Cold fusion

For the article about the computer programming language, see ColdFusion.

File:ColdFusion.jpg

Charles Bennett examines three "cold fusion" test cells at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA

Cold fusion is a nuclear fusion reaction that takes place at or near room temperature and normal pressure instead of the thousands of degrees and millions of pounds of force required for plasma fusion reactions. It has two major lines of research: muon-catalyzed fusion and low energy nuclear reactions. 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. Events in the early 2000's suggest however that the issue has not been fully settled scientifically.

The latest mainstream review of cold fusion occured in 2004 when the US Department of Energy set up a panel of eighteen people to review 15 years of research in cold fusion. About half of the reviewing scientists indicated they were "somewhat convinced" that excess power is generated in these experiments, and that this power cannot be attributed to ordinary chemical or solid state sources. However, two thirds of panel did not feel that the evidence was conclusive for low energy nuclear reactions.

Researchers continue to report, at conferences and in peer-reviewed journals, the generation of excess heat, tritium, helium, neutrons and apparent nuclear transmutations, using electrolytic cells, gas loading, ion implantation and other techniques. Over 3,000 cold fusion papers have been published including about 1,000 in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Peer-reviewed journals specializing in related subjects do often publish cold fusion papers without comment.

Cold fusion is currently not accepted by much of the mainstream scientific community. Cold fusion papers are rejected by the major scientific journals such as Nature and Scientific American. The subject is often not taken seriously by the popular press.

History of cold fusion by electrolysis

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

A cold fusion calorimeter of the open type, used at the New Hydrogen Energy Institute in Japan. Source: SPAWAR/US Navy TR1862

On March 23, 1989, the chemists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann ("P and F") at the University of Utah spoke at a press conference held by the University of Utah and reported the production of excess heat that they say could only be explained by a nuclear process. The report was particularly astounding given the simplicity of the equipment: essentially an electrolysis 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 volcanoes that implied some sort of nuclear reaction within. At first he worked with diamond anvils on what he referred to as piezonuclear fusion, but then moved to electrolytic cells 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. [1]

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 reactions alone. If this were true, their device would have considerable commercial value, and should be protected by patents. 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 [2]. 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 [3]. Jones, apparently furious at being "scooped", faxed in his paper to Nature as soon as he saw the press announcements [4]. Thus the teams both rushed to publish, which has perhaps muddied the field more than any scientific aspects.

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." [5]

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". [6]

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 [7] [8], 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.

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 [9].

Cold fusion cell at the US Navy Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, San Diego, CA (2005)

The generation of excess heat has been reported by

• Michael McKubre, director of the Energy Research Center at SRI International,
• Richard A. Oriani (University of Minnesota, in December 1990),
• Robert A. Huggins (at Stanford University in March 1990),
• Y. Arata (Osaka University, Japan),
• T. Mizuno (Hokkaido University, Japan),
• T. Ohmori (Japan),

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:

• Electrolytic Cells (using liquids and solids) / the classic Pons and Fleischmann cell
• Gas (Glow) Discharge Cells / Ohmori-Mizuno type set-up
• Gas Reactions
• Ion bombardment
• Cavitations Reactions
• Solids With Pressurized Gas
• Plasma Discharge
• Phase Change or Chemical Reactions
• Biological Systems

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 come 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. [10]

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. [11]

In January 2006, the Washington Post, Time magazine, The Guardian, and other major newspapers and magazines wrote negative statements on cold fusion in articles about disgraced Korean biologist Hwang Woo-suk, saying in one it was a "scientific misdeed" debunked in 1989. [12].

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.

Many researchers, most outside the United States, continue to report the generation of excess heat, tritum, neutrons and other nuclear effects in peer-reviewed journals [13]. They use electrolytic cells, gas loading, ion implantation and other techniques. Over 3,000 cold fusion papers have been published including about 1,000 in peer-reviewed journals [14].

