The leader in cold fusion news and information.
July 10, 2005 -- Issue #11

Copyright 2005 New Energy Times (tm)
Published by the New Energy Institute Inc. six times per year.
Subscriptions: $24/year Suggested Donation
 
Editor: Steven B. Krivit
Copy Editor: Cindy Goldstein
 
Contributors to this issue:
Haiko Lietz
John Coviello
Ludovica Manusardi Carlesi
Jed Rothwell
 Thomas O. Passell
 
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EDITORIALS AND OPINION
1.   From the Editor
2.   To the Editor
NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
3.   Navy San Diego SPAWAR Group Continues to Break Publishing Barrier
4.   The 12th International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems (ICENES)
5.   The 12th International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (ICCF-12)
6.   Proposed Italian-Japanese Nuclear Transmutation Project
7.   Politics and Science: Discussions on the Proposed Italian-Japanese Nuclear Transmutation Project
8.   "Sun In a Water Glass," Haiko Lietz's Report for German National Radio
9.   Introducing the International Sustainable Energy Organization
ANALYSIS AND PERSPECTIVES
10. Are Fast Breeder Reactors the Only Foreseeable Alternative?
11. Hot Fusion Program Recovers From Four-Year Delay
12. Report of the 2005 Cold Fusion Colloquium at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
13. The 2005 Gluck-Krivit Cold Fusion Survey
14. Remembering Eugene Franklin Mallove
15. Report on the Sixth International Workshop on Anomalies in Hydrogen/Deuterium-Loaded Metals, Siena, Italy, May 13-16, 2005
BITS AND PIECES
16. Cold Fusion Experimenter Not Arrested for Breaking and Entering
17. Want the Straight Poop on Where the United States Is Dumping Its Radioactive Waste?
18. Wikipedia Not the Place for Original Research
19. The Global Institute for New Energy Technologies: Exactly What Does It Do?
20. Speakers Available - Experts on the Subject of Cold Fusion
21. Updates to the New Energy Times (tm) Web Site
22. Help Wanted
23. Support New Energy Times (tm)
24. Appreciation
25. Administrative
 

 

EDITORIALS AND OPINION
 

"The freest and fairest societies are not only those with independent judiciaries, but those with an independent press that works every day to keep government accountable by publishing what the government might not want the public to know."
 
- Judith Miller, investigative reporter for The New York Times, after being sent to jail on July 6, 2005 after a federal judge declared that she was "defying the law" by refusing to divulge the name of a confidential source.

 
 
1. From the Editor 

The Clean Energy Revolution: A Future With Low Energy Nuclear Reactions
By Steven Krivit
 
You may not be familiar with the term "volumetric energy density," but I assure you that you are familiar with the concept.

If I asked you to picture in your mind a gallon container of gasoline, I'm certain you'd have no trouble visualizing it.

Since the 1973 gas crisis, most of us pay close attention to the miles-per-gallon-of-gasoline rating of our cars. If you drive a Hummer, for example, you expect that a gallon will take you 10 miles. If you drive a Prius, alternatively, you expect to go 55 miles.

Correlating the space used to contain the gasoline with the distance it will carry you is an example of volumetric energy density.

Now let's say you climbed up into your Hummer one day, turned the engine on, hit the gas, and went only a single mile on a gallon of gasoline. You'd obviously suspect a problem. Similarly, if by some miracle, you were able to go 1,000 miles on just one gallon, you'd also suspect a problem, but you'd most likely figure that the problem was in your head.

Now hold on to your reality belts, for what I am about to say has no reference point in our personal experience outside of science fiction movies -- so far.

What we have been discussing so far is combustion energy: the burning of fuel, a chemical process. Alternatively, if we can somehow, miraculously, find a safe way to release energy in a clean nuclear reaction, the potential energy release is astronomically higher.

We've heard the talk about hydrogen. But this so-called hydrogen economy, is, so far, based on the combustion of hydrogen, not the nuclear use of hydrogen.

This entire subject of burning hydrogen for an energy source, and the related talk about a "hydrogen economy," is of questionable virtue.

There is no known method to gain energy from hydrogen. Hydrogen can be chemically released from methane or water, however, these processes consume an equivalent amount of energy. If you take into account the efficiency losses, the use of hydrogen from these sources results in an overall energy loss.

The only real way to extract hydrogen effectively on a relatively low scale is to capture wind or solar power and on a large scale, to use nuclear fission plants. To a large extent, when people talk about the hydrogen economy, they are really talking about the nuclear fission industries' "economy."

On the other hand, let's take a look at the potential use of hydrogen in a fusion or other low energy nuclear reaction, should researchers figure out how to scale up the "cold fusion" process, for example.

For fusion reactions, scientists easily can calculate the amount of energy that would be released from hydrogen. It's quite large. Fusion reactions result, conservatively, in 8 million times the amount of energy you'd get from burning the same amount of hydrogen in combustion reactions.

Let's say that, instead of the one gallon of hydrogen in your car, this same gallon container was filled with the hydrogen isotope deuterium. And say you had a car that used a low energy nuclear reaction cell to extract the energy.

Consider this visionary glimpse of the future from a retired scientist from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Dr. Edmund Storms: "You could go to the moon and back on one gallon of deuterium. Or, if you just wanted to drive around town instead, you would have to replace your worn out old car before you ran out of fuel."

It would seem that the fuel would last infinitely, and, dare I use the word, perpetually. Of course, it would eventually be consumed, but the reduction in mass would be nearly imperceptible.

I know you're thinking, "OK, Steve, what kind of drugs did you have for breakfast?" However, these futuristic ideas are based on known science and reasonable extrapolations of what we know about low energy nuclear reactions today.

Every indicator points to the pollution-free nuclear use of hydrogen. And when these technologies appear, the as-yet pipe dream of the "hydrogen economy" will become reality, and the world will mark a new epoch, on par with the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution. The energy revolution will begin.

[Distribution note: This article, "The Energy Revolution - A Future With Low Energy Nuclear Reactions," by Steven Krivit, published by New Energy Times on July 10, 2005, may be freely distributed and published so long as no modifications to the text are made and this distribution note is included.]
 

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
 
2. To the Editor
(Letters may be sent to "letters" at the New Energy Times domain name. Please include your name, city, and state or province.)
 
To the editor:
 
I'm in close communication with Dr. Peter Gluck, a chemical engineer and a veteran observer and supporter of cold fusion and low energy nuclear reactions. From the earliest days, he has believed that the effect is at the surface, in a thin catalytic layer, not in the bulk of the cathode. More investigators are coming to similar conclusions.
 
He recently circulated a memo about reproducibility of experiments, with special emphasis on active, ill, and dead cathodes. In 2003, you surveyed investigators and found 80 percent reproducibility, which looks good, but these are ill cathodes on Peter's scale.
 
Gluck sees three categories of cathodes: active, ill, and dead. In the 16 years of cold fusion experiments, beginning with the Fleischmann-Pons effect, there have been a handful of events where the reaction turns on so strongly that the apparatus explodes or burns a hole in the bench or the experimenter runs and dunks it in a pail of water. This is what we should be seeing, and it is not reproducible. If this level of activity were the norm, there would no fumbling by the Department of Energy.
 
Peter believes the ill cathodes may result from a pervasive but unsuspected contaminant, such as air. Perhaps it is nanobacteria, which can thrive in heavy water. Sometimes, what doesn't work can be as informative as what does work; it's a matter of perspective.
 
In comparison, the 'reproducible' experiments are with 'ill' cathodes that produce a bit of heat, detectable with careful calorimetry.
 
Then there are the dead ones, for no apparent reason.
 
Nobody seems able to reliably manufacture active cathodes, and that is what we need.
 
Mike Carrell
Cinnaminson, NJ

 

NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
 
3. Navy San Diego SPAWAR Group Continues to Break Publishing Barrier
By Steven Krivit
 
Is mainstream science beginning to accept the validity of cold fusion? That's certainly the outlook from this vantage point. Pleased with their recent publishing achievement of anomalous morphology changes in their palladium-deuterium cell in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, a team from the U.S. Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command center in San Diego, Calif. broke further ground in bridging the communication gap between the isolated cold fusion community and the broader science community.
 
Naturwissenschaften, a prestigious journal published in Germany, has accepted their paper "Evidence Of Nuclear Reactions In The Palladium Lattice" for publication.
 
The paper presents evidence of transmutation that occurs when their cold fusion cell is placed in an external electric field. These findings were reported at the 11th International Conference on Condensed Matter last year. That paper is available here: http://newenergytimes.com/library/2004Szpak-PrecursorsAndTheFusionReactions.pdf.
 
