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Cold Panacea
By Charles Petit
Science News

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Two researchers proclaimed 20 years ago that they'd achieved cold fusion, the ultimate energy solution. The work went nowhere, but the hope remains.

It was like the cavalry had shown up.

Twenty years ago, newspapers and broadcasters burst with news from the campus of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City delivering what seemed a miracle. Its name was cold fusion. Its lure was simple: inexhaustible, clean and affordable energy.

A news conference is not a very professional way to introduce scientists to a major development in a field they've never even heard of. But university officials, spooked by fear that a rival researcher at nearby Brigham Young University might have stolen the idea, unloaded it hurriedly for the TV cameras and reporters scribbling in notebooks. The university didn't pussyfoot around. The confident opening of the March 23 press release was:

Two scientists have successfully created a sustained nuclear fusion reaction at room temperature in a chemistry laboratory at the University of Utah. The breakthrough means the world may someday rely on fusion for a clean virtually inexhaustible source of energy. Collaborators in the discovery are Dr. Martin Fleischmann, professor of electrochemistry at the University of Southampton, England, and Dr. B. Stanley Pons, professor of chemistry and chairman of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Utah.

The press release lacked technical detail. A hint to why was toward the bottom. It declared that the university was filing for patents. It included the phone number and name of the university official in charge of arranging business deals.

The announcement came at a time ripe for such possibility. As it is today, energy policy then was an exercise in neurosis. Memories of the oil embargoes and shortages of the 1970s were fresh.

Global warming was already a big worry among scientists, if not yet among politicians. Nuclear fission reactors were being canceled fast - scorned as expensive and perhaps dangerous. And to underscore fossil fuels' pitfalls, the very next day after the announcement, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker plowed into a rocky shoal in Prince William Sound, Alaska, dumping 11 million gallons of Prudhoe Bay crude and fouling a teeming ecosystem.

Hordes of reporters covered both events, and dozens of newspaper articles about the promised new energy source appeared in the first few weeks of cold fusion delirium. Scientists pored over grainy TV video to try to mimic the Utah team's apparatus.

Cold fusion's balloon began leaking quickly as the great majority of independent groups found nothing to report, and could poke holes in the claims of others who did.

In November that year a Department of Energy review panel reported finding no evidence that Pons and Fleischmann's claim had much to it. The DOE report cited experimental error, failure to replicate test results, no success at repeating the occasional episode of apparent anomalous heat and a trillionfold shortfall in the radiation that ought to result from true fusion. Some influential scientists labeled the whole thing as voodoo physics and as self-deluded, pathological science. Pons and Fleischmann slowly sunk out of sight. Pons seems to have left science altogether.

In 2004, a follow-up DOE panel reached the same conclusion: that the science was unconvincing.

Voodoo, or bolt from the blue

Hard feelings remain. Some adherents think that a mainstream scientific cabal stifled inquiry into a promising new field. Many others - some skeptical from the start - think the adventure wasted their time. A few refuse to even talk about it in public to this day. Said one, "It's dead. It's over. Leave it alone, and leave me out of it."

But cold fusion briefly struck such a powerful chord in society that - one is tempted to think 20 years on and with the energy predicament in many ways even worse - the cold fusion story provides some perspective for viewing things now. To start: Is there any reason to believe that the world might get another chance, another cold fusion, another bolt from the blue - with the bonus of being real?

Some researchers in fact say, given the history of surprise in science, that unsuspected things can be expected in any field, including energy. Just because cold fusion has not worked out and most probably never will does not mean the world could not get lucky with something just as good. "Do I think there are things out there that are game changing? I think that absolutely will be the case," says one such optimist, Keith Matzen of Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M.

He oversees work on a dark horse in conventional fusion research, a machine that uses a violent electronic squeeze machine called the Z-pinch. It already can, for one hundred-billionth of a second, jam 200 trillion watts of electrical power - 200 times what the entire United States uses in that same tiny flash of time - through a drum-shaped skein of slender tungsten wires. The strands blow up and push a converging wave of plasma onto a tiny pellet of deuterium and tritium fuel. Maybe, Matzen hopes, a bigger version - which won't be cheap - will unleash more energy from such slam-banged pellets of fusion than it soaks up. And that's just by applying standard physics.

