Cold Fusion, May Ye Rest in Peace
By Steven B. Krivit
June 5, 2011
[This article is Copyleft 2011 New Energy Times. Permission is granted to reproduce this article as long as the article, this notice and the publication information are included in their entirety and no changes are made to this article.]
Judging by some recent reader comments, another reminder about the distinction* between “cold fusion” and “low-energy nuclear reactions” is in order.
“Cold fusion” was a metaphor for a utopian dream: clean, inexpensive, universally available, virtually unlimited energy from water. The concept of “cold fusion” inspired hope for a greener planet, local energy production, freedom from the shackles of the petrocracy and, among other benevolent ideals, world peace. My first book, The Rebirth of Cold Fusion: Real Science, Real Hope, Real Energy, espoused this perspective.
For many years, proponents claimed “cold fusion” as a nuclear process that emulated thermonuclear fusion at room temperature. LENR is nuclear, but it looks nothing like fusion.
On the other hand, the term low-energy nuclear reactions has been around almost as long as the term “cold fusion.” LENR, however, affirms the reality of a possibly as-yet-unexplained set of nuclear phenomena at room temperature, but it does not presume or assert a fusion mechanism.
The hope and the promise of the rebirth of “cold fusion” do not change with the abandonment of the theoretical speculation of “cold fusion.” The reasons for the hope and inspiration remain: They are sustained by the recognition of a viable non-fusion theory and a large collection of experimental data which include light hydrogen experiments. Not even cold fusion proponents propose that light-hydrogen nuclei fuse with each other at room temperature.
A few stubborn “cold fusion” theorists, like Scott Chubb, who recently died, have hung on to fantasies of finite probabilities for the existence of evidence to support their theories of “cold fusion.” Chubb’s last words to me about our ideological disagreement revolved around the absence of experimental evidence for the theory of “cold fusion.” This followed my revelation of the data manipulation and fabrication by electrochemist Michael McKubre.
“The verdict is still out about the 24 MeV reaction,” Chubb wrote. “To say otherwise ignores the error bars, the results, etc. This is not fantasy. I appreciate your candor about this, but until more experiments are done, to say otherwise is also a fantasy.”
Many years ago, when I knew very little about nuclear physics, Chubb easily convinced me to accept the theory of “cold fusion.” But as I began to learn more, our perspectives diverged. Till the day he died, Chubb never wavered in his conviction.
Perhaps someday, Chubb’s belief that LENR involves fusion as its dominant reaction process will be experimentally validated. But 22 years have passed, and the growing body of evidence has consistently invalidated the “cold fusion” theory and instead confirmed weak interactions.
Since 2006, when Allan Widom and Lewis Larsen published their weak-interaction-based LENR theory, the attempts by cold fusion believers, including Nobel prize-winner Brian Josephson, to try to change both the meaning and definition of nuclear fusion have been evident.
I first presented my thesis, that LENR does not support the theory of “cold fusion,” at the 2008 American Chemical Society meeting. It has been unchallenged for three years.
I repeat here the closing paragraph from my January 31, 2011, editorial in Issue 36: “Leaving cold fusion in the past does not mean forgoing the dream of a new source of clean nuclear energy. It does not mean letting go of the hope of energy from abundantly available sources. It does not mean forgoing a vast new field of possibilities in science and technology. But it does mean moving on.”
* Recommended Reading: Distinction Between LENR and “Cold Fusion”
“On the Reality of LENR and the Mythology of Cold Fusion”
New Energy Times, March 10, 2010
“On the Reality of LENR and the Mythology of Cold Fusion” (Video)
New Energy Times, March 10, 2010
“On the Reality of LENR and the Mythology of Cold Fusion” (PDF)
New Energy Times, March 10, 2010
“Cold Fusion is Neither”
New Energy Times #35, July 30, 2010
“Cold Fusion Versus LENR: Competing Ideologies”
New Energy Times #36, January 31, 2011
Editorial: Progress Is This Way
New Energy Times #36, January 31, 2011
Perhaps a somewhat better title for this paper could be’ “Cold Fusion has revelead its true identity”
Life is a formidable force, this field’s existence was very real but with many zombi-like features.