Possible commercial developments

Cold fusion researchers say that it could have a substantial economic impact [15], 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). [16]. Researchers have not yet discovered methods to prevent cathodes from deteriorating, cracking, and melting during the experiments (at least four cells have exploded, from energy bursts far larger than can be explained by chemistry.[17]) 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. [18] Companies publicly claiming to be developing cold fusion devices, include: Energetics Technologies Ltd. (Israel), 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. [19]

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 in plasma 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.

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 solitons. (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. (Some experiments even resulted in explosions [20])

Evidence is now available that is based on well-designed and well-understood precision calorimetry methods. For example, McKubre et al. Template:Ref harvard 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 Template:Ref harvard 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 2006), leaving the issue open. Other possibilities have been explored in many papers, which have been reviewed and summarized by Storms Template:Ref harvard.

Relation between excess heat and nuclear products

File:ColdFusionAutoradiograph.jpg

An autoradiograph showing the effects of tritium from a cold fusion experiment at the Neutron Physics Division, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Bombay, India

For a nuclear reaction to be proposed as the source of energy, it is necessary to show that the amount of energy is related to the amount of a nuclear product. Until the work of Miles et al. Template:Ref harvard, various unexpected nuclear products had been detected but never in sufficient amounts. Miles et al. showed that helium was generated when anomalous heat was measured and that the relationship between the two measurements was consistent with the amount of energy known to result from a d-d fusion reaction. Since then five other studies Template:Ref harvard have observed the same relationship. Of course, some of the detected helium could have resulted from helium known to be in normal air. Also, the heat measurements could be wrong in just the right amount every time the measurements were made. Even though these possibilities could have been used to explain one study, it is unlikely that such an advantageous combination of error can explain all of the results, especially when active efforts were made to reduce these errors. At the present time, researchers in the field believe that heat and helium are related, but the source of the helium is still to be determined. In other words, the helium may not result from d-d fusion.

If the excess heat were generated by the hot fusion of two deuterium atoms, the most probable outcome would be the generation of either a tritium atom and a proton, or a ³He and a neutron. The level of neutrons, tritium and ³He actually observed in Fleischmann-Pons experiment have been well below the level expected in view of the heat generated, implying that hot fusion reactions cannot explain it. However, deuterons in a metal matrix have substantially less angular momentum (which is proportional to temperature and limited by interactions with the enclosing solid) than those in a plasma. This difference may explain the observed difference in branching ratios.

If the excess heat were generated by the hot fusion of two deuterium atoms into ⁴He, a reaction which is normally extremely rare, gamma rays and helium would be generated. Insufficient levels of gamma rays relative to hot fusion have been observed in proportion to the heat generated. U.S. Navy researchers Stanislaw Szpak and Pamela Boss, with Jerry J. Smith from the Dept. of Energy have measured bremsstrahlung radiation consistent with very high energy alpha particles, suggesting that energy may be released as ⁴He nuclei momentum instead of the gamma radiation observed in plasma fusion.

Besides helium, other nuclear products are detected in much smaller quantities. Early in the history, great effort was made to detect neutrons, an expected nuclear product from the d-d fusion reaction. Except for occasional bursts, the emission rate was found to be near the limit of detection or completely absent. This fact was used to reject the initial claim. It is now believed that the few neutrons are caused by a secondary nuclear reaction, possibily having nothing to do with the helium producing reaction. Tritium is another expected product of d-d fusion, which was sought. Too little tritium was detected so that once again the original claims were inconsistent with expectations. Nevertheless, the amount of tritium detected could not be explained by any conventional process after all of the possibilities had been completely explored. The source of tritium is still unknown although it appears to result from a nuclear reaction that is initiated within the apparatus. Various nuclear products normally associated with d-d fusion also have been detected as energetic emissions, but at very low rates.

Finally, the presence of heavy elements having unnatural isotopic ratios and in unexpected large amounts are detected under some conditions. These are the so called transmutation products. Work in Japan Template:Ref harvard Template:Ref harvard Template:Ref harvard Template:Ref harvard Template:Ref harvard has opened an entirely new aspect to the phenomenon by showing that impurity elements in palladium, through which D2 is caused to pass, are converted to heavier elements to which 2D, 4D or 6D (deuterons) have been added. The claims have been replicated in Japan and similar efforts are underway at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL).

