Cold Fusion Heating Up

Physics Today ^ | April, 2004

[Waldozer]

DOE Warms to Cold Fusion

Whether outraged or supportive about DOE's planned reevaluation of cold fusion, most scientists remain deeply skeptical that it's real.

Hot air? The cold fusion claims made in 1989 by B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann didn't hold up. But they did spawn a small and devoted coterie of researchers who continue to investigate the alleged effect. Cold fusion die-hards say their data from the intervening 15 years merit a reevaluation-- and a place at the table with mainstream science. Now they have the ear of the US Department of Energy.

"I have committed to doing a review" of cold fusion, says James Decker, deputy director of DOE's Office of Science. Late last year, he says, "some scientists came and talked to me and asked if we would do some kind of review on the research that has been done" since DOE's energy research advisory board (ERAB) looked at cold fusion nearly 15 years ago. "There may be some interesting science here," Decker says. "Whether or not it has applications to the energy business is clearly unknown at this point, but you need to sort out the science before you think about applications."

DOE is still working out the details, Decker says, but a review of cold fusion will begin in the next month or so and "won't take a long time--it's a matter of weeks or months."

Turning up the heat Last summer, after the 10th International Conference on Cold Fusion in Cambridge, Massachusetts, participants came away energized, says the conference's organizer, MIT theorist Peter Hagelstein. About 150 people attended the conference; the number of people working on cold fusion or, as some of them prefer to call it, low- energy nuclear reactions, is perhaps several hundred worldwide, most of them outside the US. Says Hagelstein, "Everyone was convinced things would start changing. The question on the table is, Can we establish to the satisfaction of the scientific community that there is science here?"

"The field has made a huge amount of progress," Hagelstein says. "In 1989, it was not clear if there was an excess heat effect or not. Over the years, it's become clear there is one. It wasn't clear if there was a low-level emission of nuclear products. Over the years it's become clear that, yes, there is. In addition, other new effects have surfaced."

"It's either my good luck or my bad luck, but I discovered there was something worthy of pursuit," says Michael McKubre, an electrochemist at SRI International, a nonprofit research institute in Menlo Park, California. McKubre's experiments are along the lines of Pons and Fleischmann's. A typical setup consists of a palladium cathode at the center of a helical platinum anode in a solution of heavy water with lithium salt. An applied current dissociates the deuterium, and deuterons load into the palladium. Experiments take a couple of weeks and "leaving them to sit is where most of the tricks are," says McKubre. Among the tricks, he says, are loading the palladium with sufficient concentrations of deuterons and increasing the signal-to-noise ratio in heat and helium measurements. "The numbers are what you expect for two deuterons fusing to produce helium-4, with about 24 MeV per helium nucleus. There is a nuclear effect that produces useful levels of heat. I know it's true."

"With knowledge comes responsibility," continues McKubre. "We know that this has economic implications and, potentially, security implications. The main application that cold fusion enthusiasts foresee following from their work is a clean source of energy; transmutation of nuclear waste and tritium production to augment weapons are also on their list. But, says McKubre, to solve "the various problems in scaling up the effect to make it more easily studied and potentially useful, we have to involve the scientific community."

[Waldozer]

The DoE has been convinced that enough credible evidence from authorative sources (like the Navy Research Laboratory, for instance, see http://www.spawar.navy.mil/sti/publications/pubs/tr/1862/tr1862-vol1.pdf) exists to justify their re-evaluation of their obviously flawed 1989 conclusions reached concerning "cold fusion" research.

Is this political news? What would happen if we could tell the Arab nations to look for other customers for their oil? What are the chances that "cold fusion" will get a fair hearing among die-hard skeptics and cynics, many of whom have built their careers on science that would be shaken to its foundation, and whose income comes from competing research or oil? What are the chances that the dominant media will provide a shred of objectivity in their coverage after all buying into the pathological skepticism like that expressed in Time Magazine's millenium issue in which Fleischman and Pons were pictured next to Joseph Mengele and labeled 'Frauds of the Millenium,' betraying a glaring ignorance of the vast contributions of these two scientists.

How good is the evidence? I worked for an ex-MIT engineering professor on this matter for two years and learned a lot. My opinion, however, pales in significance with that of the impeccably credentialed scientists who express unreserved believe that the original claims of Fleischmann and Pons have been demonstrated in spades, contrary to what this article says.

If the public is to know the evidence, the DoE re-evaluation hearings must be open to the public. The public must shed the naive belief that scientists are above politics. Don't be snowed. It is not that hard to understand. Please opine for open hearings at DoE!

