Talk:Nuclear transmutation

Distinction between alchemy and nuclear reaction
I suspect this article would be clearer with an explicit distinction between alchemy and nuclear reaction. Indeed the second could be there rather than here. --Henrygb 15:57, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Long-lived fission products
This text needs checking.. "Isotopes of plutonium and other actinides tend to be long-lived with half-lifes of many thousands of years, whereas radioactive fission products tend to be shorter-lived (most with half-lifes of 30 years or less)." I thought that isotopes with short long half-lives could occur just about anywhere on the periodic table. -- 70.29.131.204 14:32, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
 * in fact most radioactive isotopes (actinides or otherwise) have short half-lives ( < 1 day) and there are plenty of long-life isotopes among non-actinides. source: partial list of isotopes with long half life (> 1 year)

10Be 1.5 e+6 y 22Na 2.6019 y 26Al 7.17e+5 y 32Si 150 y 36Cl 3.01e+5 y 39Ar 269 yhfhfhuyfhi 42Ar 32.9 y 40 K 1.277e+9 y 41Ca 1.03e+5 y 48Ca 6e+18 y Not a single one of them is formed in nuclear fission.

The point is in the "tend to". It is true that both minor actinides and fission products contain both long- and short-lived nuclides, but in spent nuclear fuel, the proportion of long-lived isotopes in the fission products is negligible, while minor actinides consist mostly of long-lived isotopes. --Philipum 08:36, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

I've added a table of the seven long-lived fission products at right, and medium-lived FP at left. The isotopes cited by the poster above are all below the mass range for fission products.--JWB 22:28, 9 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Fission products tend to have many extra neutrons, giving them short half lifes. That is, they are relatively far from stable nuclides. Pu-239 comes from U-238. Additional neutrons without fission will generate Pu-240, Pu-241, and Pu-242, not so far off, and longer half life. Gah4 (talk) 08:50, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

Don't confuse atomic physics with alchemy
I added a bit about gold and lead, since the matter is open to misunderstanding.

I don't think alchemists even recognised gold as an element - they mostly subscribed to the Greek theory of the Four Elements, Earth, Fire, Air and Water. On that basis you could get gold just by changing the mix, but this was wrong.

--GwydionM 17:28, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Hmm not exactly, Alchemists rely on duality more than on the four elements. In some sense they are near of modern chemistry (Acid/base, Reduction/Oxidation, etc)

Note that the chain from gold to lead in the main section induces to error, because while the whole balance is exotermic, some of the intermediate products are not. Particularly compare 201 Hg with 197 Au. In fact, it is energetically better to transmute Hg to a mix of Au and Pt, see http://conjeturas.blogia.com/2006/061601-mercurio.php for the detailed balance. Arivero 15:03, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Accelerated radioactive decay
Googling this with "magnetic field" brings up only creationists who use it as an excuse for why radioactive decay rates seem to suggest an Earth too old for creationism. Is there any genuine scientific reference to this? Ken Arromdee 18:04, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

This article cites the Spallation Neutron Source as a Photoneutron example. It does not use photons, but rather PROTONS which are accelerated and used to bombard the samples to induce the nuclear reaction generating the neutrons. This needs to be changed. It is not a good example of the use of photon energy or gamma rays for the purpose of inducing transmutation

Transmutation with Brown's gas
What do you think of this paper? Completely bogus? They speak about Kervran as if he was onto something... — Omegatron 17:43, 9 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Although Omegatron is not any longer active in Wikipedia, I will respond to this question, maybe it's interesting for others:


 * For me, the paper looks like bogus. At least I found a document that states that "A. Michrowski (Planetary Clean Energy Association) presented 'Advanced Transmutation Processes,' in which he attempted a survey of cold transmutations" on a conference at the Texas A&M University. (My English language skills are not good enougth to decide whether "attempted" is a bit deprecatory or not.) Also, the paper itself does not cite very reliable sources. And Kervran is as labeled as "Nobel Nominee", although the nominees of the Nobel prize are never published nor they are told that they are being considered for the prize. So, this seems to be a lie. Instead, he received an Ig Nobel Prize.


