Category: Commentary
On May 8, 1989, the Electrochemical Society held their spring meeting in Los Angeles amid the frenzied controversy of the cold fusion announcement, and declared it F-Day!
This was on the heels of the 1989 American Physical Society meeting that began May 1 in Baltimore, where disgruntled physicists who failed to replicate the findings gathered together to congratulate each other for saving science from amateurs. After all, they knew nuclear theory, and chemists did not. Some of the biggest insults hurled by the mainstream physicists came from scientists with the MIT Plasma Fusion Laboratory and Caltech.
Electrochemist Nathan Lewis was from Caltech and claimed to have seen no effect. As it turned out, his experiment was woefully marred. [See Examples of Isoperibolic Calorimetry in the Cold Fusion Controversy by Melvin H. Miles J. Condensed Matter Nucl. Sci. 13 (2014) 392–400] Still, Dr. Lewis showed solidarity with physicists by claiming "that their device "violates the first law of thermodynamics," that is, the conservation of energy or, as is often said, "the universe offers no free lunch".
That's how Eugene Mallove tells it in his Pulitzer Prize-nominated book Fire from Ice Searching for the Truth Behind the Cold Fusion Furor.
I've seen Youtube video of him frothing at the mouth while angrily asserting that Drs. Fleischmann and Pons had not "stirred their cells" properly.
Physicist Steve Koonin, a colleague of Nathan Lewis's at Caltech, as well as future BP Oil exec and Department of Energy Secretary, said, "If fusion were taking place, we would see radiation in one form or another, and you would simply not be able to hide that radiation."
Of course, this is what makes cold fusion/LENR so attractive. Not only do we get fusion-sized energy from tiny table-top cells that use a fuel of water, the heat energy is derived from a new type of reaction that generates no deadly radiation, as well as no CO2! Oh, Steve.
Eugene Mallove writes in his book Fire From Ice:
"…that Dr. Koonin also told New York Times reporter Malcolm Browne at the time of the meeting, "It's all very well to theorize about how cold fusion in a palladium cathode might take place … one could also theorize about how pigs would behave if they had wings. But pigs don't have wings." "
Nathan Lewis (L), Steve Koonin (Middle), and Charles Barnes (R) of Caltech. Usurping the scientific process, and believing a 100-year-old theory over the experimental facts, these three men helped to close down research on what could have been clean fusion energy technology. Photo: Interview with Charles Barnes Caltech Oral Histories
Dr. Steve Koonin further disgraced himself for all historical time by saying "My conclusion is that the experiments are just wrong and that we are suffering from the incompetence and delusion of Doctors Pons and Fleischmann."
While the Baltimore meeting allowed physicists to vent their failures with misery as company, the lowest point for the American Physical Society was reached when Dr. Steve Jones from Brigham-Young University led a panel at a news conference. Steve Jones, of course, the very reason why the March 23, 1989 news conference was held in the first place.
It was after five years of research that Drs. Fleischmann and Pons decided to get funding for their experiments. The US Department of Energy gave their proposal to Dr. Steve Jones for review. Dr. Jones had been previously working on a different kind of muon-catalyzed fusion, but had given it up for lack of results. (He claimed to get neutrons, though no one has ever reproduced his results.)
When Jones saw what the pair from University of Utah were up to, he was excited enough to jump back in, and he contacted Drs. Fleischmann and Pons – not a normal procedure in the application process – to invite them down for a visit to see his neutron detector. In the end of February 1989, while they visited, Steve Jones told Drs. Fleischmann and Pons that he would be announcing his own form of "cold fusion" in May, but, if they wanted to publish papers at the same time, he would be willing to do that.
Huh? Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons wanted nothing more than to get their funding and keep working, but upon arriving back at the University of Utah, administrators and lawyers were fearful of losing the "first place" of announcing this new kind of energy-producing experiment. The two electrochemists were prodded into making the news conference announcement anyway, beating Jones' own announcement.
At the Baltimore meeting of physicists, Dr. Jones, perhaps still sore from being one-upped on his one-up, made poor scientific judgement by polling with a show of hands in order to determine whether cold fusion was dead, as documented by Steven Krivit on his website.
