Scientist Ducks Reports, Fusion Review Closed To Public
Les Earnest
By HILARY GROUTAGE, Associated Press Writer
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - The University of Utah scientist who claimed
to have discovered a cold fusion energy process made his first
appearance in Utah in weeks Wednesday at the opening of a review his
work by independent researchers.
Electrochemist B. Stanley Pons ducked away from cameras while
listening to the four-member review team's vows to conduct an
unbiased review and keep open minds about his controversial
experiments.
Pons left Utah several weeks ago, putting his Salt Lake City home up
for sale and pulling his 7-year-old son out of school. Later reports
placed him in France.
Pons dodged reporters Wednesday, and Fritz Will, director of the
university's National Cold Fusion Institute, rebuffed reporters'
questions about the scientist. Will would only say Pons was attending
the meetings - which were closed to the public - and was expected to
appear before the state Fusion Energy Advisory Council on Thursday.
The state council oversees spending for fusion research and was
responsible for dispersing $5 million last year to start the fusion
institute.
Pons and colleague Martin Fleischmann created a furor last month
when they left Utah, apparently without making their destinations
known to officials of the institute and the university. Fleischmann
returned to his home in Tisbury, England, for medical treatment, and
did not return for the review, Will said.
The episode cast yet another shadow over the research that was
unveiled on March 23, 1989, when the two announced at a news
conference they had achieved a sustained nuclear fusion reaction in a
simple tabletop experiment that produced more energy in the form of
heat that was used to run it.
Fusion long has been sought as a potential source of cheap and
virtually inexhaustible energy.
But few scientists have been able to duplicate their work and many
remain skeptical.
Researchers around the world have spent billions of dollars trying
to reach that same energy surplus from hot fusion, the process that
powers the sun and stars by combining, or fusing, two hydrogen atoms
into a heavier helium atom.
Participants in Wednesday's closed-door session were required to
sign a confidentiality agreement, officials said.
Dale F. Stein, a metallurgist and president of Michigan
Technological University, promised a fair review of the work going on
at the institute - even though he was a member of a national panel
that recommended against providing federal funds for fusion research
early on.
''I think that (Department of Energy) panel said there was reason to
continue research'' even though it did not approve funding the
University of Utah's fusion research, he said. ''I was very open and
objective as a member of that panel.''
Stein and the others said the results of the review will not be
available until mid-December.
The other panel members are Stanley Bruckenstein, a professor of
chemistry at State University of New York at Buffalo; Loren G.
Helper, a chemist from Alberta, Canada; and Robert Adair, a professor
of Physics at Yale University.
Will told the council last month that dozens of researchers in the
United States, Japan, India and elsewhere not only had produced
excess heat, but evidence of such nuclear fusion indicators as
tritium, an isotope of hydrogen, and neutrons, uncharged particles.
Recently researchers from two laboratories - the Colorado School of
Mines and the University of Hawaii - reported detecting positively
charged atomic particles they said might be products of cold fusion
reactions, according to Wednesday's Wall Street.
A palladium rod used in the Hawaii experiment that produced
unexpected heat showed helium atoms that might have been produced in
a fusion reaction.
AP-NY-11-07-90 2021EST
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Mark H. North
>[From Associated Press]
>By HILARY GROUTAGE, Associated Press Writer
> SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - The University of Utah scientist who claimed
>to have discovered a cold fusion energy process made his first
>appearance in Utah in weeks Wednesday at the opening of a review his
>work by independent researchers.
> [ ... ]
> Dale F. Stein, a metallurgist and president of Michigan
>Technological University, promised a fair review of the work going on
>at the institute - even though he was a member of a national panel
>that recommended against providing federal funds for fusion research
>early on.
> ''I think that (Department of Energy) panel said there was reason to
>continue research'' even though it did not approve funding the
>University of Utah's fusion research, he said. ''I was very open and
>objective as a member of that panel.''
> Stein and the others said the results of the review will not be
>available until mid-December.
> The other panel members are Stanley Bruckenstein, a professor of
>chemistry at State University of New York at Buffalo; Loren G.
>Helper, a chemist from Alberta, Canada; and Robert Adair, a professor
>of Physics at Yale University.
I know Dale Stein and talked to him at the Sante Fe meeting. Although,
at the time, I felt he was more skeptical than most (including myself)
I believe him to be a fair, competent and unbiased person regarding
this issue. Also, I know that Mich. Tech. has no axe to grind vis a vis
'Cold Fusion' (I was on sabbatical there in the physics department
'87-'88).
If anyone knows the other panel members it might be comforting to us all
if similar things can be said about them and their institutions.
Please post if you have pertinent information.
Mark