Reproducibility of the result

While some scientists have reported to have reproduced the excess heat with similar or different set-ups, they could not do so with predictable results, and many others failed. Some see this as a proof that the cold fusion is pseudoscience, or more precisely, pathological science. In the best experimental set-ups, excess heat has been observed in about half of attempts. [21]

Yet, it is not uncommon for a new phenomenon to be difficult to control and replicate, and to bring erratic results. For example, attempts to repeat electrostatic experiments (similar to those performed by Benjamin Franklin) often fail due to excessive air humidity. That does not mean that electrostatic phenomena are fictitious, or that experimental data are fraudulent. On the contrary, occasional observations of new events, by qualified experimentalists, can in some cases be the preliminary steps leading to recognized discoveries.

The reproducibility of excess heat will remain a key issue unless an experiment is produced that is fully reproducible by simply following a set of instructions or recipe, or until excess power generation is continuous rather than sporadic, so that it can be observed by the broader scientific community. Reproducibility is currently hampered by the large number of variables that may influence it, some of which are unknown or poorly understood as of 2006.

Energy source versus power store

It has been suggested that the observed excess power output which begins after a cell is operated for a long time may be due to energy accumulated in the cell during operation. This would require a systematic error in calorimetry (in other words that the cell is drawing more power than goes out, but calorimetry incorrectly shows the two to be equal). Additionally, the amount of energy reported in some of the experiments appears to be too great compared to the small mass of material in the cell, for it to be stored by any known chemical process. Dennis Cravens, a professor of chemistry and physics at Eastern New Mexico University, is working on a completely self-contained cold fusion device based on a Stirling engine. While this is in the early stages, if successful and capable of doing work on the external environment it would confirm production of excess energy without the need for measurements. [22]

Allegations of suppression of cold fusion research

Cold fusion researchers often allege discrimination against them as reason for their papers not being published in the more established journals. They say that Nature and some other reputable science journals reject papers on the subject without reviewing them. They have large collections of summary rejection letters [23]. Nature and other journals asks if it would have disappeared sooner if it had been "mocked" with more "vituperation." [D. Lindley, Nature, 1990], which advocates say is proof of bias. Cold fusion researchers say that this discrimination prevents them from getting the appropriate tools and funding to further investigate the effect, and to address the known issues with the experiments.

There have been other claims of abuse of the peer review system. When Miles and Noninsky wrote critiques of an anti-cold fusion paper by N. Lewis, Lindley, the associate editor of Nature, asked Lewis for "advice" about whether to publish the critiques, albeit in the second round after the first version by Noninsky was rejected by an independent reviewer. [24] Lewis recommended against the publication of the critiques. Lindley sent Lewis' comments back to Noninsky and Miles, and he told Noninsky: "I am sorry that we must persist in our negative opinion of your work, but it seems clear by now that you are not pursuing a useful path. I can see no likelihood that Nature would wish to publish your work." Noninsky and Miles felt that a neutral third party should have been assigned all of the reviews, rather than allowing Lewis to advise about a critique of his own paper.

Other kinds of fusion

A variety of other methods are known to affect nuclear fusion. Some are "cold" in the strict sense that no part of the material is hot (except for the reaction products), some are "cold" in the limited sense that the bulk of the material is at a relatively low temperature and pressure but the reactants are not, and some are "hot" fusion methods that create macroscopic regions of very high temperature and pressure.

Locally cold fusion :

• Muon-catalyzed fusion is a well established and reproducible fusion process that occurs at ordinary temperatures. It was studied in detail by Steven Jones in the early 1980s. It has not been reported to produce net energy. Net energy production from this reaction is not believed to be possible because of the energy required to create muons, their 2.2 µs half-life, and the chance that a muon will bind to the new alpha particle and thus stop catalyzing fusion.