 * --Cyfal (talk) 12:22, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

That part about lead turning into gold
looks ugly —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.73.107.126 (talk) 08:04, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Not only that, but the (common, denigrating, uninformed) assertion that a major goal of alchemy was Pb->Au is simply incorrect. One way to discover this is to read Carl Jung's studies of alchemists. Like science, alchemy had its pretenders/charlatans/quacks ... and the assertion no doubt had some nudge-nudge value in applying for alchemy research grants. However they individually viewed their real efforts (shrouded in deep code), their efforts were more like experimental chemistry than usury. It's more than a little notable that a mind like Newton's was swept in *after* he'd done the heavy math/physics lifting. I view them as transitional figures in the shadowy interregnum between unverified beliefs and verifying observation (lost since the Greeks). Twang (talk) 19:46, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I removed the half life listed for Pb-204 because the number given is a lower bound. It has never been observed to decay. Xit vono (talk) 00:38, 29 December 2015 (UTC)


 * http://www.nndc.bnl.gov/chart/reCenter.jsp?z=82&n=122 says > 1.4e17 years, and alpha decay. That should be a reliable source. If there is a nuclide with the appropriate energy, the decay can be predicted. I don't know if that is what they did, though. Gah4 (talk) 08:58, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

The quote
After reading the article I noticed this page needs quite a few citations. I would like to use that quote for an assignment however teachers for some reason or other despise wikipedia. So i ask can proper citations be given for this article it would be greatly appreciated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.111.22.104 (talk) 05:18, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

First Man-made Nuclear Transmutation Attribution Corrected
For more than 50 years, most scholars have incorrectly attributed the first man-made nuclear transmutation to Rutherford. In fact, the credit belongs to Patrick Blackett, a research fellow working under Rutherford.

In 2016, I published a forensic historical examination of the research in my book Lost History. In 2017, I communicated my findings to the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of History and Heritage Resources; the American Institute of Physics, Center for History of Physics; the Imperial College London, Physics Department (Home to Blackett's laboratory); and the Cambridge University, Physics Department (Home to Rutherford's laboratory). Each organization has now completed its own independent analysis, concurred, and corrected their respective Web sites. Here are the respective urls:


 * https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1890s-1939/exploring.htm
 * http://history.aip.org/history/exhibits/rutherford/sections/atop-physics-wave.html
 * http://www.imperial.ac.uk/physics/about/department-history/ (Click on Nobel Prize Winners)
 * http://www.cambridgephysics.org/cockcroftwalton/cockcroftwalton2_1.htm

StevenBKrivit (talk) 23:38, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

New work on Nuclear Transmutation
Has anyone here followed the recent decades of work on the experimental transmutation results from Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR)? While the field is still controversial in some minds, it contains a large quantity of data and publications on this major finding of the research. Even within the first decade of research into this LENR phenomenon, nuclear transmutation was considered to be a major result (https://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-Transmutation-Reality-Cold-Fusion/dp/1892925001). Part of the controversy was that, while major changes in isotopic ratios from the "natural" were measured, no characteristic radiation (such as that from neutron activation) was observed. Less than a decade later, a single table in a book (https://www.amazon.com/s?k=THE+EXPLANATION+OF+LOW+ENERGY+NUCLEAR+REACTION) contains ~ 30 references to LENR studies showing nuclear transmutation. By 2014, about 10% of a major technical book on the subject (and nearly 15% of the >900 references) is devoted to the subject (https://www.amazon.com/s?k=THE+EXPLANATION+OF+LOW+ENERGY+NUCLEAR+REACTION)

Despite the major impact of transmutation on the present state of LENR, it was not really believed by most of the contributors of the field for many years. Even today, there is no accepted model for what is going on. Perhaps because of this, there has been almost no effort to tie it into nuclear-waste remediation. One paper has proposed a model that addresses this issue ("Theoretical basis for Nuclear-waste Remediation with Femto-atoms and Femto-molecules"). .... Aqm2241 (talk) 00:13, 23 September 2022 (UTC)


