Cold Fusion Is Hot Again

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

(CBS)  Twenty years ago it appeared, for a moment, that all our energy problems could be solved. It was the announcement of cold fusion - nuclear energy like that which powers the sun - but at room temperature on a table top. It promised to be cheap, limitless and clean. Cold fusion would end our dependence on the Middle East and stop those greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. It would change everything.

But then, just as quickly as it was announced, it was discredited. So thoroughly, that cold fusion became a catch phrase for junk science. Well, a funny thing happened on the way to oblivion - for many scientists today, cold fusion is hot again.

"We can yield the power of nuclear physics on a tabletop. The potential is unlimited. That is the most powerful energy source known to man," researcher Michael McKubre told 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley.

McKubre says he has seen that energy more than 50 times in cold fusion experiments he's doing at SRI International, a respected California lab that does extensive work for the government.

McKubre is an electro-chemist who imagines, in 20 years, the creation of a clean nuclear battery. "For example, a laptop would come pre-charged with all of the energy that you would ever intend to use. You're now decoupled from your charger and the wall socket," he explained.

The same would go for cars. "The potential is for an energy source that would run your car for three, four years, for example. And you'd take it in for service every four years and they'd give you a new power supply," McKubre told Pelley.

"Power stations?" Pelley asked.

"You can imagine a one for one plug in replacement for nuclear fuel rods. And the difference only would be that at the end of the lifetime of that fuel rod, you didn't have radioactive waste that needed to be disposed of," McKubre replied.

He showed 60 Minutes just how simple the experiment looks; there are only three main ingredients. First, there is palladium, a metal in the platinum family. Second, one needs a kind of hydrogen called deuterium which is found in seawater.

"Deuterium is essentially unlimited. There is ten times as much energy in a gallon of sea water, from the deuterium contained within it, than there is in a gallon of gasoline," he explained.

The palladium is placed in water containing deuterium and the third ingredient is an electric current.

The experiment is wrapped in insulation and instruments. They're looking for what they call "excess heat." In other words, is more energy coming out than the electric current puts in?

No one knows exactly how excess heat would be generated, but McKubre showed 60 Minutes what he thinks is happening.

At the atomic level, palladium looks like a lattice and the electricity drives the deuterium to the palladium. "They sit on the surface and they pop inside the lattice," he explained, using an artist's rendition of the lattice.

McKubre believes there is a nuclear reaction - possibly a fusion process like what happens in the sun, but occurring inside the metal, at a slower rate, and without dangerous radiation.

Scientists today like to call it a nuclear effect rather than cold fusion. At least 20 labs working independently have published reports of excess heat - heat up to 25 times greater than the electricity going in.

"This little piece of palladium metal has about a third as much energy as the battery in your automobile. So very small volumes, very small masses can produce large amounts of energy," he explained, holding a small piece of palladium foil weighing just 0.3 grams.

McKubre has been working on this since that first discredited claim of cold fusion made headlines 20 years ago.

"To work on this issue is almost to put your scientific credibility at risk and I wonder why you've done it?" Pelley asked.

"My belief is that if there's a one percent chance that Fleischmann and Pons were correct, and I now believe that possibility is 99 percent. I have a duty to work on it," he replied.

Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons amazed the world in 1989 with their cold fusion news conference at the University of Utah. Fleischmann in particular was one of the world's leading electro-chemists, and the announcement of room temperature fusion set the world on fire.

[samuelblack]

>One of the misconceptions that seems to be evident is that only the government would be involved in attempting to suppress cold fusion research; otherwise who would oppose it. The answer: Hot fusion scientists at MIT.

If you are so gullible to believe that a few hot fusion scientists at MIT have enough power to suppress a revolutionary energy source that would provide unprecedented benefit to the US and its government, then it is no surprise that you are also gullible enough to believe cold fusion is real.

>Lobbyists for the 'hot fusion' community took the following steps:
>1. A committee visited several laboratories where low-energy nuclear reactios were achieved and declared them all invalid.

