Warming Up to Cold Fusion

The Washington Post ^ | Sharon Weinberger

[Arkie2]

On a quiet Monday in late August -- a time of year when much of the Washington bureaucracy has gone to the beach -- a panel of scientists gathered at a Doubletree Hotel set between the Congressional Plaza strip mall and a drab concrete office building on Rockville Pike. The panel's charge was simple: to determine whether that idea had even a prayer of a chance at working. The Department of Energy went to great lengths to cloak the meeting from public view. No announcement, no reporters. None of the names of the people attending that day was disclosed. The DOE made sure to inform the panel's members that they were to provide their conclusions individually rather than as a group, which under a loophole in federal law allowed the agency to close the meeting to the public.

At 9:30 a.m., six presenters were invited in and instructed to sit in a row of chairs along the wall. The group included a prominent MIT physicist, a Navy researcher and four other scientists from Russia, Italy and the United States. They had waited a long time for this opportunity and, one by one, stood up to speak about a scientific idea they had been pursuing for more than a decade.

All the secrecy likely had little to do with national security and more to do with avoiding possible embarrassment to the agency. To some, the meeting would seem no less outrageous than if the DOE honchos had convened for a seance to raise the dead -- and in a way, they had: Fifteen years ago, the DOE held a very similar review of the very same idea.

[Arkie2]

LOL!

[hopespringseternal]

Acheiving fusion is relatively easy. Anyone can build a simple tabletop device that will fuse deuterium and produce neutrons.

This may be true of cold fusion too. The problem is that no one has even come close to a sustainable, break even reaction. The loss mechanisms are such that as you put more and more energy in, almost all that energy goes to something other than fusion.

To top it off, fusion is not "clean." It makes gobs of neutrons.

Fission is here. It works. I makes plenty of power. Even the "waste" issue is a nonissue if you simply process it (forbidden by Carter.)

[Diogenesis]

Vindication is coming because many US and overseas laboratories
have reproduced cold fusion with far better results than McKubre.
But McKubre appears to have craved the attention of the media the most.
As one example, there were two robust open demonstrations, one lasting one full week, at MIT
in August 2003.
Also 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

[cripplecreek]

You must be talking about Louis Leaky. The man was regarded as the father of modern archeology till he suggested humans in America earlier than was accepted. At that point the archaeological community savaged him, called him insane and drove him into seclusion.

[Wonder Warthog]

"Even the top experimenters in the cold fusion field admit they have real difficulty in reproducing their results. If the experimenters can't get past that barrier there's no science there."

That's what statistics are for. You might want to read some of Jeffrey Kloostra's science columns in Analog magazine about "hard to reproduce" science.

I haven't been following the CF story closely, but what I "have" read says that the folks the DOE is interviewing have made significant progress toward better reproducibility.

[Wonder Warthog]

"However, that does not mean that it CANNOT happen."

But that is precisely what your fellow physicists have said, and used every (non-scientific) means possible to stifle the necessary experimental work--ridicule, interference with funding, and all of the "academic tricks" to impede work "outside the theoretical pale".

"Chemistry is full of examples of two compounds that won't react, but in the presence of certain conditions and catalysts will react. Obviously the forces involved are fundamentally different, but I think the idea that there is some catalyst and conditions that could allow the energy barriers between protons to be overcome other than massive energy is not inconceivable."

But again--that's exactly what those who oppose CF research say---that it "is" impossible.

[Arkie2]

Well, maybe there's hope after all. I saw an article earlier this week with a quote from one of the DOE panel members saying the results of their review would be released before the end of November so we should have the DOE's opinion in a few days.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

I'm no physicist, but I have been following this cold fusion stuff off and on for years. Over the years, there has been progress made (due mainly to material science), but his has been slow and streaky.

That said, I don't know if anything usuable is around the corner, but there is something out there. I believe the reason that it has a bad rap is due to the fact the the U. of Utah forced the scientists doing the research to jump the gun on it. Also, the Cold Fusion name caused a lot of heartache in the scientific community (especially of the lack of gamma rays). Perhaps a better title would be something like "thermal induction."

