Cold Fusion Update No. 2 - Morrison

[Vincent Cate]

Here is the latest update from Douglas Morrison.
His past notes can be ftped from:

sam.cs.cmu.edu:/afs/cs/user/vac/ftp/morrison

-- Vince

Date: Sun, 9 Dec 90 12:55:55 +0100
From: morr...@vxprix.decnet.cern.ch
Subject: Cold Fusion Update No.2.
To: "vincen...@sam.cs.cmu.edu"@dxmint.cern.ch

Dear WA84 and E632 Colleagues, 9 December 1990.

COLD FUSION UPDATE No. 2

COLD FUSION CONTINUES - AT A LOW RATE

SECRET OF PONS AND FLEISCHMANN'S PATENT REVEALED - THERE IS NO SECRET.

SUMMARY
Since the previous update early in July, there have several conferences
where mainly Believers met and reported their results. Perhaps the most serious
one was at BYU led by Steve Jones et al., where the conference title was;
"Anomalous Nuclear Effects in Deuterium/Solid Systems" - questions of power
or excess heat were intentionally excluded. Steve concluded that there exists
a community which is interested and a Second Annual meeting should be held in
the fall of 1991 - there is a 90% probability that the Italian Physical Society
will organise it - again this would probably be for nuclear effects only. Only
a very few people now seem to believe in the possibility of obtaining
commercially useful power - almost everyone does not believe in it.
The Utah State Fusion Advisory Panel expected Dr. Pons to present a report
on the progress obtained with the million dollars of state money he had spent,
but he had "vanished". However he did turn up as requested on 7 November to
attend a meeting of the National Cold Fusion Institute review panel - these are
four well-known and respected scientists, but it is not clear what they are
being asked to report on - possibly not on Cold Fusion.
Profs. Pons and Fleischmann have generally refused to answer scientific
questions, explaining that it is essential to protect the secrets of their
patents. However on my way to work, stopped at the World Intellectual Property
Organisation and for less than $9 got a copy of their patent. Experimentally
there is very little data as previously. But the 50 claims sound exciting and
include neutron beams and energy generation - unfortunately it is hard to see
reasonable justification for them in the patent application.
After reports of possible fraud at Texas A&M University, a panel
was set up to review Cold Fusion. Its report is excellent. Even though it
is in-house, they have studied the work of the five groups and what is most
important, they have also studied the world situation. Their report is mature
and shows common sense. Their conclusions cannot be shortly summarised in a
fair way - see below.
Have been reading early copies of Frank Close's book "Too Hot to Handle", on
Cold Fusion - it should be in the shops soon. Very Interesting and
worth buying.
It is now agreed that Steve Jones et al. will put cells inside the
Japanese 4500 ton Kamiokande solar neutrino detector - this should settle
questions of neutron production.

SUBJECTS
- These are arranged roughly in historical order. For those short of
time, suggest reading only Sections that may interest them.

1. General Electric Co.

2. World Hydrogen Energy Conference

3. Italian Physical Society

4. BYU Conference on Anomalous Nuclear Effects

5. National Cold Fusion Institute and its Funding

6. Patents of Pons et al.

7. Texas A&M Review Panel

8. Book "Too Hot to Handle" of Frank Close

9. Conclusions and Future.


1. GENERAL ELECTRIC CO.
The General Electric Company has two special links
with Cold Fusion. They signed a special agreement with Pons and Fleischmann
whereby they would have special access, but would have to keep strict
secrecy. Secondly Irving Langmuir was a General Electric employee and it was
there in 1953 that he gave his famous lecture on Pathological Science. So
it was not inappropriate to give a talk there entitled " N-Rays, Cold Fusion
and Pathological Science".
The people at GE kept very strictly to their promise of secrecy about
their joint work with Fleischmann and Pons - though if they had found any
positive result it would have been surprising from past experience if the
media world had not heard about it.
However I was surprised to find out that completely indepentently, they
had performed a large series of experiments on Cold Fusion. Was told that
they had found no excess heat, no neutrons, no tritium and no gammas. Hear
that they may make these results available soon.
Fritz Will had worked at GE before becoming Director of the National Cold
Fusion Institute, NCFI, and was struck by the way people at GE volunteered
opinions saying how good he was and talked of his integrity.
Was taken round the GE Research Labs and was most impressed by the quality
of the people and of the work they were doing - was particularly interested
in their NMR research and development work.


2. WORLD HYDROGEN ENERGY CONFERENCE.
This meeting held in Hawaii
from 23 to 27 July, is the 8th of a biannual series of Conferences held
by those who believe that hydrogen is the fuel of the future as it
pollutes so little. It is a wealthy and well-organised business with many
sponsors such as the DOE. Industry was well-represented - BMW flew out their
demonstration car which is fueled by hydrogen which is stored in metal (tubes
of a vanadium alloy). Had wondered if the car's rear would be too heavy with
these tubes and would spoil its famous handling qualities, but the driver gave
a most convincing display of cornering at high speed).
As Dr. Bockris is one of the gurus of the subject of hydrogen as a fuel,
almost a quarter of the time of the conference was devoted to Cold Fusion.
There were four plenary sessions of one hour. On the first three days the
guest speakers scheduled were Governor John Waihee, Senator Daniel Inoyue
and Senator Daniel Akaka. The other speaker in the Cold Fusion session
with Senator Inoyue was Dr. Bockris. However the schedule was changed
with Senator Inoyue moving to the fourth day and myself being the second
speaker after Dr. Bockris. This resulted in my being given an unusual
introduction - Dr Bockris finishing by saying "I feel I should introduce
the next speaker who may not be known to you - he is Dr. Morrison who is
Scottish and who has all the advantages and disadvantages of the Scots", he
then proceeded to list all the disadvantages of the Scots!
John Bockris faced up squarely to the issues of contamination and the
possibility of "spiking" his group's tritium samples (by spiking is meant
adding water containing tritium to the sample). At breakfast he defended
very well and was convincing. In his plenary session talk he addressed the
question and this can be read partly in the proceedings, and convincingly
except when he said that their security was nil whereas Kevin Wolf's lab was
completely secure and you needed to pass a security guard, then he added, "our
security was nil but we had two people staying with the experiment 24 hours
a day, sleeping beside it". These statements surprised his colleagues. His
written paper gives a table of 79 groups which at one time or another have
reported (by publication, internal reports, letters or private communication)
positive effects(think this table was compiled by Fritz Will of NCFI).
During the parallel sessions 23 talks were presented, of which 22 were
favourable to Cold Fusion (the other was by Prof. Gerhard Kreysa of Dechema,
Frankfurt whose work has been described in an earlier note). Most of the papers
added little to what was given at the First Annual Cold Fusion Conference,
though it could be remarked that the Huggins group that used to speak of excess
heat effects of 11% at Santa Fe, now talked of 3% average and 11% peak (am told
that Prof. Huggins is on sabbatical in Europe and there is little work now
being done at Stanford).
The most exciting new result was from Hawaii in a group led by B.Y. Liaw
of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute and Bruce Liebert of the Dept. of
Mechanical Engineering. They used a completely new technique - a eutectic
LiCl-KCl molten salt saturated with LiD as electrolyte in a Pd/Al or Ti/Al
electrochemical cell. The operated at a temperature of 370 C which gives
faster kinematics and potentially more efficient high-grade heat. They gave
what they called "preliminary results" claiming an enormous "excess power gain
of 1512 percent" which is also given as 7.16 Mj/mol D2. At the end of Mr Liaw's
talk I asked if they had checked by running with hydrogen instead of
deuterium - he said they had not had time. It seems surprising after all that
has happened, that any group would present preliminary results before they had
made these checks. These dramatic results were reported in the Boston Herald
under the front page heading "New Cold Fusion Advance Claimed". When Mr. Liaw
presented these results at a Physics Department seminar, his work was criticised
strongly and it was suggested it was essentially a battery. Prof. Vic Stenger
(the leader of the Sceptics Society) and Prof. John Learned wrote a note
detailling the problems and the effects of spreading this preliminary report.
Bruce gave a reply. In the 10 September Honolulu Advertiser, Mr Liaw claimed
to have observed not only excess power (for a brief period as a battery does)
but also excess heat, claiming "We got at least 10 times what we put in".
Later at the BYU meeting, Bruce told me that they had repeated the experiment
with hydrogen and had found no effect. But although the result is so exciting
he decided not to present a paper on the subject though he did mention it
very briefly at the end, saying he had just received new results showing
excess heat and excess power and also helium had been found in the Pd rod.
Nate Hoffman commented that as the amount of helium was small, they would
want to check first the amount of helium in the lab.
Among other ideas was (1) a cold fusion water-heater for just over $100
(2) explanations in terms of di-neutrons and (3) another invoking neutrinos
with a magnetic charge as strong as that of an electric charge!
The proceedings of the Cold Fusion Symposium have a glossy production and
can be had for only $15. The first paper is that of Dr. Bockris and at the very
end can just be found my Review of Cold Fusion - also available from CERN or
from Vincent Cate on the net.


3. ITALIAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY
The Italian Physical Society annual meeting was held this year in the
historic town of Trento from 8 to 13 October. It is probably the biggest of the
European Physical Society meetings. This year's meeting had a joint session of
the Nuclear Physics and Material Science divisions on Cold Fusion. To ensure
balance, the Chairman, Prof. Renzo Leonardi, invited Prof. Scaramuzzi and
myself to give review talks followed by a discussion. This was rather
interesting. A member of the audience gave a short talk saying essentially
that clearly there were many things not completely explained and that not
everyone agreed on and hence it was reasonable to continue research on
Cold Fusion at a low level. Asked Prof. Scaramuzzi, who was sitting beside me,
who he was and was told he was Prof. Ricci, President of the Italian Physical
Society and President of the European Physical Society. The following talk was
by Dr. T. Bressani who was a co-author with Prof. Preparata of a theoretical
paper which explains all positive results including the ratio claimed of
tritium to neutrons of a hundred million to one. As Dr. Bressani and I had
already had three talks together totalling 5 hours, without agreeing, I did
not comment.


4. BYU WORKSHOP ON ANOMALOUS NUCLEAR EFFECTS IN DEUTERIUM/SOLID SYSTEMS.
This
conference was organised by Steve Jones and Nate Hoffman, et al. and
sponsored by DOE, EPRI etc. The invitation explained that Brigham Young
University had an Honor Code which did not allow tobacco, coffee, tea or
alcohol. Nonetheless some 150 people attended and the conference did not seem
any different except for the comments. Unexpectedly and contrary to
indications, the Conference dinner at Sundance, the Robert Redford resort,
had the same restrictions and most people seemed to accept it though I did
try asking for wine - unsuccessfully.
There were many interesting talks, all favouring Cold Fusion except one by
Bob Anderson, Bill Johnson(well known and respected on the net) and others
from Los Alamos (one of the four Los Alamos groups working on Cold Fusion).
They ran several cells surrounded by 20 3He counters which were surrounded
by a Cd liner and polyethylene outside that. They found they could produce
all Cold Fusion positive effects, but all were due to background such
as variation of barometric pressure, cosmic ray spallation, sun falling on the
building heating up a pre-amplifier, inadequate statistical analysis. Among
the effects observed were peaks of neutrons at 2.5 MeV and effects of more
than three standard deviations(if you take a enough data, and there are
fluctuations due to cosmics and barometric pressure etc., it is normal to
observe peaks of many standard deviations) - but all had other explanations.
It was strong evidence in favour of making all the checks before holding a
press conference.
Many of the talks were updates or repetitions of those presented at
the First Annual Cold Fusion Conference, but there were two additional
tendancies; one was to improve the instrumentation and do more checks, and
the other was to try and study things in a more basic way. One example of the
latter was Dr. Storms of Los Alamos who said they had had so many negative
results in their search for tritium that they had decided to change and
study loading and micro-pores in the metal. They tried cycles of electolysis
and found hysteresis effects in the volume increase of the Pd electrode, which
were different for the alpha and beta phase. Thus after each cycle of increasing
and decreasing the current (expect temperature cycling would be similar), the
volume finished larger. They were able to explain this volume increase by taking
photomicrographs which showed that elliptical micro-pores had been progressively
produced. A consequence of this was that on later cycles the incoming hydrogen
could move more quickly, and also could escape as a gas more quickly so that
the maximum loading that could be obtained was reduced as time went by. This
also was studied as a function of current density - as the current was increased
the effects proceeded faster but higher loadings were not obtained once the
micro-pores had been formed. It was concluded from their measurements that
loadings, D/Pd above 0.65 cannot be obtained. (comment - this value of 0.65 is
rather lower than many experiments which claim up to 0.8, but there has never
been any serious evidence for values of 1.0 by electolysis - excluding ion
implantation and gas pressures of about a magabar. Further this invalidates a
frequent excuse of Believers for the negative results of others that the
experimenters did not work hard enough or long enough to get a loading of
more than one).
Another very interesting result given by Dr. Storms was that if there is
tritium in the depths of the Palladium rod (either by contamination or
separation of hydrogen isotopes or by fusion), then the tritium escapes into
the gaseous phase and does not change the amount of tritium in the electrolyte.
This is important as some of the claims of very large amounts of tritium, come
from samples taken from the electrolyte and not from the gas. Dr Storms also
commented if the tritium were to be produced on the surface of the palladium
then the tritium would go into the electrolyte(this seemed to be a theoretical
statement as my notes do not contain any evidence to support such a happening).
This question needs some further careful checking as it could restart the
debate about "spiking" the electrolyte with tritiated water.
Dr. Randell of Savannah River said they had observed the gas to come off
at certain points which could be interpreted as where the micro-pores met
the surface.
Howard Menlove described his new counter arrangement which is much more
extensive with two rings of 3He counters - when they have enough counters in
each ring they will be able to say, by timing, whether the neutron came from the
cells inside or from external cosmics (as was done at Harwell with 3 rings), but
at present they are relying on a remote counter to veto cosmics - this seems to
me a dangerous procedure and it is to be hoped they will change soon by having
their entire apparatus surrounded by veto counters. He reported further evidence
for neutron bursts as found previously.
Tom Clayton reported on his work with Howard et al. at Los Alamos in
underground counting rooms. Bursts of neutrons continue to be observed.
Steve Jones reported on their work with Howard and others in a lead mine in
the village called appropriately, Leadville. Being deep underground, the
background is greatly reduced, from 23400 to 75 counts/hour for the singles and
the correlation rate from 300 to 1/20 per hour - great improvements and this
despite problems with humidity in the mine. To understand this experiment
it is important to know that they did not count singles when on the surface
as the rate was too high. So what they do is every time a count is observed they
open a gate (typically for 128 microseconds) and if a second pulse is recorded
then they score a correlation. Then this second pulse has a gate opened for it
and again if another single occurs within the gate a correlation is recorded -
and also if this third single occurs within the gate of the first single, then
a correlation is recorded for it too. Thus this is not a simple clean
experiment. For example if there are 2 or 3 or 4 or 10 counts in a gate, then
the corresponding numbers of correlations would be 1, 3, 6 and 45 resp. Again
let us suppose there is a burst of neutrons from the palladium at times
1, 6, and 16 microseconds, this would be counted, if I have understood
correctly as a 3-correlation. If there were a background pulse in addition
at 110, this would be counted as a 3-correlation and a 2-correlation or
should it be counted as a 3-correlation and two 2-correlations? Now am
not sure which though did talk to people. But the main point is that
this is not a simple conventional statistical problem. Also it should be noted
that the figures are labelled "counts" but it should really be "correlations'.
But the solution is clear - having gone down a mine to reduce background
drastically, one should make use of it and drop entirely this complicated
correlation system and use normal electronics to count singles. Then any
bursts can be obtained from straightforward analysis that all can understand.
Dr. Cecil of the Colarado School of Mines used a 100 micron silicon detector
and observed charged particle emission when charging cells to 400 and 600 mA.
He reported that the peak energy jumps around. This experiment seems in the
early stages. It would be more convincing if in the future, other detectors
were used in coincidence.
Dr. Takahashi of the Dept. of Nuclear Energy in Osaka, looked for neutrons
using 3He counters and NE213. His results were curious as he found peaks near
2.45, 4 and 6 MeV. He explained his results in terms of a three-body
reaction, d + d + d ==> d + 4He + 23.8 MeV, but did not give any cross
section estimates - would expect them to be extremely small.
Dr. Totsuka from the Kamiokande experiment in Japan described their very
large 4500 ton water Cerenkov system that is being used to observe neutrinos
(especially solar neutrinos. They also had a great success counting
neutrinos from Supernova 1987A). This is a group with a very high reputation.
He offered to allow people to install cold fusion cells in the centre of their
apparatus and they could measure any neutron production by observing electrons
produced from the gammas coming from neutron capture in the water. They would
have great sensitivity and almost no cosmic background. Aferwards Steve Jones
and his co-workers took up this offer and results should be obtained early
next year. (Was worried that this might interfere with their important
programme of work in which they count a few solar neutrinos per week, but in
