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examines three "cold fusion" test cells at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA]] Cold fusion is a and Low Energy Nuclear Reaction s. The former, initiated by Andrei Sakharov and F. C. Frank in the 1940s, and Luis Alvarez in 1956, is not controversial but it consumes more energy than it generates. Johann Rafelski and Steven E. Jones of Brigham Young University were the first scientists to use the term "cold nuclear fusion" to describe this line of research in 1986. Low energy nuclear reactions (LENR) — or chemically-assisted nuclear reactions (CANR) — were initially reported by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann at the University Of Utah in 1989. The first low energy nuclear reaction experiment was published in March of 1989, and was front-page news for some time. This announcement generated A Strong Controversy at the time, but the debate abated quickly and cold fusion was rejected by the mainstream scientific community. DOE Warms to Cold Fusion , ''Physics Today'', April 2004 Cold fusion researchers say that they have been shunned by the scientific establishment. They publish papers in scientific journals specializing in related fields, but none have published in major scientific journals such as '' Nature '' or '' Scientific American '' after the initial controversy. The latest mainstream review of cold fusion occurred in 2004 when the US Department Of Energy set up a Panel Of Eighteen People To Review 15 Years Of Research in cold fusion. The reviewing scientists were evenly split on the following issue: "Is there compelling evidence for power that cannot be attributed to ordinary chemical or solid states sources". Two thirds of the panel did not feel that there was any conclusive evidence for low energy nuclear reactions. HISTORY OF COLD FUSION BY ELECTROLYSIS See also: Timeline Of Cold Fusion Early work The idea that Palladium or Titanium might catalyze fusion stems from the special ability of these metals to absorb large quantities of Hydrogen (including its Deuterium Isotope ). The hydrogen or deuterium disassociate with the respective positive ions but remain in an anomalously mobile state inside the metal lattice, exhibiting rapid diffusion and high electrical conductivity. The special ability of palladium to absorb hydrogen was recognized in the nineteenth century. In 1926, two German scientists, F. Paneth and K. Peters, reported the transformation of hydrogen into Helium by spontaneous nuclear catalysis when hydrogen is absorbed by finely divided palladium at room temperature. (Paneth, F., and K. Peters (1926) ''Nature,'' 118, 526.) These authors later acknowledged that the helium they measured was due to background from the air. In 1927, Swedish scientist J. Tandberg said that he had fused hydrogen into helium in an Electrolytic Cell with palladium electrodes. On the basis of his work he applied for a Swedish patent for "a method to produce helium and useful reaction energy". After deuterium was discovered in 1932, Tandberg continued his experiments with Heavy Water . Due to Paneth and Peters' retraction, Tandberg's patent application was eventually denied. In 1934, researchers including Ernest Rutherford reported that bombardment of inorganic compounds containing Deuterium , such as (ND4)2SO4, by deuterons produced tritium and hydrogen. (Oliphant, M.L., ''et al.'' (1934) "Transmutation effect observed with heavy hydrogen," ''Nature,'' 133, 413.) Original Pons and Fleischmann experiment On cell containing Heavy Water (deuterium oxide) and a Palladium Cathode which rapidly absorbed the deuterium produced during electrolysis. In their original set-up, Fleischmann and Pons used a Dewar Flask (a double-walled vacuum flask) for the Electrolysis , so that heat conduction would be minimal on the side and the bottom of the cell (only 5 % of the heat loss in this Experiment ). The cell flask was then submerged in a bath maintained at constant temperature to eliminate the effect of external heat sources. They used an open cell, thus allowing the gaseous deuterium and oxygen resulting from the Electrolysis reaction to leave the cell (with some heat too). It was necessary to replenish the cell with Heavy Water at regular intervals. The cell was tall and narrow, so that the bubbling action of the gas kept the electrolyte well mixed and of a uniform temperature. Special attention was paid to the purity of the palladium cathode and electrolyte to prevent the build-up of material on its surface, especially after long periods of operation. The cell was also instrumented with a Thermistor to measure the temperature of the Electrolyte , and an electrical heater to generate pulses of heat and calibrate the heat loss due to the gas outlet. After Calibration , it was possible to compute the heat generated by the reaction. A constant current was applied to the cell continuously for many weeks, and heavy water was added as necessary. For most of the time, the power input to the cell was equal to the power that went out of the cell within measuring accuracy, and the cell temperature was stable at around 30 °C. But then, at some point (and in some of the experiments), the temperature rose suddenly to about 50 °C without changes in the input power, for durations of 2 days or more. The generated power was calculated to be about 20 times the input power during the power bursts. Eventually the power bursts in any one cell would no longer occur and the cell was turned off. Announcement's aftermath The press reported on the experiments widely, and it was one of the front-page items on most newspapers around the world. The immense beneficial implications of the Utah experiments, if they were correct, and the ready availability of the required