Paul Browns History on the net prior to Elgindy/Royer. Also the nuclear battery scam. Info also in scummy brokers CRD's (Now turned stock promoters). " And then there were drug possession charges which were later dismissed"
The story of Nuclear Solutions begins with Paul Brown, its founder, a college dropout who got a Ph.D. in physics from a non-accredited organization.
News reports show that in 1989, he was fined by the state of Idaho for lying about his education and selling unregistered securities. In 1992, Brown, without admitting or denying allegations made by the Securities and Exchange Commission, agreed to a permanent injunction baring him from violating federal securities laws. The SEC alleged that Brown had made false statements about a nuclear battery developed by another company he founded called Peripheral Systems. And then there were drug possession charges which were later dismissed.
After disappearing from the business world for almost a decade, Brown reappeared last August, founding Nuclear Solutions, a small Idaho-based nuclear waste disposal company. Soon he began looking for needed financing and got in touch with an Atlanta, Ga., brokerage called J.P. Turner & Co. LLC.
The relationship between Brown and J.P. Turner was the beginning of a chain of events that led Nuclear Solutions to the center of a federal investigation involving rogue federal agents and their alleged use of confidential information to help short sellers manipulate the stock of companies. In a May indictment, the government charged that short seller Anthony Elgindy , and co-defendants Jeffrey Royer of the FBI, Derrick Cleveland and Troy Peters used information gathered from FBI databases to extort stock from Nuclear Solutions and other companies.
===============================
"Dave Lavigne of RCL hinted that Talbert (ex-president of Peripheral) had
stock in more names than his own and might have been doing some insider
trading. RCL has put out a buy recommendation (I believe on several occasions but
at least once) pushing the stock. "
---------------------------------------------
from Scheider Securities CRD:"PERIPHERAL
SYSTEMS STOCK BASED ON REPRESENTATIVES THAT PERIPHERAL HAD
DEVELOPED A NUCLEAR POWERED BATTERY THAT WOULD BE HIGHLY
PROFITABLE. THEY FAILED TO DISCLOSE TO INVESTORS THAT NUCELL,
A WHOLLY- OWNED SUBSIDIARY OF PERIPHERAL, WAS THE SUBJECT OF
JUDGMENTS OBTAINED IN A LAWSUIT FILED BY THE STATE OF IDAHO IN
1988 ALLEGING FRAUD IN CONNECTION WITH THE SALE OF THE NUCELL
STOCK. COHIG TOOK OVER RCL'S SPOKANE OFFICE IN 1991 AND FAILED
TO HALT THE FRAUDULENT OFFER OF PERIPHERAL SYSTEM STOCK.
CONTACT: TIM MARTIN - 208/332-8004." Reporting Source: Regulator (Form U-6)Date Reported: 02/14/1996 Initiated By: IDAHO DEPARTMENT OF FINANCEDate initiated: 02/14/1996Docket/
Case Number: 1996-7-32Allegations: COHIG AND OTHER DEFENDANTS SOLD SECURITIES IN IDAHO WHILE
MISREPRESENTING ESSENTIAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE COMPANY WHOSE
STOCK WAS BEING SOLD AND ENGAGED IN PRACTICES WHICH OPERATED
AS A FRAUD OR DECEIT UPON THEIR IDAHO CUSTOMERS. Current Status: FinalResolution: OrderResolution Date: 02/14/1996Sanctions
Ordered: Disgorgement/RestitutionResolution
Details: COHIG AGREED TO AN ADMINISTRATIVE ORDER WHICH REQUIRES COHIG TO
PROVIDE RESTITUTION TO SIX IDAHO RESIDENTS FOR PURCHASES OF
PERIPHERAL SYSTEMS, INC. STOCK.
