(Part 1)
SOMETIMES the simplest of problems aren’t addressed by scientific research for the longest time, when it could be otherwise.
For instance, in researching nuclear reactors during some of my previous articles, I found out that hydrogen embrittlement is a big problem in nuclear reactors, as it degrades structural material. Among other things this causes a shortening of reactor life, and increased danger to the reactor itself. To my surprise, there weren’t many articles about this, and none about the origin of hydrogen that causes the embrittlement.
I had immediately thought that the main source of hydrogen was neutron decay way back in 2023. A free neutron decays with a half-life of about 11 minutes. There is a massive flux of neutrons in all nuclear reactors. Surely even if a small percentage of them decay into protons, this would form a significant of amount of hydrogen, hydrogen being a proton and a bound electron.
Last year a paper appeared in the internet – Influence of neutron decay on nuclear reactor materials. This was the first paper on this subject, although nuclear reactors have been around since World War 2, almost a hundred years ago.
So why has no research on this been previously done?
I would guess that here simply wasn’t enough interest or funding for such a “mundane” subject. For almost a hundred years! Yet it is undeniably an important subject.
The paper confirms that massive amounts of neutrons do decay into hydrogen. And this causes embrittlement.
More research needs to be done on this of course. (Send comments and suggestions to mabuhibisaya2017@gmail.com)/PN
