After 23 years, researchers at the Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego, Calif., have been ordered to stop their low-energy nuclear reaction research.
On or about Nov. 9, 2011, Rear Admiral Patrick Brady , commander of SPAWAR, ordered SPAWAR researchers to terminate all LENR research. The order came seven days after Fox News published a story about Andrea Rossi’s Oct. 28, 2011, demonstration of his Energy Catalyzer. New Energy Times discussed the Fox News story on Nov. 9.
Fox contributor John Brandon wrote that a SPAWAR representative attended the demonstration and measured and verified the test. Brandon also wrote that SPAWAR may have been the customer to whom Rossi sold his 1 megawatt device on Oct. 28, 2011 – the same device still sitting in Rossi’s garage in January.
According to sources who are familiar with the commander’s orders but not authorized to discuss them, Brady gave the following instructions to SPAWAR researchers:
1. Immediately cease all LENR research at SPAWAR.
2. Return any unused funds for LENR research.
3. Withdraw any pending proposals for LENR research.
4. Do not publish additional scientific papers on LENR research.
According to the sources, Brady also issued instructions to cancel one of two existing cooperative research and development agreements for LENR research between SPAWAR and JWK International Corp., a private company in Annandale, Va.
New Energy Times sent the list of instructions to James Fallin, the director of public affairs at SPAWAR San Diego, and asked for confirmation.
“In response to your recent query,” Fallin wrote, “while I won’t discuss details of our internal decision-making processes, I will confirm SPAWAR plans no further low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) research. There are other organizations within the federal government that are better aligned to continue research regarding nuclear power. We have taken initial steps to determine how a transition of low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) research might occur.”
According to one of the sources, the rationale that Brady used was that LENR work was not part of SPAWAR’s mission. According to Brady, the source said, its mission is in information dominance, and energy is not part of that mission. New Energy Times read the response from Fallin to the source today.
“It’s bullshit,” the source said.
Ray Mabus, the Secretary of the Navy, says that energy is a fundamental part of the Navy’s mission. In a talk on Oct. 13, 2011, Mabus said that the Navy pioneered the use of nuclear technology for its ships and that it has continued to do pioneering energy work.
“This is what we do,” he said. “We change the way we use and produce energy, and we’re doing it again, and we’re at the cutting edge, which is where the Navy has always been on energy use.”
If Brady is thinking of moving LENR research out of SPAWAR and over to the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., that makes little sense because NRL has had a very poor track record in LENRs.
SPAWAR has an impressive track record of more than two dozen original LENR research papers published in peer-reviewed journals. NRL has none.
Brady took command of SPAWAR Aug. 6, 2010, when Rear Admiral Michael C. Bachmann retired.
“For many years, Admiral Bachmann had been extremely supportive, scientific and open-minded about LENR research at SPAWAR,” one of the sources said.
The Bologna Facts
Brandon did not go to Bologna, Italy, to attend the Rossi demonstration. He obtained information about the Oct. 28, 2011, Rossi demonstration from Sterling Allan, who runs a Web site called Pure Energy News Service. Allen is also a sales and business associate of Rossi’s.
Brandon, citing Allen, identified researcher Paul Swanson as the SPAWAR representative who attended the Oct. 28, 2011, demonstration.
According to Fallin, Swanson did not travel to Bologna on official SPAWAR or Navy business, and he paid his travel expenses out of his own pocket.
Swanson did not attend the Oct. 28 demonstration. Rossi had claimed that this demonstration was performed so the “customer” could verify his device. Instead, Swanson attended the Oct. 6, 2011, demonstration.
In his story, Brandon also borrowed and republished a two-year-old quote from another SPAWAR LENR researcher. The quote was irrelevant to the Rossi story, but Brandon’s inclusion of it gave the misleading impression that the researcher’s work was relevant. That connection may have contributed to the commander’s decision.
One of the sources told New Energy Times today that he was concerned about the implications of this type of reaction.
“Imagine the impact on the Department of Defense if a foreign power could effectively cancel a research program by embarrassing some of its top brass,” the researcher said.
A LENR researcher who was aware of the commander’s orders wondered whether he had been influenced in part by the internal factionalism in the LENR field. The SPAWAR researchers’ reports of energetic alpha particles disprove the D+D –> 4He hypothesis.
“The commander’s reaction seems extreme, over the top,” the researcher said. “It makes me wonder.”
[March 1, 2012 Correction: We have removed "neutrons" from the statement about SPAWAR researchers' reports.]
Dear Steven,
while i myself favor Neutron capture as the mechanism responsible for LENR, i suggest that you should be more careful in evaluation of the SPAWAR work. You wrote:
“The SPAWAR researchers’ reports of neutrons and energetic alpha particles disprove the D+D –> 4He hypothesis.”