fact the Cold Fusion cells would be very small compared with the size of the
detector).
Dr. M. Srinivasan of BARC (please note this is Bhabha Atomic Research Centre
and not Bombay Area Reactor Centre as someone wrote - the name difference is
important) described recent work done in July and August 1990. Much of the
work was with a plasma focus device and large numbers (E +9) of neutrons were
observed, however this is essentially a hot fusion device. Titanium chips with
D2 gas was tested for K X-rays of 4.9 keV and some were found but at a low
rate (10 chips out of 10 000). With four chips tritium was observed (about
E +15 atoms). Some control tests with hydrogen were done but it seems there were
too few in number relative to the rate of observing tritium. Visited BARC in
August - it is a very large and extensive lab something like Harwell (though
Harwell does not have monkeys around everywhere and Harwell's security is not as
strict) and much of the equipment is of good quality. There are a few people who
believe deeply in cold fusion. There was not much activity at that moment,
mainly due to funding problems.
Kevin Wolf gave a lively talk about tritium and other work at Texas A&M.
This report is based on my notes, his paper and private conversations.
They had found tritium in some rods from the manufacturer and this probably
accounts for their "observation" of tritium. However further measurements by
themselves and elsewhere (e.g. NCFI) showed that the tritium contamination
in the original Pd rod only occurred with one batch from one manufacturer and
hence this most probably was not an explanation of other reports of tritium.
Other reports of tritium tend to be at reactor centres where there is tritium,
or in labs where there are major possibilities of tritium contamination.
It should be noted that the difference in detection sensitivity between
tritium and neutrons is about E +8 and it is claimed by some that the
ratio of tritium production to neutron production is also E +8 as would
be expected if both were effects a few times background. When his group
observed tritium, there were no corresponding counts of neutrons of
2.5 or 14 MeV nor of gamma rays between 80 and 3500 keV. Altogether they
looked at some 200 cells and their conclusion on the question of tritium is
"There is no evidence from our study for a cold fusion mechanism."
He said they had also done experiments with a 16 micron Silicon detector
while cycling samples down to 85 K, but no effects were observed.
During his talk Kevin showed a graph of D/Pd loading - over a period of
50 days, the loading quickly rose to a maximum of 0.63 and then decreased
to about 0.5 - the rod had deep cracks and a network of closely-spaced
cracks on the surface. This is in agreement with Dr. Storms' report.
Prof. Bertin's group had previously reported production of neutrons
in their experiment deep in the Gran Sasso tunnel, in agreement with the
results of Jones et al., but had been criticised at the Santa Fe Conference
in May 1989 as their background seemed too high to be neutrons. Now he reported
that they have added considerable shielding and have good pulse shape
discrimination, so that their signal to noise has risen from 0.2 to 80,
indicating that they were probably counting gammas previously. The
background rate is now 3 neutrons in 140 hours which is comparable with
that of the French group in the Frejus tunnel. One awaits their new results.
Tried to emphasise that this Frejus group had the best results on
neutron production to date, giving a deduced fusion rate of less than
2 E -26 fusions per second per dd pair - this is about a factor of hundred
less than that of Jones et al. The reference is Aberdam et al. Physical
Review Letters 65 (1990) 1196.
Francesco Celani of Frascati reported that his group has also been
working in the Gran Sasso tunnel. In their experiments in April - June 1989,
they observed two emission events. They have now greatly increased their
shielding which has reduced the gamma background from 1/10 of sea level to
1/500 th. They are now studying loading D2 gas into high temperature
superconductors which they temperature cycle down to 77 K and also try
to stimulate by irradiation with a neutron source - they are motivated by
the work of M. Rabinowitz, Mod. Phys. Lett. B3, (1990). Dr. Rabinowitz gave
a talk, but on the BNL cluster experiment which is "lukewarm" fusion - he
explained the results in terms of deuterons back-scattering off Titanium and
then back-scattering off Oxygen.
Prof. Tsarev of the Lebedev Institute in Moscow, presented a model based on
acceleration in cracks in the metal and found some agreement with the
experimental observation of neutron bursts and acoustic effects, however they
are checking their observations.
The question of whether cold fusion could occur in the earth giving
unusual isotope ratios, e.g 3He to 4He and possibly excess tritium, was
discussed by Prof. Palmer of BYU and Fraser Goff while Gary McMurty of
Hawaii gave a couple of fascinating talks about geology and in particular
studying volcanoes. While intriguing, the scientific evidence seems
inadequate and is weak theoretically and as will be shown on pages 354 -356 of
Frank Close's book, it does not contribute significantly to the earth's heat.
Prof. Rafelski gave a good summary talk of the various theories, and
appeared to conclude that to explain the Cold Fusion positive results,
the best hope was New Physics (however he did not try to explain the
more numerous negative results). Prof. Preparata, who is spending a short
sabbatical at NCFI, did not have a happy conference, his theory being called
semi-classical and criticised in detail (boundary calculations) and appearing
to be bested in his controversial interventions for example when he finally
goaded Prof. Belyaev of Dubna into saying "You make strong declaratory
statements. Now I will make a strong declaratory statement", and he did.
Prof. Preparata replied "Ridiculous, I am a quantum field theorist"
The Summary talk was given by David Worledge of the Electrical Power
Research Industry, EPRI, which is a major funding agency for Cold Fusion
Research. He briefly reviewed the various experimental results and appeared to
find none completely satisfactory(especially the tritium results) though the
total appeared interesting and worth further study (he like almost everyone else
at the meeting, did not refer to all the negative results even where they gave
upper limits much lower than the positive findings). He concluded that this was
not normal dd fusion; there was little guidance from theory; many of the
experiments reported were greatly improving their apparatus and technique in
particular in making controls. He felt there was a message to funding agencies
that this was a legitmate field of research that needs some support.
As there had been rather little time for discussion since there were so many
speakers, Steve Jones invited people to give 5-minute presentations AFTER the
Summary speaker! Prof Scaramuzzi said that these meetings were useful, that it
took about a year to obtain a good careful result and hence he proposed
holding a further meeting in a year's time. He had spoken to the President of
the Italian Physical Society and with 90% confidence it should be possible
to have the next meeting at Varenna in October or September of next year.
I showed one transparency saying this conference was a big improvement;
more checks were needed; people should try to prove themselves wrong even
looking for effects due to solar flares, atmospheric pressure changes, etc.;
>90% of the world's scientists judge there is no Cold Fusion; the probability
of excess heat was about zero; the probability of nuclear effects was small;
it is too late for poor experiments; if one really wishes to continue, only good
careful experiments should be tried.
Steve Jones said that there now appeared to be a community of scientists
working on nuclear effects so he was in favour of Prof Scaramuzzi's offer.
He noted that it was difficult to publish Cold Fusion results in major
journals but George Milley, editor of Fusion Technology, takes the opinion
that it is up to the referees to decide whether to accept for publication.
There were many more talks, these are one person's selection - the
complete proceedings will be out in the spring.
A general comment - this was intended to be a Workshop where people with
positive results on nuclear effects met and compared results and tried to find
what they had in common to plan future experiments. In the first aim they were
successful - people did meet and discuss. But in the second aim there was no
one who summarised to show that there was any apparent consistency in the
results. The conclusion (unstated) was rather that there were many
diverse results and therefore one should explore further with better
experiments. Maybe this is a fine conclusion. But in normal Science, one
considers ALL the results, positive and negative. At a Workshop it is
conventional to organise summary talks on neighbouring fields that are of
crucial importance - but this did not happen. There was no detailed summary
talks giving tables of scientific results e.g. flux of neutrons claimed,
including the positive and negative ones. A possible conclusion that the
negative experiments with very small upper limits, were correct and that the
positive finding were background fluctuations or artifacts, was not considered.
Will it be different at a future conference?
After the end of the conference, was several times asked if I heard results
that would make make me believe in Cold Fusion. Replied that while some
results looked interesting, if one made the balance between the positive and
the negative results, the balance was still very heavily weighed in favour
of there being no Cold Fusion. One was still waiting for a single convincing
experiment which would have positive, reproducible results of several
nuclear or heat effects simultaneously.