"We are investing in things we know. But will some breakthrough technology come along and change things? I think so. I think there may be a breakthrough approach," Matzen says.

But let's say that we don't get lucky, don't get a redo on cold fusion or its ilk. Science may nonetheless have the tools to achieve a sustainable industrial society without sending climate and the carrying capacity of Earth into an unpredictable but probably bad hothouse future. For as badly as humans still depend on fossil energy, there are more options now. Twenty years ago solar power was just a stunt, best left for satellite self-power in orbit; the idea of getting substantial energy from wind was grist for jokes; and the only batteries suited for cars were lead-acid anchors.

Miraculously cheap energy

Richard A. Muller, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, leads (according to a 2008 student poll) the most popular course on campus: "Physics for Future Presidents." The MacArthur Fellow has published a popular book of the same title (SN: 10/11/08, p. 30). As his course and book suggest, Muller follows the nexus of science and policy - including energy - keenly.

During the early, heady days of cold fusion, he publicly offered a 100-to-1 bet that cold fusion is bogus. That seems like a risky offer. "Not to me. I read the paper," Muller said at the time.

He explained recently what he meant. "Most serious, big new things in science, even those that are rejected eventually, start off with a high-quality paper." This one? "Terrible. No grad student in any accredited university could get away with a paper that bad." The Utah pair didn't document procedures, run control experiments (such as, without heavy water or deuterium), and failed to discuss alternative explanations for their numbers. There were just too many opportunities for serious mistakes to believe the experimenters had stumbled across a revolution in science, Muller says.

But does the world need such a revolution now?

"We actually have it already," Muller says. "And we've done it more than once. I teach classes in a room with no windows, right in the middle of the day. We use electricity to keep it light. That tells you something. We pay 10 cents a kilowatt-hour for electricity. When electricity first came into use, it was delivered from batteries. That costs about $1,000 per kilowatt-hour even today. Our energy is so cheap it would astonish our ancestors."

It's a regular cycle, Muller figures. "Nuclear power was another revolution, and it worked, and then we got used to it and demanded more. Coal did the same thing. Rocks that burn! And enough to last forever! That was the cold fusion of its day. We'll get more, we always have."

The next round, he adds, better be clean - with solar energy his favorite overall bet.

Another question worth pondering: Can one imagine energy that is too cheap? One benefit of low-cost energy is obvious. The poor throughout the world could get electricity; they could stop burning dung, felling forests for fuel or using smoke-spewing motorbikes. And if a new source were cheap enough, market forces would lead to abandonment of cheap coal for that source, without carbon taxes or other enforced regulation.

But industrial and governmental ambition would similarly gain new avenues. Many people could travel anywhere and at any time, build cities and buildings and ships and aircraft and probably even spaceships and hotels on the moon. The leveling of mountains for coal might end, but the leveling of mountains for almost any purpose people in charge desired would be just a matter of aiming automated, smokeless bulldozers at them.

"I am not afraid of mildly expensive energy," says Jay Keasling, a synthetic biology chemist who is CEO of the DOE Joint BioEnergy Institute in Emeryville, Calif. "When gas hit $4 per gallon, we did wonders with efficiency." We could get by just as well, he says, on less energy. "Efficiency will be the key."

At the Joint BioEnergy Institute, researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and partners in other government labs and in industry are trying, among other things, to coax microbes into transforming cellulose and other plant sugars directly into the equivalent of gasoline and diesel fuel. "It won't be as cheap as [fossil] gasoline today," Keasling says. "But we can make transportation fuels, bulk chemicals and a lot more this way."

Real promise in the sun

The sun, nature's decidedly hot fusion machine 150 million kilometers away, has been called the champion of all energy sources.

Studies estimate that even aggressive efficiency improvement and such oft-mentioned fossil fuel alternatives as wind, geothermal, biofuels and even nuclear power cannot - given today's technologies and in some cases given basic physical principles - replace what fossil fuels provide today: 85 percent of all the energy we use. And that amount does not even include the additional energy needed to handle population growth and developing world modernization by mid-century.

