Many Scientists Still Give 'Cold Fusion' Cold Shoulder a Year After Initial Claim
By Jerry E. Bishop
Wall Street Journal

April 3, 1990

SALT LAKE CITY -- "Cold fusion" researchers are beginning to suspect that more than one kind of nuclear reaction may be occurring in their controversial experiments.

But while skeptical scientists call some of the latest findings "interesting," they say the cold-fusion researchers have yet to produce convincing evidence of any kind of nuclear reactions at all in their experiments.

Thus stands the cold-fusion debate after a three-day meeting to mark the first anniversary of a claim that a simple table-top apparatus was producing more energy than it was consuming, apparently by the fusion of hydrogen atoms at room temperature. That announcement by British chemist Martin Fleischmann and his University of Utah colleague, B. Stanley Pons, implying the discovery of a new energy source, set off a world-wide scientific furor that continues.

The conference focused on scientists who have continued to do cold-fusion research and have come up with more or less positive experimental results. Largely absent were the scores of scientists whose attempts to reproduce the cold-fusion experiments last year failed and who believe that Messrs. Fleischmann and Pons were mistaken. The conference was organized by the National Cold Fusion Institute set up at the University of Utah last fall with $5 million appropriated by the state legislature to exploit the cold-fusion discovery.

Reports from more than 40 different laboratories indicated that a small but growing number of scientists believe they are seeing entirely new phenomena in the cold-fusion experiments. "There is a growing consensus that you can't explain the phenomena by errors" in the experiments, declared Ernest B. Yeager, member of a Case Western Reserve University team that reported significant amounts of excess heat energy and tritium, a triply heavy form of hydrogen, coming out of cold-fusion devices.

"At least 25 laboratories throughout the world have achieved positive results," said Edmund Storms of the Los Alamos National Laboratory who recently reported detecting tritium in cold-fusion experiments. "We can put aside the question of whether it is a real phenomenon or not," Mr. Storms said.

But John Huizenga, professor of chemistry and physics at the University of Rochester, said he heard nothing during the conference that would change the conclusions last November of an ad hoc committee of scientists set up by the Department of Energy to evaluate the cold-fusion experiments. Mr. Huizenga was co-chairman of the now-disbanded committee, which concluded that "the present evidence for the discovery of a new nuclear process termed cold fusion isn't persuasive."

Most current cold-fusion experiments are more sophisticated versions of the original Pons-Fleischmann devices. A thin rod of palladium encircled by a coil of platinum wire is immersed in "heavy" water in which the hydrogen atoms are a doubly heavy form known as deuterium. When an electric current is applied to the apparatus the heavy water molecules begin to break up into deuterium and oxygen atoms in a classical electrolysis-of-water process. Many of the deuterium atoms liberated from the heavy water are "soaked up" by the palladium rod.

A recent count found 16 laboratories have reported measuring excess energy coming from a total of 40 electrolytic cells, David H. Worledge of the utility industry's Electric Power Research Institute told the conference. Five of the laboratories have claimed measuring high levels of excess heat energy, he said.

Mr. Worledge said he counted seven laboratories that have reported finding tritium in 22 different cells, including groups at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Texas A&M University in the U.S. and the Bhabha Atomic Research Center near Bombay, India. He also cited reports from at least three laboratories of detecting neutrons coming in short-lived bursts from cold-fusion experiments, albeit at extremely low levels.

But even scientists who believe these measurements are reliable said the reports make cold fusion even more baffling than before. The number of tritium atoms being counted indicated that fusion reactions can account for only about 5% of the excess heat being measured, the researchers said. Moreover, for every tritium atom produced there should be a neutron, yet the number of tritium atoms outnumber the neutrons being detected by as much as 100 million to one.

Adding to the confusion were indications that the heat and tritium mightn't be produced at the same time or by the same reaction. Several scientists, including Mr. Fleischmann, suggested that different "mechanisms" may be at work. "The two processes {heat and tritium} seem to be caused by two different events," Mr. Storms of Los Alamos said.

Cold-fusion advocate John Bockris of Texas A&M argued that the tritium found in his experiments appeared to be coming from nuclear reactions occurring on the surface of the palladium rods, probably on microscopic pimples called dendrites that seem to form on the palladium during an experiment.

The heat, on the other hand, may be coming from some reaction inside the palladium rods. Charles D. Scott of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee said a cold-fusion cell in his laboratory produced heat for as long as 200 hours at a time at a level far greater than could be explained by any chemical reactions. He also detected tritium as well as neutrons and gamma radiation in the experiment.

During some of these heat-producing periods, the Oak Ridge scientists siphoned out the heavy water and replaced it with ordinary water composed of "light" hydrogen atoms and oxygen. The heat production began to die down, indicating the heavy deuterium atoms are necessary to whatever nuclear reaction is going on. It took several hours, however, before the cell was no longer producing excess power. This suggested that nuclear reactions were still occurring among deuterium atoms trapped inside the rod.

Critics at the conference remained skeptical. "I'm here because I find it extremely interesting but I'm as skeptical now as I was at the beginning if not more so," said Richard Petrasso of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He said that the reports of neutrons could easily be the result of faults in neutron detectors and the reports of tritium, even if accurate, couldn't explain the claims of excess heat.

The cold-fusion researchers conceded their biggest problem is that they still cannot turn their experiments on and off at will. The experiments turn on at completely unpredictable times and no one yet has figured out what triggers them.

Many scientists will remain skeptical "until we can give them a recipe so they can reproduce {the experiments} in their own labs on their own equipment," said Howard Menlove of the Los Alamos laboratory. "I hope that it {the recipe} will come within the next six to 12 months," he added.

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