Generally cold, locally hot fusion :

• In sonoluminescence, acoustic shock waves create temporary bubbles that collapse shortly after creation, producing very high temperatures and pressures. In 2002, Rusi P. Taleyarkhan reported the possibility that bubble fusion occurs in those collapsing bubbles (aka sono fusion). As of 2005, experiments to determine whether fusion is occurring give conflicting results. If fusion is occurring, it is because the local temperature and pressure are sufficiently high to produce hot fusion.[25]
• The Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor is a tabletop device in which fusion occurs. This fusion comes from high effective temperatures produced by electrostatic acceleration of ions. The device can be built inexpensively, but it too is unable to produce a net power output.
• Antimatter-initialized fusion uses small amounts of antimatter to trigger a tiny fusion explosion. This has been studied primarily in the context of making nuclear pulse propulsion feasible. This is not near becoming a practical power source, due to the cost of manufacturing antimatter alone.
• Pyroelectric fusion was reported in April 2005 by a team at UCLA. The scientists used a pyroelectric crystal heated from −34 to 7°C (−30 to 45°F), combined with a tungsten needle to produce an electric field of about 25 gigavolts per meter to ionize and accelerate deuterium nuclei into an erbium deuteride target. Though the energy of the deuterium ions generated by the crystal has not been directly measured, the authors used 100 keV (a temperature of about 10⁹ K) as an estimate in their modeling.[26] At these energy levels, two deuterium nuclei can fuse together to produce a helium-3 nucleus, a 2.45 MeV neutron and bremsstrahlung. Although it makes a useful neutron generator, the apparatus is not intended for power generation since it requires far more energy than it produces. [27] [28] [29] [30]

Hot fusion :

• "Standard" "hot" fusion, in which the fuel reaches tremendous temperature and pressure inside a fusion reactor, nuclear weapon, or star.

The methods in the second group are examples of non-equilibrium systems, in which very high temperatures and pressures are produced in a relatively small region adjacent to material of much lower temperature. In his doctoral thesis for MIT, Todd Rider did a theoretical study of all non-equilibrium fusion systems. He demonstrated that all such systems will leak energy at a rapid rate due to bremsstrahlung, radiation produced when electrons in the plasma hit other electrons or ions at a cooler temperature and suddenly decelerate. The problem is not as pronounced in a hot plasma because the range of temperatures, and thus the magnitude of the deceleration, is much lower.

See also

• DoE panels on cold fusion
• Mizuno experiment
• List of fringe theories in physics
• Stanley Pons
• Martin Fleischmann
• Huemul Project

References

Books

• Krivit, Steven ; Winocur, Nadine. The Rebirth of Cold Fusion: Real Science, Real Hope, Real Energy. Los Angeles, CA, Pacific Oaks Press, 2004 ISBN 0976054582.
• Beaudette, Charles. Excess Heat: Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed, 2nd. Ed. South Bristol, ME, Oak Grove Press, 2002. ISBN 0967854830.
• Park, Robert L. Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0195135156.
• Mizuno, Tadahiko. Nuclear Transmutation: The Reality of Cold Fusion. Concord, N.H.: Infinite Energy Press, 1998. ISBN 1892925001.
• Taubes, Gary. Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion. New York, N.Y. : Random House, 1993. ISBN 0394584562.
• Huizenga, John R. Cold Fusion: The Scientific Fiasco of the Century. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 1992. ISBN 1878822071; ISBN 0198558171.
• Close, Frank E..Too Hot to Handle: The Race for Cold Fusion. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1991. ISBN 0691085919; ISBN 0140159266.
• Mallove, Eugene. Fire from Ice: Searching for the Truth Behind the Cold Fusion Furor. Concord, N.H.: Infinite Energy Press, 1991. ISBN 1892925028.