But one source, by all calculation, can do so in principle: solar power. The sun constantly delivers 120,000 trillion watts to Earth's surface - offering enough energy in one hour to provide all that civilization uses in an entire year. A grid of solar cells working at a perfectly feasible 10 percent efficiency and placed on a piece of land 400 kilometers on a side would provide all the power the United States needs. Not that anybody knows how to do it yet. How to store such energy for use in the dark, how to drastically lower the costs of solar energy devices and how to turn that energy into liquid fuels for aircraft and other vehicles are nowhere near known today. But in big, round numbers, solar energy appears to offer the only power with the muscle to bear most of the burden in a low-carbon, sustainable civilization. And, of course, all the other renewable sources scientists know about, and perhaps some they don't yet, could carry part of the load.

Finally, if one despairs that the amalgamation of strategies now pursued won't wean mankind from burning fossil fuels and discarding its CO2 waste into the common air supply, and if one regards science like a state lottery where any ticket just might come through, there are shreds of reason to hope that cold fusion will somehow yet ride to the rescue.

Pons reportedly lives quietly in the south of France and, say acquaintances, dislikes discussing cold fusion. Fleischmann is retired in England and, despite ill health, follows the field closely.

But even without these men, hopeful research putters along after all this time. In the past year teams in Japan and in India report encouraging evidence of heat from small test cells, heat they cannot explain. Obscure journals and regular meetings bring a steady stream of new analyses and proclamations of hope that if one gets conditions just so, a fusion reactor fed isotopes found abundantly in seawater will light our cities, perhaps propel our cars. Even mainstream science meetings have the occasional session devoted to such so-called low-energy nuclear reactions. The 2008 American Chemical Society convention in Philadelphia included more than a dozen papers reporting evidence and theories for how simple tabletop reactions might mimic the reactions that power stars.

Like playing one ticket or even a lot of tickets for the Mega Millions lotto jackpot, cold fusion is a terribly long shot. "I'm still waiting for them to so much as boil water for a cup of tea with cold fusion," says Richard Garwin, a retired IBM Research physicist, longtime government adviser, winner of the National Medal of Science and prominent member of the 1989 DOE review of Pons and Fleischmann's work. Garwin likely never will get that tea. But as the state lottery promoters say: Hey, you never know.

Charles Petit is a freelance science writer based in Berkeley, Calif. He covered the original cold fusion announcement as a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle.

COMMENTS

This account of the history of cold fusion is completely incorrect. Petit wrote:

. . . as the great majority of independent groups found nothing to report, and could poke holes in the claims of others who did.

By 1990, 20 groups published papers reporting failed replications, and 98 groups reported success. Three of the negative papers turned out to be false negatives; they actually did measure excess heat, but they made errors and did not recognize this. Replications were reported by researchers at Los Alamos, China Lake and BARC. At BARC the director of the lab and later Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, government of India, and many others reported tritium and excess heat.

In subsequent years over 200 major laboratories replicated.

No holes have been poked in any major cold fusion experiment.

These replications have been described in hundreds of papers published in mainstream, peer-reviewed journals, which can be found in any university or national laboratory library. You will find a list of 3,000 papers and the full text of 500+ papers here:

http://lenr-canr.org

- Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org

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For the record, I am the "acquaintance" to whom Petit spoke and provided, at his request, an update on Fleischmann and Pons. And for the record, Petit declined my offer to brief him on what has been learned since 1989.

It's understandable that Petit didn't see through the smokescreen by people like Lewis and Koonin (Caltech), Jones(BYU) and Myerhof (Stanford) when he was in the trenches covering this story back in 1989. I doubt I could have either. 

But for someone who is the Head Tracker for the Knight Science Journalism program and a respected member of the National Association for Science Writers not only to fail to do his homework, but to decline current information when offered to him is not understandable.

The American Chemical Society national meeting takes place in three weeks from now in Salt Lake City. This year there are more than three dozen papers to be presented from scientists coming from the U.S., Italy, Russia, China, Japan, Germany, Ukraine. There will be recent graduates from UCSD to present their successful experiments, and there may possibly be another live demonstration by high school students as occurred in 2003 at MIT.