Big deal. What gives them a monopoly on declarations of validity? If CF were valid, where were the committees sent by non-hot-fusion scientists to declare the experiments valid? Funding agencies like the DOE go to great lengths to avoid reviews from scientists with conflicts of interest. Since they would stand to benefit immensely from the success of CF, they would surely seek unbiased reviewers, and there are plenty of them around.

>2. An agent was obtained at the Office of Patents and Trademarks to ensure that no cold fusion patents were approved

How do you ?obtain an agent?? How does a lobby group or an agent simply ensure that no patents on a particular subject are approved? Why didn?t the CF researchers ?obtain an agent? and ensure that no hot fusion patents are approved? You know that the money provided by the DOE for hot fusion research has to be accounted for, and paying lobbyists and bribing patent officers is not an acceptable line in the budget. The DOE after all, and the government it represents would benefit immensely from the success of CF. Maybe the patent office just decided not to grant patents for technology that doesn't work.

>(? It is possible to get patents in France, Italy, Israel, South Korea and Japan, all of whom have government-backed cold fusion programs.)

And isn?t it funny that CF progress in those countries is no better than in the US, which is to say, there isn?t any.

>3. All major U.S. technical journals were warned against printing any cold fusion articles.

Warned by hot fusion scientists? What possible weight could they put behind such a warning? That they would then withhold papers? Are you suggesting a scenario in which CF is valid, but journals won?t publish it for fear of losing hot fusion articles? Do you think they would be afraid to publish the most revolutionary, environmentally beneficial articles on energy in 50 years, and become the most cited energy journal on the planet, because they want to keep publishing luke-warm incremental progress on a so-far unsuccessful technology? Is that what you think?

>4. A fund of about $30,000 was provided to Random House to fund a book to destroy the credibility of cold fusion. This book was BAD SCIENCE, THE SHORT LIFE AND WEIRD TIMES OF COLD FUSION, a hatchet job by Gary Taubes.

Have you informed the DOE about this? Because, if it?s true, I?m pretty sure it represents an illegal use of their funds, and as a major beneficiary of successful CF research, I?m pretty sure they wouldn?t like it.

Anyway, if all it takes is 30k, why don?t the CF proponents get a book written to rebuild the credibility of CF? Oh, that?s right. They?ve tried. With several books in fact. I wonder why it?s not working. They seem to spend more time writing about the saga than doing more experiments, probably because they?ve realized that more experiments with the same ambiguous, marginal, irreproducible, and impractical results aren?t going to be any more convincing than what they?ve already got. (Perhaps less.)

>5. An 'official' from Washington, D.C. called all major universities and warned them, 'If you have so much as a graduate student working on cold fusion, you will get NO CONTRACTS OUT OF WASHINGTON!'

What?s an 'official' from Washington? And how do lobbyists for hot fusion scientists persuade such an 'official' to threaten universities not to do research on a subject that purports to provide unprecedented benefit to the US? Do you think these hot fusion scientists can use government money to bribe government officials to act against the government's own interest by prescribing university research? And if that kind of circularity works, how would a well-funded area of research ever get shut down? Like say, the integral fast reactor?

>6. Robert Park, a self-appointed 'spokesman' for the American Physical Society has been vigorously lambasting cold fusion and its supporters for over ten years.

Park is not a hot-fusion scientist. Anyway, why doesn't a CF advocate self-appoint himself as a 'spokesman' for the APS, and vigorously advocate CF and its supporters? Maybe Park is more effective because he is right.

[samuelblack]

>Senator John Kerry and Hazel O'Leary acitively shut down a competing technology to the hot fusion program at MIT (Just check Wikipedia under the integral fast reactor).

And yet, solar, wind, and geothermal research continue, and research into fission reactors is picking up again, if not quite as much into breeder reactors.

>Why? It allegedly led to "threats to non-proliferation". Big tobacco said that nicotine was non-addictive.

But the medical establishment disagreed, with virtual unanimity.

>Big coal told you that CO^2 didn't cause global warming.

But the climatology establishment disagrees, with virtual unanimity.

>Big physics (MIT) told you that the IFR was a threat to non-proliferation.

No. That would be the environmentalist movement, which doesn't like fission reactors of any kind, and particularly dislikes breeders. Jane Fonda had a little to do with that attitude. The physics establishment is largely supportive of fission reactors for energy, with or without breeding, but most I think would admit that the production of plutonium in breeders requires special precautions to avoid proliferation, or at least the perception of proliferation.