Eugene Mallove wrote in Fire From Ice:
Finally, "science by press conference" occurred again, degenerating even further into "science by poll." At a news conference on the second day of the Baltimore cold fusion fest, Steve Jones asked for an impromptu "straw poll." He asked nine of the session's leading speakers whether they were at least 95 percent confident that the University of Utah claim to have generated heat by fusion could be ruled out. Eight answered "yes" and one, Rafelski, Jones's colleague, wisely withheld judgment. Rafelski commented, "This should not be taken as the matter is settled." However, Yale physicist Moshe Gai said of his group's work, "Our results exclude without any doubt the Pons and Fleischmann results." The panel voted more favorably on whether the claim that neutrons were being seen in a number of cold fusion experiments could be ruled out—three of nine kept an open mind."
May 2, 1989 Physicist Steve Jones takes a vote on whether or cold fusion is "dead". Photo: New Energy Times if you can't tell.
To have the top physicists in the country ridiculing the scientific process with such ugly outrage showed weak stature in scientific thinking, but these physicists were successful in having the tide turn against Drs. Fleischmann and Pons' work. Their excess heat effects were now completely suspect.
Thus, when the May 8 meeting of the Electrochemical Society began, electrochemist Dr. Nathan Lewis of Caltech was confident in his superior knowledge. Nevertheless, there were 1600 attendees who were less assured.
From Fire and Ice, we get a list of positive results being reported from very competent and open-minded scientists. Eugene Mallove writes:
Everyone was awaiting May 8, when at the special cold fusion session of the Electrochemical Society spring meeting in Los Angeles, Fleischmann and Pons were supposed to present a "thorough, clean analysis" of the thermal aspects of their experiment. Pons told Jacobsen- Wells of the Deseret News, "We are going to supply all the information that we can. People evidently are misunderstanding a lot about calorimetry. A lot of people are making calorimetric measurements with instruments that may not be suitable for these experiments."
The meeting began with controversy over the relative absence of critical scientists; had it been arranged to be a celebration of only positive results? Lewis of Caltech was present at least as a token skeptic. As he had done in Baltimore, he proclaimed his numerous permutations and combinations of materials and conditions, all of which had failed to show excess power or nuclear products. "I'd be happy to say this is fusion as soon as somebody shows that it is," a self-assured Lewis told the 1,600 assembled. Fleischmann and Pons were having no trouble. Now they were claiming to get bursts of heat lasting a few days up to 50 times the power input to their cell—the claim was even more extreme than before! Was this a tip-off that they were really onto something, or that they had completely gone off the deep end? To rebut Lewis, they showed a brief film clip of a bubbling cell in which they had injected red dye. Within 20 seconds the dye had spread uniformly through the cell, intuitively giving the lie to Lewis's accusation about improper stirring.
Concerning their neutron results, Fleischmann and Pons backed off a bit, acknowledging reluctantly that their measurements were deficient and were the "least satisfactory" part of their research. They said that they would rerun their experiment with a new detector. More disturbing was their withholding of the long-awaited and promised 4He measurements. There was an emerging feeling (not necessarily a correct one) that if there were no copious neutrons, there had to be helium-4 to make the claim for a nuclear process. The Fleischmann-Pons rods were being analyzed for helium by Johnson-Matthey Corporation, the 170-year-old British precious metals supplier, under an agreement of exclusivity with the company. This was the presumed reason for the turning down of many other offers to do the rod "autopsy." Fleischmann had admitted at the meeting that if no helium were to turn up, "it would eliminate a very strong part of our understanding of the experiment."
Bockris from Texas A&M, Huggins from Stanford, and Uziel Landau from Case Western all backed up the Utah duo with positive heat measurements. At a press conference Huggins said, "… It's fair to say that something very unusual and large is happening. There is conclusive evidence there is a lot of heat generated here—much larger than the proposed chemical reactions that people suggest might be happening." A thinly veiled criticism of physicists by a Society official, Dr. Bruce Deal, drew applause: "Unlike other societies, we do not attempt to solve complex technical problems by a show of hands." But not every electrochemist left the meeting convinced. The experiments were subtle, apparently difficult to reproduce consistently, and of course totally unexplained. Steve Jones again reiterated his faith in his neutrons and disbelief on the question of heat—at least in cold fusion cells. Cold fusion might still be partly responsible, he thought, for the hellish conditions inside the planet.
