Cold Fusion Book

[Gaylene Merganthaler]

Coldfusion is a hypothesized type of nuclear reaction that would occur at, or near, room temperature. It would contrast starkly with the "hot" fusion that is known to take place naturally within stars and artificially in hydrogen bombs and prototype fusion reactors under immense pressure and at temperatures of millions of degrees, and be distinguished from muon-catalyzed fusion. There is currently no accepted theoretical model that would allow cold fusion to occur.

In 1989, two electrochemists, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, reported that their apparatus had produced anomalous heat ("excess heat") of a magnitude they asserted would defy explanation except in terms of nuclear processes.[1] They further reported measuring small amounts of nuclear reaction byproducts, including neutrons and tritium.[2] The small tabletop experiment involved electrolysis of heavy water on the surface of a palladium (Pd) electrode.[3] The reported results received wide media attention[3] and raised hopes of a cheap and abundant source of energy.[4]

Many scientists tried to replicate the experiment with the few details available. Hopes faded with the large number of negative replications, the withdrawal of many reported positive replications, the discovery of flaws and sources of experimental error in the original experiment, and finally the discovery that Fleischmann and Pons had not actually detected nuclear reaction byproducts.[5] By late 1989, most scientists considered cold fusion claims dead,[6][7] and cold fusion subsequently gained a reputation as pathological science.[8][9] In 1989 the United States Department of Energy (DOE) concluded that the reported results of excess heat did not present convincing evidence of a useful source of energy and decided against allocating funding specifically for cold fusion. A second DOE review in 2004, which looked at new research, reached similar conclusions and did not result in DOE funding of cold fusion.[10] Presently, since articles about cold fusion are rarely published in peer-reviewed mainstream scientific journals, they do not attract the level of scrutiny expected for mainstream scientific publications.[11]

Nuclear fusion is normally understood to occur at temperatures in the tens of millions of degrees. This is called "thermonuclear fusion". Since the 1920s, there has been speculation that nuclear fusion might be possible at much lower temperatures by catalytically fusing hydrogen absorbed in a metal catalyst. In 1989, a claim by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann (then one of the world's leading electrochemists) that such cold fusion had been observed caused a brief media sensation before the majority of scientists criticized their claim as incorrect after many found they could not replicate the excess heat. Since the initial announcement, cold fusion research has continued by a small community of researchers who believe that such reactions happen and hope to gain wider recognition for their experimental evidence.

The ability of palladium to absorb hydrogen was recognized as early as the nineteenth century by Thomas Graham.[20][21] In the late 1920s, two Austrian-born scientists, Friedrich Paneth and Kurt Peters, originally reported the transformation of hydrogen into helium by nuclear catalysis when hydrogen was absorbed by finely divided palladium at room temperature. However, the authors later retracted that report, saying that the helium they measured was due to background from the air.[20][22]

In 1927, Swedish scientist John Tandberg reported that he had fused hydrogen into helium in an electrolytic cell with palladium electrodes.[20] On the basis of his work, he applied for a Swedish patent for "a method to produce helium and useful reaction energy".[20] Due to Paneth and Peters's retraction and his inability to explain the physical process, his patent application was denied.[20][23] After deuterium was discovered in 1932, Tandberg continued his experiments with heavy water.[20] The final experiments made by Tandberg with heavy water were similar to the original experiment by Fleischmann and Pons.[24] Fleischmann and Pons were not aware of Tandberg's work.[25][text 1][text 2]

The term "cold fusion" was used as early as 1956 in an article in The New York Times about Luis Alvarez's work on muon-catalyzed fusion.[26] Paul Palmer and then Steven Jones of Brigham Young University used the term "cold fusion" in 1986 in an investigation of "geo-fusion", the possible existence of fusion involving hydrogen isotopes in a planetary core.[27] In his original paper on this subject with Clinton Van Siclen, submitted in 1985, Jones had coined the term "piezonuclear fusion".[27][28]

The most famous cold fusion claims were made by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann in 1989. After a brief period of interest by the wider scientific community, their reports were called into question by nuclear physicists. Pons and Fleischmann never retracted their claims, but moved their research program from the US to France after the controversy erupted.