>The real reason is that if the IFR had been selected, the hot fusion program at MIT would have been superflous and MIT stood to lose billions of dollars in research grants. Apparently Senator Kerry shut down the program to protect his constituents at MIT...

This doesn't make sense. The funding for the IFR was also in the billions. Why wouldn't the constituents doing that research deserve equal protection? Or even more, if the program really was more viable, and therefore offered more benefit to the country. The truth is that the economics of both technologies are very much unknown, and until the technologies are more developed, no one knows which is more viable, so continuation of the IFR would not have been an immediate threat to hot fusion. In fact, to date, all breeder reactors have been very expensive, and some have been shut down (in France e.g.) because they are not competitive. As promising as breeder reactors may be, fusion, if it can be made to work economically, still has dramatic advantages in terms of fuel sources, and in the public perception of waste products and the dangers of catastrophic failures (meltdowns). And so it is very unlikely fusion research will stop for advances in fission research.

>Cold fusion and the IFR were both shut down by MIT who stood to lose billions of dollars in research grants if either program was successful

But surely MIT's reach is confined more or less to the US, and (this may come as a surprise to you) there is science beyond the borders of the US. And yet, in spite of considerable work on both fast breeders (esp. in France and Russia), and CF outside the US, work outside the US is also continuing unabated in plasma fusion research. In fact, the next big plasma fusion reactor (iter) is being built in France, the country that supported Pons & Fleischmann for a while, and that has the highest percentage of its energy produced by fission (78%), and that has done the most research into breeder reactors.

You would be much more successful arguing that big oil or big coal was shutting down CF and IFR research. Their reach is much more global, they have a lot more money, the money doesn't come from the government (a potential beneficiary of CF), and a lot more people would be affected. But it's too late now. If you change horses now, we'll all recognize you as a conspiracy theory in search of a conspirator.

>Does anyone believe that politics played no role in shutting down cold fusion research and the IFR in this country?

Certainly not in CF, for which funding has been grossly out of proportion to the results produced (although not from the DOE). Environmental politics has regrettably played a negative role in the shutting down of research into fast breeders. That is likely to change when (if) global warming becomes manifestly obvious from the rise in sea level. Hopefully it won't take that long.

[crackpotsloughter]

One of the misconceptions that seems to be evident is that only the government would be involved in attempting to suppress cold fusion research; otherwise who would oppose it. The answer: Hot fusion scientists at MIT. Consider the following website by Emerging Energy Marketing Firm, Inc. Prepared for Republican National Committee. Subject: The politics of New-Energy Technology.

"When low-energy nuclear fusion (dubbed 'cold fusion' by the media) was first announced, the 'hot fusion' community falsely assumed that this low-energy nuclear reaction was a threat to the continuation of $500 million (or more) per year from the DOE. Lobbyists for the 'hot fusion' community took the following steps:

1. A committee visited several laboratories where low-energy nuclear reactios were achieved and declared them all invalid.

2. An agent was obtained at the Office of Patents and Trademarks to ensure that no cold fusion patents were approved (I will note in passing that the worst that would have happened if hot fusion scientists had been right is that a few perpetual motion machines would have been patented. Since they are wrong, it may have cost American inventors billions of dollars in lost patent royalties. It is possible to get patents in France, Italy, Israel, South Korea and Japan, all of whom have government-backed cold fusion programs.)

3. All major U.S. technical journals were warned against printing any cold fusion articles. (All but FUSION TECHNOLOGY, the journal of the American Nuclear Society agreed not to publish).

4. A fund of about $30,000 was provided to Random House to fund a book to destroy the credibility of cold fusion. This book was BAD SCIENCE, THE SHORT LIFE AND WEIRD TIMES OF COLD FUSION, a hatchet job by Gary Taubes.

5. An 'official' from Washington, D.C. called all major universities and warned them, 'If you have so much as a graduate student working on cold fusion, you will get NO CONTRACTS OUT OF WASHINGTON!'