-----------------------------------------
from dave's crdNASD Registered Person: DAVID LEWIS LAVIGNE CRD Number: 1251725
** This individual's registration with the NASD was terminated as of 10/24/2002.
Disclosure information on terminated individuals may occasionally be reported to
and captured by NASD; however, such disclosure information has not been
reviewed by the individual, and there is no regulatory requirement that
terminated individuals report any information to NASD. ** =============================================
Summary: RCL NORTHWEST AND ITS REPRESENTATIVES, GORDON WESLEY SODORFF,
JERRY RAY LINEHAN AND THEIR SUPERVISOR MICHAEL B. LAVIGNE,
INDUCED IDAHO INVESTORS TO PURCHASE SHARES OF PERIPHERAL
SYSTEMS STOCK BASED ON REPRESENTATIVES THAT PERIPHERAL HAD
DEVELOPED A NUCLEAR POWERED BATTERY THAT WOULD BE HIGHLY
PROFITABLE. THEY FAILED TO DISCLOSE TO INVESTORS THAT NUCELL,
A WHOLLY- OWNED SUBSIDIARY OF PERIPHERAL, WAS THE SUBJECT OF
JUDGMENTS OBTAINED IN A LAWSUIT FILED BY THE STATE OF IDAHO IN
1988 ALLEGING FRAUD IN CONNECTION WITH THE SALE OF THE NUCELL
STOCK. COHIG TOOK OVER RCL'S SPOKANE OFFICE IN 1991 AND FAILED
TO HALT THE FRAUDULENT OFFER OF PERIPHERAL SYSTEM STOCK.
CONTACT: TIM MARTIN - 208/332-8004.
========================================================
From: Vincent Cate (vac@sam.cs.cmu.edu)
Subject: Cold Nuclear Fission / Peripheral Systems
View: Complete Thread (11 articles)
Original Format
Newsgroups: sci.physics, sci.energy, sci.physics.fusion, sci.environment, sci.skeptic
Date: 1990-08-30 11:30:36 PST There is an inventor (Paul Brown) and a company (Peripheral Systems)
that are making unbelievable claims about large quantities of electricity
being produced directly from small amounts of radioactive materials.
Since this bypasses the heat stage used in nuclear power plants or
RTGs and can not be nearly as good as they have claimed I think that
"Cold Nuclear Fission" is the correct name for it. I believe that
Peripheral Systems in general and Paul Brown in particular are making
fraudulent claims. These claims make their nuclear battery appear far
better than it can possibly be and make me wonder if they have even
built working batteries.The numbers they give out would indicate that they are getting more
electrical power out of radioactive materials than is available in the
radiation from them. For example, the radiation from Strontium-90 is
about 2.3 watts per gram (not all of this is usable). In their annual
report Peripheral has claimed they could get 70 watts from 1 gram of Sr-90.
They have also said they could get 70 watts from 1.5 curie (1/100 gram)
of Strontium-90. Another time Brown led a reporter to write that 1/100
of a gram could run an electric heater. It is impossible to produce
70 watts of electricity from 2.3 watts of radiation so these claims and
others they have made are false and make their battery sound fantastic to
investors. Misleading investors is securities fraud and against the law. Steelhawk hired Pickard Lowe and Garrick to check out the "ionic battery"
(not the RNB for which bogus claims have been made). Steelhawk started
talking with PLG in December and had an agreement in Feb 1990. The ionic
battery is a DC device that is about the same as a Burke cell (see patent
3,409,820 by Burke) except that it feeds back some of the electricity it
produces to maintain an electric field instead of using a separate battery
for the field. Brown seems to think that this is different enough to get
a patent and given our patent office he is probably right. PLG has given
Steelhawk a report that said that the ionic battery looks legitimate (not
exactly public but Steelhawk will give out the intro and the conclusion).
From this peripheral systems has come out with press releases using quotes
from PLG's report on the ionic cell and claims this report refutes
scientific and press claims that the ionic cell contradicts the laws of
thermodynamics. However, it does no such thing. The scientific and press
claims were about the RNB and, more to the point, about the amount of
electricity produced per amount of fuel.Checking around (Peripheral, SteelHawk and PLG) it seems PLG has not been
involved with the RNB in any way. Nobody at PLG has ever seen an RNB.
