Comments on: Cold Fusion Is Hot Again

60 Minutes: Once Considered Junk Science, Cold Fusion Gets A Second Look By Researchers

[storms2]

We would like to thank 60 Minutes for presenting an accurate description of the controversial subject of cold fusion. For 20 years, this phenomenon has been investigated by a small number of people, myself included, in laboratories located in many countries in spite of it being generally rejected by conventional science and frequently maligned by articles in the media. Gradually, the collection of information supporting the reality of the effect has reach a level that warrants serious public description, which 60 Minutes has provided. Hopefully, public discussion about the subject will continue so that the promise of this amazing phenomenon to produce clean and inexpensive energy can be implemented.
For those who doubt the reality of the claims, I suggest they at least take the time to study the large amount of supporting information before making uninformed and foolish statements.

[jmattson]

Stanley Pons and I were PhD students of Professor Harry B Mark, Jr, at the University of Michigan from 1966-70. We published our first scientific paper together, with Professor Mark, in 1967. Stan is one of the brightest people I have ever known, and I do not doubt that he and Dr. Fleischman discovered something quite out of the ordinary back in 1989. I am sure that the renewed interest in their work will eventually reveal what that phenomenon is. When I look back at what we thought of the subatomic world when we were graduate students (40 years ago), I can hardly recognize what the scientific community knows today -- and I am astounded at how much we simply did not know. Stan and Fleischman, I am guessing, were way ahead of their own brains in 1989.

One of the major faults of the United States' support of the physical sciences for the past 30 years is the failure to support young scientists with new ideas, and our reliance on the old guard to help us muddle through without upsetting too many "settled' scientific theories. I wager many will be surprised when the current crop of electrochemists figure out what Stan and Dr. Fleischman discovered in 1989. I know that I will be.

[osborca1]

So with the success of cold fusion, where are the cold fusion power plants? How could that question not be addressed?

[JedRothwell]

Jared wrote: "One can think of many ways heat could be generated through chemical processes and ordinary metal gas interactions." This is true, but cold fusion cells do not contain any chemical fuel, they do undergo any chemical changes and they have produced 10,000 times more than an equivalent mass of chemical fuel could produce. In other words, chemical sources are ruled out. Cold fusion also produces helium in the same ratio to the heat as plasma fusion does, and tritium in varying ratios, but far above background. (Sometimes millions of times.)

I have a collection of 1,200 peer reviewed papers on cold fusion that I copied from the libraries at Los Alamos and Georgia Tech. I have 2,000 other papers from conference proceedings, the U.S. Navy, Los Alamos and various other national labs in the U.S., Italy, India, Japan and China. This body of literature describes many thousands of positive experimental runs performed in 200 major laboratories, by roughly 2,000 professional researchers. Many of these results were at very high signal to noise ratios. They employ a whole range of different instrument types to confirm the heat, tritium, x-rays, neutrons and so on. There is not the slightest chance that all of these researchers in all of these tests were making mistakes.

Cold fusion has reached temperatures and power density comparable to the core of a conventional fission reactor. The reaction cannot be controlled at present but if this problem can be fixed it may become a practical source of energy.

I have uploaded a bibliography of 3,000 papers and 500 full-text papers on cold fusion to LENR-CANR.org.

[vicski]

An irresponsible piece of journalism . There may be some interesting palladium electrochemistry, but to associate this effect with nuclear fusion of deuterium is patently wrong. Scientific literacy in the United States is already at a sufficiently low state without this kind of distortion of the facts.

[Namexbq]

If cold fusion is occurring in these experiments, there should be helium (or other products) created in the process. It might take a while to collect a measureable amount but the amount is easily calculated if fusion is the source of the energy. What do the experimenters or their critics say about this.

If this is not a fusion process but some chemical/physical process, the energy available has been vastly over estimated.

[RockTheReactors]

"the experiments produce excess heat at best 70 percent of the time; it can take days or weeks for the excess heat to show up."

sounds just like a woman!

[Jared552]

What about the neutrons and gamma rays that are emitted when fusion occurs?

One can think of many ways heat could be generated through chemical processes and ordinary metal gas interactions.

[Plethorus]

Deuterium may be "essentially unlimited" but palladium is not. If the process you describe actually produces energy, it must be because the deuterium atoms are fusing with palladium atoms. (There is a reason it is called "cold fusion".) When that happens, you no longer have a palladium atom; it becomes an atom of silver.
Why did you not explain that deuterium atoms are hydrogen atoms having one proton and one neutron in the nucleus, whereas ordinary hydrogen atoms have only a proton? If you are not going to do simple research, why should we trust your conclusions?