 * LENR transmutations were reported at the NSF/EPRI workshop in 1989. Edward Teller made reference to LENR transmutations observed at LLNL. NRL saw them too but pulled back after they came under attack. See page 412 here https://www.amazon.com/dp/0996886419
 * StevenBKrivit (talk) 20:54, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Beyond iron, fusion does not produce joules, but loses joules. AI told us how much joules to fuse up to gold.
"How much energy would you put into ITER to fuse 1 kilogram of lead into gold?"

[quote=https://poe.com/chat/1xggzsvlajwrw9be4yc ]...to fuse 1 kilogram of lead (Pb) into gold (Au), we need to consider the mass difference between the two elements and the energy release per nucleon during fusion.

The atomic mass of lead is approximately 207.2 atomic mass units (AMU), and the atomic mass of gold is around 197.0 AMU. Therefore, to convert 1 kilogram (1000 grams) of lead into gold, we need to account for the mass difference, which is 10.2 AMU.

The energy release per nucleon during a fusion reaction is typically on the order of millions of electron volts (MeV). However, the exact value depends on the specific reaction and isotopes involved. For the sake of estimation, let's assume an energy release of 7 MeV per nucleon.

To calculate the total energy required, we multiply the mass difference by the energy release per nucleon and the number of nucleons in 1 kilogram of lead. The number of nucleons can be estimated using Avogadro's number and the molar mass of lead.

...

Number of nucleons in 1 kilogram of lead (Pb): (1000 g) / (207.2 g/mol) * (6.022 x 10^23 nucleons/mol) ≈ 2.91 x 10^26 nucleons

Energy required: (10.2 AMU) * (7 MeV/AMU) * (2.91 x 10^26 nucleons) ≈ 2.03 x 10^28 MeV

Converting MeV to joules: 1 MeV = 1.602 x 10^-13 joules

Energy required (in joules): (2.03 x 10^28 MeV) * (1.602 x 10^-13 joules/MeV) ≈ 3.25 x 10^15 joules

So, it would take approximately 3.25 x 10^15 joules of energy to fuse 1 kilogram of lead into gold.[/quote]

"Gold is not evenly divisible by helium, so you could not fuse helium into 100% pure gold, there would be other atoms formed, but if that is acceptable, how much helium to fuse to form 1 pound of gold, and how much joules would you lose (of course, past iron fusion loses joules, so this would not produce joules, just produce gold) to compress (through supermagnets, lasers, or other compressors) helium to gold?"

[quote=https://poe.com/chat/1xgib6hn4e7s11urf56 ]

To form 1 pound of gold through helium fusion, we need to determine the amount of helium required. Let's start by calculating the number of gold atoms present in 1 pound of gold.

The molar mass of gold (Au) is approximately 197 grams/mol. Since 1 pound is equal to 453.592 grams, we can calculate the number of moles of gold:

Number of moles of gold = (1 pound / 453.592 grams) * (1 mol / 197 grams) ≈ 0.002301 moles of gold

In the fusion reaction, four helium nuclei (alpha particles) combine to form a nucleus of beryllium, and then another helium nuclei fuses with the beryllium nucleus to create a carbon nucleus. This carbon nucleus then captures three helium nuclei to produce an oxygen nucleus, and so on.

It takes a series of fusion reactions to convert helium into gold. The exact number of helium nuclei required depends on the specific pathway and conditions of the fusion process. However, it is estimated that around 10^19 helium nuclei (or alpha particles) would be required to produce 1 gram of gold.

Since there are approximately 453.592 grams in a pound, the total number of helium nuclei required would be:

Number of helium nuclei = (10^19 helium nuclei / 1 gram) * (453.592 grams / 1 pound) ≈ 4.53592 × 10^21 helium[/quote] SwuduSusuwu (talk) 06:01, 11 January 2024 (UTC)