[BenLurkin]

What do you make of this from Popular Mechanics? Battery Taps Water

Photo by University of Alberta

A radically new type of battery takes advantage of the way water molecules line up when they come in contact with glass. The electrokinetic microchannel battery, developed by Larry Kostiuk and his colleagues at the University of Alberta, makes use of the fact that water molecules have positive and negative ends.

Glass takes on a positive charge wherever it touches water, explains Kostiuk. Conversely, the negative-charged ends of all the water molecules line up facing the glass container. In the battery, water flows through glass channels, producing electricity along the channel walls.

"Each channel contributes less than a nanoamp," says Kostiuk. "But you can gang together as many as you need." The prototype shown here cranks out 2 microamps.

[Citizen Tom Paine]

Electrochemistry is a "black art" requiring a lot of hands on experience. Lets hope there is a new energy source out there which we may put in our basements to generate heat and electricity.

[Diogenesis]

BUMP for cold fusion which generates helium 4 from deuterium.
and is a better source of net future energy than gasoline or hydrogen or ethanol (has to do with mc2)
Cold fusion demonstrations and research meeting in Cambridge MA during the week of August 23, 2003
including the FR thread entitled "Cold fusion gets cold shoulder from many scientists"

---

Many US and labs overseas have reproduced it.
There was an open demo this Summer attended by FReepers.
At that meeting, Mitshubishi and Toyota presented their recent results.

Click for info to how Mitsubishi and Toyota and others continued research

Theoretical Framework for Anomalous Heat and 4He in Transition Metal Systems

Deuteron Fluxing and the Ion Band State Theory

Calorimetric Principles and Problems in Pd-D2O Electrolysis

Anomalous Effects in Deuterated Systems, Final Report

Thermal and Nuclear Aspects of the Pd/D2O System, Vol 1

Thermal and Nuclear Aspects of the Pd/D2O System, Vol 2

"...California is experiencing rolling blackouts due to power shortages.
Conventional engineering, planned ahead, could have prevented these
blackouts, but it has been politically expedient to ignore the inevitable.
We do not know if Cold Fusion will be the answer to future energy needs,
but we do know the existence of Cold Fusion phenomenon through
repeated observations by scientists throughout the world.
It is time that this phenomenon be investigated
so that we can reap whatever benefits accrue from additional scientific understanding.
It is time for government funding organizations to invest in this research"
Dr. Frank E. Gordon
Head, Navigation and Applied Sciences Department
Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, San Diego

[Ides of March]

If "cold fusion" really is a source of low cost, unlimited energy, then government intervention is not necessary, epecially for such low-cost, benchtop research as "cold fusion." Government only has to subsidize the losing technology; the winners are self-sustaining in a capitalist society. Therefore the hearings are a waste of time and money.

[Diogenesis]

Like the 911 Atrocities, American citizens should find out what went wrong
and apply some accountability.

[dennisw]

It could be that the capital expenses of cold fusion generation of electricity dwarf the power output.

[Waldozer]

Thermocouples demonstrate that is is possible to transduce useful electrical energy from heat, unfortunately, like this battery, not as yet in quantities that might compete with our main energy sources. I am not very familiar with this device, but the 2nd law of themodynamics has validity constraints that clever engineering have out-maneuvered, and this appears to be such a device.

Cold fusion, however, is nuclear. The energy densities in some experiments are said to exceed conventional fission reactors. Yet, no hazardous waste and infinite fuel supplies (apparently) exist. The problem is that there has been so little money provided beyond discretionary funding and small grants and private money, due to the stigma attached and the refusal of the USPTO to grant patents that they decide are vaguely related to cold fusion, due to the 1989 DoE conclusions (see www.blacklightpower.com). Starved for funds, the research has been limited mainly to very low cost experiments that have done well at demonstrating the effect (excess heat, nuclear reaction products coextensive with the heat produced, and a variety of related evidence). The scientists doggedly work under conditions that few would tolerate, were they not convinced of the significance of the evidence. They need access to much better analysis equipment before characterization of the reactions can be taken to a point where possibly useful technology can emerge. Thus far, this appears to be as completely benign energy source as one could ask. Naturally, with the suppression of this research in this country, other countries who have taken it seriously (Japan) have real advantages over us.

[gorush]

"It could be that the capital expenses of cold fusion generation of electricity dwarf the power output."

True, but I've heard of some promising results from the latest generation flux-capacitors.

[PatrickHenry]

Slow news day. Ping.

