Another LENR Meeting: at American Nuclear Society Conference

The American Nuclear Society is a non-profit organization which provides educational and informational services for professionals in the fields of nuclear science and technology. The ANS is holding its 2012 ANS Winter Meeting and Nuclear Technology Expo in San Diego, California from November 11-15, and the theme of this conference is “Future Nuclear Technologies: Resilience and Flexibility”.

Although the primary focus of the conference are topics connected with nuclear fission, there is a session listed this year sponsored by the Society’s Materials Science and Technology Division (MSTD) that will focus on LENR. The title of the session is “Discussion of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions — Papers/Panel” The program for the session taken from the conference program is listed below.

PAPERS
The Big Picture of Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction Research, Steven B. Krivit (New Energy Times)

Electroweak Neutron Production via e + p → n + ν and CaptureDuring Lightning Discharges, Lewis G. Larsen (Lattice Energy LLC)

Slow Neutron Generation by Plasma Excitation in Electrolytic Cell, Domenico Cirillo (Cirillo_lab)

Transmutation Reactions Induced by Deuterium Permeation Through Nano-Structured Pd Multilayer Thin Film, Yasuhiro Iwamura, Takehiko Itoh (Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd.), Yasuko Terada (Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute), Tetsuya Ishikawa (Coherent X-ray Optics Laboratory, SPring-8/RIKEN)

PANEL DISCUSSION
This session will explore the surprising possibility that highly energetic nuclear reactions and elemental transmutations result from low-energy nuclear reactions (LENRs). Although the term was not used a century ago, examples of LENRs go back that far. LENRs are weak interactions and neutron-capture processes that occur in nanometer-to-micron scale regions on surfaces in condensed matter at room temperature. Although nuclear, LENRs are not based on fission or any kind of fusion, both of which primarily involve the strong interaction.

From this listing it appears that this session will focus on the weak force/neutron capture theoretical framework that is at the heart of the Widom/Larsen theory (with Larsen himself presenting).

It’s interesting that the ANS is willing to sponsor such a session — and it might be another signal of professionals taking the area of LENR more seriously.