"We submitted our paper to Nature first," electrochemist Pamela Boss said, "but they rejected it. They said that they don't publish in that area."
 
The Naturwissenschaften paper required two revisions and took seven months for the review process.
 
"It really is a good feeling to see that the scientific process works," Boss said. "The reviewers asked good questions. There was no nonsense. Some other reviewers in the past have been very insulting and unprofessional. This review process was clearly done very professionally."
 
"Needless to say, we're happy," Frank Gordon, head of the Navigation and Applied Sciences Department, said.
 
One of the other electrochemists, Stan Szpak, 83, still comes into the laboratory every day for a few hours, passionate to continue his cold fusion research.
 
"We wouldn't have achieved this without him," Boss said. " Stan Szpak is like a bulldog. He's very determined."

 
 

Pamela Boss, Frank Gordon and Stan Szpak

 

4. The 12th International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems (ICENES)
The 12th International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems will take place Aug. 21-26, 2005, in Bruxelles, Belgium. The conference is hosted by the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre, Studiecentrum voor Kernenergie - Centre D'tude de l'Energie Nuclaire, an organization of 600 dedicated people who advance the peaceful, medical and industrial applications of nuclear energy.

The main objective of ICENES 2005 is to provide an international scientific and technical forum for scientists, engineers, industry leaders, policy makers, decision makers and young professionals who will shape future requirements for a broad review and discussion, at world level, of various advanced, innovative and non-conventional nuclear energy production systems. The proposed systems are expected to contribute to a sustainable development of future energy production.
 
New Energy Times Editor Steven Krivit will present "How Can Cold Fusion Be Real, Considering It Was Disproved By Several Well-Respected Laboratories In 1989?" on Friday, August 26. The abstract can be viewed at http://newenergytimes.com/conferences/2005/ICENES2005/KrivitS-ICENES2005-Abstract.pdf.

Other cold fusion presentations will include:

"Progress In Cold Fusion Research," by Michael McKubre, Irving Dardik, Graham Hubler, Shaul Lesin and Vittorio Violante
"Analytical Study of Plasma Reaction in Organic Mixed Solution," by Tadahiko Mizuno and Yoshiro Tanaka
"Low Energy Nuclear Reactions In Condensed Matter With Production of Heat and Impurity Nuclides," by Alexander Karabut
"Nuclear Exothermic Reactions In Lattices: A Theoretical Study of D-D Reaction," by Fulvio Frisone
"Coherent Nuclear Reactions In Condensed Matter," by Antonella De Ninno, Emilio Del Giudice, Martin Fleischmann, and Antonio Frattolillo. 
"Search for an Abnormal Enthalpy of Hydrogenation and Deuteration of Various Metals. Possible Relation With Low Energy Nuclear Reactions," by J. Dufour, D. Murat, X. Dufour and J. Foos, 
 
Please see the Conferences page at the New Energy Times Web site for more information.
 

5. The 12th International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (ICCF-12)
The Web site for the 12th International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science, http://www.iccf12.org/, has been updated. This conference takes place on Nov. 27 - Dec. 2, 2005. Please note that a new location has been selected: Shin Yokohama Prince Hotel, in Yokohama, Japan.
 
Key dates:
Early registration discount: 15 Aug. 2005
Abstract deadline: 31 Aug. 2005

 

6. Proposed Italian-Japanese Nuclear Transmutation Project
This story first appeared in Italian on June 2, 2005, in Il Sole 24 Ore, Milano, Italy
By Ludovica Manusardi Carlesi
 
Two important initiatives could indicate a new opportunity for nuclear energy in Italy. Italy decided to stop running and building nuclear power plants as a result of a public referendum in 1987, which was considered absurd by the scientific community.
 
The first initiative is the possibility of a new laboratory near Rome. The main purpose is studying nuclear waste, namely caesium and strontium, in a new process using nonradioactive elements, which could lead to clean and safe nuclear waste. This gas diffusion process was developed in Japan at Mitsubishi and, in a similar way, using electrolysis, in Italy by the National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Frascati.
 
The second initiative is an interesting proposal by Italian scientist Bruno Coppi, a researcher at Boston University, to fund the Ignitor project. The goal of the Ignitor project is to study the feasibility of thermonuclear fusion in Caorso, one of the four Italian nuclear power plants. The others are Garigliano, Trino Vercellese, and Latina, all being decommissioned.
 
The Caorso facility is well-suited for the Ignitor project and is the home of many qualified researchers. Both proposals are being considered by the Societ Gestione Impianti Nucleari, the society dedicated to the decommissioning of nuclear power plants and the management of nuclear waste.
 
The first experiment deals with an extraordinary result obtained in Japan by Iwamura at Mitsubishi and in Italy by the Celani group at the National Institute of Nuclear Physics laboratory in Frascati.
 
Anomalous transmutation of the elements strontium and caesium into molybdenum and praseodymium occurs during a palladium loading process induced by gas deuterium permeation.
 
The observed results convinced the Italian and Japanese group to attempt a similar transmutation using radioactive strontium and caesium, two of the most dangerous byproducts of nuclear power plants' waste. 
 
Two years of hard work by the Italian and Japanese scientists in a laboratory near Rome and 13 million euros could be the necessary start-up to demonstrate the success of this proposed experiment. In the second phase, two years later, the process is expected to be ready for application. 
 
Bruno Coppi's request to exploit the Caorso site for the Ignitor experiment has received support from the ministries of research and environment and from the unions.
 
That project had government approval in 1990, but the initiative had been set aside. The Italian Parliament had allocated 130 billion lire at that time, now 65 million euro, for the Ignitor project.
 

7. Politics and Science: Discussions on the Proposed Italian-Japanese Nuclear Transmutation Project
By Steven Krivit with translation assistance from Dr. Vittorio di Stefano 
 
On June 23, the department of research of Forza Italia, the largest political party in Italy assembled a scientific gathering in the Italian government facility known as the Sala del Senato, in Rome. Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister, is a member of the party.
 
The meeting was organized in two round-table sessions. Francesco Celani, a nuclear physicist with the National Institute of Nuclear Physics at Frascati reported that the goal of the first session was to discuss the question, "Why is there such a big gap between expenditures from the Italian government for public research relative to the public benefits offered?" The title of this session was Government Efforts to Improve Research.
 
Several political dignitaries presented talks, which were open to the public. Presenters included Guido Possa, vice minister for education, university, and scientific research, and Letizia Moratti, minister for education, university, and scientific research.
 
"The second part of the meeting," Celani said, "was offered to people who have projects that can be useful for taxpayers. It was titled 'Scientific Research and Competitiveness.'
 
Besides Celani, four speakers representing Italian industry gave presentations, as well as Akito Takahashi, of the department of nuclear engineering, in the Graduate School of Engineering at Osaka University.
 
Celani and Takahashi are both members of the executive committee of the International Society for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science. They presented two talks on a proposed research project for the remediation of nuclear waste. The title of Celani's talk was "Concise Presentation of the Italy-Japan Project for the Definitive Remediation of Some of the Most Dangerous Nuclear Wastes (Strontium and Cesium) by a Method Developed by Dr. Yasuhiro Iwamura of the Mitsubishi (Japan)."
 
Takahashi's presentation was called "Simplified Description of a Theoretical Model, Able to Explain Many of the Experimental Transmutation Results, Discovered by Iwamura."
 
The Italian national press agency, ANSA, picked up the story and carried an enthusiastic report on the project.
 



Francesco Celani
 
 
 


Akito Takahashi

 

8. "Sun In a Water Glass," Haiko Lietz's Report for German National Radio
On June 5, German National Radio aired a 25-minute report covering the excess heat and excess energy field. In this report, Lietz establishes the reality of cold fusion and reports its ties to hot fusion.
 
The report includes comments from Wolfgang Suttrop and Hans-Stephan Bosch, who study magnetic confinement fusion at Garching, Max-Planck-Institute. This institute was unable to confirm cold fusion in 1989 and hasnt taken a look at it since.
 
Lietz also speaks with Armin Huke of the Berlin Technical University who, with Konrad Czerski, studies deuteron beam fusion as part of their cold fusion research. Lietz also interviews Jean-Paul Biberian, John Dash, and Roger Stringham, participants in the International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science in Marseille, France. Stringhams energy-producing sonofusion work is presented, as well its differences from bubble fusion.
 