5. NATIONAL COLD FUSION INSTITUTE and its FUNDING.
The day after the BYU Workshop, the Utah State Fusion
Advisory panel which supervises the National Cold Fusion Institute, met in
the Governor's Conference Room in the State Capitol. The national press
and TV were well represented. They were perhaps encouraged by stories in the
media that Prof. Fleischmann was undergoing medical treatment in Britain while
Prof. Pons had "vanished" and was rumoured to be in France and he had applied
for a sabbatical. Martin Fleischmann strongly said he had not been notified of
the meeting while Fritz Will said that all efforts to contact them had
been made. Thus there was a certain air of excitement.
Fritz Will started, giving a very upbeat presentation including a list of
100 groups in > 10 countries who had observed Cold Fusion effects, concluding
"Cold Fusion is more than a passing fancy". He then gave the main new result
which was that at the NCFI tritium enhancements of 25 to 50% had been observed
and this was reproducibile in 8 cells with D2O while no increase was observed
in cells with H2O. The statement from Texas A&M that there was tritium
contamination in the Palladium rods and this contamination could explain tritium
findings, was incorrect as they had tested 130 Pd samples and found no excess
tritium. Excess heat had been observed up to 28%, in an accurate flow
calorimeter and the electrode had shown slight tritium enhancement. He also
quoted other outstanding outside results - Takahashi, Menlove et al.,
Clayton et al., Cecil, Liaw and said they were fortunate to have with them
at NCFI, Prof. Preparata who had a quantum field theory which had been upheld
in many other cases and which also gave the experimentally found tritium to
neutron ratio of a hundred million to one.
Haven Bergeson, the leader of the Physics group, said that for science it
is essential to have reproducible results and fortunately they now have. They
are using pairs of cells in series, one part with D2O and the other part
with H2O, monitored separately. The cathode is nickel and the anode is a
deuterated plate. They run for only a few hours. They have 16 different cells.
Eight of the ten cells gave results. With D2O all gave 25 to 50% enhancements
which is 4 to 8 standard deviations whereas they never found anything with the
H2O cells which only gave 1 to 2 standard deviation enhancements. Have not
looked for neutrons yet.
The graph shown of the tritium enhancements looked impressive and the Panel
looked impressed. But was surprised that no one said that when one does electro-
lysis there is always an enrichment of the tritium content of up to a factor
of 100%. Hence the results shown were not at all unusual and were certainly
not evidence for fusion. Had a copy of the DOE panel report with me which
in an Appendix describes all this in detail. Further one should be very
doubtful of any measurement of less than 1000 counts per min per ml (which
excludes many positive reports of tritium - though not Bockris et al. and BARC
who have counts of more than a million dpm/ml. However as a visitor I did not
feel it appropriate to say anything though at various times other members of the
audience made comments, some long. What is the correct morality - the conflict
between open Science and politeness?
Next the leader of the engineering group spoke - had heard previously that
as they had found nothing they were giving up. He said they had tried to follow
the
the six recommendations of the DOE Panel. They had used closed cells with
recombination of the gases as well as many other kinds of cells. In one set
of 7 cells, one had given a burst of excess heat for a few days - this in
experiments that lasted 20 to 130 days. He was asked what was the total
energy in the burst of heat. Andy Reilly replied 30 joules. Prof. Preparata
cried out "that's a lot". Hm, Well, people claiming excess heat usualy talk
of megajoules.
Combining what was said with the written report which was longer,
the following results were found;
1. With commercial Seeback cells, accurate to better than 5 milliWatt, no excess
heat was found to +/-3%. No tritium production was observed in any of
9 experiments.
2. With small cells of conventional design but external recombination,
no tritium was observed in any of the 30 experiments.
3. As it had been claimed that D/Pd loadings of greater than one were necessary
to achieve effects, loadings were measured to 5% using a volumetric
technique after back-filling the gas space with deuterium as suggested by
Prof. Walling. For 33 experiments the equilibrium loading ratio varied from
0.65 to 0.85, essentially independent of the current density (note this last
phrase is contrary to a frequent excuse). Rods of 1, 2 and 4 mm all
rose to equilibrium in less than 500 minutes (the smaller ones faster).
When the pH of the solution was 1.3 and 1.7, the loading had been observed
to increase from a stable value of 0.6 to as high as one unexpectedly. The
cause of this is presently unknown.
4. Atmospheric pressure cells were run - no excess heat was observed.
5. High pressure(100 atm) cells have been developed with controlled cell
temperature and ability infer heat flows, cathode loading, and other
diagnostic information. A reference cell calorimeter was also made. No
detailed results are given but it is stated "This work shows the importance
of the effects of small variations of the heat transfer coefficient
on the overall accuracy of Newton's Law type devices and the relative
importance of the temperature measurement on the accuracy of the flow
calorimeters". Now this is highly coded - the essential point is that a
major criticism of the basic calorimetric work of Pons and Fleischmann
is that they calibrate by heating their cell and watching it cool, then
using Newton's Law of cooling obtain their calibration; but the objection
is that they are calibrating at a different temperature from where they are
doing their measurements. It would be good to see what the results actually
are!
However the points 1 to 5 were rather not made at the meeting though
they were in the report which it seems the Panel had read.
Returning to the Panel, Prof. Guruswamy of the Metallurgy Group reported
that early on they had observed excess heat, but with later experiments,these
effects were no longer observed because of changes (improvements?). They
had tried other systems including shaped explosive charges, but the results
were not yet clear. The structure of the Pd electrodes had been studied and
had seen loadings varying between 0.6 and 0.9. Some neutrons had been
observed but with poor reproducibility.
Fritz Will summarized these results again and added that Prof. Preparata
had predicted that if the D/Pd loading was less than one, then no Cold Fusion
results would be found and that was the reason why so many groups have failed
to find Cold Fusion was because they had not loaded to above one.
The Panel asked how much of this work was by Pons and Fleischmann, and was
told none. After questioning, Fritz calculated that of the $2.1 million spent,
the share of Pons was $1 million. The Assistant Attorney-General, Joe Tesch,
said that he had been in contact with Pons' lawyer, Mr. Triggs who said that
they were busy working on a new patent which should be finished in about a
month, but they would be fully co-operative during this time. He also said that
Dr. Pons was asking for a sabbatical which would allow him to devote more time
to Cold Fusion.
Various members of the Panel pointed out that Pons and Fleischmann have an
obligation to the State and must be accountable for the money they spend.
Karen Morris, the Provost of Utah State College, who is a scientist and who
seemed to have the clearest idea what was going on, said "We have coddled them
and have been very reasonable".
It was said that finally it had been possible to find a four-man panel
to review the working of the NCFI as had been requested by various University
groups. For some reason which was not given, great care was made not to reveal
the four names, though heard that the physicist was Bob Adair - a well-known and
respected person (am told the other three are also respected in their fields).
After some discussion, the review committee was arranged for 7 November and the
Fusion Advisory panel for the 8th (no connection with the 6 November elections)
The charge to be given to the review panel was not expressed clearly but it
seemed to be only to look at the present work of NCFI and see whether it were
being carried out competently and according to normal scientific procedures.
It appears that the charge was not to study to see whether there was anything
in Cold Fusion. Their one-day spell at the NCFI seemed so crammed that they
would not have time to answer such a question.
After a 10-minute break, people were surprised when Mr. Tesch announced
that he had phoned Mr. Triggs and a three-way phone meeting had then taken
place between him, Triggs and Pons. Dr. Pons agreed to be back in Utah on
7 November. It was not said where Pons was phoning from.
There was some discussion of going into secret session so that they could
discuss patents (however see below about the secret of the patent).
It was not said at the meeting, but in the report it is written that Dr.
Pons had set up a series of 32 cells in January where he varied the following
parameters; (1)size of cathode, (2)Temperature, (3) electrolyte composition,
(4) pH, (5) current density, plus time as a sixth parameter. A second matrix of
again 32 cells was set up later to study in particular (7) form of electrode,
(8) methods of poisoning electrode, (9) solvent/electrode couples,
(10) electrode composition, (11) solvent purity. It may be noted that none of
these seems to be a special secret. Neutron, gamma-ray and X-rays would be
measured from some of the cells. Was glad to see in the lab that there was
some extra shielding against cosmics.


