cannot see how this would work, (ASH is an excellent example), then why was the patent issued in the first place?

[photon555]

Re: Transmutation patented by Mitsubishi

Perhaps of even greater importance is that patents are issued on the basis that they describe a solution that someone "reasonably skilled in the art" can produce from reading and acting upon the description. If those "reasonably skilled in the art" cannot see how this would work, (ASH is an excellent example), then why was the patent issued in the first place?

Is this another example of patent trolling? Do they expect someone else will develop a usable technology in the near future?

[Chris Coles]

Re: Transmutation patented by Mitsubishi

Is this another example of patent trolling? Do they expect someone else will develop a usable technology in the near future?

I put my comment up on the basis that there is a basic requirement for the issue of a patent which is that another must be able to replicate the invention having nothing more than the patent specification and a relevant skill to enable the replication. Thus if it is not reproducible, it should not be patented in the first place.

Yes, I do understand where you are coming from, however, I do not believe that it is possible to create an imaginary specification to preclude the possibility of another creating a usable product upon which the first patent would apply for the very simple reason that the present patent is published and thus must be addressed before a new patent can be issued.

[ASH]

Re: Transmutation patented by Mitsubishi

Is this another example of patent trolling? Do they expect someone else will develop a usable technology in the near future?

It looks to me like Mitsubishi must have internally funded some cold fusion experimentation, or bought a smaller company that did so, and got some weird spectroscopic data but no real progress toward industrial power generation. (This is plausible, as Mitsubishi has a nuclear power division, and it would make some sense for their R&D to examine potential new or competing technologies.) At least the apparatus described, and its method of use, is very Pons & Fleischmann-like. It has palladium electrodes charged with absorbed deuterium -- it seems clear to me that they were trying to replicate other cold fusion research. Anyway, in my (totally made up scenario), someone's boss's boss eventually said "justify your [department's/project's] existence; show me progress toward something I can use". Filing a questionable patent or patents is one way to answer the question "What did corporate get for its investment in your department's R&D budget?" At least where I work, filing patents often has more to do with -- (a) increasing the size of one's patent portfolio because of the bullshit way tech companies are valued when they get acquired, and (b) showing management that there's a quantifiable metric that proves your department is producing IP -- than with protecting IP that you think works, or which you are planning to commercialize. Getting a patent past the patent examiner isn't always that high a bar, in practice.

[vinoveri]

Re: Transmutation patented by Mitsubishi

Filing a questionable patent or patents is one way to answer the question "What did corporate get for its investment in your department's R&D budget?" At least where I work, filing patents often has more to do with -- (a) increasing the size of one's patent portfolio because of the bullshit way tech companies are valued when they get acquired, and (b) showing management that there's a quantifiable metric that proves your department is producing IP -- than with protecting IP that you think works, or which you are planning to commercialize. Getting a patent past the patent examiner isn't always that high a bar, in practice.

This is a good summary of why many firm acquire patents. I've been working in the patent field for 15 years and can tell you that is has become somewhat of a racket. You can literally get a patent on anything you file on, the claims however may be extremely narrow. It is becoming an increasing drag and distraction on real wealth production, at least where I work, and I'm currently managing multiple patent infringement lawsuits. But business is good, for the patent office, for the patent practioners, for the engineers, for the lititgators, etc. Heck, under the new America Invents Act the USPTO has new post-grant review processes which are starting to bring in a lot of money to the PTO and address the problem of "crappy patents" being awarded. Instead of making sure they don't issue crappy patents, they created a process to challenge all the crappy patents.

On the good side, the patent system still encourages broad detailed disclosure of ongoing innovations and constitutes a great body of knowledge on which to build on and continue to innovate. Everything gets corrupted if it gets big enough, but the patent system is still a big net positive with regard to public disclosure and dissemination of knowledge imo.