Lietz discusses some of the politics and sociology of science and reviews the role of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in cold fusions early days. Tom Passell, of the Electric Power Research Institute, which funded cold fusion research from 1989 until 1994, provides background information on some MIT researchers who privately sought funds to study cold fusion.
 
The report concludes that, considering the amount of evidence available, it is unreasonable to continue to refer to the so-called "three miracles" of cold fusion with disbelief. At close glance, this continued rejection is a reflection of the closed minds and preconceptions of a few outspoken scientists.
 
An English-language version is not available at this time, but Lietz is hoping to make such arrangements soon. The German version is available as text and on-demand audio.
 
Haiko Lietz, "Sonnenfeuer im Wasserglas," Deutschlandfunk (June 5, 2005)
http://www.dradio.de/dlf/sendungen/wib/382858/
 




Haiko Lietz on the Job

 

9. Introducing the International Sustainable Energy Organization 
New Energy Times would like to introduce readers to the International Sustainable Energy Organization (ISEO). Founded in response to an initiative of six political parties of the Swiss National Council, it launched operations in 2002 at the Johannesburg Summit for sustainable development. ISEO's offices are located in Geneva, in the vicinity of the United Nations' offices.
 
ISEO's aim is to enhance worldwide cooperation and respect among the nongovernmental organization community, governments, U.N. bodies, academia and experts with the common goal of transforming the global energy economy sustainably. ISEO tries to improve standards and the individual quality of life by the use of clean, efficient energy.
 
ISEO works closely with the United Nations and its Economic and Social Council. ISEO also ensures its policy influence at the highest levels through working relationships with regional organizations like the European Union and national governments, to encourage a sustainable world economy.  ISEO's "Blueprint for a Clean Sustainable Energy Age" became the global energy reference book.
 
ISEO's Web portal http://www.uniseo.org/ offers information ranging from clean conventional to novel energy systems, and provides information about conferences and periodicals.  A networking page allows direct links to relevant organizations. Members can submit their success stories for publication in the ISEO Newsletter.  A team of coordinators updates this information platform and is active in international standards committees like the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). 
 
Enquiries may be addressed to the chairman of ISO/TC203/WG3, Gustav R. Grob, who acts also as ISEO's executive secretary and was one of its founders: grob@icec.ch.
 

ANALYSIS AND PERSPECTIVES
 
10. Are Fast Breeder Reactors the Only Foreseeable Alternative?
By Steven Krivit
 
New Energy Times reader Richard Moody Jr. brought to our attention an interesting article from the National Policy Analysis by George Stanford, Ph.D., a nuclear reactor physicist, now retired from Argonne National Laboratory. Moody summarizes the article as follows:
 
"The Integral Fast Reactor appears to be the answer to our baseload energy needs. It is designed not to melt down; unlike light-water reactors, it uses liquid sodium for coolant at atmospheric pressure with multiple barriers to keep the sodium isolated from air. As far as the safety record, there was a sodium fire in Monju, Japan, but no one was hurt, no radioactivity was released and the reactor was not damaged.
 
The Integral Fast Reactor is a net sink for plutonium because it consumes more than it produces. Man-made elements created by the reactor, such as plutonium, are fed back into the reactor. If it is possible to transmute strontium and cesium with cold fusion technology, then most of the radioactive wastes can be rendered harmless, obviating the need for storing the wastes underground.
 
The reactor reduces the risk of proliferation by providing a use for plutonium in the reactors as opposed to diversion to terrorist organizations. It would have real value and provide an incentive for the decommissioning of nuclear bombs and the transferal of the payloads to Integral Fast Reactors. Also, weapons-grade plutonium is not produced in Integral Fast Reactors.
 
President Clinton directed Congress to stop funding on nuclear research; apparently, he thought it was not worth pursuing. The project was eliminated by Congress just shy of completion; the irony is that finishing the project cost no more than decommissioning it!! In theory and in practice, the Integral Fast Reactor has proven its merit. In these times of $55/barrel for oil, it deserves a second look."
 
We discussed this with a nuclear physicist who works for the French Atomic Energy commission. He had a few interesting comments to share: "Of course, I completely agree with Dr. Stanford, because there is just one way to do nuclear physics: the way that nature decides. At our facility, we work on this kind of reactor in the frame of "Generation IV.""
 
The physicist, who requested anonymity, started paying attention to cold fusion at the Marseilles, France cold fusion conference in October 2004. He is hopeful about cold fusion but uncertain of the future. "If cold fusion is not able to fulfill our energy needs in the next five decades," he said, "the only other solution is Fast Breeder Reactors. Tokamaks, hot fusion, just don't work and will never work."

 

11. Hot Fusion Program Recovers From Four-Year Delay
By Steven Krivit
 
Controlled thermonuclear (hot) fusion research started 54 years ago, with the hope of providing clean, abundant energy. Many good scientists have spent a large part of their career searching for the Holy Grail of nuclear fusion by bringing the energy that powers the sun down to earth.


 
 
 

ITER, Latin for "The Way"


 
As an energy source, hot fusion has never worked. Certainly, well-understood theories support the idea, and certainly, they can fire up a flaming ball of plasma, and they certainly have legitimate evidence that nuclear reactions are occurring.
 
Dozens of government and academic laboratories around the world have built experimental tokamak reactors and failed. None has ever produced more energy than it consumes; nor are these units ever expected to. All hope for previous hot fusion reactors has been abandoned, and all bets are now on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, known as ITER.


 
 

Schematic Diagram of ITER. Human figure, in black circle, shows scale.
 

The costs and complexities of hot fusion are too much for any one nation to solve -- thus, the inspiration for ITER. In 1985, an international collaboration of scientists and governments agreed to pool their resources to make what they hope will be the world's first working hot fusion reactor.
 
They hope that, if they can build a bigger device with greater capacities and some new technologies, they will solve the riddle of how to create a miniature sun on Earth without melting everything in its path.
 
"It turned out to be much harder than we thought," Dr. Robert Park, director of public information for the American Physics Society, said, "but they make steady progress. It's not spectacular progress, but the joke is it's the energy source of the future and it always will be, because they're constantly giving you an estimate of how many years before we have controlled fusion reactors in business and it doesn't happen."
 
With the first commercial hot fusion reactor expected midcentury, this science experiment will have run more than 100 years before providing energy to this energy-starved earth -- that is, if it ever works.
 
Others have ridiculed the never-ending hot fusion quest with a variant of Parks'; "hot fusion is just 20 years away and it always will be." Perhaps the joke needs updating to reflect the new 50-year expectation.
 
Certainly, the hot fusion field deserves a chance, as should any good science research in the public interest. But 100 years? With apologies to Mother Goose, it's starting to sound a bit like "all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't get hot fusion to work in the end."
 
For the last four years, the international coalition experienced divisive political cracks, and progress was stalled not by the technical problems but rather by political ones.
 
The disagreement was the debate on where to locate the project. The semi-finalists in the competition for world's largest Tokamak had been the cities of Cadarache in France and Rokkasho-mura in Japan.
 
The U.S. participant in ITER, the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, had been counting the days. Its Web site, before the siting announcement, tallied "three years and 324 days past the ITER schedule for a site decision." 
 
On June 28, Reuters reported that Japan had conceded and agreed to site ITER in France.
 
However, Reuters failed to report that the Cadarache site had been decided by the EU last year. A plasma physicist who works for the French Atomic Energy Commission told New Energy Times, "The EU decided on November 30, 2004, during an official summit in Bruxelles, to build ITER in France at Cadarache, with or without the USA, Japan and Korea."

 


 
ITER Site Plan - Click Image for High Resolution Image

 
 
ITER is expected to cost a total of 10 billion euros including operating expenses over 35 years, according to Bloomberg Financial News Network. Add this to the $16 billion the U.S. taxpayers have already spent, and you've got a hefty price tag.
 
International political posturing aside, the questions are, did France really win, and did Japan really lose?
 
New Energy Times recommends that the EU and other funding agencies start to consider alternate options, just in case hot fusion doesn't deliver as promised, as promised, as promised.
 
 
 

12. Report of the 2005 Cold Fusion Colloquium at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
By John Coviello
 
The 2005 Cold Fusion Colloquium took place at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., May 21. 
 
The colloquium was dedicated to the memory of Dr. Eugene Mallove, MIT class of 1969. Mallove, who died tragically in May 2004, was perhaps cold fusion's most persistent supporter during the field's darkest years, after the original Fleischmann and Pons announcement in March 1989. The MIT entrepreneurs club hosted the colloquium, the fourth cold fusion event at the MIT campus since 1989.
 