6. PATENTS OF PONS ET AL.
The New Scientist of 10 November told that while
Pons and Fleischmann remain coy about their work because of patents pending,
patent offices have details which constitute a do-it-yourself guide. So on my
way to work went into the World Intellectual Property Office beside the Place
des Nations, and they very efficiently made me a copy just as the New Scientist
said, for 11.50 S Fr. It was International Publication number WO 90/10935 with
the publication date of 20 September 1990, though what is more important is the
International Application number of PCT/US90/01328 of 12 March 1990.
This is a "continuation-in-part" of 7 US patents with Priority Dates of
13 March to 16 May 1989. The Applicant is the University of Utah. The Inventors
and Inventors/Applicants are Pons, Fleischann, Walling and Cheeves whose home
addresses are given (according to press stories one of these addresses may be
out of date). Marvin Hawkins is not (yet) listed. The patent is designated for
all the 42 PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty) states - so it includes Burkino Faso,
but does not include Mexico, Brazil, China, India, Israel, South Africa, etc.
The Abstract says "The present invention involves an apparatus and method
for generating energy, neutrons, tritium, or heat as a specific form of
energy. The apparatus comprises a material such as a metal having a lattice
struture capable of accumulating isotopic hydrogen atoms and means for
accumulating isotopic hydrogen atoms in the metal to a chemical potential
sufficient to induce the generation of the specific items. The sufficient
chemical potential is, for example, enough to induce the generation of
an amount of heat greater than a joule-heat equivalent used in accumulating
the isotopic hydrogen atoms in the lattice structure to the desired
chemical potential". Now what is very striking about this Abstract is what it
does NOT say - the word "fusion" is never used whereas in all the publicity in
March 1989 the whole idea was to use deuterium from sea-water to give fusion
inside palladium! Unlimited Power from Fusion Without Pollution!
This was the first time I had ever looked at a patent and as a scientist was
horrified. I had this image that one describes the new invention, gives the
experimental or theoretical information to justify it, and then stakes a claim
on the basis of these. The reality is very different.
Everything is terribly vague and general. Instead of talking of deuterium,
which is the main material as it is abundant in the sea, one talks of "isotopic
hydrogen atoms". The drawings are all "schematic" and greatly simplified, thus
Fig. 1-8 is a plan for steam generation and the drawing consists of three
concentric rings and a tube coming from a box labeled "steam generator" going
into them and out back to the box( a friend described the drawings looking as
if they came from a hundred year old school textbook). The only experimental
graph of nuclear products, is Fig. 1-7, "spectrum, in counts per minute of
beta-ray disintegrations from a heavy water sample" and consists of a smooth
curve with a sharp peak at 5 keV. It does not look at all like a Kurie plot.
There are no experimental points and no errors. For the question of excess
heat there are a series of curves(again with no experimental points or errors).
There are three tables of results of cells giving excess enthalpy. There is no
experimental evidence for neutron production.
The phrases are very general and the word "preferred" is used to qualify as
in "A preferred metal is one of the group VIII or group IVA, palladium being
the most preferred". Many suggestions are made for which no experimental
or theoretical justification (just a hope) are given, e.g. "The invention also
contemplates loading of lithium atoms into the lattice, either alone or
preferably in combination with isotopic hydrogen atoms, to achieve nuclear
fusion reactions".
The 50 claims are very repetitive with only minor variations between one
and the next. An example is No. 37 "The method as claimed in any of claims 32
to 36, further comprising the step of converting heat generated in said
lattice to work".
Finally there is the International Search Report - this was done in Holland
and incredibly only found three references - it was dated 19 June 1990.
After I read it through a second time, I could see that there was a careful
form of logic, bringing back memories of closely reasoned mathematics.
Learnt some more about patents from a friend who is an international patent
lawyer (no connection with WIPO - he has not even been to Switzerland - yet).
The main object is to build a fence round the region that contains your goodies
And the more farflung the fence the better, to establish a monopoly, if possible
The invention should be described sufficiently fully that so that after reading,
it should be possible to construct it, but at the same time should not be so
explicit that you are giving away your secrets. It is not necessary to give
detailed scientific evidence as proof - the criteria are different. Now I
understand better - my hopes were for a document with scientific value. But
on the other hand am worried that for the case of the claims about neutron
production, there are descriptions of the work, but there is no evidence, though
there is some theory which shows that if you have tritium, you should also
have neutrons. So if the Examiners do not read the literature (but only accept
the International Search Report), they could easily accept the patent. However
am told that the US (and Russian) Search Departments are more thorough. Cannot
help remembering that Einstein worked in the Zurich patent office, though
only for a short time - are the US Patent Examiners also good?
This patent may have a problem. The first filing date of the first US patent
application was 13 March 1989. Including the International Search, the filing
of the US patents with WIPO in Geneva has to be done within 19 months - that is
by 13 October 1990 and this has not been done. Now the US Patent Office is
often slow, but if the U. of U's patent lawyers, Auchterlonie et al. of Houston,
wish to be safe, they should check.
For the minority who are interested, here are some more details of the
patent - otherwise you are advised to skip to the next Section. It should be
noted that this information is in the public domain.
(0). Essentially Introduction
Gives titles of 7 US patents (1, 3 and 4 are heat-
generating, 5, 6, and 7 are for power-generation and No. 2 is for neutron-beam).
Essentially apparatus produces heat by compressing low atomic weight nuclei,
possibly involving nuclear fusion. "the charged lattice emits occasional bursts
of neutrons, and/or undergoes short-duration periods of exceptional heat output"
This suggests heat-generating nuclear chain reactions which may be stimulated
by high energy particles or rays - at various stages all possible high and low
energy particles are proposed to bombard the lattice. The basic aim seems to
be to raise the chemical potential high enough to produce heat, neutrons,
tritium - various means are suggested to accomplish this, particularly
electrolysis (but gas pressure is not mentioned). The current is "preferably
2-2000 mA/cm2, although higher current levels up to about 10.000 mA/cm2 and
even higher can be used in certain applications" (note if I understand rightly,
this does not mean than Fleischmann and Pons have used 10.000 mA/cm2 ). They
also write of heating the metal "to produce the chemical potential of at least
about 0.5 eV in less than one microsecond". There follows a description of
many drawings, generally very simple (though the first figure of a face-centred
cube has a mistake in it).
SECTION 1. HEAT GENERATING CONDITIONS WITHIN A METAL LATTICE
A Metal Lattice
Many odd things such as "the metal lattice should be
capable without swelling". "Fusion.... may be favoured by fermionic metals"
such as 46Pd105, 22Ti47, 22Ti49. Catalytic poisons are favoured. Casting or
annealing are not favoured, though machining the surface may remove impurities.
B. Electrolytic Compression
Non-aqueous solvents are suggeted, e.g.
deuterated alcohols. One mA/cm2 is described as the "minimum current level".
A formula is derived for the time to charge a rod;