RNB stands for Resonant Nuclear Battery.Brown is quoted in Aerospace and Defense as saying, "Independent and
Peripheral-sponsored tests indicate that we are getting more than 25%
conversion efficiency." When I talked with Brown he said that he was
misquoted and there has been no independent verification of this. Since
they first filed on the RNB in 1986 this seems odd. Since they have had a
patent (#4,835,433) since May 1989 and are giving talks about how it works
and showing pictures of the device it seems very odd to not be willing to
show the device in action. Brown told Claire Poole of Forbes that previous claims in the press were
misquotes (seems there was some newspaper article) when she talked with
him in 1989. Then he told her that he got 70 watts from 1.5 curie of
radioactive material (see Forbes article). He told me that he did not
know where she got that number. Now their 1989 annual report (the 1990
one is not out yet) has claimed 70 watts from 1 gram of strontium-90 (140
curies). This still turns out to be bogus. When asked Brown will not say
how many grams of what material it really took to get 70 watts. It seemed
that he did not know.Since radioactive materials are not cheap, being off by another factor of
100 makes a big difference in the potential market size. For example
Brown has claimed (December 1989 Hazmat World) that they will be able to
sell devices for $1/watt of power (for example a 50,000 watt device would
cost $50,000). However with the prices I got from Brown (10 cents/curie
-- so $14/gram for Sr-90), at 25% efficiency it is on the order of
$100/watt just for strontium-90 fuel. Regular nuclear power plants are
around $2/watt, so the difference between $1/watt and $100/watt is really
drastic. At $1/watt there would be a multi-billion dollar market and at
$100/watt or more there would be a far more limited market. Brown told me
that the ionic cell will be about $5,000. It is not clear exactly how
much power this will produce. In Brown's paper presented at the the June
1990 American Nuclear Society conference he claims 0.01 to 5 watts. So at
best it is $1,000/watt and it might be as bad as $500,000/watt. Brown claimed that the military wanted to buy 10,000 of these $5,000
devices every month. Since nobody even seems sure how much power the
battery is going to produce this must not be anything close to a firm
order but the way he said it it sounded like it was. The old president (Talbert) was either fired or asked to resign recently.
Part of the reason seems to be the way he has been passing out incorrect
information. Brown says that Peripheral will not be making any more press
releases or passing out news articles like they did in the past. In my
opinion it has been very wrong to pass out news articles that had errors.
For example, one in WARD'S Engine Update says that the PLG report says
"the energy balance of the RNB is perfect and does not contradict the laws
of thermodynamics." when what the report really says has "ionic" and not
"RNB" in that sentence. The above may be due to an error by a reporter
but my guess is that most of the reporters got the quotes right (they tape
interviews) and that Brown really said most all of these errors. The problem with the amount of energy per gram of radioactive material
implied by the 1989 Peripheral Systems Annual Report is on page 4. It
says that 70 watts of electricity was produced from 1 gram of strontium-90
and 50,000 watts from 2 lbs of stuff (55 watts/gram). This is far above
the amount of energy available in the radiation. Here are my calculations
which have been checked by 3 different Nuclear engineers (two point out
that I should really use only 0.535 Mev/decay since the energy in a
neutrino can not be used, but even with this generosity Brown is way off):Specific activity of Sr-90: 139 curies/gram
Curie: 3.7e10 decays/sec
Max energy per decay: 2.8 MeV/decay
Energy equality: 1 MeV = 1.6e-13 joules
Power: 1 joule/sec = 1 wattA good source for the above is "CRC - Handbook for Radioactive Nuclides"Using the above:curie decay/sec MeV joule watt
1 gram * 139 ----- * 3.7e10--------- * 2.8 ---- * 1.6e-13 ----- * 1 ----
gram curie decay MeV j/secWe get that one gram of Sr-90 produces: 2.3 watts of radiationSo with 100% efficiency in converting to electricity the most you could
get would be 2.3 watts of electricity per gram. Numbers in the annual
report imply 70 watts of electricity is produced per gram of strontium-90.
Given the energy in the radiation and the reported efficiency of 25% it
should take about 100 times as much fuel as they are claiming. Given that
not all of the 2.8 MeV is usable, they are really off by about a factor of
500.Brown agrees with my numbers and admits that the annual report is wrong.