The speakers at this colloquium were serious scientists. Despite what many skeptics believe, this was not an amateur science conference. The participants were degreed scientists, with long and distinguished science careers in government, private industry and academia. Attendees were treated to a respectful, scientific day of accurate, state-of-the-art presentations on this confusing and exciting new field.
 
A hundred people attended the colloquium, including a few MIT students. Eleven researchers in the cold fusion field gave a total of 11 presentations at the colloquium. Additionally, three presentations were made regarding non-cold-fusion-related alternative-energy topics ranging from solar-related latent energy of water to catalyzed combustion for high fuel efficiency and reduced emissions. 
 
The highlight of the colloquium occurred when professor Peter Hagelstein of MIT, in response to a question about what impact cold fusion science might have on society, informed the audience that he had reason to believe that a commercial cold fusion device would be marketed within a year by a group from South Korea that had received a patent from their country for a cold-fusion-related technology.
 
A variety of redundant theories were put forward to explain cold fusion. At times, conflicting data were presented regarding experimental results, such as the presence of neutron emissions in some cold fusion experiments. A patent attorney delivered a noteworthy presentation, covered later in this article, regarding issues surrounding the complete refusal of the United States Patent and Trademark Office to issue cold fusion patents.
 
Dr. David Nagel of George Washington University was the first speaker at the colloquium. Nagel was quick to respond to a question about whether cold fusion is the victim of a conspiracy to prevent it from being developed. He said that there is no conspiracy regarding cold fusion. This is just the normal processes of science dealing with a new and controversial phenomenon, Nagel said. He pointed out that many controversial scientific discoveries went through a similar period of rejection by the mainstream science community, only to be accepted eventually.
 
Nagel noted that another mechanism of energy production is present in cold fusion cells, based on the fusion of weak forces, with occasional neutron emissions resulting. This is beyond the mechanism that is well-established in cold fusion experiments, which produces excess heat and helium-4 (He4). He said a multitude of mechanisms eventually will explain cold fusion.
 
A member of the audience asked Nagel about skeptical assertions that cold fusion claims are the result of rampant experimental error. He responded, "Look at the data from the experiments," implying that the evidence for cold fusion was in the experimental data available in the public domain. One of the best resources is the online cold fusion library at www.lenr.org.
 
Skeptics have tended to concede in recent years that excess heat is being observed in cold fusion experiments, but they attribute the observed results to experimental error, such as improperly calibrated calorimeter instruments. These are used to measure the minute amounts of excess heat produced by cold fusion cells. 
 
Skeptics also rely on alternative explanations to dismiss the excess heat measurements in cold fusion experiments. Some skeptics assert that recombination of molecules in the cold fusion cell, which creates heat from chemical reactions, is responsible. However, cold fusion proponents note that such chemical processes do not create nearly enough heat to account for the excess heat observed in cold fusion cells.
 
Interestingly, skeptics rarely provide alternative explanations for the nuclear ashes reported in cold fusion experiments, such as helium-4 and tritium. They either ignore these results altogether or write them off as gross experimental error. 
 
Russ George followed Nagel. George is the founder of an independent cold fusion research company called D2Fusion (http://www.d2fusion.com), which is dedicated to developing solid state fusion energy technologies. On June 2, Solar Energy Ltd., of Vancouver, Canada, announced that it agreed to acquire 100 percent of D2Fusion. The announcement stated that, "unlike the reactions in 'cold-fusion,' D2Fusion technology uses much simpler and more reliable solid state processes."
 
George noted that cold fusion reactions occur only in solid matter, especially in hydrogen-loving metals, such as palladium. According to George, the reaction does not appear uniformly in the host metal. The microstructure dimensions of the metal used in a cold fusion cell are the key to the reaction; perhaps impurities in the palladium are where nuclear reactions are actually occurring. Deuterium is the preferred isotope of hydrogen for producing the cold fusion reaction, yielding mainly helium-4 as the primary product. 
 
In contrast to Nagels assertion, George said he believed no neutrons are present in consistently reproduced cold fusion experiments. George noted that tritium also is observed in small amounts. He said a variety of methods reliably create solid-state fusion. His company is working mainly on glow discharge methods of producing cold fusion and avoids electrochemistry. George reports that his team has been using both titanium and palladium, though work with titanium is not widely accepted in the cold fusion community, because most researchers work with palladium.
 
Dr. John Dash of Portland State University is a professor emeritus in the physics department. Dash stands out among cold fusion researchers as one who openly researches and teaches cold fusion at a major American university. Since 1989, 40 of his students have been trained in cold fusion research, with seven master's theses and two doctoral dissertations completed on his departments cold fusion research.
 
Dash focuses on the characterization of titanium cathodes after electrolysis in heavy water. He uses the secondary ion mass spectrometry technique to analyze the elemental structure of cold fusion cathodes. He claimed that the best results are obtained when the sample of palladium or titanium is reduced by 20 percent, by shaving some off the surface of the cathode.
 
Peter Hagelstein, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, made a presentation that leaned heavily toward understanding the theoretical underpinnings of the cold fusion phenomenon. A physicist by training, Hagelstein is one of the leading theorists in the field. 
 
He stressed that experimenters at SRI International and elsewhere had noted a need for keeping the cell loaded for one month before any excess heat events appeared. This is probably one of the reasons why early replication attempts failed. Inexperienced researchers just didn't understand that it would take time for the cold fusion effect to appear. The interpretation, in light of the current models, is that it takes time for the flux-enhanced diffusion rate of vacancies from the cathode surface to lead to enough near-surface vacancies to support a significant heat effect.
 
Hagelstein noted that, for any cold fusion explanation that involved reactions between two deuterons, the conditions under which the deuteron-deuteron overlap was maximized would be the main focus of interest. From a quantum mechanical analysis, he found that the overlap was maximized when the deuterons formed a molecular state inside the cathode metal. This is consistent with double occupancy cold fusion models. He noted that new "site-other-site" processes were an early proposal for alpha ejection in cold fusion experiments. 
 
Hagelstein proposed a mechanism through which the lattice and nuclei might exchange angular momentum. It involves the transfer of excitation between sites in the lattice. If a neutron or neutral particle is detached from a nucleus for a short time, the lattice notices, because of the local mass change, since the lattice does not see neutrals. That is ultimately what is required for angular momentum and energy exchange to occur. Hagelstein termed it the Duschinsky mechanism. He conjectures that angular momentum exchange accounts for the lack of neutrons detected in cold fusion experiments.
 
Hagelstein also noted that he has examined 150 models and variants that have been presented to date regarding the physical mechanisms that could allow cold fusion to occur. He said the present model, which he has been working on for seven years, seems to reflect a great many cold fusion experimental results. Hagelstein supports simplifying the theories explaining cold fusion into a more concise theory.
 
Dr. Yeong E. Kim of Purdue University provided an explanation of the theories he believes explain the cold fusion effect. Kim stated that cold fusion is not a bulk phenomenon (heat in lattice) but a surface phenomenon involving high-density plasmas in micro- or nano-scale cavities located in the surface region.
 
The Boson Ground State fusion mechanism is his favorite theory to explain the cold fusion effect. Micro- or nano-scale active spots in the surface region of the palladium cathode are the most likely place in which the cold fusion reaction occurs. Kim believes the cold fusion effect includes deuterium-deuterium reactions as well as deuterium-lithium reactions and transmutations of elements. 
 
The issue of transmutations of elements, changing an element into a different element, is a recurring theme among cold fusion experimenters. It is the subject of a $25 million Euro joint initiative under consideration by the Italian government in conjunction with cold fusion researchers in Japan.
 
Transmutations of elements is a highly controversial claim in and of itself. Many cold fusion researchers are reporting transmutations in the cathodes of their cold fusion cells, a fact that cannot be ignored. This may be important to the eventual understanding of the cold fusion phenomenon and lead to breakthroughs in related scientific fields.
 
Dr. Mitchell Swartz, a graduate of Harvard Medical School in oncology, who also earned three advanced degrees at MIT, presented his cold fusion research findings. Swartz defined cold fusion as electrolysis -1, which he further defined as the background continuum electromechanics, as it applies to the loading of the cold fusion cell. Swartz believes control of the manifold, the parameters that cause the reaction in the cold fusion cell, is the key to reproducibility. The operating point of power input must be optimized, Swartz said. His experimentation has determined that the optimal operating point of a cold fusion cell can be determined after one week of running the cell. 
 
