Pons, Fleischmann Don't Plan to Attend U.S. 'Cold Fusion' Conference Next Week
By Jerry E. Bishop
The Wall Street Journal

May 18, 1989

The next act in the "cold fusion" controversy may be put on without the star performers.

As of yesterday, neither B. Stanley Pons nor Martin Fleischmann, the chemists whose claims of room-temperature fusion have ignited an international scientific uproar, had any plans to attend a special cold fusion conference in Santa Fe, N.M., next week. The conference was called by the U.S. Department of Energy three weeks ago to evaluate the controversial cold fusion experiments.

The two scientists are winding up a series of new experiments at their University of Utah laboratory and will be busy next week writing up the results for scientific journals, a university spokeswoman said. Their reports may include the results of a critical test on the palladium rods used in their fusion experiments, according to the spokeswoman, Pamela Fogle.

The Utah scientists have been under intense pressure from other scientists to have the palladium rods analyzed for the presence of helium. In the small Utah fusion apparatus, the palladium rods are immersed in "heavy" water and subjected to an electric current. If the fusion of hydrogen atoms actually takes place inside the rods, as Messrs. Pons and Fleischmann claim, then helium atoms, a by-product of fusion, should be trapped inside the rods.

The testing of the palladium rods has been surrounded by some mystery. Scientists have said the tests could be done in a matter of three or four days. As long ago as mid-April, Mr. Pons told doubting scientists at a meeting of the American Chemical Society that testing of the rods was being arranged. Early last week, at another meeting of skeptical chemists, he and Mr. Fleischmann again said the tests were being arranged.

Ms. Fogle hinted that the two chemists aren't likely to disclose the helium test results until they've written a scientific paper and had it reviewed by other scientists. She explained, "They've apparently been stung by all the criticism" that broke around the two chemists because they announced their fusion claims at a news conference on March 23 before their experiments had been reviewed and published in a scientific journal.

The Santa Fe meeting was called on April 25 by the energy department when confusion over the Utah claims was at its height among scientists. As of yesterday, several hundred scientists had registered for the conference, according to organizers at the energy department's nearby Los Alamos National Laboratory.

After almost two months of controversy, the battle over the Utah experiments is boiling down to two basic issues. The tests of the palladium rods for residues of helium-4 should settle the first issue -- whether hydrogen fusion is actually taking place.

The other issue centers on how Messrs. Pons and Fleischmann arrived at the claim that their device is producing four times as much energy in the form of heat as it is consuming in electricity. In their published report, they gave little information as to how they determined this figure. But many scientists now believe it was based more on calculations than on actual measurements. And the calculations were based on how much of the energy put in isn't producing heat, they suggested.

The presumed calculations stem from the nature of the Utah device. It is a simple electrolysis-of-water apparatus in which an electric current flows between two electrodes -- a palladium rod and a platinum wire -- that are immersed in "heavy" water. The water molecules absorb this electrical energy and break apart, or dissociate, into their constituent hydrogen and oxygen atoms. These atoms will release the absorbed energy only if they recombine to form water again.

Messrs. Pons and Fleischmann have said that all but a tiny fraction of the dissociated hydrogen and oxygen atoms emerge as gases from the device and aren't recombining. Therefore, they said, the energy tied up in these atoms isn't contributing to the heat coming out of the device. The two chemists, using time-tested formulas, apparently calculated the amount of input energy tied up in the hydrogen and oxygen gases and then subtracted it from the total energy input.

This calculation left a small amount of input energy producing heat in the device. Some of the heat is "Joule heating" produced by the resistance of the water to the flow of the electric current. After this Joule heating is subtracted, the amount of input energy left is far too small to account for the amount of heat coming out of the device. Therefore, the "excess" heat must be coming from the fusion of the hydrogen atoms that have been absorbed into the palladium rod, the Utah chemists apparently believe.

But skeptical chemists said this kind of calculation is suspect in the absence of actual measurements. They want to see experiments in which the hydrogen and oxygen gases are drawn off and allowed to recombine into water, with the resulting heat actually measured. Until this is done, they said, they won't accept the Utah claims of excess heat coming from fusion.

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