6. Robert Park, a self-appointed 'spokesman' for the American Physical Society has been vigorously lambasting cold fusion and its supporters for over ten years. PARK IS NOW BEING SUED." As far as the final comment, Park recently went on the record to proclaim that cold fusion is "science" just not important science.

Senator John Kerry and Hazel O'Leary acitively shut down a competing technology to the hot fusion program at MIT (Just check Wikipedia under the integral fast reactor). Why? It allegedly led to "threats to non-proliferation". Big tobacco said that nicotine was non-addictive. Big coal told you that CO^2 didn't cause global warming. Big physics (MIT) told you that the IFR was a threat to non-proliferation.

The real reason is that if the IFR had been selected, the hot fusion program at MIT would have been superflous and MIT stood to lose billions of dollars in research grants. Apparently Senator Kerry shut down the program to protect his constituents at MIT because no other Senators felt compelled to shut down the program, only Senator Kerry.

According to the experts Charles E. Till and George S. Stanford, the IFR promised clean, inexhaustible energy that was weapons incompatible and proliferation-resistant. It was safe, could burn up all special nuclear materials, including plutonium from decommissioned warheads, and the radioactive wastes from light-water reactors.

Cold fusion and the IFR were both shut down by MIT who stood to lose billions of dollars in research grants if either program was successtul (When Kerry and O'Leary shut down the IFR, it was three years from completion and completing the work would have cost no more than shutting it down (Stanford)).

Does anyone believe that politics played no role in shutting down cold fusion research and the IFR in this country?

[JedRothwell]

Samuelblack wrote:

"And this is especially so given that your claim about reproducibility is contradicted in the paper [by Miles] you cite to support it."

Please note that I cited McKubre, Mengoli, Arata or Iwamura for reproducibility. I said that "Miles et al. showed that repeatability is a function of the material." I did not say they claimed high reproducibility. They found the main source of irreproducibility: the materials. Reproducibility has increased a great deal since they wrote that paper.

As for the rest, I will let you have the last word again.

[samuelblack]

>>The only specific reference you supply to support your claim of repeatability is not refereed . . ."

>In my opinion, China Lake reports are better than most peer-reviewed papers.

As you are careful to point out below, your opinion means squat. And this is especially so given that your claim about reproducibility is contradicted in the paper you cite to support it.

>>"And in table 10, by 100% repeatability, you are presumably referring to several materials in which the effect was observed twice in 2 tries."

>Yes, 7 out of 8 tests for the NRL material, 2 out of 2 for the Johnson-Matthey Type A palladium supplied by Fleischmann and Pons.

But in spite of this, the authors of the paper conclude explicitly in several places that CF is not reproducible. You said "I know many experiments that fit this description [consistently repeatable]" and cited Miles (1996) to support it. The paper actually asks two questions in the Intro:

1. Is the apparent physical effect real? and
2. If so, can it be reproduced regularly?

In response to question 2, it answers

"... no. The lack of reproducibility has made this research exceedingly difficult and frustrating. The only consolation is that no other research group in the world has been able to solve the reproducibility problem. Given that the excess heat effect is real, this will never be a useful energy source until the reproducibility problem is solved."

Gee, that kind of sounds like what Gruber was saying. So the paper you cite actually supports Gruber's point, and contradicts yours.

> See also the statistical analysis of the helium results in this paper:

Now, you're just trying to divert attention from the question of reproducibility, which was the reason you cited the paper. No one disputes the fact that the CF researchers claim their results prove CF. The point of this discussion was that even the CF researchers admit that it's not reproducible.

>"This statistical treatment shows that the odds are approximately one in 750,000 that our complete set of heat and helium results could be this well correlated due to random experimental errors in our calorimetry and helium measurements.

This is based on unsupportable assumptions that errors would cause a 50/50 chance of excess heat and or excess He, and it is irrelevant if the artifacts that produce the errors are correlated (i.e. not random). The opposite of random errors is not fusion.

>>"I just flipped all the coins in my pocket twice, and the nickel came up heads both times."

>Let's see you get 9 out of 10,

If someone slipped 4 of 5 nickels into the mix with heads on both sides, that's what I'd see.

> or better yet, let's see you get 749,999 out of 750,000.