In honor of Dr. Mallove, Swartz proposed a unit of measure unique to the cold fusion field called the "Mallove." The Mallove is a proposed unit to describe the height and width of the optimal operating points that appears to describe most, if not all, cold fusion systems and their products. The optimal operating points appear when the product is plotted as a function of input electrical power. The peak is where each system should be optimally operated.
 
Swartz said that he has observed the Tardive Effect in his cold fusion experiments, in which excess heat is produced well after input power is removed. Other cold fusion experimenters call this the heat-after-death phenomenon.
 
In what may be the first announcement of this type, Swartz also mentioned that he is working on a cold fusion cell that produces motion as well as excess heat, which would be an important step in the eventual development of a commercial cold fusion device. However, he did not offer any details.
 
An audience member asked Swartz whether radiation would be a concern once cold fusion was scaled up to a level practical for electricity generation. He replied that, even at much higher levels of operation, which would be necessary for a commercial cold fusion energy device, the cold fusion reaction would not produce nearly enough radiation to be a concern. The radiation levels would remain minute and of little concern. Swartz said a city such as Boston requires four gigawatts of electricity to power the city on an average day, and a cold fusion cell could produce that quantity of electricity with four pounds of deuterium, with the waste product comprising four pounds of helium-4.
 
Dr. Talbot Chubb, a retired physicist from the Naval Research Laboratory, presented his explanation for how cold fusion can occur. Chubb explained that, when kinetic energy dominates over potential energy and the deuterium-deuterium are in Bloch states, the coulomb barrier can become irrelevant and allow deuterium-deuterium fusion to occur. When deuterium enters a Bloch state, it is partitioned into many fractions, like a spoonful of cookie dough being split into dabs, with a dab in each of thousands of dimples in a dimpled metal sheet. When a "white" and a "red" deuterium atom enter the same Bloch state, the pair comes to resemble thousands of "pink" dabs occupying the same thousands of dimples in the cookie sheet.
 
This pairing is not like a molecule, where each atom remains whole and separate in its own dimple. When there are enough dimples, the potential energy of coulomb repulsion associated with pink pieces of dough becomes smaller than the associated kinetic energy. When the Bloch state is achieved in a cold fusion cell, "pink" pairs of superposed atoms collapse to nuclear dimensions, which allows fusion to occur between them. The partitioned form of the "pink" nucleus forbids the normal fusion products but allows the metal to get hot. 
 
In the mathematics of atom physics, the merging of "white" and "red" dabs to form a "pink" dab represents imposition of coordinate exchange symmetry. A dab represents a portion of the charge density of a deuteron, or paired deuteron if "pink," and the associated piece of its proton-neutron pair. Weak potential barriers separate the dabs. The sum over all dabs is the deuteron -- that is, nucleus of the deuterium atom. The principle that allows and requires summing is called "coherence." The transition from adsorbed atom geometry to Bloch state geometry is called coherent partitioning. The inverse of coherent partitioning could be called "orbital consolidation." For a deuteron ion in a potential well, there is no difference between orbital geometry and zero-point-motion geometry. The transition between orbital geometry and point-nucleus geometry, as modeled in impact nuclear physics, is called wave function collapse.
 
Talbot Chubb's nephew, Dr. Scott Chubb, a physicist with Research Systems Inc., presented another theoretical explanation for cold fusion. He proposed that Zener-Ionic breakdown causes cold fusion. A highly polarized nanoscale crystal of palladium deuteride in a cold fusion cell produces a variant of a well-known phenomenon, Zener-Electronic breakdown, that can lead to electron conduction in insulators.
 
Forcing deuterium atoms into palladium becomes increasingly difficult because, at a certain point, the electrons that allow this to take place effectively do not want to continue the loading process. Near full loading, in finite-size palladium deuteride crystals, a small number of these electrons begin to oscillate over large distances into and away from the crystal by occupying electronic energy band states that are either immediately above or immediately below the electronic Fermi energy of the material. In response to the behavior of the electrons, a small number of deuterons also begin to oscillate.
 
The combined effect leads to a configuration that is dominated by the electrons that appear to induce wavelike oscillations, involving palladium atoms, in a manner that resembles the lowest energy vibrations, acoustical phonons, that occur in palladium deuteride. But in the case of finite-size crystals, these vibrations can carry a small amount of deuteron charge. When this happens effectively, the palladium deuteride crystal can conduct both electrons and deuterons.
 
But whether this happens depends on the size of the crystal. In crystals that have characteristic dimensions of .01 millimeters, the oscillations can carry charge but only after a very long time, on the order of weeks. In crystals that have characteristic sizes of tens of angstroms, the oscillations can carry charge in less than a hundredth of a second. Once the oscillations can carry charge, deuterons effectively can occupy wavelike, energy-band states that are analogous to the kinds of wavelike, energy-band states that electrons occupy. However, simply occupying these wavelike states, which are called Ion Band states, does not mean that deuterons can fuse.
 
In order to fuse, the ion conduction process has to be stifled for a while, and the palladium deuteride crystal has to behave as a novel form of "conductor/insulator," in which it initially fails to conduct ions but after a while can do this. If the time before it begins to conduct is sufficiently large, the nonconducting deuterons in Ion Band states can store up enough momentum to tunnel, through a phenomenon referred to as Zener tunneling, into higher-energy Ion Band states in a way that will allow them to fuse. An important point is that, when the deuterons are in the insulating state, they all are in a single Ion Band state, and have the same energy. Because of this fact, they are degenerate, and they actually occupy a Bose Einstein Condensate.
 
From this state, they can induce a change coherently, allowing cold fusion to occur, in which the momentum of the reaction is transferred instantly into all the particles in the crystal. The associated resonant Bloch Tunneling effect requires an incubation period, or triggering time, that is consistent with the range of triggering times that have been observed during the reaction. Chubb conjectured that this correlation suggests that size of the particular crystals that are used plays an important role in the triggering time rates that have been observed in cold fusion reactions.
 
Many competing theories to explain the cold fusion phenomenon were presented at the colloquium, and they created confusion among the general public regarding what cold fusion is. Even the researchers seem a bit confused, with so many widely varying theories being presented to explain the cold fusion effect.
 
Dr. Robert Bass, a physicist at Innoventech Inc. with an extensive background in the aerospace industry, made a proposal to the audience for a cold fusion experiment that had not been attempted. Bass proposed to make deuterium gas into a stand-alone crystal, by pressurizing it, and then applying an electric current to observe whether a cold fusion reaction occurs under these conditions. Bass believes this experiment would help the understanding of the cold fusion phenomenon.
 
Two patent attorneys gave presentations at the colloquium. Both were eager to represent researchers who wished to have their cold fusion ideas patented with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Professor Robert Rines, former head of MIT's patent office department and dean and founder of the Franklin Pierce Law School, made a presentation about why cold fusion researchers have such difficulty gaining patents in the United States.
 
Rines said the United States Patent Office considers cold fusion a fallacy, akin to perpetual motion. Examiners from the Patent Office have demanded a working model before issuing a patent. He believes this is an unfair hurdle for the cold fusion field to overcome, because it is not applied to other exotic fields of study that routinely receive United States patents. He believes the United States Patent Office is basing its opinion on the advice of scientists who have outdated information and prejudiced opinions about cold fusion. He went so far as to say that there is a conspiracy against cold fusion in the United States Patent Office because the technical community is clearly divided about the validity of cold fusion, as demonstrated by the recent Department of Energy review. 
 
There very well might be a conspiracy against cold fusion in the United States, because it is the only country that routinely refuses to grant patents for cold fusion processes and technologies, despite mounting evidence for the existence of the phenomenon. Consider, for a moment, the great lengths the government has gone to in recent years to secure international petroleum supplies, spending hundreds of billions of dollars and using the military in offensive missions to that end. It's not hard to imagine that this same government, with its family ties to the oil industry, might work against competing energy technologies such as cold fusion. Even using the United States Patent Office as a blocking mechanism does not seem too outlandish.   
 
Unfortunately, the colloquium did not include a Future of Cold Fusion panel discussion, as listed on the agenda. Instead, the organizers invited three speakers who discussed non-cold-fusion alternative energy topics, which in essence prevented a thorough discussion of the future of cold fusion research and the presentations of the day. Many people who follow cold fusion are wondering, Is there is a future for this field? 
 
Sixteen years have passed since the original cold fusion announcement. Will cold fusion remain just a laboratory curiosity eventually accepted into mainstream science with little fanfare and little practical use? Or will cold fusion revolutionize the way we produce our energy and live? 
 