Who cares for a name as long it catches mice, excuse me, generates usable energy? But with less than 5 historical exceptions, energy release was tragically low and desperately unreliable. All we can hope now is that non-palladium transition metals plus hydrogen will live fully technologically and the new theories will became First Class- i.e. predictive and usable.
Hi Peter,
People who are smart enough to know what fusion is and is not care. People who have little-to-no tolerance for faith-based “science” care. These include publishers, editors, reviewers, reporters, universities, skeptics, physicists, venture capitalists, industrialists, government agencies. Capisce?
The people who don’t seem to care, but should, are the cold fusion proponents who have been trying to gain acceptance and respect for the field for 22 years. And they wonder why they run into closed doors?
At the ACS in 2008, I presented a quote from John Fisher, a LENR theorist who has proposed a non-fusion, neutron-based explanation. He nailed the problem:
“In my opinion, [LENR] has been crippled by wide acceptance of the belief that deuterium fusion of some sort is responsible for energy generation, and also by rejection of alternative [proposed] mechanisms,” Fisher wrote. “Progress is stunted when we reject a mechanism, because we then fail to undertake the experiments it suggests.”
There has been no greater handicap to the progress in the LENR field in the last decade but that which has been self-imposed as a result of its adherents’ belief in the theory of fusion, haphazardly coupled to the valid empirical observations.
SBK
Very nice article, I may have my head in the clouds but I like to believe that we know so little about physics that the universe will surprise us and we will discover clean, everlasting, and low cost energy… Also we know about our corner of the universe, but that doesn’t say a lot about the rest of it, there could be a corner where the fundamental properties here on Earth don’t exist.
Agreed. And were there not an available explanation based on known physics for that which we had attributed to “cold fusion” it would have been wise to keep our minds open to the infinite unknown.
I looked into the LENR phenomenon in 1996. Even then, it seemed clear that it could not be Deuterium fusion in the conventional sense. I met a group of physicists about a year later. When I asked them about the “cold fusion” phenomenon, much to my surprise, most of them told me they thought the phenomenon was real but that it could not be fusion in the conventional sense.
I do not know why many people in the LENR field have insisted that it has to be Deuterium fusion, case closed. Whatever the phenomenon actually is, as long as it can be developed and commercialized, that is the point. Everything else is irrelevant.
What is clear to me is that there is a lot to nuclear science that we do not yet understand. It seems likely that the fission and fusion processes that we are all familiar with may be a small part of a much larger range of nuclear reactions yet to be discovered. Widom-Larson theory proposes such a range of nuclear reactions across the entire periodic table of elements.
The fission power that we developed in the 1940′s and fusion reactions we discovered in the early 50′s resulted from the specific development of nuclear weaponry. These happen to be the reactions we stumbled upon in the course of such work. I see no reason to believe that these two groups of reactions are the only nuclear reactions that are possible. It may be that there is a complete nuclear analog to chemistry awaiting discovery. If so, not only will new nuclear reactions lead to better energy generation, but industrial transmutation and materials processing as well.
The name associated with the phenomenum is not as important as the discovery. One would assume that the mainline Physics theorists would be excited by a chance to understand a new concept. The things that are unknown are the most interesting; laws of physics that are currently well known are just that.
Current Physicists should keep an open mind and seek out new concepts at every opportunity. It is impossible to estimate how many of the natural laws have been uncovered. We just do not have a magic ball that can answer that query. Think back 100 years and you can get a pretty good idea of how little was known at that time, but few realized it. I honestly expect that the next 100 years will show similiar progress. Who among the readers of this article think that little remains to be discovered? Please respond and explain why. I would especially like to hear from science researchers.
I have been a problem solver in electronics for many years and find that the most headway is often made when something out of the ordinary shows up. The unexpected or unexplained can be a wonderful guide.
I’ve read quite some stuff about LENR now and at first W-L convinced me. But as I read through the SPAWAR papers there is something that made me cautious:
The 11-17 MeV neutrons detected by CR-39
I don’t see how such high MeV Neutrons fit to WL. Szpak et al also favored neutron capture in their 2007 paper (http://www.springerlink.com/content/75p4572645025112/), but in their latest paper (http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8001205) they are talking about D+T fusion.