equipment, led scientists around the world to attempt to repeat the experiments within hours of the announcement. The press conference followed about a year of work of increasing tempo by Pons and Fleischmann, who had been working on their basic experiments since 1984. In 1988 they applied to the US Department Of Energy for funding for a larger series of experiments: up to this point they had been running their experiments "out of pocket". The grant proposal was turned over to several people for Peer Review , including Steven Jones of Brigham Young University . Jones had worked on Muon-catalyzed Fusion for some time, and had written an article on the topic entitled ''Cold Nuclear Fusion'' that had been published in '' Scientific American '' in July 1987. He had since turned his attention to the problem of fusion in high-pressure environments, believing it could explain the fact that the interior Temperature of the Earth was hotter than could be explained without nuclear reactions, and by unusually high concentrations of helium-3 around Volcano es that implied some sort of Nuclear Reaction within. At first he worked with Diamond Anvil s on what he referred to as ''piezonuclear fusion'', but then moved to Electrolytic Cell s similar to those being worked on by Pons and Fleischmann. In order to characterize the reactions, Jones had spent considerable time designing and building a neutron counter, one able to accurately measure the tiny numbers of neutrons being produced in his experiments. His team got 'tantalizingly positive' results early January 1989, and they decided in early February to publish their results. Both teams were in Utah , and met on several occasions to discuss sharing work and techniques. During this time Pons and Fleischmann described their experiments as generating considerable "excess energy", excess in that it could not be explained by Chemical Reaction s alone. If this were true, their device would have considerable commercial value, and should be protected by Patent s. Jones was measuring Neutron flux instead, and seems to have considered it primarily of scientific interest, not commercial. In order to avoid problems in the future, the teams ''apparently'' agreed to simultaneously publish their results, although their accounts of their March 6 meeting differ. In mid-March both teams were ready to publish, and Fleischmann and Jones had agreed to meet at the airport on the 24th to send their papers at the exact same time to Nature by Federal Express . However Pons and Fleischmann broke that apparent agreement : they had submitted a paper to the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry on the 11th, and they disclosed their work in the press conference the day before. Jones, apparently furious at being "scooped", faxed in his paper to ''Nature'' as soon as he saw the press announcements. Thus the teams both rushed to publish, which has perhaps muddied the field more than any scientific aspects. Jones’s manuscript on history of cold fusion at BYU , Ludwik Kowalski, March 5, 2004 Within days scientists around the world had started work on duplications of the experiments. On April 10 a team at Texas A&M University published results of excess heat, and later that day a team at the Georgia Institute Of Technology announced neutron production. Both results were widely reported on in the press. However, both teams soon withdrew their results for lack of evidence. For the next six weeks additional competing claims, counterclaims, and suggested explanations kept the topic on the front pages, and led to what some journalists have referred to as "fusion confusion." CBS Evening News , April 10, 1989 In mid-May Pons received a huge standing ovation during a presentation at the American Chemical Society . The same month the president of the University of Utah, who had already secured a $5 million commitment from his state legislature, asked for $25 million from the federal government to set up a "National Cold Fusion Institute". On May 1 a meeting of the American Physical Society held a session on cold fusion that ran past midnight; a string of failed experiments were reported. A second session started the next evening and continued in much the same manner. The field appeared split between the "chemists" and the "physicists". At the end of May the Energy Research Advisory Board (under a charge of the US Department Of Energy ) formed a special panel to investigate cold fusion. The scientists in the panel found the evidence for cold fusion to be unconvincing. Nevertheless, the panel was "''sympathetic toward modest support for carefully focused and cooperative experiments within the present funding system''". Cold Fusion Research , A Report of the Energy Research Advisory Board to the United States Department of Energy, November 1989 Both critics and those attempting replications were frustrated by what they said was incomplete information released by the University of Utah. With the initial reports suggesting successful duplication of their experiments there was not much public criticism, but a growing body of failed experiments started a "buzz" of their own. By the end of May much of the Media attention had faded. This was due not only to the competing results and counterclaims, but also to the limited attention span of modern media. However, while the research effort also cooled to some degree, projects continued around the world. In July and November 1989, ''Nature'' published papers critical of cold fusion Upper limits on neutron and -ray emission from cold fusion , ''Nature'', 6 July 1989 Upper bounds on 'cold fusion' in electrolytic cells , ''Nature'', 23 November 1989 which cast the idea of cold fusion out of mainstream science. As 1989 wore on, cold fusion was considered by mainstream