Desktop Reactor Can Serve Power Needs
By Kumar Chellappan
Deccan Chronicle (India)

Sunday, January 18, 2009

A "small decentralised desktop reactor" capable of producing 50 to 100 kw of electricity in optimum conditions to power individual houses or commercial establishments is a real possibility, according to Mahadeva Srinivasan, a physicist and former scientist of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Trombay, Mumbai.

Pursuing the research for this project in laboratories across the US, Dr Srinivasan told Deccan Chronicle that the reactor, based on cold fusion technology, offered an era of gridless electricity and would use palladium, platinum and heavy water. Along with Dr P K Iyengar, former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Dr Srinivasan had reproduced the cold fusion reaction in BARC laboratories immediately after the declaration by American scientists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons of the University of Utah that they had produced a nuclear fusion at room temperature on March 23, 1989.

"The device used by Fleischmann and Pons was an electrolytic cell where the cathode was a rod of Palladium and the anode a coil of platinum wire. The electrolyte was lithium deuteroxide dissolved in heavy water. During electrolysis, the scientists found that a massive amount of excess heat was released and from that electricity could be generated," said Dr Srinivasan.

But most scientists could not replicate the experiment with the same results and the powers that be of the day concluded that there was no experimental evidence to substantiate the Fleischmann-Pons' claim. ''The deuterium to palladium loading ratio in the cathode was crucial and it made the difference. Researchers who pursued the experiment under another name 'Low Energy Nuclear Reactions' have come to the conclusion that it was possible to reproduce the results elsewhere," said Dr Srinivasan.

With the exit of Dr Iyengar from AEC, the cold fusion project was given a silent burial. "Dr Srinivasan was not given any support by AEC authorities because of the differences of opinion between physicists. I had extended my full support to him," said Dr A. N. Prasad, former director, BARC. Dr Iyengar said that he was convinced about the results. "But the government is the most insensitive part of any system," said Dr Iyengar who was confident that Dr. Srinivasan's dream reactor would become a reality in the near future.

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