Brown told me that he did not write the annual report and that a marketing
or public relations person got these numbers from an incorrect newspaper
article and put them in the annual report. He also says he never noticed
this error before. Since there is only about one page of the report that
is about the nuclear battery, and it has his picture, I don't see how he
could have missed it for over a year. It makes a big deal out of how much
power can be produced from such a little amount of fuel, and even compares
this to the amount of amount of fuel used in other devices. If he had
done the experiments he claims to have then he should have known that it
took over 100 times as much fuel as the annual report said. This type of
error should have jumped out at him. My guess is that he really wrote it
or at least provided the numbers.In a London Times article Brown has led the reporter to write that "A
battery with the power output of a single bar electric fire will contain
just 1/100 of a gram of strontium-90." A "single bar electric fire" is a
small space heater, around 500 to 1,000 watts. Again, with 1 gram of
strontium-90 you can not get more than 2.3 watts, so these numbers are
really bogus.In Hazmat World (who seems to have interviewed Brown) they say that
Peripheral got 70 watts of electricity off of 1 ounce of radioactive
material. If this is strontium-90 then this is another bogus claim. I
have never seen a claim for the 70 watt device that seemed close to
reality (like, say 500 grams of strontium-90).Wayne Klein of the Idaho Securities Exchange says that securities fraud
charges were brought against Nucell and they were convicted. After this
Nucell claimed the SE drove jobs out of Idaho and Nucell left.Klein said Nucell was making all of these claims about nuclear batteries
but turned out not to even have a permit for radioactive materials. I
really doubt that you can buy the quantities of fuel needed to radiate
50,000 watts from normal decay without a permit (if it were U-235 this
would be more than enough to make a nuclear bomb). If it were so easy to
get fuel I think kids and terrorists would be building nuclear bombs,
since the only hard part is getting the fuel. I am not sure when Brown
claims to have done the 50,000 watt device, it may have been after leaving
Idaho. Even with a permit this would be a lot of fuel.Klein also said something about Brown making false claims about his
education.Dave Lavigne of RCL hinted that Talbert (ex-president of Peripheral) had
stock in more names than his own and might have been doing some insider
trading. RCL has put out a buy recommendation (I believe on several occasions but
at least once) pushing the stock. Peripheral also sold licensing rights to First Northwest Capital Inc. for
a very low price. FNCI bought $100,000 of Peripheral stock and paid
another $100,000 outright. This seems incredibly low given either the
amount that peripheral has invested or the amount it should be worth if
real (if 25% efficient etc).It also seems odd that a startup that is short on cash and needs the cash
it has to develop an amazing new product would be buying all sorts of
other companies (Peak Beam Systems Inc, PENCO, X-Ray Inc, and TriSys).Another Brown quote (seems to be misleading investors by alot) this one
from Hazmat World December 1989 page 24 (second page of article): ``"The
actual applications are unlimited," Brown suggests. "If or when we get
this to a fully developed product, the implications are tremendous. We're
talking about a low-cost, compact device that could be beneficial anywhere
power is needed. For pennies a day, you could flood the desert, or drive
an electric car until the wheels fell off. It could change the energy
industry as we know it."''Given the prices of radioactive materials and the real amount needed to
run Brown's batteries the above statement is unreasonable. I have not
really checked prices but radioactive material is not cheap.Another quote from the San Jose Mercury News, ``The cost of such a battery
will be competitive with other power sources, Talbert said. "There's
really no expensive components in it," he said.'' Radioactive material is
expensive in the quantities really needed. It does not seem to be even
near price competitive (off by a factor of 100).In Business Week they say "Brown predicts the battery will generate
electricity for 3 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is more than competitive
with conventional sources." Also it says that Talbert "thinks the battery
could supplement - or even supplant - nuclear reactors and coal-fired
generators." Given the real amounts of fuel needed they are not close to
being economically competitive.In Insight they report that at Oak Ridge people used 8,000 grams to
produce 500 watts giving 0.063 watts per gram of strontium-90. Then "The
Nucell prototype is said to yield 7,500 watts per gram of strontium-90; it
required only about 1 centigram of the isotope." This is just not real.
As the included calculations show there is at the very most 2.3 watts of
energy radiated per gram of strontium-90. Claims of 7,500 watts/gram are
false.I talked with Brown on 7/28 and 7/29 at the International Tesla Symposium.
At this time he told me that the 50 kw device they built ran for 15
minutes, the 70 watt device ran for 3 weeks and the 5 watt device ran for
months untouched. I have reason to believe that the 5 watt device does
not yet exist. I have the strongest of doubts about the 50 kw device. I
am sure that 1 gram of Sr-90 is not enough to produce 70 watts. Just in
case you are impressed by Brown giving a talk at this conference let me
tell you that it was organized by a relator in Colorado Springs (Mr
McInnis (719) 576-1985) and the "scientist" talking before Brown believed
that the future could affect the past and her experimental results were
that a computer crashed once. This was a very bogus conference.Several physicists that I know have pointed out that even real physics
conferences will let anyone speak. This is in strong contrast to
conferences in many other fields.I know a physicist who corresponded with Brown about errors in Brown's
calculations around 2 years ago. It seems Brown had made some mistakes
and was under a very mistaken impression about how many watts of radiation
were put off per gram of fuel. My guess is that from these mistaken
calculations he made up his "experimental results". This physicist mailed
copies of his letters to Brown to me (they are not here yet) and said that
I could tell people about the letters from Brown. He was not sure he
should give me copies of Brown's letters (possible problem with copyright
and/or non-disclosure) but said a subpena for the documents would make it
possible for him to give them out.Ewart Blackman told me something I found interesting. Brown got one of
his power output numbers by calculating how many watts it must have taken
to burn out a wire that blew one time (like how many watts for 1/10 second
to blow a wire). The clear problem with this is that there is a lot of
energy stored in the capacitor and inductor so it could output a high
wattage for a short time without producing any energy at all. So this
burst of energy is a really bogus way to come up with numbers for energy
production.Two more bogus claims are in the patent. This is particularly strong
because it (like the annual report) is straight from them. They claim to
have gotten 9,000 watts off of the following combination: 1 milicurie of
radium, 200 grams of uranium, 100 grams of thorium. They claim that
there is a synergistic effect between the radioactive materials and that
more power can be obtained by adding a second milicurie of radium. The
synergistic effect stuff is bogus. It takes a lot of energy to cause an
atom to split (like a gamma-ray) and given the amount of material (well
under a critical mass) there could not have been much of this going on.