It’s not that im a fusion supporter, but I think SPAWARs recent work wont fit WL.
If “scientists” spent a bit more time researching cold fusion or what ever else one wants to call it instead of the usual academic crazy preoccupation with totally unimportant rubbish, such as what to name it.
Are they ever going to learn nobody except themselves cares what to call it , they are being paid to move the world forward, not sit arguing with each other how many angels will fit on a pinhead.
I don’t get it. I don’t get the distinction between “Cold Fusion” and LENR. They are just terms used to describe a nuclear process that ocurrs at low energies – “Fusion” being a nuclear process, and “Cold” being low in energy. Fusion does imply that a heavier nucleus resulted from two or more light nuclei, that is true. Is that the objection?
I’ve heard a number of people insisting that LENR isn’t “Cold Fusion”. Is that because “fusion” means the smashing of high-energy nuclei together to overcome the coulomb barrier? Well, if that is the objection, then of course there is no such thing as Cold Fusion. If “fusion” means “Hot Fusion” to some people, then those people would object to “Cold Fusion”, because it’s not hot.
If the term were “Cold Fission” would that help any?
Why the fervent objections to a term that has no real definition?
???
I wonder whether someone has never read the “report 41″ an experiment done in 2002 by Italians scientist of ENEA (Ente Nazionale Energie Alternative) De Ninno, Frattolillo, Rizzo, Del GIudice, Preparata with the contribution of the Nobel prize Carlo Rubbia (at that time president of the ENEA).
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/DeNinnoAexperiment.pdf
The report is the sum of an experiment that proves, without doubt, that in the Palladium-Deuterium cell, there is Helium4 production correlated with the heat excess of the reaction. So the H4 production demonstrates that the phenomenon is a nuclear fusion.
The report also suggests that the coherence in condensed matter (a theory demonstrated by Giuliano Preparata http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuliano_Preparata) could be the reason why the fusion take place.
Obviously the work has never been published by any scientific review because (as reported by De Ninno and Del Giudice):
- Science: “We don’t have space for editorial reasons”;
- Nature: “it’s impossible that inside water the temperature could increase so much” (?)
(Giuliano Preparata called Nature as “The scientific Pravda” because they answer to him “Since the phenomenon doesn’t exist, we don’t publish anything about it”);
- Others four reviews never allowed the normal review process.
A summary of all the facts is in this video by the Italian national network RaiNews24 (in English language):
http://www.rainews24.rai.it/ran24/inchieste/19102006_rapporto41-eng.asp
De Ninno and Del Giudice are superb scientists. But, at least as of the last time I spoke with De Ninno, she was not able, after so many years, to separate her excellent empirical research from her fixed perspective that the mechanism was from a hypothetical cold fusion process. I can understand her difficulty. Del Giudice has begun to see the weak interaction picture.
Moreover, her group made a crucial, erroneous assumption in their Rapporto 41.
New Energy Times, January 29, 2010, Issue #34
http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/34/345revisions.shtml
ENEA Frascati (De Ninno Group)
After careful review of an experiment by the group led by Antonella De Ninno (ENEA Frascati), reported in its 2002 paper [4], New Energy Times retracts all of the MeV/4He values we reported in Issue #29 for this experiment.
However, the measurements of helium in this experiment hold strong. We are retracting only our statements about the measured excess heat relative to the measured helium.
To their credit, the authors never stated claims of specific MeV/He values in their paper. This was our own interpretation based on the data presented in their paper and our communication with the authors.
We have learned, through a better understanding of their paper, that the authors did not perform calorimetry. Rather, they used the helium measurements to back-calculate the excess heat they would have expected from the amount of helium they measured, assuming the hypothesis of a D+D —> 4He + 23.8 MeV (heat) reaction.
The authors appear to have performed a brilliant experiment which demonstrates the nuclear production of helium. As well, the melted cathode from this experiment provides compelling evidence of a nuclear energy process.
Like you, I am highly sceptical about Rossi & Focardi but they are putting on quite a show:
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