This is simply not true. The Neutrons detected have (kinetic) energys in the MeV range. The Neutrons in WL theory are close too zero kinetic energy. Collective efffects that could lead to energies of 0,8 MeV to explain where the energy for the restmass of a Neutron comes from is one thing, but Neutrons with such “high” kinetic energies is quite another thing. If WL are right there could be some Neutron emission (although the mean free path of the created neutrons is really short) but i doubt that there could be Neutrons with kinetic Energys in the MeV range. Those Neutrons detected by SPAWAR do in fact fit more to DD and DT Fusion than to the low kinetic energy Neutrons in WL.
Again, we are talking about Neutrons with energy to scatter a carbon atom. So at least energies of 9.6 MeV. The Spawar team even estimates Neutrons with kinetic energies of 15.44 MeV for those trippletracks in the CR39. There could be serious doubt, that the collective effects could deliver energies as high as those 0.8 MeV needed to create the Neutron from an electron and proton in the first place. Now where should the energy in the 10 MeV range come from?!
Hi David,
I would have to agree with what you write. While I have no doubts about their reports of high-energy alphas, I do have some doubts about SPAWAR’s interpretation of “triple-tracks.” We know that CR-39 is a time-integrated detector. What we don’t know is if each of those tracks occurred at the same time. We don’t know of any direct measurement of the “neutron” energies. All we have are pictures of a few sets of three tracks near each other. So there is a lot of room for interpretation.
There have been some low-flux bursts of low-energy (1 MeV or less) neutrons observed throughout the history of the field; some of the best work has been done at BARC.
http://newenergytimes.com/v2/archives/1989BARC1500Report/1500.shtml
I suppose if we were talking about a plasma physics environment, DD or DT might be a reasonable explanation for the neutrons that SPAWAR claims. But of course this is a room temperature environment, which leaves us with the age-old problem of overcoming the Coulomb barrier at room temperature.
I have questioned SPAWAR’s assertion of DT here: Krivit, S.B., “Development of Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions Research,” Wiley Nuclear Energy Encyclopedia: http://newenergytimes.com/v2/books/2011Wiley/2011Wiley.shtml
“Some researchers have also suggested that secondary D-T reactions may be responsible for the low fluxes of neutrons seen in LENRs. A significant problem with this hypothesis is that no tritium is used as a starting material. Another problem with this suggestion is that tritium is rarely seen as a product in LENR experiments, although when it is observed, it appears in significant amounts.”
Thank you,
SBK
Stephen,
Excellent story. I don’t agree with you about Rossi (I don’t think), but I surely appreciate your coverage of such an important development as this. Previously, this was merely rumor. Your confirmation and putting the story in context are a very important contribution to following the reality of what is really or might be happening. This seems like politics, pure a simple. Kill the messenger, the oldest play in the book.
Cheers,
psi
If they concluded that LENR was real, then they may have decided to make the project go black. That would involve a very public cancellation of the research.
As a small high tech businessperson, I can tell you from direct experience there are two basic types of high tech entrepreneurs:
One type gets an idea, hypes it to raise money, lives a somewhat extravagant lifestyle on the funds raised and never actually makes product. They often need help actually making some sort of progress to please or mollify investors. It blows my mind how they can make promises without any actual working hardware in the lab, but they do it.
The other kind actually gets it working before they raise any money. In contrast to the flamboyant public approach, this type is secretive. Nothing about the project would be public until it was producing the product on a pilot scale and seed funding was intact.
The first type is not quite a scam but it is close. They really believe in it. The second type is the real one. You won’t hear a peep about them until it is in production. Academics and related government are the only ones with the incentive to publish actual research results freely.
Secure successful government research on this would go black. The fact that they cancelled one contract but kept the other is interesting: “Brady also issued instructions to cancel one of two existing cooperative research and development agreements for LENR research between SPAWAR and JWK International Corp., a private company in Annandale, Va.”
It sounds like JWK has one approach that works and it was taken black. The other approach was dropped. JWK sounds like a company that does analysis (http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/product-compint-0000679672-page.html), and thus may not be doing the actual work, but instead acts as a secure conduit for funds to the company.
Hi Laurie,
Thanks for your voice of reason. I have to apologize with a misunderstanding about the way we wrote one sentence. JWK had two CRADAs with SPAWAR. The one with LENR was cancelled. The other one, not involving LENR remains active.
Does this help?
SBK
Thanks Steve. It makes more sense now, whether the project has gone black or not. There should not be a gray area in either case.
By the way, your reporting and investigation on this has been great! Rossi clearly falls in the first type of high tech entrepreneur. I am suspicious of any entrepreneur in this field who has investors but no product to show for it.
Dagnyd–
Very interesting thought. Steven, what you do think about this? Is that possibly what’s going on, or do you think the cancellation is real? (Sorry for misspelling your name in my first post).
psi
Hi Roger,
Thanks for your question. People know know the commander well attribute his knee-jerk reaction primarily to his personality. Only question is if he had “encouragement” from third-parties. As far as going black, its about 22 years late for that.
SBK
This is exactly along the lines of comments I have previously made here and elsewhere – Rossi’s ‘efforts’ have been, and are, damaging because it undermines confidence in bona fide scientific research.
This is that exact concern, made manifest.
I think Brady’s order is not only dumb, it’s worse: It is the very thing that conspiracy theorists just adore…