[Waldozer]

The winners are indeed self-sustaining in a capitalist economy. Our Constitution mandates the formation of a patent system to protect the inventor. In this case, it has failed because of government misfeasance (the 1989 DoE hearings). If patent protection were allowed, private funding would be much more plentiful. What is called for is for government to correct government's mistake and allow the market to work as the founders intended.

On another score, we have found it necessary for the government to direct funding into projects deemed not suitable for local control, like road building and defense. In the modern world, we need very expensive research to stay on par with competing nations. Valor requires support from advanced technology on the battlefield.

[js1138]

not that slow...

[boris]

I followed the Cold Fusion issue for many years.

I will only note that the Japanese--no fools--continued to issue patents in the field, and still do so to this very day.

--Boris

[boris]

"Constitution mandates the formation of a patent system to protect the inventor."

The problem is that today, a U.S. patent is worthless.

That's right: worthless. You still cannot patent a perpetual motion machine, but you can patent any number of violations of Newton's Laws.

Why?

Because the Patent Office ceased requiring working models of patented devices! The rationale given: they were 'out of warehouse space' in which to house the models.

Look on the U.S. patent website and see the large number of risible and impossible ideas which have been granted patents.

I wonder what the qualifications are to be hired as a patent examiner. No Einsteins there!

--Boris

[templar]

As simple as the 'cold fusion' process is reputed to be, and as simple as research into it and development of applications would seem to be, I'm surprised someone isn't cranking cold fusion generators, hot water heaters, home heating units, etc. out in their garage for retail sale. Unless, of course, it (cold fusion) is a failure or just a laboratory measurement trick and curiosity.

[Waldozer]

You may recall that the USPTO did issue a few patents accidentally to Dr. James Patterson for his innovative bead cathode flow-type cold fusion devices. Patterson had received so many non-cold fusion patents that his patent examiner just pass them along. There has been at least one physics doctorate awarded for cold fusion research at Portland State University, Oregon (Dr. John Dash's student). Recent work from Dennis Letts is very interesting (http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/LettsDlaserstimua.pdf)

With due respect, this is hardly a forum to establishing validity of the claims of scientists.

Some of the more impressive scientists, IMO are Italian and Russian, but the political issues surrounding establishing credibility of the evidence still dominate. It is a sad fact in this day and age that simple and accepted validation of simple and very important set of experimental results cannot seem to occur. It is easier and more gratifying to most to naysay than to investigate and consider, and suspend judgement, or apply it wisely.

[Waldozer]

There have been discoveries in physics (theoretical or empirical) that have proven to be merely curiosities, but some time later, that discovery allowed understanding of something that seemed paradoxical. The knowledge is worth having for its own sake. For instance, solid state rectification was discovered long before transistors became practical.

I agree that patents are not worth as much as patents that a well functioning patent office would produce. But try getting some venture capitalist to invest in your fringy science project with no protection whatsoever. If nothing else, the re-evaluation should proceed honestly to clear the names of Fleischmann, Pons and others like John O'M. Bockris while they are still alive, who were smeared by opportunists, for the sake of science. Their science was good and has been validated.

Cold fusion reactions are difficult to start and sustain, but the experts report high rates of reproducibility now. Useful technology will certainly never occur if the needed research does not happen. Of course, it may never occur (like hot fusion commercial reactors -- most likely).

[FairOpinion]

Very interesting. Thanks for the info.

[theFIRMbss]

>Government only has to subsidize the losing technology; the winners are self-sustaining in a capitalist society. Therefore the hearings are a waste of time and money.

"Winners" are not the
only things that self-sustain
in a market place.

And the modern world
is hardly a pure market.
Yesterday's winners

keep themselves going,
too. (For instance, rejecting
cold fusion papers

from establishment
science journals.) These hearings
might clear some dead wood.

[Wilhelm Tell]

The winners are indeed self-sustaining in a capitalist economy.

That is why the radical left will turn against any truly sustainable and economically feasible form of energy production. I have no opinion as to the usefulness of cold fusion -- however, should it or something else environment-friendly become practical, you will hear all sorts of weird arguments -- "The universe is running out of helium!" "Too much fresh water will harm the 'balance' of nature!" "People will only waste electricity if it costs little to produce and doesn't harm the environment!" "For ever, people have lived in poverty. It is 'unfair' to permit science to cause future generations to live in ease!" It will all end when some eco-terrorist group spreads nuclear waste around the world in order to "purify" the earth of all life forms. I just hope we can terraform Mars in time.