Soon cold fusion would face increasingly acid opposition. Martin Deutsch, professor of physics emeritus at MIT had told Science News, "In one word, it's garbage." (Science News, Vol. 135, May 6, 1989.) Some media had essentially written it off. Scientists who had genuinely tried to make cold fusion happen, but who for reasons still not clear could not coax their cells into working, would be joining the ranks of the opposition. They were frustrated and mad. They had wasted precious research time chasing rainbows. Enough was enough! Time to move on.
But those who believed in the tantalizing results of some experiments would not be stilled. Others who were bold enough to theorize about fantastic mechanisms to explain cold fusion did not give up either. They persevered, egged on by the serious critics.
If people were having trouble finding neutrons, perhaps the mysterious "cold fusion" was a kind of nuclear reaction that was largely neutronless—as the MIT analysis seemed to suggest. As skeptic Petrasso himself would say in January 1990 at a lecture at the PFC, "We may turn out to be the big allies of Fleischmann and Pons if they can now prove that they have fusion, because what we've demonstrated now is that they basically didn't have any neutrons at all coming from their heat-producing cell….So now they can claim that they are having neutronless heat generation." If this turns out to be true, a mind-boggling technological revolution may be in store for us.
The cover of Time magazine on May 8, 1989. Fusion or Illusion? Two obscure chemists stir up a fascinating controversy in the lab, but new tests challenge their hopes of creating limitless energy By Michael D. Lemonick.
So it was that cold fusion became the "pariah science" despite so many positive results, and the Electrochemical Society proclaimed May 8 to be F-day. While I imagine that means Fusion Day, one could fill in F-day with other words, for though the ugly attitudes have stopped spraying spittle as they emote, the lasting effects of these lost years have yet to be measured.
What would have been different if these physicists had only kept to their scientific oath, to follow a method "consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.
Lucky for us, Caltech, MIT, the Department of Energy, the USPTO – it's a long list – were not able to stop the research. Today, we are nearing commercially-available technology using condensed matter nuclear science, the field which Drs. Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons discovered. It's 30-years late, but after rolling that long, we can expect an avalanche of announcements that will flip the narrative of failure that mainstream physicists have perpetrated. The failure is their own.
These men who de-railed our future should apologize to Dr. Martin Fleischmann (posthumously) and Dr. Stanley Pons (still underground), and us. The best way would be to urge their colleagues at the current Department of Energy to recognize CMNS science and start funding science research so we can get a technology fast. Or, we can just let them fade away, on the wrong side of history forever.
Get Eugene Mallove's Fire From Ice from the New Energy Foundation online store here!
The 22 International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science on September 8-13, 2019. Registration now open!
LENR-forum has a poll on the "best LENR science news" of 2018 which you can vote on here.
Cold Fusion Now! voted, and here, we share our perceived top achievements in slightly different distinct categories of science, engineering, and news, for the "2018 I'M HOT!" award. We say "perceived" as the CMNS field is wrought with secrecy as advances are made in labs cluttered with NDAs. Programs have developed around the globe, and there is more LENR activity than ever, but little hard news about results or funding.
We give a nod to those who have published and revealed publicly what they have achieved in 2018 in regards to Science, Engineering and News.
"Science" refers to research focused on determining the basic parameters of a LENR experiment.
"Engineering" refers to developments concentrated on producing excess heat expressly for commercial purposes.
"News" refers to announcements or stories that have the potential to provide science or engineering results in the future.
BEST SCIENCE Clean Planet-Tohoku-et al.
The collaborations between academia and industry in Japan have been producing results that have brought LENR into the mainstream of science through the actual facts of Reproduction. A two-year collaboration between Clean Planet Inc, Technova, and Tohoku University, and a host of other universities on the island, on excess heat experiments using similar cells and the same cathode materials, have produced results with similar output profiles. A willingness to publish these increasingly "hotter" results, and the scope of the cooperation, puts this group of researchers in the top spot for 2018 I'm Hot! Science Award.