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

Steven B. Krivit
Editor, New Energy Times

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I was astonished to discover from this article that cold fusion has been shown to be unreal by repeated studies and that it never will be real. My reaction was similar to reading a modern article claiming that the atom bomb is a myth. I have been investigating cold fusion for 20 years, first at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and later in a private laboratory funded by serious investors. Like hundreds of other trained scientists, I have seen direct evidence for the phenomenon many times. In addition, I published a book, “The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction” that summarizes over 1000 papers addressing the subject. If Charles Petit had done even a minimal amount of research, he would have discovered this huge source of support for the reality of cold fusion. Once again, a person that the general public counts on to give factual information has left them with a wrong understanding.
Edmund Storms
Feb. 27, 2009 at 8:15pm
 

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Mar. 1, 2009 at 8:02pm
It's really rather straightforward: low energy nuclear reactions (LENRs) are real physical phenomena, but they're simply not fusion. Never were.

LENRs do represent a potentially game-changing clean, 'green' nuclear energy technology. Unlike more familiar fission and fusion power generation technologies that are based on what physicists call the 'strong interaction,' we believe that LENRs are instead dominated by the 'weak interaction.' This fundamental difference in the underlying physics of energy generation could enable LENR technology to have major competitive advantages over fission and fusion because LENRs do not produce any significant fluxes of dangerous energetic neutrons, deadly 'hard' gamma radiation, and/or any appreciable amounts of environmentally dangerous, long-lived radioactive isotopes.

LENRs' unique characteristics eliminate any need for heavy, expensive radiation shielding or protective containment structures. It also eliminates substantial costs associated with nuclear waste remediation and cleanup, since no radiologically 'hot' waste would be produced. Importantly, LENRs open-up the possibility of developing commercial 'green' portable nuclear power generation systems that have orders-of-magnitude greater energy density and longevity than competing chemically based power generation technologies such as batteries, fuel cells, and fossil-fueled microgenerators. If achieved, these would be revolutionary developments.

Lattice has spent nearly 8 years quietly developing its proprietary knowledge of LENRs. Apart from useful experimental R&D, we have achieved major theoretical physics breakthroughs that have enabled us to reach a point where Lattice is finally ready to begin an intensive engineering program aimed at building prototype 'breadboard' LENR power generation devices. Since May 2005, Lattice has published nonproprietary, 'basic science' aspects of its theoretical breakthroughs in a series of seven technical papers that establish the credibility of its science and LENRs (to obtain copies please see the list of 'live' URLs down below).

The Institute of Science in Society (I-SiS) is a nonprofit environmental organization headquartered in London, UK (http://www.i-sis.org.uk/index.php). Over the years, I-SiS has made notable contributions to efforts that aim to curtail the spread of genetically modified crops in Europe. Until recently, I-SiS (like Greenpeace) has also steadfastly opposed expanded use of nuclear (fission) power. However, after technically evaluating LENRs in 2007, I-SiS changed its policy position on nuclear power. In fact, I-SiS now advocates commercial development and deployment of nuclear technology in the form of weak interaction LENRs (as opposed to strong interaction fission or fusion processes) as a truly 'green,' carbon-free nuclear energy technology. Accordingly, Dr. Mae-wan Ho, Founder and Director of I-SiS, asked Lattice to write a series of short articles on various aspects of LENRs that would be suitable for a broad reading audience. To date, six such SiS articles have been published ---- there are hyperlinks to them down below.

Besides seven technical publications and six 'plain English' SiS articles listed below, there are two public online MS-PowerPoint presentations as follows:

Posted January 30, 2009 (19 slides)

Posted February 14, 2009 (24 slides)

LENR-based distributed power generation would appear to fit beautifully into the vision articulated in the new book by Robert Galvin et al., "Perfect Power: How the Microgrid Revolution will Unleash Cleaner, Greener, and More Abundant Energy."

Lewis Larsen
President and CEO
Lattice Energy LLC
Chicago, IL
(312) 861 - 0115

*** URL Hyperlinks to Technical Publications ***

1. "Ultra Low Momentum Neutron Catalyzed Nuclear Reactions on Metallic Hydride Surfaces", Eur. Phys. J. C 46, 107 (2006 - arXiv in May 2005)


2. "Absorption of Nuclear Gamma Radiation by Heavy Electrons on Metallic Hydride Surfaces" (Sept 2005) Widom and Larsen
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/cond-mat/pdf/0509/0509269v1.pdf

3. "Nuclear Abundances in Metallic Hydride Electrodes of Electrolytic Chemical Cells" (Feb 2006) Widom and Larsen
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/cond-mat/pdf/0602/0602472v1.pdf

