Posted on 03/02/2002 4:54:40 PM PST by aculeus
NUCLEAR scientists will this week announce they may have achieved a controlled form of cold fusion, a technology that potentially offers humanity a limitless source of clean energy.
The researchers are to publish evidence suggesting they have successfully fused the nuclei of hydrogen atoms, so recreating the processes that take place within the sun.
Until now the only way to achieve fusion has been through nuclear weapons or in vast experimental machines that cost billions of pounds. Both depend on generating extremely high temperatures.
However, the latest research, by scientists at the American government’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Michigan, was done on a laboratory bench using relatively simple and cheap equipment at room temperature.
The study echoes the work of Professor Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons who, in 1989, announced they had achieved cold fusion at Southampton University but were ridiculed when no one could repeat their work.
Fleischmann and Pons made what many now see as a fatal mistake when they released their results at a press conference rather than having them scrutinised by other scientists before publication in an academic journal.
It is understood that Rusi Taleyarkhan from Oak Ridge, Fred Becchetti from the University of Michigan and their collaborator, Robert Nigmatulin, of the Russian Academy of Sciences, have repeated their work and subjected it to extensive peer review.
If confirmed, the discovery could rank among the most important since the dawn of the nuclear age. The scientists are, however, extremely cautious at this stage, saying only that they have detected all the signs of fusion rather than categorically confirming it.
Their technique uses pressure waves to generate tiny bubbles in a solution of acetone that has been infused with deuterium, a “heavy” form of hydrogen extracted from sea water.
At the heart of most hydrogen atoms is a nucleus comprising a single proton. Deuterium atoms, however, have an additional particle, a neutron. This makes them roughly twice as heavy and slightly unstable.
Physicists have long known that smashing two deuterium atoms together can fuse them into tritium, a third form of hydrogen with a proton and two neutrons. This fusion releases vast amounts of energy. This was the principle used to create the hydrogen bomb in 1945, but ever since then scientists have been struggling to find a way to control the process.
In the latest technique, the sound waves create bubbles that expand with explosive force. As the wave passes, the bubbles implode, generating extremely high temperatures. This process is known as sono-luminescence after the flashes of light emitted.
Until recently scientists could generate only temperatures of tens of thousands of degrees, far short of the sun’s 10m Celsius. This appears to have been solved by “hitting” the bubbles with another sound wave that compresses them so rapidly that temperatures soar and the deuterium fuses.
An insider said the researchers had detected “promising signs of fusion” including the creation of tritium and, crucially, the emission of neutrons. The researchers believe the neutrons have energy levels consistent with those that would be emitted by deuterium fusion.
This would enable them to escape the fate of Fleischmann and Pons, whose readings of neutrons enabled them to claim they had achieved fusion. It later emerged that these neutrons could have been the results of contamination.
Neil Turok, professor of theoretical physics at Cambridge University, said the results, if confirmed, were extremely exciting: “Cold fusion has a bad history but these laboratories are among the best in the world and they will have taken every precaution to get it right.”
The research has major implications for other fusion projects. Britain already hosts the Jet project at Culham in Oxford, where a machine has been built to research sustainable nuclear fusion reactions.
This weekend it emerged that Culham had scrapped its own research into sono-luminescence and other low-tech forms of fusion after a report from Thornton Greenland, a former senior scientist, suggesting it was unlikely ever to work.
Greenland said: “I thought there was too little evidence to show it would work, but this suggests I was wrong.”
Recently, Lord Sainsbury, the science minister, committed Britain to joining an international project to build a £2 billion fusion machine called Iter, Latin for “the Way”.
Even this, however, will be able to sustain fusion reactions for only 16 minutes. A proper fusion reactor capable of producing power is thought to be 30-50 years away.
Fleischmann, who now lives near Salisbury, still believes his results were correct although he regrets allowing colleagues to press him into publicising them before he was ready.
He said: “I hope they have achieved it. If they have, I hope people are ready for it this time.”
COLD = LOW ENERGY
((((yawn))))
Ummm- not necessarily. Cold Fusion just means that the temperature at which the fusion is occuring is much lower than that traditionally expected. The fusion process can be used to heat something up - like say boil water to steam. (A nice conventional use.)
If this pans out - it's a very big deal. But I wouldn't sell that Enron stock just yet...
Go here: OFFICIAL BUMP(TOPIC)LIST
and then click the topic to initiate the search! !
If they're wrong, it's off to the Gulag!!
...and their auditors are Arther Andersen?
Well give me a ping when one of these cold-fusion researchers boils enough water to make a decent cup of coffee.
Depends on your scale of "cold."
In this context, "cold" means significantly less than 100 million degrees C.
All you need to do is make steam at 3 or 400 C, maybe, without melting down your fuel cells or elements, and there's your power source.
That's as hot as we know how to make anything that makes steam, but still cold by traditional fusion standards.
And just what course in atomic physics taught you that tidbit of techno-babble? You really should study up on your fizix a bit better.
You're right. The hydrogen bomb was tested in 1950, as I recall.
Hope the rest of the article is a little more accurate.
"Cold" fusion is supposed to initiate at near room temperature, and the act of fusion generates great amount of heat. Theoretically, the heated solution would be passed through a heat exchanger/genorator system much like todays fission reactors.
Fusion is also supposed to cause NO radioactive byproducts, thus nuetering the anti-nuke whackos. Both the actual "hot" fusion and theoretical "cold" fusion models I know of are also NOT self sustaining, meaning no big BOOM in an accident.
I thought weapons used nuclear FISSION.
Edward Teller's baby.
You take it from there.
I heard a few months ago that the crown prince of SA was advising his country to *diversify* their investments. That is secret code for "Before long, we are going to be swept into the dustbin of history."
Man, this is going to be sweet.
I do not sell it.
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