Cold Fusion?
It was the most notorious scientific experiment in recent memory - in 1989, the two men who claimed to have discovered the energy of the future were condemned as imposters and exiled by their peers. Can it possibly make sense to reopen the cold fusion investigation? A surprising number of researchers already have.
Almost four stories high, framed in steel beams and tangled in pipes, conduits, cables, and coils, the Joint European Torus (JET) claims to be the largest fusion power experiment in the world. Located near Oxford, England, JET is a monument to big science, its donut-shaped containment vessel dwarfing maintenance workers who enter it in protective suits. Here in this gleaming nuclear cauldron, deuterium gas is energized with 7 million amperes and heated to 300 million degrees Celsius - more than 10 times hotter than the center of the sun. Under these extreme conditions atomic nuclei collide and fuse, liberating energy that could provide virtually limitless power.
Maybe.
High-tension lines run directly to the installation, but they don't take electricity out - they bring it in. For a few magic seconds in 1997, JET managed to return 60 percent of the energy it consumed, but that's the best it's ever done, and is typical of fusion experiments worldwide. The US Department of Energy has predicted that we'll have to wait another five decades, minimum, before fusion power becomes practical. Meanwhile, the United States continues to depend on fossil fuels for 85 percent of its energy.
Many miles away, in the basement of a fine new home in the hills overlooking Santa Fe, New Mexico, a retired scientist named Edmund Storms has built a different kind of fusion reactor. It consists of laboratory glassware, off-the-shelf chemical supplies, two aging Macintosh computers for data acquisition, and an insulated wooden box the size of a kitchen cabinet. While JET's 15 European sponsor-nations have paid about US$1 billion for their hardware, and the US government has spent $14.7 billion on fusion research since 1951 (all figures in 1997 dollars), Storms's apparatus and ancillary gear have cost less than $50,000. Moreover, he claims that his equipment works, generating surplus heat for days at a time.
Storms is not an antiestablishment pseudoscientist pursuing a crackpot theory. For 34 years he was part of the establishment himself, employed at Los Alamos on projects such as a nuclear motor for space vehicles. Subsequently he testified before a congressional subcommittee considering the future of fusion. He believes you don't need millions of degrees or billions of dollars to fuse atomic nuclei and yield energy. "You can stimulate nuclear reactions at room temperature," he says, in his genial, matter-of-fact style. "I am absolutely certain that the phenomenon is real. It is quite extraordinary, and if it can be developed, it will have profound effects on society."
That's an understatement. If low-temperature fusion does exist and can be perfected, power generation could be decentralized. Each home could heat itself and produce its own electricity, probably using a form of water as fuel. Even automobiles might be cold fusion powered. Massive generators and ugly power lines could be eliminated, along with imported oil and our contribution to the greenhouse effect. Moreover, according to some experimental data, low-temperature fusion doesn't create significant hazardous radiation or radioactive waste.
Most scientists laugh at these claims. "It's pathological science," says physicist Douglas Morrison, formerly employed by CERN in Geneva. "The results are impossible."
Yet some highly qualified researchers disagree.
George Miley, who received the Edward Teller medal for innovative research in hot fusion and has edited Fusion Technology magazine for the American Nuclear Society for more than 15 years: "There's very strong evidence that low-energy nuclear reactions do occur. Numerous experiments have shown definitive results - as do my own."
John Bockris, formerly a distinguished professor in physical chemistry at Texas A&M University and a cofounder of the International Society for Electrochemistry: "Nuclear reactions can occur without high temperatures. Low-energy nuclear transformations can - and do - exist."
Michael McKubre, director of the Energy Research Center at SRI International: "I am absolutely certain there is unexplained heat, and the most likely explanation is that its origin is nuclear."
Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction writer, futurist, and funder of Infinite Energy magazine: "It seems very promising to me that nuclear reactions may occur at room temperatures. I'm quite convinced there's something in this."
Statements like these prompt an obvious question: If nuclear fusion can be demonstrated in anyone's basement workshop for a few thousand dollars, and could revolutionize society - why haven't we heard about it?
We have. On March 23, 1989, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announced their discovery of "cold fusion." It was the most heavily hyped science story of the decade, but the awed excitement quickly evaporated amid accusations of fraud and incompetence. When it was over, Pons and Fleischmann were humiliated by the scientific establishment; their reputations ruined, they fled from their laboratory and dropped out of sight. "Cold fusion" and "hoax" became synonymous in most people's minds, and today, everyone knows that the idea has been discredited.
Or has it? In fact, despite the scandal, laboratories in at least eight countries are still spending millions on cold fusion research. During the past nine years this work has yielded a huge body of evidence, while remaining virtually unknown - because most academic journals adamantly refuse to publish papers on it. At most, the story of cold fusion represents a colossal conspiracy of denial. At least, it is one of the strangest untold stories in 20th-century science.
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