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Gold/Mining/Energy : A New Age In Gold Refining -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Jackson who wrote (452)	1/16/1998 3:24:00 PM
From: Chuck Bleakney	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 672

It is very difficult to get neutrons through some absorbing materials. Boron for example absorbs just about any free neutron that comes in contact with it. It and other elements are used inside the reactor as part of the control rods. If you sheilded a sample in boron it would activate very little or not at all, even after a long time of exposure to a high energy flux. The cluster's as described are generally a small number of atoms that may cage an even smaller number of atoms. As they are described they do not yield to chemical process as they would normally because they are very stable compound structures. I can't say that I have enough specific knowlege to support the existence of these structures, just that I do have enough knowlege to say that if they exist in the structure as they are described then they will not yield good results in a neutron activation anaylsis. We would commonly wrap pure gold samples in a cadmium shield before activation. The cadmium was an absorber, but only of neutrons of a speed we did not want for our analysis. Any analysis is done on site and the results of that analysis is what the geologist will get... They would not and could not ship radioactive samples outside of their controlled area. Plus the fact that the equipment for analysis of those samples is very expensive and requires a well trained operator to get accurate results. Even if a mass spectroscopy does detect the prescence of the cageing element(s), the "normal" chemical process's will not attack and remove that cage unless it has been "cracked" by some other method. Again I'm not proving the existence... just that the structure as stated holds water under the weight of the knowlege I can call my own and so I cannot discount it wholesale. We are certainly not all knowing and should not say that this and that CANNOT be true because it will not yield to that which I know to be tried and true. It has been proven time and time again that knowlege evolves. Last centuries scientific laws are just the basis of this centuries scientific laws. Everything breaks eventually, often to yield just one more layer of the onion. Chuck