These questions deserved to be presented and discussed at the colloquium, because future research initiatives and funding might depend on how the public perceives the future of cold fusion. The organizers of the colloquium are now planning a second colloquium for later this year. Perhaps these questions will be addressed then or at other conferences later this year.
 
- John Coviello has an environmental science degree and works in the environmental science field. He has had a keen interest in the environment and alternative energy throughout his life, understanding that many of our pollution problems and even some social and geopolitical problems are a result of our overreliance on dirty fuel stocks, including coal, oil and nuclear. Coviello has followed the cold fusion saga through thick and thin over the past 16 years, developing an in-depth understanding of the science and politics surrounding cold fusion.

 

13. The 2005 Gluck-Krivit Cold Fusion Survey



Dr. Peter Gluck


 
Over the last few months, Dr. Peter Gluck, a retired chemical engineer in Romania, and New Energy Times Editor Steven Krivit sent out a survey to some cold fusion researchers asking for their answers to four questions:
 
1. What Is Cold Fusion (LENR, CANR, CMNS)?
2. How Does It Work?
3. What Chances Does It Have To Be Scaled Up to a Technology?
4. What Must We Do in Order to Attain This?
 
The survey came to 14 pages, so we have placed it on the Web, not in this newsletter. The survey has not been edited; the responses are exactly as we received them. It be viewed at http://newenergytimes.com/reports/2005GluckKrivitSurvey.shtml.
 
Clearly, the answers indicate no consensus. However, the responses show a fascinating variety of perspectives on this young scientific field. Gluck presented some of these survey results at the Third National Conference on New Energies at Grottammare, Italy, on April 23. The conference was organized by the National Observatory for New Energies.
 
In Gluck's Grottamare presentation, he discussed an entertaining view of the application of statistical methods to obtain a decision or a verdict.
 
"In the case of cold fusion," Gluck writes, "it was a great error, if not idiocy," when cold fusion was evaluated in 1989 by the Department of Energy. They based their decision on the tally of "positive" papers versus "negative" papers.
 
Gluck explains the following manifesto he wrote in response to the Department of Energy's failure to recognize cold fusion. "Being very angry with the bad statistics we were inundated with by the terrible Ceausescu regime, and having studied by the famous book by Darrell Huff How to Lie with Statistics, I wrote:
 
 (1)From 317 Papers Published On Cold Fusion Only 56 Present Positive Results.                                                                                                                                                    
Conclusion: Cold Fusion Is Statistically Dead
 
(2)The Romanian Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu Was Executed. The Firing Squad Was Scared And Used 302 Bullets But Only 43 Were Deadly.
Conclusion: Nicolae Ceausescu Is Statistically Alive. 

 

14. Remembering Eugene Franklin Mallove




Dr. Eugene Mallove
June 9, 1947 - May 14, 2004


By Jed Rothwell
 
To summarize a person's life in a few paragraphs is to caricature him. It is to run the risk that people may remember a few anecdotes instead of the person himself. To summarize a person in a single word is even worse, yet one word -- one quality -- comes to mind when I think of Eugene Mallove. He was indomitable. He was fearless; he was the most determined person I ever met. Again and again, he did what he believed must be done, against enormous odds, often at great personal sacrifice. He resigned from MIT because MIT researchers attacked cold fusion soon after the March 1989 announcement and because they tried to bury evidence of excess heat in their own experiments. This was an extraordinary thing to do! Call it brave or call it quixotic; very few middle-class people with a comfortable, prestigious job at a world-famous institution would resign over a matter of principle, in an obscure scientific debate. But Gene did not hesitate.
 
I think that, in the early years, he took it for granted that other scientists would come around soon. They would see the truth and act on it, because that is what scientists are supposed to do. He believed that scientists are, by and large, as intellectually honest as he was himself and that they love truth and are above petty politics. After years of disappointment, he became cynical about them. He came to believe that institutions such as MIT, the Department of Energy and the American Physics Society are hopelessly corrupt and beyond redemption. Because he himself was a product of the establishment, with degrees from MIT and Harvard, this must have been hard for him. Those of us who never fully trusted the establishment in the first place and who were never part of it were not as disillusioned.
 
Nobody is perfect. Every strength of personality also can be a weakness. Gene's adamant self-assurance sometimes manifested itself as overconfidence. He was annoying at times, even to his friends. Especially to his friends. He was too quick to lend support to controversial, unproven, unreplicated experiments and theories. He published these ideas, which was unquestionably the right thing to do, but he also endorsed them, and he spent money on them unwisely. He wasted time, he wasted funding, and he hurt his own reputation. He was so enthusiastic and so anxious to see positive results that he sometimes jumped to conclusions and announced a positive result in one issue of Infinite Energy, only to be forced to retract in the next issue. He took sides in heated arguments among "free energy" factions, although as a publisher he should have remained neutral. This is not the right mindset for a publisher. It is not a productive, objective attitude for an experimentalist.
 
Gene went from believing the textbooks and championing mainstream science to the opposite extreme. He sometimes seemed convinced that anything the establishment endorsed was wrong, including Einstein's theories and perhaps even the laws of thermodynamics. He concluded that people who oppose the establishment are probably right. That does not follow. A more evenhanded, or cynical person is skeptical about both sides. Einstein may be wrong, but there is no reason to think his critics are right. Throughout history, people on both sides of scientific controversies have often been wrong. Light is neither particle nor wave. The distinction turned out to be unhelpful to our understanding of light.
 
But I should not exaggerate this quality. If cold fusion survives, Gene's masterpiece, "Fire from Ice," will be judged one of the fairest, most objective, prescient books ever published.
 
Faith in action and the will to commit are defects in an experimentalist, but they are virtues in a crusading social reformer, and that is what Gene became, in spite of himself. At times, I sensed he was conflicted over this, because he considered himself a Republican or a libertarian. But his parents named him after Franklin D. Roosevelt, and I think a person can never turn away from the heritage of liberal activism such parents bequeath. If cold fusion succeeds, Gene will be counted as a great social activist. When he was discouraged, he would express the nihilistic conservative view that mankind is a lost cause and hardly worth fighting for, anyway. I did not take him seriously. No one could give so much of himself, so unstintingly, without faith in people and love for mankind.
 
Gene often became angry. As he told Steve Krivit, what he wanted most was vindication. He meant Old Testament vindication, not a New Age happy ending. But in his personal life, he did not let this anger cloud his friendships or interfere with his sense of humor, his zest for life, his creativity, his curiosity and his fascination with the new. He was always buoyant, always looking forward to the next experiment. He and I often argued. We disagreed about the direction of the magazine. I ran out of things to write about cold fusion, and I have devoted most of my time for the last few years to the LENR-CANR.org Web site, instead. Gene and I seldom talked during this time. Yet whenever we did, despite our differences, I always came away with a buzz of excitement, a sense of exuberance. I felt motivated and anxious to press on.
 
I think he remained convinced to the end that we must win, and we will win, despite what seemed to me to be overwhelming opposition and very bad odds. I am in this fight because I can be, because it appeals to me and I can do as I please in life. Gene was in this fight because he had to be. It was his karma. He threw himself into it in a way that made me and other advocates look like dilettantes. Without a trace of embarrassment, he would juggle menial jobs, working all hours to support his family, while he would be plotting, striving, struggling, negotiating and driving on with boundless energy to promote cold fusion and the magazine. He would work all day and then speak eloquently on a radio program half the night. His ability to motivate other people, his book, articles and lectures had enormous and still-untold influence. He believed in the power of truth. In the cover pages of "Fire from Ice," he quoted Alexander Dumas: "Great is truth. Fire cannot burn, nor water drown it." As a cynic and student of history, I say, "yet people can ignore the truth, and they often do." I doubt that we shall prevail, and I know it will be more difficult without Gene's help.
 
 
Editors' Note: After a yearlong investigation, police arrested a suspect in the Mallove murder case.
Details are here http://www.newenergytimes.com/news/NewsFlashJune022005.shtml
 

15. Report on the Sixth International Workshop on Anomalies in Hydrogen/Deuterium-Loaded Metals, Siena, Italy, May 13-16, 2005
By Thomas O. Passell
 
I would first like to note that this report is not intended to be a comprehensive summary of the proceedings but rather a summary of my impressions, interpretations and possibly misinterpretations of the workshop. My travel arrangements permitted me to attend only the middle two days, comprising three separate sessions.
 