time = 5 x (radius squared) / (diffusion coefficient)

This gives 20 days to charge a 2 mm diameter rod! This is in complete
contradiction with measurements of charging as described earlier by Drs. Storms
and Wolf. A stacked cell with many elctrodes in one electrolyte bath is strongly
preferred, but it is not clear if such a stacked cell has ever been used.
C. Charging with Metal Hydrides
Two alternatives are given - using mixtures
of metal and metal hydrides, or high energy lasers to heat in less than one
microsecond.
D. Thin-Film Lattice
It is suggested that the active part (Pd) could be a
thin film, then many "embodiments" are suggested - again no evidence that this
has been tried ( if my new understanding is correct, it is not necessary to
try it experimentally).
E High Energy Exciting of the Metal Lattice
Bombardment with many particles
of various (all) possible energies are suggested - even using accelerators.
F. Heat and Neutron Generating Events
"This section considers fusion-
related heat generating events" based on experiments with "current densities
between about 0.7 up to 70 mA/cm2" (note fig.III_8 which is Fig 8 of
Pons's paper at the First Annual Conference, shows that there is a threshold
of about 64 mA/cm2). Later is written "At higher current densities of 1.2 mA/cm2
and 1.6 mA/cm2 excess enthalpy generation of >9% and >25%......was observed".
These values are claimed "to be reproducible in three sets of long term
measurements". The very low current densities used here appear to give positive
results though elsewhere it is claimed that these are too low and are the
reason for "failures", i.e. negative findings. This is perhaps the only place
where reproducibility is claimed. Table 1-A gives the excess specific heat
results - basically the same as the tables in the original Fleischmann and
Pons paper.
It is claimed that tritium accumulates in the electrolyte, but the value of
100 dpm/ml is given - this is what might be expected by normal electrolytic
separation of tritium since tritium always occurs in the heavy water as
explained in the DOE Panel report and such low counting rates should not be
taken as evidence of tritium production.
G. Application; Electrical Generator
Standard description but finishes
by talking of pollution; "The apparatus uses deuterium, a virtually
inexhaustable source of energy, to produce heat, and the products of the
reaction -- tritium and presumably isotopes of helium-- are either short-lived
(tritium) or relatively benign (helium)." Curious - neutrons are never mentioned
though with fusion giving the energy, one Watt should produce a billion billion
neutrons per second - and these neutrons often convert the material of the walls
etc to other isotopes which can be radioactive with many different half-lifes.
H. Reactor products Recovery
Essentially discusses a standard set-up to
recover tritium - a subject of some interest to constructors of hydrogen bombs!