BEST ENGINEERING Brillouin Energy Corporation
There are few labs whose sole purpose is to engineer a commercial product, but only one that has followed the prescribed steps of evaluation by a recognized independent lab with public distribution of the technical reports, and that is Brillouin Energy Corporation. The verification of the Brillouin Hot Tube by SRI International was confirmed by two seperate technical reports, the one this year announcing a doubling of the thermal output over the previous report. Their ability to swap out reactor cores and obtain the same outcomes is the result of a focus on engineering cores to specifications that have recently bumped thermal excess to 50 Watts, equating to twice the heat input. Doing the hard work in the full view of their investors, and laying bare the results for the public, puts this group of engineers in the top spot for 2018 I'm Hot! Engineering Award.
BEST NEW STORY GEC-NASA GRC Agreement
This year Global Energy Corporation and NASA Glenn Research Center entered into an agreement to develop a 10kW Genie power generator based on the previously patented hybrid fusion-fission reactor which uses LENR-generated neutrons to activate fissionable material – "a natural abundance uranium deuteride fuel element", eliminating the need for plutonium. While NASA has dabbled in LENR off-and-on since the 1990s, this agreement for development is a new level of cooperation that brings the US agency together with a private corporation long involved in LENR research. If they are successful, the reactor would provide a cleaner alternative to conventional fission, making another useful application of the LENR reaction. For this announcement, we give GEC-NASA the 2018 I'm Hot! News Award.
2019 will mark 30-years of research in the field that Drs. Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons discovered in 1989. As labs build upon hard-won successes incrementally, we are approaching the point where replication is the norm, and results are repeatable.
It's anyone's guess when mainstream science will turn attention towards this solution to our energy problems. However, the knowledge and skills built up the CMNS community are indispensable to bringing this science to a technology, and the increasing collaboration between LENR scientists and mainstream institutions shows resources in CMNS being drafted for that experience.
2018 shows how productive that cooperation can be.
Take your vote on the Best of 2018 at the LENR-forum poll here.
Posted on September 6, 2015 September 6, 2015
Davids vs. Goliath In A Race to Replace Hydrocarbons With Nuclear Fusion As The World's Dominant Energy Source
Davids vs. Goliath
In A Race to Replace Hydrocarbons With Nuclear Fusion As The World's Dominant Energy Source [.pdf]
by Douglas A. Pinnow, Ph.D.
There is only so much oil, coal, and natural gas remaining to supply the energy needs for humanity. What to do when it runs out? And perhaps more relevant: What should be done if a disruptive alternative energy source takes everyone, including the entrenched hydrocarbon industries, by surprise?
It's unlikely that nuclear fission will become the replacement energy source of choice with the negative legacy of Chernobyl, Three-Mile Island, and Fukushima along with a limited supply of uranium that many view as analogous to limited oil supplies. Perhaps renewable energy sources like wind and solar will evolve to fill the gap when oil runs out. But, these are still "fair weather" sources because the energy that they produce cannot yet be economically stored on the vast scale required to supply the needs of the entire civilized world after dark and on windless days.
The another possibility on the horizon is fusion energy that might be produced by taming the power of the sun and by using plentiful fuel available from the seas – specifically, an isotope of hydrogen, known as deuterium, which can be extracted from normal water. However, recreating the sun in a box on earth has proven to be very problematic. This article is to report on a rather exciting race to be the first to commercialize the fusion energy alternative. The race participants include a well-funded but slow moving international consortium, the Goliath, and a number of nimble companies, the Davids, which are financed primarily by venture capital.
While fusion energy is not a hot daily topic for the publishing and broadcast media, it is, nevertheless, impressive that the world's most expensive machine (presently projected to cost $16 billion) is currently being built in Cadarache, France to advance the prospects for fusion energy. This machine is called the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) and, as can be seen in Figure 1, it is really big – the Goliath of the fusion energy research efforts
Figure 1. Construction site for the $16 billion ITER located in Cadarache, France (near Monaco) that is sponsored by seven participants; the European Union, India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea, and the United States. The circular structure in the center-right is the footing for a 500 Megawatt hot fusion plasma reactor that is projected to become operational around 2027.
This massive project was launched as a Reagan-Gorbachev initiative in 1985 to consolidate the efforts being conducted by thousands of scientists around the globe to harness fusion energy using extremely hot gas plasmas contained in a large donut shaped reactor vessel. The temperatures in the plasma must reach approximately 100 million degrees Centigrade to duplicate the fusion reactions in the sun. This is so hot that it would melt all known materials. So, the strategy is to contain the plasma inside of an intense magnetic field that is suspended in free space within the donut.