About 35 people attended the meeting, including a few interested in investing or participating in the research. I was most interested in the experimental results presented, with less interest in the theoretical explanations of the phenomena.
 
John Fisher, a private researcher from Carpenteria, Calif., presented the case for the existence of polyneutrons as a means of overcoming the coulomb barrier in solid-state nuclear reactions. The fact that such bodies never have been reported in physics experiments on particles makes this theory a hard sell.
 
Akito Takahashi, of Osaka University, elaborated his theoretical explanation for such exotic transmutation reactions as those reported by Iwamura, for example cesium-133 going to praseodymium-141. Takahashi's effort to explain reactions well beyond the simple deuterium+deuterium reaction is commendable.
 
Julian Brown, with the physics department at Oxford University, presented the case for proton pairing in metals analogous to electron pairing in superconducting metals. Brown thinks the ion-band states hypothesized by Scott Chubb might be populated by proton pairs instead of individual protons. Brown believes the solid-state has many more surprises in store for us in addition to the excess heat effects we have observed over the past 16 years.
 
Antonio Spallone, with the Institute Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, described successful loading of palladium by hydrogen to near 1:1 ratio using electrolytes containing ethanol, strontium, calcium, and mercury, the latter three at nanomolar levels. Spallone noted that mercury ions at nanomolar levels are helpful and micromolar levels are harmful to the achievement of high loading.
 
Francesco Celani, with the Institute Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, reported the apparent significance of surface nanostructural features on cathodes in loading and excess heat experiments. The detrimental effects of impurities in the initial heavy water supply as well as leachates from the cell container walls were noted. Celani found favorable effects from adding silicon dioxide particles of three-to-four nanometers diameter to the electrolyte, presumably in creating the proper surface nanostructures. Hydrogen diffusion rates 1,000 times higher than normal were observed with such surface features on the electrode. He reported inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry results indicating anomalies in isotopic ratios of copper and palladium-108, depleted 5 percent below normal from his experiments.
 
Russell George, of D2Fusion Inc., reported his observations of surface anomalies from ultrasonic cavitation that gave microscopic structures similar to those observed in metals such as californium-252 which exhibit spontaneous fission events of 200 mega electron-volts of energy. The presumption is that mega electron-volt level nuclear reactions were the source of such features in palladium exposed to cavitation submerged in heavy water.
 
Jean-Paul Biberian, with the Facult des Sciences de Luminy at the University of Marseilles, reported an explosion in his open electrochemical cell 26 Oct. 2004 that destroyed his dewar, in which the gaseous volume was less than 120 cubic centimeters. Michael McKubre said that he believes the explosion of stoichiometric deuterium and oxygen gas could have produced the observed damage. Biberian's explosion report be viewed at newenergytimes.com/library/2005BiberianJP-ExplosionDuringAnElectrolysis.pdf.
 
Arik El-Boher, of Energetics Inc., reported interesting benefits from simultaneous application of modulation of the currents in electrochemical cells at frequencies up to 10 khz and ultrasonic waves up to 20 khz. Repeatability remains unsatisfactory; however, two of five experiments with such conditions gave excess heat of 70 percent and 1,800 percent, respectively. His success rate with glow discharges was improved by plasma cleaning of the electrodes; 5 of 19 experiments gave excess heat of 10 percent to 73 percent.
 
Mark Tsirlin, of Energetics Inc., presented detailed microscopy of surfaces of palladium designed to enhance the excess heat effects in both glow discharges and electrochemical cells.
 
Vittorio Violante, with the Italian Agency for New Technologies Energy and Environment in Frascati, described the benefits of exposing the electrochemical cell cathode surfaces to laser irradiation. Longevity and control of excess heat in the 20 percent to 45 percent range were improved. Three-way cooperation among Energetics, SRI, International, and at least two Italian laboratories was apparent in design and strategies of experiments.
 
Ubaldo Mastromatteo, of ST Microelectronics, reported observing new elements after a 76-day laser irradiation of a 500-nanometer palladium film exposed to deuterium gas at 4 bar pressure. Boron-11 had been ion-implanted in the palladium film before its exposure. Mastromatteo's intention is to ion-implant other low-Z atoms in the same type of film to detect whether nuclear reactions are occurring in the palladium impurities. 
 
The new elements observed by energy dispersive X-ray analysis were sodium (34 percent), carbon (8.7 percent), silicon (4 percent), potassium (3.9 percent), calcium (2.4 percent), chlorine (1.9 percent), aluminum (0.8 percent), sulfur (0.5 percent), and magnesium (0.4 percent). The effort was carried out by the applied electronics group at the University of Lecce.
 
I presented a progress report on attempts to obtain excess heat in one-watt glow discharge experiments in argon, deuterium and hydrogen. This approach allows the rapid screening of different pairs of electrode metal surfaces, gasses and gas pressures. The gas pressures are in the range from one to 10 Torr. I obtained encouraging but not definitive results using palladium leaf on the cathodes.
 
The workshop exhibited a continuing increase in creativity of experimental strategy and design. It also showed increasing cooperation among the main laboratories attempting to solve the puzzle of excess heat and helium-4 production effects in metal-deuterium systems. The field still suffers from a subcritical amount of resources to solve these issues, which could be of great importance to the worlds energy future.

BITS AND PIECES
  
16. Cold Fusion Experimenter Not Arrested for Breaking and Entering
Here's a funny story from Rod Gimpel that didn't seem so funny at the time.
 
Gimpel is a chemical engineer working for Washington Group International, a company that is involved in turning nuclear waste into glass. He lives in Richland, Wash. and has been interested in cold fusion since 1998, when he wrote his masters thesis on cold fusion and nuclear transmutation.
 
He conducts experiments with other members of his small research group called Collaborated Energy Research Group, which has a recent patent related to cold fusion.
 
Gimpel recounts how he and his wife were locked out of their home a few weeks ago when his cold fusion experiment went "active:"
 
"After a couple of long days in the lab, I finally had the plasma cold fusion experiment up and running in the home lab. It was running smoothly - it sounded like a small pulsating steam locomotive. As I promised my wife, it now appeared like a good time to take that long evening walk.
 
We left for the walk, latching the front door behind us. On our return, we keyed our security code into the keypad to open the garage door. The key flashed back at us to say that it did not understand the code. We tried to key in the code several times more and received the same flashing response. 
 
What luck!  The plasma cold fusion experiment was emitting a radio-wave frequency that was jamming the electronics in our home! It was getting late, so I broke the garage window in the lab and contracted one of the small neighborhood kids to crawl through the broken window and unlock the front door. 
 
The next day the security system worked just fine after the cold fusion experiment had burned itself out. I had the unpleasant task, however, of replacing the window. My wife and I no longer depend on electronics to let us in the house - spare keys work better."
 

17. Want the Straight Poop on Where the United States is Dumping Its Radioactive Waste?
Check out the blog of Ron Bourgoin, a dean and physics professor at a college in North Carolina. He's been in the trenches; before his career in education, he was a federal employee working on nuclear missile systems. http://nukewastewatcher.blogspot.com/ 
 

18. Wikipedia Not the Place for Original Research
By Steven Krivit
 
I was preparing to improve the horribly deficient definition of cold fusion on this Internet-based encyclopedia when I was told that it violated its policy to contribute original reporting and research. Since I am committed to doing original reporting in this field, I regret to inform New Energy Times fans who have requested that I contribute to Wikipedia that I must honor its rules and bow out. It may be helpful for readers to understand the limitations of Wikipedia.
 
Wikipedia user "Brian0918" advised me that "Wikipedia isn't for discussing fundamental questions, coming up with our own opinions, and then writing them into articles."
 
My response to Brian:
 
"Indeed, I understand now. I had mistakenly thought that Wikipedia might be on the cutting edge of information delivery, considering its ability to evolve dynamically, and in near-real-time. But I have now read the page regarding original information and see clearly that Wikipedia, if it remains true to its roots, must stand back from that edge and only accept information that is clearly certain, much like a regular encyclopedia.
 
Cold fusion is a rapidly evolving, highly controversial topic and will continue to be so for many years. It is unlikely that Wikipedia will ever be current with the facts on the subject until the subject of cold fusion itself settles down.
 

19. The Global Institute for New Energy Technologies: Exactly What Does It Do?
 

 


Nicholas Moller, GIFNET president and free-energy inventor

Last fall, Nicholas Moller contacted Jean Paul Biberian, the chair of the 11th International Conference on Cold Fusion (ICCF-11), which took place in Marseilles, France. Moller said that he was with the Global Institute for New Energy Technologies (GIFNET), a nonprofit organization based in Switzerland. He stated he was also on assignment from the BBC to produce a documentary on cold fusion and hydrogen and wished to attend ICCF-11.
 