Brown refused to tell me which isotope of uranium and thorium he used but
even if the uranium were U-235 (instead of the common U-238) the
watts/gram would still be many orders of magnitude off. PHONE NUMBERS:Peripheral Systems and Nucell (800) 468-8215
Pickard, Lowe and Garrick (714) 650-8000 Stan Kaplan
Peripheral Systems FAX number (303) 624-8526
Steelhawk Resources Ltd 1-800-565-9990 Mike Cartmell
RCL Northwest Inc - broker for peripheral (800) 688-1114 Dave Lavigne
Forbes magazine (713) 228-2272 Claire Poole
Triumf - Ewart Blackmore - (604) 222-1047
Oregon Securities Exchange (503) 378-4387
Idaho Securities Exchange (208) 334-3684 - Wayne Klein
Seattle Securities Exchange Commission (206) 442-7990 Derel HegalARTICLES:Peripheral Systems Annual Report May 1989
Tesla Technology and Radioisotopic Energy Generation - Brown July 1990
Peripheral RNB Patent #4,835,433
The Beta Voltaic Effect ... - Brown June 1990
RCL Northwest Inc Buy recommendation 2/28/90
San Jose Mercury News, August 12, 1989, Page 9A. - * from mother
Peripheral Systems "Dear Shareholder" of May 18 1990
Peripheral Systems Inc correction press release - * through PLG
Soup-can Physics - Forbes March 6 1989 p 142 - * from CMU library
Financial Markets - Vol 1 No 6, May 1990
Investors Eye New Battery Technology - Today's Investor May 11 1990
Multiple Uses Seen for Improved Battery - IPN May/June 1990
WARD'S Engine Update July 1, 1990, page 5
Researchers harness energy from nuclear waste - Hazmat World Dec 1989
Crisis Investing - The Robb Report - June 1990
International Tesla Symposium handout - July 1990
Nuclear battery mops up waste - The Sunday Times - LONDON - Nov 12, 1989
A Pint-size Power Source Packing an Atomic Punch - Bus Week Aug 29 1988
Nuclear Battery Taps Fission By-product - Insight - Aug 29 1988
Steelhawk press release of May 10 1990
Steelhawk press release of June 13 1990
Steelhawk press release of Feb 1 1990
Note from Mike Cartmell
Intro and Conclusion of PLG Ionic Battery report
PLG description and Kaplan Johnson Bley descriptionBurke Patent #3,409,820I know a few more things that I have told a few people I would not give
out (they may have just been afraid of me giving it to the press). Most
of it is not good for Brown or Peripheral. If there were a court case I
could come up with some more things.Brown has been quoted with many bogus numbers for battery power and
quantity of radioactive material. When confronted and asked for the real
numbers he agreed that reported numbers were wrong but that the real
numbers were proprietary. It is as if he is willing to give out bogus
numbers to the press and print bogus numbers in the annual report but he
keeps the real numbers top secret.The RNB may or may not actually produce some electricity but Brown's
claims make it look far better than it can possibly be. I am surprised
that he has not been charged with securities fraud since leaving Idaho.If there are any reporters reading this who would like to do a story
please give me a call. If you know a reporter who might be interested
feel free to forward this to them. If you know someone who has invested
in this company they might appreciate your telling them the above.-- VinceName: Vincent Cate
Email: vac@cs.cmu.edu
Home Phone: (412) 361-1447
Work Phone: (412) 268-3077
FAX: (412) 681-1998Address: 6938 Meade St, Apt 2
Pittsburgh PA, 15208 |