Martin Fleischmann of the University of Southampton and Stanley Pons of the University of Utah hypothesized that the high compression ratio and mobility of deuterium that could be achieved within palladium metal using electrolysis might result in nuclear fusion.[29] To investigate, they conducted electrolysis experiments using a palladium cathode and heavy water within a calorimeter, an insulated vessel designed to measure process heat. Current was applied continuously for many weeks, with the heavy water being renewed at intervals.[29] Some deuterium was thought to be accumulating within the cathode, but most was allowed to bubble out of the cell, joining oxygen produced at the anode.[30] For most of the time, the power input to the cell was equal to the calculated power leaving the cell within measurement accuracy, and the cell temperature was stable at around 30 C. But then, at some point (in some of the experiments), the temperature rose suddenly to about 50 C without changes in the input power. These high temperature phases would last for two days or more and would repeat several times in any given experiment once they had occurred. The calculated power leaving the cell was significantly higher than the input power during these high temperature phases. Eventually the high temperature phases would no longer occur within a particular cell.[30]

In 1988, Fleischmann and Pons applied to the United States Department of Energy for funding towards a larger series of experiments. Up to this point they had been funding their experiments using a small device built with $100,000 out-of-pocket.[31] The grant proposal was turned over for peer review, and one of the reviewers was Steven Jones of Brigham Young University.[31] Jones had worked for some time on muon-catalyzed fusion, a known method of inducing nuclear fusion without high temperatures, and had written an article on the topic entitled "Cold nuclear fusion" that had been published in Scientific American in July 1987. Fleischmann and Pons and co-workers met with Jones and co-workers on occasion in Utah to share research and techniques. During this time, Fleischmann and Pons described their experiments as generating considerable "excess energy", in the sense that it could not be explained by chemical reactions alone.[30] They felt that such a discovery could bear significant commercial value and would be entitled to patent protection. Jones, however, was measuring neutron flux, which was not of commercial interest.[31][clarification needed] To avoid future problems, the teams appeared to agree to publish their results simultaneously, though their accounts of their 6 March meeting differ.[32]

In mid-March 1989, both research teams were ready to publish their findings, and Fleischmann and Jones had agreed to meet at an airport on 24 March to send their papers to Nature via FedEx.[32] Fleischmann and Pons, however, pressured by the University of Utah, which wanted to establish priority on the discovery,[33] broke their apparent agreement, disclosing their work at a press conference on 23 March[34] (they claimed in the press release that it would be published in Nature[34] but instead submitted their paper to the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry).[31] Jones, upset, faxed in his paper to Nature after the press conference.[32]

Fleischmann and Pons' announcement drew wide media attention.[notes 1] But the 1986 discovery of high-temperature superconductivity had made the scientific community more open to revelations of unexpected scientific results that could have huge economic repercussions and that could be replicated reliably even if they had not been predicted by established theories.[36] Many scientists were also reminded of the Mssbauer effect, a process involving nuclear transitions in a solid. Its discovery 30 years earlier had also been unexpected, though it was quickly replicated and explained within the existing physics framework.[37]

The announcement of a new purported clean source of energy came at a crucial time: adults still remembered the 1973 oil crisis and the problems caused by oil dependence, anthropogenic global warming was starting to become notorious, the anti-nuclear movement was labeling nuclear power plants as dangerous and getting them closed, people had in mind the consequences of strip mining, acid rain, the greenhouse effect and the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which happened the day after the announcement.[38] In the press conference, Chase N. Peterson, Fleischmann and Pons, backed by the solidity of their scientific credentials, repeatedly assured the journalists that cold fusion would solve environmental problems, and would provide a limitless inexhaustible source of clean energy, using only seawater as fuel.[39] They said the results had been confirmed dozens of times and they had no doubts about them.[40] In the accompanying press release Fleischmann was quoted saying: "What we have done is to open the door of a new research area, our indications are that the discovery will be relatively easy to make into a usable technology for generating heat and power, but continued work is needed, first, to further understand the science and secondly, to determine its value to energy economics."[41]

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