Reports and reviews

• "Cold Fusion Research" - Energy Research Advisory Board report (November 1989)
  • Conclusions and recommendations section of the report
• U.S. Navy Report Detailing a Decade of Cold Fusion Research "Thermal and Nuclear Aspects of the Pd/D2O System", U.S. Navy TECHNICAL REPORT 1862, February 2002
• U.S. DoE 2004 Cold Fusion Review - U.S. Department of Energy review of 15 years of cold fusion experiments
  • Additional information on the DoE 2004 Cold Fusion Review. This page includes the full text of the reviewer's comments, which is not available on the DoE pages, plus links to the full text of 42 of the papers submitted by cold fusion researchers to the review panel. (The list of all 130 submitted papers can be found here.)
  • Response to the DoE/2004 Review of Cold-Fusion Research - C. Beaudette's critique of the DoE 2004 Cold Fusion Review
• Cold Fusion overview - John Coviello provides an introductory synopsis for new encyclopedic entry at PESWiki.com.
• Cold Fusion - An Objective Assessment - by Dr. Edmund Storms, a review of the experimental results (December 2001; 233 references, including 34 studies reporting anomalous energy using the Pons-Fleischmann method)
• A Student's Guide to Cold Fusion - by Edmund Storms. A 55-page introduction to the subject.
• Overview of BARC Studies in Cold Fusion. - P.K. Iyengar (Atomic Energy Commission, India) and M. Srinivasan (Bhabha Atomic Research Centre) review some of the major research in India.
• A Cold Fusion primer, in English and Italian

Papers

• ^ Fleischmann, M., S. Pons, and M. Hawkins, electrochemically induced nuclear fusion of deuterium. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1989. 261: p. 301 and errata in Vol. 263. [31]
• ^ Pons, S. and M. Fleischmann, Calorimetric measurements of the palladium/deuterium system: fact and fiction. Fusion Technol., 1990. 17: p. 669.
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Journals and publications

• Infinite Energy - one of the original periodicals dedicated to cold fusion and new energy
• New Energy Times - site that focuses on the latest advances in the field of cold fusion
• Cold Fusion Times - quarterly journal about cold fusion

Websites and repositories

• LENR-CANR Low Energy Nuclear Reactions — Chemically Assisted Nuclear Reactions - information and links on cold fusion research (mainly pro-cold fusion), and an online library of over 500 full-text papers from the peer-reviewed literature and conference proceedings
• Britz's cold nuclear fusion bibliography - an overview and review of almost all available publications about cold nuclear fusion
• Cold Fusion — 17 Years and Heating Up - directory of cold fusion resources compiled by FreeEnergyNews.com
• L. Kowalski's web site - a collection of commentaries on cold fusion research from a physics teacher
• International Society for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science - website of the ISCMNS
• JL Naudin's web site - the CFR project, a High Temperature Plasma Electrolysis based on the Tadahiko Mizuno work from the Hokkaido University (Japan)

News

1980s

• Elation Should Be Tempered Until Jury Has Examined Experiments The Financial Post (May 1989)
• "Physicists Debunk Claim Of a New Kind of Fusion" - Science (May 1989)
• "PFC results said to deal blow to fusion claims" - MIT Tech (May 1989) - Early cold fusion claims set straight by work in their Plasma Fusion Center

1990s

• Whatever Happened to Cold Fusion? The American Scholar (Late 1994)
• What If Cold Fusion Is Real? Wired, (November 1998)
• Whatever happened to cold fusion? Physics World, (March 1999)
• The War Against Cold Fusion - What's really behind it? SF Gate - (May 1999)

2000s

• Arthur C Clarke demands cold fusion rethink BBC News (September 2000) See also: [55]
• Warming up to Cold Fusion Washington Post Magazine (November 2004)
• ICCF-11 Overview With Links to Presentations International Society for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (November 2004)
• U.S. review rekindles cold fusion debate Nature - (December 2004)
• The 2005 Cold Fusion Colloquium Cold Fusion Times (May 2005) - Public gathering of cold fusion researchers at MIT
• Cold-Fusion Believers Work On, Even as Mainstream Science Gives Them the Cold Shoulder Salt Lake City Weekly (October 2005)
• ICCF-12 Overview With Links to Presentations International Society for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (December 2005)
• Does fusion scientist 'hold the secret'? Deseret Morning News (March 2006)
• Fleischmann Joins D2Fusion to Develop Cold Fusion Heaters Pure Energy Systems News (March 2006)