4. "Theoretical Standard Model Rates of Proton to Neutron Conversions Near Metallic Hydride Surfaces" (Sep 2007) Widom and Larsen
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/nucl-th/pdf/0608/0608059v2.pdf

5. "Energetic Electrons and Nuclear Transmutations in Exploding Wires" (Sept 2007) Widom, Srivastava, and Larsen
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0709/0709.1222v1.pdf

6. "High Energy Particles in the Solar Corona" (April 2008) Widom, Srivastava, and Larsen
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0804/0804.2647v1.pdf

7. "Primer for Electro-Weak Induced Low Energy Nuclear Reactions" (Oct 2008) Srivastava, Widom, and Larsen
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0810/0810.0159v1.pdf

***URL Hyperlinks to 'Plain English' Online SiS Articles on LENRs ***

#1. November 13, 2008
Low Energy Nuclear Reactions for Green Energy -
How weak interactions can provide sustainable nuclear energy and revolutionize the energy industry
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/LENRGE.php

#2. December 4, 2008
Widom-Larsen Theory Explains Low Energy Nuclear Reactions & Why They Are Safe and Green -
All down to collective effects and weak interactions
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Widom-Larsen.php

#3. December 10, 2008
Portable and Distributed Power Generation from LENRs -
Power output of LENR-based systems could be scaled up to address many different commercial applications
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/PortableDistributedPowerFromLENRs.php

#4. December 11, 2008
LENRs for Nuclear Waste Disposal -
How weak interactions can transform radioactive isotopes into more benign elements
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/LENR_Nuclear_Waste_Disposal.php

#5. January 26, 2009
Safe, Less Costly Nuclear Reactor Decommissioning and More
How weak interaction LENRs can take us out of the nuclear safety and economic black hole
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/safeNuclearDecommissioning.php

#6. January 27, 2009
LENRs Replacing Coal for Distributed Democratized Power
Low energy nuclear reactions have the potential to provide distributed power generation with zero carbon emission and cheaper than coal
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/LENRsReplacingCoal.php
Lew
Mar. 1, 2009 at 2:11pm

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Readers my be confused by Lewis Larsen's suggestion that "cold fusion" is not fusion.

I explained this eye-opening perspective in my presentation at last year's American Chemical Society meeting.

http://newenergytimes.com/Library2/2008/2008-Krivit-ACS.pdf

Nobel laureate Julian Schwinger is well known for saying that
"the circumstances of cold fusion are not those of hot fusion."

It is also true that the results of cold fusion are not those of hot fusion. This was a significant point of my 2008 ACS talk.

I will speak at ACS again this year on Sunday, March 22 at 8:55 a.m.

For those who are interested, we have dedicated a portal page on New Energy Times with addtional information on the Widom-Larsen theory.

http://newenergytimes.com/wltheory

Steven B. Krivit
Editor, New Energy Times
http://newenergytimes.com/
Steven Krivit

*************

Charles Petit, you should be ashamed of yourself. At least with the negligible amount of research since 1989 you have done, you are true to your last name.
Have you even heard of the SPAWAR Navy research results?
Have you read anything of Dr Storm's?
Have you even perused one issue of Steve Krivit's New Energy Times?
Perhaps spent even a minute to check out the myriad of papers on many levels at Lenr-canr.org, Jed Rothwell's site.
As I am pretty sure the answer to all these is NO, I ask you as a science-minded lay person, part of the very market you write for, to do some of the above and then give an honest, if brief, accounting of the cold fusion activity since 1989.
You owe it to us. This was not a hoax or bad science.
America needs this.
The world needs this.
Your integrity should demand this.

Mitch Bogart, Sharon, MA
Mitch Bogart
Mar. 5, 2009 at 12:30pm

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There appears to be much more to this story than Petit provided. Cold fusion is obviously a more advanced enterprise than the article suggested.

I am particularly intrigued with the implied statements about low energy conversion of radioisotopes. If true, this could be an immense tool. In some ways, I really feel sorry for the 'science writer for the lay press.' Searching for metaphors, simplifying and reducing data interpretation, and then caught in the crossfire of giant egos. Still, one can hope for better...
Phil Grimm
Mar. 8, 2009 at 10:10am

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I would think that Science News would correct this story or, at least, make up for the appalling lack of technical expertise by producing another article - ASAP.