Now you're mixing up reproducibility with probability of a real effect. Even though the paper claims vanishing likelihood that the effect is not real, it admits that "Most experiments produced no evidence of any excess power. Overall, only 30% of our experiments yielded evidence for excess power."

>It takes several years to do this many experiments. You cannot expect better proof than 9 out of 10.

Why not? 10 out of 10 fission fuel rods produce heat. And they all produce the same heat to within small tolerances. And they did so less than a decade after fission was discovered.

Anyway, the authors don't claim 90%, they claim 30%. But even if you claim that for a particular material the reproducibility is 90% in this experiment, what happens when another lab follows the recipe? Will they get 90% too? And if so, then considering this was done in 1996, how is possible that a review of excess heat experiments in 2007 still only claims that 1/3 of the experiments are successful? And if a recipe for 90% reproducibility exists, how is it possible that it hasn't been made practical yet? So many questions. So few answers.

>>"You cannot be serious."

>This is not about me.

Yes it is. This is about you making false claims in this forum. This is about you and your claim that CF is reproducible. The paper you cited to support your claim contradicts it. Explicitly. Several times.

>Miles & Johnson are serious, and these results are definitive.

But they do not support reproducibility; nor do the authors claim it.

[JedRothwell]

I wrote:

"My reports were not erroneous. They were accurate, and authors did not retract."

I meant that my reports were accurate descriptions of the claims made by the authors, and those authors did not retract, as far as I know. One author is dead (CETI) and the other I have lost contact with (Hydrodynamics).

I did not perform the experiments or make the claims. I reported them. I did make measurements with my own instruments, as described in these reports, and as far as I could tell they confirmed the author's claims (except for the mistake I discovered at Hydrodynamics, which was corrected). My reports were carefully reviewed by the authors and by other outside observers, and I am sure they were accurate. But, as I said, several independent replications would be needed to establish these claims.

I should perhaps add that I have discovered and reported far more mistakes in cold fusion experiments than all of so-called "skeptics" put together. If anyone deserves to be called a skeptic in this field, I do. I have found no significant mistakes in any mainstream experiments, other than those that the authors themselves point out, such as Mengoli (1998), p. 167. The people criticizing the experiments here know nothing about the work, and nothing about the instruments and methods, and the few papers they have looked at they have grossly misunderstood. They are not "skeptics" in the traditional sense of the word.

[JedRothwell]

Samuelblack wrote:

"'See Table 10 in Miles, M. and K.B. Johnson, Anomalous Effects in Deuterated Systems, Final Report. 1996, Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division.

The only specific reference you supply to support your claim of repeatability is not refereed . . ."

In my opinion, China Lake reports are better than most peer-reviewed papers.


"And in table 10, by 100% repeatability, you are presumably referring to several materials in which the effect was observed twice in 2 tries."

Yes, 7 out of 8 tests for the NRL material, 2 out of 2 for the Johnson-Matthey Type A palladium supplied by Fleischmann and Pons.

See also the statistical analysis of the helium results in this paper:

"This statistical treatment shows that the odds are approximately one in 750,000 that our complete set of heat and helium results could be this well correlated due to random experimental errors in our calorimetry and helium measurements. Furthermore, it is very unlikely that random errors would consistently yield helium-4 production rates in the appropriate range of 10E11 - 10E12 atoms/s per watt of excess power."


"I just flipped all the coins in my pocket twice, and the nickel came up heads both ties."

Let's see you get 9 out of 10, or better yet, let's see you get 749,999 out of 750,000.

It takes several years to do this many experiments. You cannot expect better proof than 9 out of 10.


"You cannot be serious."

This is not about me. Miles & Johnson are serious, and these results are definitive. You do not understand them.

[samuelblack]

Rothwell> With some materials he reported 100% repeatability. See Table 10 in Miles, M. and K.B. Johnson, Anomalous Effects in Deuterated Systems, Final Report. 1996, Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division.

The only specific reference you supply to support your claim of repeatability is not refereed, and has as its second sentence in the abstract:

" Reproducibility continues to be the major problem in this controversial research area."

And in table 10, by 100% repeatability, you are presumably referring to several materials in which the effect was observed twice in 2 tries.