Moller arrived in Marseille with a two-person film crew and a professional-looking camera rig. While at the conference, he conducted private videotaped interviews with many of the key players in the field and filmed some of the public presentations.
 
Moller said that his show would air on BBC television in Europe as well as on a show in China in March 2005. When the show did not air, New Energy Times started asking questions.
 
New Energy Times confirmed from the BBC that Moller was, in fact, on assignment. Moller's Web site, www.gifnet.org, indicates that he apparently also has connections to a group called the Television Trust for the Environment.
 
However, a few things about this picture seem odd.
 
Moller is best known for his free energy invention called Moller's Atomic Hydrogen Generator, also known as MAHG. His work is respected and admired by some cold fusion fans, though Moller is not known for journalism or filmmaking.
 
In Marseilles, Moller introduced himself to New Energy Times' Editor Steven Krivit as a resident of Denmark, president of GIFNET, based in Switzerland, with offices in London and Athens. Moller provided Krivit with his GIFNET business card as well as another of his cards, from Spectrum Investments Ltd.  The London address of Spectrum is the same as the London address of the GIFNET offices.
 
Moller also told Krivit in 2004 that he recently met with the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, who was enthusiastic about supporting cold fusion research, though Moller had asked Krivit to keep that information off the record at that time. Moller's Web site now displays a written message from Annan, which states, among other things, "GIFNET is showing the world how clean and new forms of energy can reduce environmental degradation and advance sustainable development."

 


Jean Louis Naudin, Kofi Annan, Nicholas Moller

 
The GIFNET Web site states that Annan visited the GIFNET laboratory on June 13, 2005, and he observed "demonstrations of Levitation Technology (the Lifter), Cold Fusion Technology (CFR), Atomic Hydrogen Heat Generation (MAGH) and High Efficiency Energy Pump Technology (HEP)."
 
Although we commend Moller for his invention and commitment to clean energy, and Naudin for his outstanding replications of Mizuno's work, New Energy Times fails to see how GIFNET is anything more than a commercial laboratory showcasing its own and several other highly questionable technologies. No other technology represented by GIFNET comes close to having the scientific credibility behind cold fusion, and unfortunately this distinction appears unimportant to Annan.
 
New Energy Times is certainly pleased that a representative of the United Nations has shown interest in cold fusion. We have to ask, though, whether GIFNET is the right organization to be representing cold fusion to the United Nations? We suggest that the International Society for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science or the International Sustainable Energy Organization may be better choices.
 
The GIFNET Web site with its impressive graphics, spiffy sounds, and lofty assertions, also raises more questions than provides answers.
 
It states, "As our nonprofit work and New Energy Technologies is made available free of charge to the World Public, your contribution will be for the benefit of All"
 
Another anomaly on the GIFNET Web site is the apparent spoofing of e-mail addresses of two of its advisory board members, Diana Noronha, and Dr. Panayiotis Pappas. The addresses appear to be specific for these individuals; however, the underlying code refers to london@gifnet.org for both. Is this a programming error or a misrepresentation?
 
As far as New Energy Times knows, Moller, or GIFNET, has not delivered any public benefit since we first heard about GIFNET eight months ago. On the other hand, he has received a great deal of information from his private interviews with the worlds' top cold fusion researchers and attracted some high-profile attention at the United Nations. New Energy Times is concerned.
 

20. Speakers Available - Experts on the Subject of Cold Fusion
Steven B. Krivit - General audiences (author of The Rebirth of Cold Fusion)
Charles G. Beaudette - Academic audiences (author of Excess Heat and Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed, 2nd Ed.)
David J. Nagel - Government and military audiences (participant in the 2004 DOE Cold Fusion Review)
 

21. Updates to the New Energy Times(tm) Web Site
 
New Energy Times(tm) Newsletter Issue #10
http://newenergytimes.com/news/NET10.shtml

August, 2003 Interview with Professor Martin Fleischmann by Steven Krivit
http://newenergytimes.com/audio/2003-24Aug-FleischmannM.mp3
 
ICCF-10 Group Photo
http://newenergytimes.com/conferences/2003/ICCF10/iccf10.shtml

ICCF-11 Group Photo
http://newenergytimes.com/conferences/2004/ICCF11/ICCF11.shtml
 
11th International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (ICCF-11) Short Course
Highly recommended for technical people new to the field seeking a quick immersion!
 
Yasuhiro Iwamura et al., "Nuclear Transmutation Induced by Deuterium Permeation Through the Pd Complexes Detected by Surface and Bulk Analysis Methods."
http://newenergytimes.com/library/2004IwamuraY-ICCF11Class-NuclearTransmutation.pdf
http://newenergytimes.com/library/2004IwamuraY-ICCF11Class-PdComplex.pdf
http://newenergytimes.com/library/2004IwamuraY-ICCF11-TheRoleOfCaO.pdf
 
John Dash, et al., "Search for Optimum Conditions to Produce Excess Heat From the Electrolysis of Heavy Water With a Palladium Cathode."
http://newenergytimes.com/library/2004DashJ-ICCF11Class-SearchForOptimumConditions.pdf
http://newenergytimes.com/library/2004DashJ-ICCF11Class-SearchForOptimumConditionsPart2.pdf
 
X.Z. Li, "The Puzzle of Excess Heat With No Strong Nuclear Radiation"
http://newenergytimes.com/library/2004LiXZ-ICCF11Class-ThePuzzleOfExcessHeat.pdf
 
Edmund Storms, "An Update of LENR for ICCF-11"
http://newenergytimes.com/library/2004StormsE-ICCF11Class-AnUpdateOfLENR.pdf
 
Main Scenarios of CMN-Effects
In this paper, Akito Takahashi presents a chart showing an overview of some of the major results in the CMNS field and displays the relationship to the experiments with their respective theories.
http://newenergytimes.com/library/2005TakahashiA-MainScenariosOfCMN-Effects.pdf
 
Cold Fusion Videos 
New Energy Times (tm), in collaboration with Bamboo Moon TV of Hawaii, is pleased to present a 14-minute introduction to the cold fusion method known as sonofusion, pioneered by Roger Stringham.
http://newenergytimes.com/conferences/2005/APS2005/2005.shtml
 
New Energy Times (tm) Editor Steven B. Krivit is featured on a nine-minute presentation titled "Cold Fusion, A Journalistic Investigation," a talk given at the March 2005 American Physical Society meeting in Los Angeles, Calif.
http://newenergytimes.com/conferences/2005/APS2005/2005.shtml

 

How Does Cold Fusion Compare With Hot Fusion? (Revised)
http://newenergytimes.com/PR/HotColdCompared.shtml

 

22. Help Wanted
New Energy Times needs a "prosumer-grade" 3 CCD digital video camera, like the Canon GL1 or GL2, and related accessory kit, as well as a wireless hand-held microphone and a shotgun microphone for filming cold fusion documentaries and creating short educational films. One subscriber has been kind enough to loan New Energy Times such a kit temporarily to film a documentary at the U.S. Navy SPAWAR facility, and at the recent APS conference.
 
However, New Energy Times needs to obtain its own kit at this time. If you can donate any of these major components or can contribute a tax-deductible donation to the New Energy Foundation for $3,000 to cover this expense, please contact the New Energy Foundation as soon as possible at (603) 485-4700.

 

23. Support New Energy Times(tm)
New Energy Times( tm) is a project of New Energy Institute Inc., a nonprofit public-benefit corporation organized under the California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation Law for public and charitable purposes. Federal 501(c)(3) recognition is pending.
 
The mission of New Energy Institute Inc. is to provide information and educational services to the general public to increase awareness and understanding of new, environmentally friendly energy research and technologies. Our goal is to to help bring about the clean-energy revolution.
 
New Energy Times (tm) offers research, reporting and analyses through its Web site, newsletter, private and public presentations and publications, including The Rebirth of Cold Fusion: Real Science, Real Hope, Real Energy by Steven B. Krivit and Nadine L. Winocur.
 
We pledge to remain a news source you can trust and a resource you can depend on. If you find our work valuable, please become a regular sponsor or make a donation so we may continue being of service. We depend on our readers and thank you for your support.
 

24. Appreciation
New Energy Times(tm) gratefully acknowledges the generosity and support of:
The New Energy Foundation
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Our Subscribers
 

25. Administrative

 
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