Science: Development in Atom Fusion to be Unveiled
By Jerry E. Bishop
Wall Street Journal

March 23, 1989

Researchers are expected to announce a new development -- possibly a breakthrough -- in the 35-year-long effort to control the energy released by the fusion of hydrogen atoms.

The University of Utah told reporters yesterday that it will hold a press conference this afternoon to announce that its scientists have achieved "a sustained thermonuclear reaction at room temperature." A university spokeswoman adamantly refused to give any further information.

It's believed, however, that the Utah scientists will announce a development in an obscure method known as catalyzed fusion. Their laboratory experiments, it's thought, show that hydrogen atoms can be forced to fuse together inside of a solid material rather than in the superhot gases that fusion researchers previously have used. Speculation was that the Utah experiments show that fusion can be triggered, or catalyzed, electrically and under conditions that exist naturally in the earth. Until now, it was thought hydrogen fusion could take place only under the millions of degrees of heat and density that exist on the sun and in the hydrogen bomb.

It wasn't clear late yesterday whether the University of Utah researchers would announce the long-sought breakthrough to practical, controlled hydrogen fusion or whether they would claim only to have discovered a new phenomenon that might lead someday to practical fusion energy. One scientist who had picked up hints about today's announcement described the claims as "fantastic," but more with a note of skepticism than wonder. Any claims of a major breakthrough would stir considerable controversy and send physicists rushing to their labs to try to duplicate and confirm the Utah experiments.

Scientists have held hopes of harnessing the energy of hydrogen fusion almost from the moment the hydrogen bomb was conceived during World War II. Since 1952, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent in a world-wide effort to achieve controlled hydrogen fusion. If such a reaction could be achieved, it would promise an almost limitless source of energy.

The barrier to controlled fusion lies in the positive electrical charge carried by the nucleus of a hydrogen atom. When two hydrogen nuclei come close together, they repel each other, just as magnets repel each other when like poles are brought together.

Until recently, it's been thought that the only practical way to overcome this repulsion of hydrogen nuclei was to heat the nuclei to temperatures on the order of 50 million to 200 million degrees or more. To obtain a useful number of fusion reactions also required confining the superhot nuclei in a small space and holding them for a limited time-sometimes for more than a second, depending on the temperature and density.

To accomplish controlled fusion, researchers have been experimenting for three decades with huge machines that magnetically confine superhot "plasmas," or charged gases, of hydrogen nuclei. Their goal has been to heat and confine the nuclei long enough to release more energy than was put into the machines. In recent years, they've also attempted to focus dozens of laser beams on tiny hydrogen-containing pellets. So far, these methods still require more energy than the reaction releases. But researchers hope to reach a break-even point within the next year or two.

The Utah researchers, which until now have been carrying out their experiments without any publicity, are believed to be studying catalyzed fusion. That method, also known as "cold" fusion, is also being pursued at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Both groups are understood to have simultaneously submitted reports on independent discoveries to the British journal Nature.

Experiments by both groups are believed to show that hydrogen nuclei can fuse at room temperature if they are confined inside solid crystals such as the metals palladium, titanium or nickel.

The idea of catalyzed fusion has only recently been pursued by physicists. Steven Earl Jones of Brigham Young University, a leading researcher in the field, has talked extensively in the last three years on what is known as "muon-catalyzed" fusion. Muons are subatomic particles that are generated in big atom smashers.

In muon-catalyzed fusion, as described in published reports by Mr. Jones, muons from an atomic accelerator are shot into a gas of deuterium and tritium nuclei, the two "heavy" forms of hydrogen. A muon will actually bind itself to a tritium atom momentarily to create a new atom. This muon-tritium atom will then bind itself to a deuterium atom to create a new molecule. In this new molecule, the tritium and deuterium nuclei are so close together that they overcome their mutual repulsion and fuse, releasing energy.

Such muon-catalyzed fusion takes place at temperatures considerably colder than room temperature. Laboratory experiments in the last two to three years in this type of fusion indicated it held high promise as a means of harnessing fusion energy, according to Mr. Jones. One of the problems, however, is that muons are expensive to produce. Mr. Jones couldn't be reached yesterday.

The experiments by the two Utah universities, it's believed, show that this catalyzed reaction can take place even without the help of a muon if two deuterium nuclei are confined inside the atomic latticework of a crystal.

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