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Researcher Defends 'Cold Fusion' Work But Draws Criticism
By William J. Broad
The New York Times

March 30, 1990

SALT LAKE CITY, March 29 — In his first appearance at an open scientific meeting in many months, a scientist who claimed to have achieved ''cold fusion'' presented no new data today that would be likely to persuade skeptics that the disputed findings were real.

The researcher, Dr. B. Stanley Pons, chairman of the University of Utah chemistry department, said at the meeting here that he had observed excess heat from a simple table-top apparatus and suggested that commercial applications of the process were possible.

But his heat-measuring methods came under attack during a discussion session, and Dr. Pons avoided a detailed reply.

Two hundred or so believers in cold fusion, curious onlookers and skeptics gathered for a three-day conference marking the first anniversary of the announcement by Dr. Pons and Dr. Martin Fleischmann, of the University of Southampton in England, that they had achieved fusion in a simple table-top apparatus at room temperature.

Fusion Has Eluded Scientists

Nuclear fusion is the force that powers the sun, the stars and hydrogen bombs, fusing atoms together rather than breaking them apart, as nuclear reactors do. The process frees vast amounts of energy, but usually requires temperatures of millions of degrees to get started. The controlled release of ''hot'' fusion in huge machines of vast complexity has eluded scientists for decades.

Although the cold fusion field has been ridiculed and scorned by many scientists, and its ranks have thinned considerably, enthusiasts here contend that prejudice is blinding many researchers to the work's merit.

''The possible technological implications were, and are, enormous,'' said Dr. Fritz G. Will, head of the National Cold Fusion Institute, a nonprofit corporation founded by the University of Utah that is sponsoring the conference.

But in opening the program, Dr. Will also alluded to dashed hopes that the table-top apparatus unveiled a year ago could rapidly evolve into a font of nearly limitless energy and profit.

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