scientists to be self-deception, experimental error and even fraud, and was held out as a prime example of pseudoscience. Moving beyond the initial controversy The 1990s saw little cold fusion research in the United States, and much of the research during this time period occurred in Europe and Asia. The government of Japan initiated a "New Hydrogen Energy Program" to research the promise of tapping new hydrogen-based energy sources such as cold fusion. Pons and Fleischmann moved their research laboratory to France, under a grant from the founder of Toyota Motor Corporation. A few periodicals emerged in the 1990s that covered developments in cold fusion and related new energy sciences, and periodic international conferences were conducted to share cold fusion research results. By 1991, 92 groups of researchers from 10 different countries had reported excess heat, tritum, neutrons or other nuclear effects. [http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/WillFGgroupsrepo.pdf] Over 3,000 cold fusion papers have been published including about 1,000 in peer-reviewed journals [http://www.lenr-canr.org/LibraryGuide.html] [http://www.lenr-canr.org/FilesByDate.htm]. Researchers share their results at the International Conference On Cold Fusion , recently renamed International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science. The conference is held every 12 to 18 months in various countries around the world, and is hosted by The International Society for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science , a scientific organization that was founded as a professional society to support research efforts and to communicate experimental results. Jed Rothwell maintains an international database of research into cold fusion [http://www.lenr-canr.org/]. The generation of excess heat has been reported by
among others. Excess heat and helium-4/tritium, thought to be signatures of cold fusion, have been reported by experimenters in numerous countries using a variety of different experimental cold fusion set-ups, including:
Source: (Storms 2001) The most common experimental set-ups are the electrolytic (electrolysis) cell and the gas (glow) discharge cell. The former because it was the original experiment and more commonly known way of conducting the cold fusion experiment, and the latter because it is believed to be the set-up that provides an experimenter a better chance at replication of the excess heat results. In February 2002, a laboratory within the United States Navy released a report that came to the conclusion that the cold fusion phenomenon was in fact real and deserved an official funding source for research. Navy researchers have published more than 40 papers on cold fusion. [http://lenr-canr.org/Collections/USNavy.htm] In 2004, the United States Department of Energy (USDOE) decided to take another look at cold fusion to determine if their policies towards cold fusion should be altered due to new experimental evidence. They set up a Panel On Cold Fusion . Its 18 reviewers were split approximately evenly on the issue "Is there compelling evidence for power that cannot be attributed to ordinary chemical or solid states sources", a significant change compared to the 1989 DoE panel. However, those who accepted evidence of such power did not believe that a nuclear reaction could explain it: two-thirds of the reviewers did not feel that the evidence was conclusive for low energy nuclear reaction. One found the evidence convincing, and the remainder indicated that they were somewhat convinced. Many reviewers noted that poor experiment design, documentation, background control and other similar issues hampered the understanding and interpretation of the results presented. The nearly unanimous opinion of the reviewers was that funding agencies should entertain individual, well-designed proposal for experiments in this field. {Link without Title} The excess heat experimental results reported by T. Ohmori and T. Mizuno (see Mizuno Experiment ) have come under particular interest by amateur researchers in recent years. A number of them, some of whom have distinguished scientific careers and research cold fusion as an aside, have used the protocol outlined by Mizuno to reportedly generate excess heat, with Coefficients of Productivity (COP) in excess of 1.5 in home-made cold fusion cells. Including this succesful replication reported in March 2006, which took place in Colorado, United States and replications reported in France by JL Naudin and researchers connected to his laboratory JNL Labs. In March 2006, the American Physical Society held a session on cold fusion in Baltimore {Link without Title} . Possible commercial developments Cold fusion researchers say that it could have a substantial Economic impact {Link without Title} , with advantages over plasma fusion (which has also not yet been developed for practical application) because it produces little ionizing radiation and can be scaled to small devices. Cold fusion's commercial viability is unknown. The evidence of the excess heat effect are not accepted by a majority of scientists. If it exists, the effect would have to be thoroughly controlled before it could be safely scaled up to larger size for commercialization. That power density achieved with palladium is often higher than conventional uranium fission reactors. High temperatures are easily obtained. High input to output ratios are seldom reported, but cells are not optimized to achieve this. The energy density of the fuel, deuterium, is much higher than uranium. Cells are orders-of-magnitude too small to be commercially viable because they are made on such a small scale (typically with less than a gram of material). [http://newenergytimes.com/Library/2005KrivitS-HowCanItBeReal-Paper.pdf]. Researchers