[Wonder Warthog]

"Well, maybe there's hope after all. I saw an article earlier this week with a quote from one of the DOE panel members saying the results of their review would be released before the end of November so we should have the DOE's opinion in a few days."

Well, it is my fervent hope that CF turns out be screamingly real and practical, so we can tell the ragheads to both pound and eat sand.

[blanknoone]

To quote from the article, quoting Max Planck, "Science advances one funeral at a time." The status quo orthodoxy is always strong...a lot of physicists would be eating a lot of crow if it turns out there is anything at all to cold fusion. And they are very prideful people, and do not care for the taste of crow. I think the physics community made a big, and immoral, mistake when they denounced the field of cold fusion, as opposed to denouncing specific claims or people. I see that as a betrayal of the scientific method and the principles of skepticism and investigation that have lead to all of our understanding that we have, and will lead to all of the additional understanding that we will have some day.

If anything ever comes from cold fusion, or even 'cooler' fusion (why only room temp? Is there a way to do it at some sort of reasonably achievable industrial temperatures and pressures?), then this episode will be looked back upon as the equivalent of burning Galileo at the stake...except they should have known better.

[Arkie2]

Even if it's real the material that seems to get the best results, palladium, is rare and expensive. Probably good for exotic energy needs under the best of circumstances but not a panacea. I think the best we can hope for is the opening of a new field of physics research. I would be happy with that.

[Wonder Warthog]

"To quote from the article, quoting Max Planck, "Science advances one funeral at a time.""

Well, I confess to not reading the whole article, as I refuse to register for the WaPo (and yes, I know about "bugmenot"--but it appears that WaPo has found a way around it, as most of the passwords from there I've tried have not worked).

"The status quo orthodoxy is always strong...a lot of physicists would be eating a lot of crow if it turns out there is anything at all to cold fusion. And they are very prideful people, and do not care for the taste of crow. I think the physics community made a big, and immoral, mistake when they denounced the field of cold fusion, as opposed to denouncing specific claims or people. I see that as a betrayal of the scientific method and the principles of skepticism and investigation that have lead to all of our understanding that we have, and will lead to all of the additional understanding that we will have some day."

I was completely and totally disgusted by the performance of some of the "scientists" in their actions suppressing CF research. All politics--NO SCIENTIFIC METHOD. DAMN such pseudoscientists (even if they might be genius physicists, they are un-deserving to be called SCIENTIST).

[Wonder Warthog]

"Even if it's real the material that seems to get the best results, palladium, is rare and expensive. Probably good for exotic energy needs under the best of circumstances but not a panacea. I think the best we can hope for is the opening of a new field of physics research. I would be happy with that."

It's not all THAT rare, and is completely re-usable in the purported CF process---BUT---there is some indication that similar things happen in titanium and/or palladium-coated titanium. Titanium IS both ubiquitous and cheap (titanium oxide is a major constituent of house paint).

[Final Authority]

Gene Malove was gunned down at his mother's home in CT earlier this year. He was a leading advocate of alternative energy but mostly. he was a n advocate of cold fusion. A former MIT prof., he published the Cold Fusion Times. The explanation of his murder was that he was just in the wrong place at the time when a peeping tom or a B&E criminal happened upon him a shot him. Plausible but not likely IMO.

The interesting talk about cold fusion is that experiments have produced tritium, a helpful isotope for making fusion weapons. This makes it much easier for rogue nations to make triggers for small suitcase sized nukes.

[Arkie2]

Tritium? I hadn't heard that and if true would be reason enough to try and suppress research. However, if true, someone somewhere will eventually be able to achieve the results. I hope you're wrong.

[Neville72]

Very, very true. What truly paradigm shifting scientific discovery hasn't been preceeded by the skeptical tut-tuts from the "nattering nabobs of negativism". I'm not competant to comment on the science but I AM well versed in history and it is repleat with instances of all-knowing "scientific" naysayers who were later proven to be fools.