I just flipped all the coins in my pocket twice, and the nickel came up heads both times. I therefore conclude that nickels land heads-up 100% of the time.

You cannot be serious.

[JedRothwell]

penny_gruber wrote:

"Jed, if you've got documentation of specific repeatable experiments kindly pick one or two and direct me to same."

As I said, see McKubre (SRI), Mengoli, Arata or Iwamura. See also the SRI replications of Arata. See Dardik and the SRI and ENEA replications of Dardik. Miles et al. showed that repeatability is a function of the material. With some materials he reported 100% repeatability. See Table 10 in Miles, M. and K.B. Johnson, Anomalous Effects in Deuterated Systems, Final Report. 1996, Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division.


"After the past erroneous reports supporting OU claims by Hydrodynamics, and CETI having a working CF device I trust that you understand my desire for more than just your word."

My reports were not erroneous. They were accurate, and authors did not retract. However, Hydrodynamics has not been independently replicated, and CETI was only replicated by U. Illinois, as far as I know. Without independent replications we cannot say for sure whether an effect is real or not.

In any case, my word has nothing to do with any of this. I do not work for the Naval Air Warfare Center or Mitsubishi. I did not make any of these claims, and I did not publish any of these papers. Nearly all of the papers at LENR-CANR.org were published elsewhere. You never need to depend on my credibility. You do not even need to trust that I copied them correctly. You can always find the originals where I got them, at the libraries at Los Alamos and Georgia Tech, or any other large university library.

[samuelblack]

> Mr. Black your definitive and self-assured comments speak volumes.

Thank you. I strive to make the definitive argument. But if it really were definitive, you would not be arguing against it, unless you make a habit of engaging in futile fights.

> Some of your comments are reminiscent of one who will cling so tenaciously to a belief that no amount of evidence or facts will convince them otherwise.

You have it the wrong way around. I and many others criticizing CF, in this forum and elsewhere, have been very explicit about exactly what sort of evidence would have us change our minds so fast, it would make your head spin. Just build a device that requires no energy input (other than D2O), and that generates obvious energy output that you can feel (meaning in the tens of watts range), for as long as you like, and as I've said over and over, the world will beat a path to your door. That mainstream science is receptive to evidence for cold fusion was proven in 1989, when the world *did* beat a path to Pons' & Fleischmann's door. The world was ready to believe it, excited to believe it, and enthusiastic at the prospects. The failure was a cruel disappointment to those of us who want clean energy as much as you do.

On the other hand, I cannot conceive of evidence or facts that would convince believers in CF that it is not in fact a source of limitless energy? I am certain that in another 20 years, if people are still claiming excess energy in electrolysis and calorimetry experiments, but have not actually succeeded in a simple and practical conversion of water into energy, there will still be true believers constructing (as ever) vast conspiracy theories, making (as ever) feeble excuses for the failure to scale the effect up, complaining (as ever) about the lack of funding, and citing (as ever) how Galileo wasn't believed either (even though other scientists did believe him). No, the only tenacity here is that of the cold fusioneers, since it is their belief that is not falsifiable, while the skeptics belief can be falsified in an imagined heartbeat.

As long as CFists continue to refer regular people to the literature to prove they have the source of infinite energy, they will continue to be ignored. You do not need to read literature to know that a burning log produces energy, even though burning logs will never supply all the planet's energy. You do not need to look at graphs to know that nuclear fission is a source of energy; a look at a mushroom cloud, or a nuclear reactor will do the trick. Evidence for fusion energy rises every morning in the east, and closer to home can be seen by exploding a hydrogen bomb; no days of number-crunching necessary. Even intermittent energy sources like wind or solar radiation don't rely on obscure journals to convince the masses that they can provide useful amounts of energy. CF, along with perpetual motion and some other claims of free energy, are in a category of their own, in which you have to look at literature to believe that energy is there; in which the man on the street has no hope of recognizing the experiment as one in which infinite energy might be provided; in which even experts have to puzzle over the data to be sure there is some excess energy produced; in which even the believers concede that after decades (centuries for perpetual motion) of claiming excess heat is produced, it still can't be used in any practical way.