I am extremely pleased with the immediate feedback by people who are leaders in this field and feel that this shows the quality of this publication by the reputation of its readers.

I am involved in solar power and would happily be persuaded to be unemployed (or move to work in the cold fusion area) should this field prove out. Please continue!

Brian Paterson
brian paterson
Mar. 9, 2009 at 9:04am

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One thing that came with the aftermath of Pons & Fleischmann is that if you wanted to stay abreast with what's happening you had to find information sources other than the established scientific journals. Back then a lot of people turned to "USENET newsgroups," these days it's blogs. I followed things for a few years, it's nice to see some of the same people still at it and with better understanding of what might be going on.

I've subscribed to Science News continuously since 1969. It's rather odd that the two most interesting things in science to my mind, cold fusion and non-greenhouse gas climate change, seem to get such poor coverage here. In both cases, it's unclear what is going on, clear that something interesting is going on, and that the spirit of scientific inquiry should be encouraged to figure it out.

Thank goodness for alternative media. Keep on plugging!
Ric Werme
Mar. 9, 2009 at 10:00pm

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The two citations that Petit references are government reports produced for the DoE, one in 1989, the other in 2004. The first was a rush to judgment, as evidenced by the chairman's threat to resign if it's conclusions were not softened to allow for the possibility that cold fusion is real. Chairman Norman Ramsey was also a Physics Nobel Laureate. He recognized that multiple groups were reporting confirming evidence, some very strong, such as Bhabba Institute, Texas A&M and Dr. Storms' and Dr. Claytor's work at Los Alamos. Nobel Laureate Julian Schwinger also recognized and repeatedly spoke about the need to take the evidence very seriously.

The report generated in 2004 was a result of comments from 18 scientists who were given a selection of papers on cold fusion. The vast majority conceded that the evidence is such that the work should definitely continue, although only a few supported federal funding (one must protect the sacred feeding trough). Some stated that the evidence could be considered as proof of the existence of the basic phenomena, however poorly understood.

Petit apparently considers cold fusion to be in the category of claims not unlike the existence of the Easter Bunny or Tooth Faery, both of which would be wonderful to believe in (I suppose), but both of which we have grown to recognize as false.

This article is fatally flawed. The need to recognize the solid evidence is very great. Petit performs a great disservice by failing to even hint at recognition, although I know that Krivit must have provided every chance for him to become current on the subject. He obviously was familiar with the original press conference, but he seems to have been carried away with the overwhelming negative press since then, and apparently wishes to remain in good stead with most of his peers. Very sad for him, actually.

Ed Wall
Edward Wall
Mar. 9, 2009 at 10:01pm

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The argument about a press conference is a red herring- it was set by the administration not the scientists. As far as the science goes- perhaps the authors and the readers should try reading the literature: here are a few to get you started:
1.    1989, Pons and Fleischmann, Electrochemically Induced Nuclear Fusion of Deuterium. Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, 261 (March, 1989) 301-308.
2.    1989, Armstrong et al., Some Aspects of Thermal Energy Generation During the Electrolysis of D2O Using a Palladium Cathode, Electrochimica Acta, Vol. 34, pp1319-1322 1989.
.....
173.    2003, Swartz, Photo Induced Excess Heat from Laser-irradiated Electrically Polarized Palladium Cathodes in D2O, Tenth International Conference on Cold Fusion, Cambridge, MA 2003.
174.    2005, Dardik et al., Progress in Electrolysis Experiments at Energetics Technologies (PowerPoint Slides), in the 12th ICCMNS, Yokohama, Japan, 2005.

Dennis Cravens
Mar. 10, 2009 at 5:42pm

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Two comments on Steven Krivit's posting, where he offers lecture slides claiming to justify the assertion that 'cold fusion is not fusion'.

1. I see no reference to the work of Claytor, who has obtained strong evidence for the production of tritium through detection of its decay products (via scintillation counter measurements and half-life measurements). That surely suggests actual fusion (starting with deuterium gas).

2. He quotes Robert Park as saying that if something you have attributed to D-D fusion is then observed with ordinary water, you have been fooling yourself. Hardly a valid argument; I can't see any real difference between that argument and saying if you observe heat generation in uranium and attribute it to the fission of uranium nuclei, and later observe the same in plutonium then you have been fooling yourself. Incidentally, I talked with Park fairly recently, and gathered that he is no longer as dismissive of CF as he has been in the past.