have not yet discovered methods to prevent cathodes from deteriorating, cracking, and melting during the experiments [http://lenr-canr.org/Experiments.htm#PhotosAccidents]. Additionally, the most widely reproduced cold fusion experiments produce power in bursts lasting for days or weeks, not for months as is needed for many commercial applications. Dr. Michael McKubre thinks a working cold fusion reactor is possible. [http://www.newenergytimes.com/Conversations/McKubre.htm] Companies publicly claiming to be developing cold fusion devices, include: Energetics Technologies Ltd. (Israel), [http://www.d2fusion.com/ D2Fusion], and JET Thermal Products . Ongoing developments concerning cold fusion commercialization efforts are tracked at peswiki . There are also some private cold fusion commercialization efforts that are rumored to be ongoing. [http://www.newenergytimes.com/news/NET15.htm#iesi] ARGUMENTS IN THE CONTROVERSY ::''See also: Cold Fusion Controversy '' Theoretical possibility of fusion at low temperature Cold fusion's most significant problem in the eyes of many scientists is that theories describing nuclear fusion can not explain how a cold fusion reaction could occur at relatively low temperatures. In order for fusion to occur, the Electrostatic force ( Coulomb Repulsion ) between the positively charged Nuclei must be overcome. Once the distance between the nuclei becomes comparable to one Femtometre , the attractive Strong Interaction takes over and the fusion may occur. However, the repulsive Coulomb interaction between the nuclei separated by several femtometres is greater than interactions between nuclei and electrons by approximately six orders of magnitude. Overcoming that requires an energy on the order of 10 MeV per nucleus, whereas the energies of chemical reactions are on the order of several electron-volts; it is hard to explain where the required energy would come from in room-temperature matter. Nobel laureate Schwinger believes that "If a proven track record can be established... you have to believe it". He also believes that cold fusion does ''not'' violate conventional theory. As he puts it, "The defense cold fusion is simply stated: The circumstances of cold fusion are not those of hot fusion". Cold fusion: Does it have a future?, Schwinger, J., Evol. Trends Phys. Sci., Proc. Yoshio Nishina Centen. Symp., Tokyo 1990, 1991. 57: p. 171.[http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/SchwingerJcoldfusiona.pdf] Cold fusion researchers hypothesise that deuterons embedded in palladium settle at points and in channels within the metal's electron orbitals which substantially increase the likelihood of deuteron collisions. (Jones, S.E., ''et al.'' (1989) "Observation of Cold Nuclear Fusion in Condensed Matter," ''Nature,'' 338, 737-740.) V.A. Filimonov and his colleagues in Russia have described this as a combination of deuteron cluster formation, shock wave fronts involving phase boundaries, and the directional propagation of Soliton s. (See also Zhang, W.-S. ''et al.,'' 1999, 2000, and 2004.) Measurement of excess heat Excess heat production is an important characteristic of the effect that has created much criticism. This is understandable because calorimetry is a difficult measurement. Some claim that the results may be in error because the levels of excess heat reported are often small, 50 to 200 Milliwatts (one thousandth of a watt) and by their nature are somewhat difficult to measure accurately. The solution to addressing those charges is to either obtain excess heat so large that they are well outside the range of experimental error, or to devise calorimeters and calorimetry procedures that are so accurate that they can be trusted to measure heat in the milliwatt range. Cold fusion researchers have concentrated mostly on the latter approach. Multiple calorimeter types, such as static, flow and Seebeck have been used to measure heat in the milliwatt or even picowatt range, but they require skill and attention to operate, and a skeptic who knows little about them may wonder whether they are being used correctly. Still some results are much larger, from 1 to 5 watts. {Link without Title} Evidence is now available that is based on well-designed and well-understood precision calorimetry methods. For example, McKubre et al. McKubre, M.C.H., et al., Isothermal Flow Calorimetric Investigations of the D/Pd and H/Pd Systems. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1994. 368: p. 55. at SRI developed a state-of-the-art flow calorimeter that was used to study many samples that showed production of significant anomalous energy. Over 30 similar studies Storms, E., Cold Fusion: An Objective Assessment. 2001. [http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEcoldfusionc.pdf have observed the same general behavior as was reported by these workers. Of course, all of the positive results could be caused by various errors. For example, questions have been raised about the Calibration of calorimeters before and during cold fusion experiments (Shanahan 2002) : they were addressed in a paper published in Thermochim. Acta (Storms 2006) , but a rebuttal was published Shanahan, K., Reply to "Comment on papers by K. Shanahan that propose to explain anomalous heat geneated by cold fusion", E. Storms, Thermochim. ActaThermochimica Acta, 441 (2006) 210-214 , leaving the issue open. Other possibilities have been explored in many papers, which have been reviewed and summarized by Storms Storms, E., A critical evaluation of the Pons-Fleischmann effect: Part 2. Infinite Energy, 2000. 6(32): p. 52. [http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEacriticale.pdf]. Relation between excess heat and nuclear products |
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