Keep at it guys.

[monocle]

In my professional career, I encountered many scientists and engineers who approached a given problem from an almost fixed point of view and could not view a given problem from any other viewpoint. Their fixated viewpoint stood in the way of developing novel solutions. In one case, the problem was improving a chemical process conducted in an autoclave and all prior papers suggested that increasing the temperature would solve the problem but then other prolems involving corrosion and equipment failure came to the fore.
</p>I suggested that it was not the higher temperatures which were effective in solving the problem but the higher pressures generated by the higher temperatures and offered a theoretical explaination for the higher pressure effect. I could not influence one person to test my suggestion even though a test or two would be fast and inexpensive. A number of years later when interest in the project faded I personally funded an experiment which demonstrated the validity of my suggestion.
</p>Whenever I now read about cold fusion I am struck about the similarity of the intellectual environment
with my experience. Nuclear fusion requires bringing two or more nuclear particles in close enough proximity to overcome their repulsive tendencies. The repulsive tendencies have been overcome by using highly accelerated particles to strike other particles, but the other particles must be restricted to a confined volume which confined volume I suspect is charaterized by high pressures. The pressures generated within the palladium lattice by hydrogen or it's isotopes is immense. It is for this reason among others that I cannot categorically dismiss the potential for cold fusion.

[Newshues]

Well, here's something to chew on.

Cavitation - the implosion of tiny little bubbles. At the center point of the implosion you can get temperatures of 5000 Kelvins and pressures of 1000 atmospheres.

That's pretty close to what's needed to fuse duetrium.

I've come across one researcher who claims a 9 in 10 success rate of demonstrating the effect. He claims 2 requirements for reproducability. a 100:1 ratio of deutrium atoms to palladium atoms across the entire electrode and a specific frequency of the electric current.

The high deutrium requirement makes sense and exceeds what most labs have kicking around in their heavy water stock. When you pass a current through water you get hydrogen on one electrode and oxygen on the other electrode, that's basic. His thought is that without the high deutrium ratio the bubbles created do not usually contain enough deutrium atoms to ensure that 2 are at the center point of the implosion. Makes sense. BTW: at 90:1 ration the experiment fails 9 out of 10 times, so close is not close enough.

What's not stressed in this article but was stressed in similar articles following the initial press release months ago was that part of the reasont eh DOE agreed tot he review was that a couple Navy scientists didn't give up on cold fusion either. They managed to convince their superiors up the chain that it was worth pushing the DOE to re-open the cold fusion case.

I believe that a very strong case could be made that something is happening. I'm not convinced that it is fusion. It may well be a particular current frequency and duetrium medium allows for more robust cavitation. I'm not ready to dismiss cold fusion either as researchers into sonoluminesence have reported similar data.

R. P. Taleyarkhan is probably the most relevant basic researcher for the prospect that cavitation allows for fussion. His testing method and data have made it through the peer review process into publication. His results, in terms of radiation measurements, are consistent with hydrogen fusion.

[finnigan2]

" This may be true of cold fusion too. The problem is that no one has even come close to a sustainable, break even reaction."

- I'm not a scientist but my closest friend from high school managed the fusion R & D unit of our largest hydro company. He later told me that fusion reactions could be made to work for a millisecond "burst" as long as the reactions were contained in huge, highly unstable magnetic field. However, because the heat produced could not be permitted to come in contact with any holding chamber, the magnetic field solution was highly unsatisfactory.
This is why I find the chemical fusion reaction idea hard to believe. The enormous heat generated by true fusion (and the reason why it would make an ideal energy source) does not seem possible to me in a mere test tube chemical reaction.

[B Knotts]

Interesting stuff. Is it real? Who knows? I'm glad they're looking into it seriously, though.

Personally, I think something is going on here. Is it fusion? Maybe; maybe not. I hope they can nail it down.