Brian Josephson
Emeritus Professor of Physics, Cambridge University
Brian Josephson
Mar. 11, 2009 at 6:51am

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Prof. Josephson’s presumption of strong interaction 'cold' fusion being the dominant nuclear process in LENR systems is not supported by the experimental evidence --- the data can easily be explained by non-fusion processes such as the weak-interaction-based Widom-Larsen theory of LENRs.

1. I agree, Dr. Claytor’s experimental observations of tritium production in LENR systems at Los Alamos National Laboratory were excellent work. While being a sporadic and rarely detected LENR reaction product, other skilled researchers besides Claytor have also made believable claims of modest amounts of tritium production in such experimental systems. Well, both hydrogen and deuterium (in varying ratios depending on the experimental setup) would assuredly be present in such LENR experiments. Tritium can in fact be produced by the simultaneous capture of two ultra low momentum (ULM) neutrons on hydrogen; it can also be produced by the capture of a single ULM neutron on deuterium. In the Widom-Larsen theory of LENRs, ULM neutrons (ultra long DeBroglie wavelengths --- see our papers for an explanation) are produced by condensed matter weak interaction processes and then captured by nearby ‘target’ atoms. Therefore, tritium can plausibly be produced in such systems at moderate temperatures and pressures by non-fusion nuclear processes. Ergo, the detection of tritium as a reaction product in an LENR system is not necessarily experimental evidence that unquestionably points to D-D “cold fusion;” other explanations are possible.

2. I agree that publicly Prof. Park is now much less critical of LENR-related research; this is in sharp contrast to Park’s earlier and rather vocal public views on this subject matter. However, you are drawing what I believe is an incorrect conclusion that this marked change in Park’s tone about LENRs is the result of his having less resistance to the idea of some sort of strong interaction “cold fusion” taking place as the dominant nuclear process in LENR systems. Au contraire, as far as I know, Park has never suggested anything of the sort, privately or publicly. In December 2006, I attended an invitation-only (Prof. Josephson was not present), closed-door meeting at Ft. Belvoir sponsored by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) at which Dr. Park spoke eloquently on this very subject. Paraphrasing his words, in his DTRA talk Park stated that he had changed his mind and did believe that LENRs were probably some sort of real, albeit poorly understood nuclear phenomenon, but that he still didn’t think that it was likely to be some form of fusion. Are you suggesting that Dr. Park recently told you explicitly, off-the-record that he accepted the idea of “cold” D-D fusion in LENR systems? If so, I simply don’t believe it.

No theory of LENRs based upon strong interaction D-D “cold fusion” has ever been able to fully explain the rich experimental depth and breadth of LENR phenomena which, contrary to the beliefs of the “cold fusion” diehards like Prof. Josephson, McKubre, Hagelstein, Chubb, Storms and others, actually extends beyond 1989 all the way back to the 1880s. By contrast, the Widom-Larsen theory is able to do so --- it is explained in our various publications.

Further online debate about fusion versus non-fusion LENRs in this forum is relatively pointless and I frankly do not have the time for such banter. However, I would urge interested Science News readers to examine the seven Widom-Larsen-Srivastava technical publications, my six ‘plain English” I-SiS articles, and Lattice’s online SlideShare presentations (please see the URLs listed in my earlier post). After becoming acquainted with our theoretical work and its implications, please study the varied experimental evidence reported in experimental papers on LENRs that can be found in the free online library located at http://www.lenr-canr.org. At that point, readers will hopefully be able to form their own independent opinions about which theoretical view of LENR phenomena, fusion versus non-fusion, is likely to be correct.

Lewis Larsen
President and CEO
Lattice Energy LLC
Chicago, IL
312) 861 - 0115
Lew
Mar. 11, 2009 at 9:32am

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Nobel prize-winner Brian Josephson mentioned my presentation at last year's American Chemical Society national meeting in Philadelphia.

The link for that presentation is here:
http://newenergytimes.com/Library2/2008/2008-Krivit-ACS.pdf

Salt Lake City, here we come!

Steven B. Krivit
Editor, New Energy Times
http://newenergytimes.com/

Steven Krivit
Mar. 11, 2009 at 10:09am

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