SECTION II Neutron Generation and Applications.
The introduction talks of
"compression and mobility in the lattice which is sufficient to produce
neutron-generating events" - but does not mention fusion! It then says this has
been "discovered" but no reference is given. Then it says that one explanation
is that it is plausible that the high compression could give close collisions
which would give dd rections producing t + p or 3He + n. It notes the neutrons
from a 1 mm diameter rod, were measured using an Harwell Neutron Dose
Equivalent Monitor. Despite the low efficiency, 2.4 E -4, "these experiments
monitored neutron generation levels severalfold above background". This
episode, with the Harwell counter etc., is described in detail in Frank Close's
book. It is interesting that later in the patent application, it is written
"possibly....neutrons were detected" and a reference is given to their
first paper. Thus it seems they are aware that the neutron measurements are
very suspect. It is said the current densities are between 0.7 and 70 mA/cm2
which again is inconsistent with the proposition that only high current
densities give high loadings.
Applications; A. Neutron Beam Generator, B. Neutron Radiography,
C. Neutron Difraction, D. Radiative Neutron Capture.
All standard descriptions of what to do
if you do have a neutron beam. Also mentions higher energy neutrons of 17.58 MeV
from the dt reaction. Adds a modern application - detection of explosive
devices for airport security. Also will treat solid tumours.
SECTION III. Detailed Analysis of Enthalpic Heat Production.
This is the
most scientific section in that it "relates to additional findings that
deuterium highly compressed by cathodic polarization in a palladium host
lattice generate enthalpy in excess of....input", "typically 1-20 Watts/cm3".
"the most surprising feature of these results.... is that the enthalpy release
apparently is not due to either of the well-established fusion reactions
d + d ---> t + p, d + d ---> 3He + n.
"Although levels of tritium and, possibly neutrons were detected, the enthalpy
release was primarily one which is aneutronic and atritonic".
The experiments and results on calorimetry are described - these are close
to the paper of Dr. Pons at the First Annual Cold Fusion meeting, March 1990.
The analysis was carried out using their "black box" calculations with a
non-linear regression analysis using four parameters - this has been commented
on previously.
There is one curious statement "the most significant blanks" are "The
experiments carried out on the 0.8 cm diameter Pd electrodes in D2O"
"which give zero excess enthalpy". Most people would say the opposite.
There is a new claim of 100 Watts/cm3.
They still support the view that "steady-state" enthalpy generation occurs
in the bulk of the electrode, though less sure now.
From Fig III-9 (which was fig 8 in Pons's paper), a threshold in the
current density is seen - however they do not say that the figure suggests a
threshold of 64 mA/cm2 which would be in contradiction with earlier claims!
It is interesting that they give as their last reference, the Harwell
experiment of David Williams et al. which was devastatingly negative despite
help from Martin Fleischmann. However could not see any comment or reference
to it in the text, so that an Examiner could easily miss the great importance
of this experiment (and many others).
CLAIMS
The 50 claims are very extensive but often vary little from one
to another, but guess these are the rules of the game. Number 12 is "the
Apparatus as claimed in any of claims 1 to 11, wherein said latice structure
is fermionic metal". Number 17 suggests adding boron, beryllium or carbon-14.
It is not until Claim 23 that electrolysis is mentioned. It is interesting
that helium production is not claimed.
CONCLUSION
To sum up, the patent application was interesting to help understand
how patent law works, but one learns little scientifically, though there
are ideas for new applications. The big question is if the Patent Examiners
will be able to evaluate ALL the evidence, positive and negative - if they
can find it!


7. TEXAS A&M REVIEW PANEL
In Science of June 15 there were stories reporting
contamination of helium in Palladium reported by Kevin Wolf and a report by
Gary Taubes of worries inside Texas A&M about the surprising results obtained
by Prof. Bockris's group of tritium production and the possibility of "spiking"
of the tritium samples. The Texas A&M authorities wisely and quickly set up a
panel to report on these happenings. The panel had three members, Profs Fry,
Natowitz and Poston, all of Texas A&M. It is always a worry that an internal
report will tend to be a whitewash job, but this report is well done and
written in a very practical and common-sense way.
The report first gives the charge to the panel and this was not a restrictive
charge as sometimes happens. It lists 8 charges to be included but the review
was not to be limited to these. Number 5 was "are the findings of tritium
consistent in principle with results from other laboratories?" - this is
excellent in that they are asked to look at ALL the results; just hope the
4-man Panel of NCFI have a similar charge to look outside the Institute and
look at ALL the results.
There is first an overview which says "the general scientific community
remains sceptical of the claimed interpretation that a cold nuclear fusion
process is occurring." They conclude "the picture remains cloudy."
They found there were 5 groups doing Cold Fusion experiments, the leaders
being Drs Bockris, Appleby, Wolf, Martin and (Marsh and Gammon). Initially
"funding was accomplished by diverting existing research contracts.... with
the knowledge and agreement of the funding agencies" which include ONR,
EPRI, SERI, DOE, etc. The groups of Drs Bockris and Wolf are continuing.
Dr Appleby' group found no evidence for tritium or radiations and have
concentrated on excess heat. Dr Martin has left the University and Drs Marsh
and Gammon have stopped.
"The first local claim of verification, based on calorimetric measurements,
was made by Martin, Marsh and Gammon in a press conference on April 10 1989.
Subsequently, it was concluded that this work contained experimental errors
and was not conclusive." Marsh and Gammon carried out some 40 more
experiments before stopping.
The Appleby group observed an "excess energy" of 10% in a very precise
experiment, but later experiments obtained lower excesses of >3%. No evidence
for nuclear products was found.
The Bockris group observed very high levels of tritium in April and May and
again in November but "Since that time, no additional cells have been reported
to have unusual levels of tritium and such measurements are not a group
priority". Some cells have apparently given excess heat and one of these also
gave tritium "but the time correlation was not established." "In recent months
the Bockris group has concentrated on the physical electrochemistry of
deuterium in Pd and has not focussed on either tritium measurements or
calorimetry." All this sounds different from the tone of claims made.
The Martin group constructed 78 cells - no evidence for cold fusion and
no tritium above normal enrichment.
The Wolf group initially checked the cells of the Bockris and Martin groups
and reported low level neutrons in some cells. Later they studied 50 D2O and
50 H2O cells and found two of the D2O cells gave tritium, but found that this
could be due to spot contamination of the Pd. The group is continuing with gas
phase experiments underground.
The panel concluded that while there were early indications of Cold Fusion,
"the large majority of recent experiments have not produced such evidence.
These results seem to represent a microcosm of the world-wide efforts in this
area" though there are still "significant positive results" at times from
elsewhere.
The Conclusions and Recommendations were well-written and with understanding.
A. Research Procedures; early "quick and dirty" searches are often justified.
Now a well-developed plan has been made with EPRI, "known for its careful
monitoring of sponsored research". They make the point that science is a human
activity and there had been a breakdown of scientific objectivity in evaluating
some data and in also language which described experiments as "successes" or as
"failures".
B. personal relationships; initial frictions caused by announcement of results
via non-standard channels, etc. Later frictions caused by non-reproducibility
of data and intemperate language.
C. Ethics; "a very serious breech of academic procedure may have been the
handling of Nigel Packham's disseration defense." "there must be no artificial
time restraints" on oral questions, and not 10 minutes.
D. Publication; problems came from publication by leaking preliminary results
to the news media". When a research publication is found to be in error, "They
should at the minimum, be retracted via the same venue by which they were
originally made known. In particular, if an announcement is made by press
conference and a retraction is necessary, it should be by a press conference".
However the Panel is realistic as it added "The human reaction is to avoid a
retraction".
E. Financial Support; "No justification for large investments". In the future,
"cold fusion research should be judged on an equal basis with other
peer-reviewed research". Glad to see the phrase "peer-reviewed" that was
missing from the DOE Panel's final report.
TRITIUM FINDINGS; The very high tritium levels found by the Bockris group
have been also reported elsewhere (BARC), but most results are of very low level
consistent with known separation factors. Some tritium contamination has been
observed but not enough to account for the very high levels. For the question of
"tritium spiking" by someone, "we have found no evidence which would lead to
the conclusion that some of the cells were spiked with tritium. Circumstantial
evidence...relatively high tritium levels observed, the surprisingly large
amounts of light water present in some of the Bockris cells, and the lack of
tight security in the laboratories....None of these provides a convincing
argument". This seems clear, but it is only in this area where the Panel's
work was weak. They mention Dr. Storms' work but not that he finds that if
tritium is produced in the palladium, the tritium goes into the gas and not
into the electrolyte where it was claimed to have been found. Also to
convert circumstantial evidence into numerical evidence, it would have been
good if the panel had made a table of all the cells and listed the tritium
found and the amount of light water in each to see if there was a correlation.
However maybe it is better and kinder just to conclude within the Panel "While
it is not possible for us to exclude categorically spiking as a possibility, it
is our opinion, that possibility is much less probable than that of inadvertant
contamination or other unexplained factors in the measurement".
Overall an excellent report.


8. BOOK "TOO HOT TO HANDLE" OF FRANK CLOSE.
The first major book on Cold Fusion
will be published shortly. It is by Frank Close who is a well-known particle
physicist who has written several popular science books. It is called "Too Hot
to Handle" and will be issued in Europe about the 24 January by W. H. Allen at
a price of 14.99 pounds sterling. When Frank was in CERN last week he told
that it should be issued in the States in March. (There was a very early book
by an author who had written other good books of a popular science nature
(e.g. his "Superstrings and T.O.E." is excellent) but this book was far
too early and had bad reviews - he told me that he was intending to write
a second version, but have not heard from him since or seen him at any of the
numerous Cold Fusion conferences).
Frank has written a serious review of the subject (376 pages) and it took
me a while to read it (also because was sent two earlier versions that were full
of typos, but now have the hardback copy). It contains quite a lot of things
that I did not know. Although it is a general review it particularly
concentrates on two subjects - on the early history and the curious Fleischmann
and Pons neutron result. For both of these he obtained some interesting
recordings and which he puts together to make a very complete history. It can
be seen that at the time of the 23 March 1989 press conference, Fleischmann
and Pons had very little real data - one can understand Martin saying that he
would have prefered to do more experiments before announcing Cold Fusion. It
must be admitted that they do not come out of it too well, but feel that Frank
has been rather kind, for while he presents the facts, he is gentle with his
conclusions. Read the book with an eye to see if he could be sued for libel,
but feel that he has been careful and the facts are so well documented, that
he probably will not be, and if he were, he would win easily. Overall it is a
good read and not too technical. The particle physics is particularly well
explained.
The next book will probably be that by Gary Taubes (who wrote the
Science article about Texas A&M). It should again be an interesting book and
would expect it to be fairly different from Frank's book - in fact they probably
will be complementary. It will tend to rather "hot", but it should be remembered
that he was not sued over his previous book.
The subject of Cold Fusion is vast and there are many more aspects of it to
be considered such as the electrochemical and material science aspects. John
Huizenga who was co-Chairman of the DOE Panel, is starting to write a book and
gather it will be different from the other two. There are rumours that Profs.
Fleischmann and/or Pons are also writing a book and it is guaranteed to be
different from the other three books!
It begins to seem like the Bloomsbury set, with everyone writing books
about everyone else even 70 years afterwards ( there was one just the other day
by someone in his nineties who still remembers Virginia Wolff clearly). And the
books sell!


9. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE
The subject and literature of Cold Fusion continues
and grows with time. The vast majority of the World's scientists do not
believe that one will ever get useful energy production from an electrolytic
or other cell. About the question of whether there are any nuclear products,
find the opinions more dispersed. Many believe there is nothing in it at all
but many others wish there was just a little bit of nuclear products for it
would be sad if there was really nothing and also there have been so many
reports they cannot all be wrong - can they? For people working with
nuclear products who have studied the reports (this is a very small part of
the population), the conclusion from combining the positive results and the
negative results (which often have upper limits which are often much less than
the positive values claimed), is that there is nothing there. The dubious logic
and internal inconsistencies of the positive results reported, reinforce this
conclusion. Pathological Science gives the most consistent explanation
of all the results.
None the less, the numerous positive results if examined not too
critically, sound convincing to many who feel that there are unexplained
mysteries which merit futher investigation. Thus expect some funding
agencies such as EPRI and US government agencies, to continue supporting
some nuclear products experiments. There is a sufficiently large number of
people around the world that they form a community, as Steve Jones said,
and will probably continue experiments and meetings for some time yet.
Whether Utah will continue to fund their National Cold Fusion Institute
depends a bit on the report of the four man Panel - feel the political
masters would be quite happy to be able to say that the work justifies
further funding and that they were right to fund it initially.
Thus media reports on Cold Fusion will probably be with us for some time yet.

Douglas R. O. Morrison.

PS The ski season looks like being good in Europe this year starting with half
a metre at the end of October and much more at the end of November giving
1.80 metres, but some of it was blown away, but this helped to fill the
crevasses on the Mont Fort glacier so that this year little straw was needed
(though one of my favourite off-piste runs has a large green hole in it).
PPS. Now it is snowing heavily over much of Western Europe and the snow-ploughs
were out in CERN this morning - too much snow now.