The "E" in the ITER name clearly establishes this machine as an Experimental project. Its goal is limited – to sustain a fusion reaction for only eight minutes! If successful, there will still be years, if not decades of research required to perfect a viable power producing machine. To put this all into perspective, the French Nobel laureate in physics Pierre-Gilles de Gennes said of nuclear fusion, "We say that we will put the sun into a box. The idea is pretty. The problem is, we don't know how to make the box."
If this Goliath were the only contender in the race to replace hydrocarbons as the world's preferred energy source, the race would, indeed, be a slow-motion event that might work to the benefit of established global energy and financial interests. No one would be concerned about the Goliath introducing a disruptive technology with an early and unexpected success.
But, things changed in 1989 when two chemistry professors at the University of Utah, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, held a press conference and announced to the world that they had succeeded in producing useful fusion energy inside of an inexpensive glass jar in their laboratory. The jar contained a rod of palladium metal with a surrounding platinum wire and both were immersed in heavy water (deuterium oxide, D2O). The palladium rod was connected to the negative terminal of a 12 Volt car battery and the platinum wire was connected to the positive terminal. It was reported that this simple set-up produced four times more energy than the electrical input from the car battery for sufficiently long periods that the only viable explanation could be a nuclear reaction.
Not surprisingly, such a potentially transformative and disruptive technology was attacked very hard from many quarters, including established energy and banking interests, and many scientists who were convinced that their hot plasma fusion approach (that is well funded by government agencies) is the only scientifically viable approach. The press dubbed the work of Professors Pons and Fleischmann "cold fusion", and within a relatively short period of time (1992) a book was published by one of the most vocal opponents, John Huizenga, titled Cold Fusion: The Scientific Fiasco of the Century. He persuasively attacked cold fusion on the basis that Pons and Fleischmann's work was difficult to reproduce and it didn't result in the harmful radiation from energetic neutrons that was expected based on known results from hot plasma fusion reactions.
By the way, elimination of harmful radiation would be a wonderful result if it could be achieved. But, character assassination by discrediting those who reported positive results was a stronger factor during the early years after the press conference announcing cold fusion. A good example to convey the flavor of those times can be gleaned from the title of an article that appeared in the April 15, 1992 issue of the Wall Street Journal, "Physicist to Report Cold Fusion Findings from Japan at MIT's Bastion of Skeptics". The Japanese visitor, Professor Takahashi, was not well received but he stuck to his guns saying "I will say what I observed, …That is the only thing I can do."
Discrediting of cold fusion was so thorough during those early days that even the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office announced that no patents would be granted to inventions in the field of cold fusion because it was too speculative. Cold fusion was relegated to the same category as a "perpetual motion machine" that everyone knows is nonsense.
As a consequence, legitimate scientists who might otherwise have been interested in conducting research in cold fusion realized that they would likely lose their government support, become ostracized by their colleagues, and not even be able to benefit by the grant of a patent if they did make a breakthrough.
But, in spite of all of this, work in cold fusion continued around the world for the past 26 years by a small group of dedicated scientists – and convincing progress has been made. So convincing, in fact, that politicians in Washington are actively in process of ditching the name "cold fusion" because it has been so thoroughly discredited. Now, it is more acceptable to call the technology by a new name 'Low Energy Nuclear Reaction' or just LENR. Apparently, it is no longer important to Washington's elite if the reaction is cold, tepid, or warm.
In 2009, an unclassified assessment was made by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency in their report DIA-08-0911-003. Quoting from this report:
Although much skepticism remains, LENR programs are receiving increased support worldwide, including state sponsorship and funding from major corporations. DIA assesses that Japan and Italy are leaders in the field, although Russia, China, Israel, and India are devoting significant resources to this work in the hope of finding a new clean energy source. Scientists worldwide have been reporting anomalous excess heat production [for years], as well as evidence of nuclear particles and transmutations.
The dedicated scientists who did brave the stigma of the 'cold fusion' name and related consequences proudly held their 19th International Conference on Cold Fusion (19-ICCF) in Padua, Italy in mid-April, 2015. And they plan to meet again next year in Sendai, Japan. Figure 2 is a photo of some of the attendees in the main conference hall. Take a close look at this picture and see if it appears to be a group of individuals gathered to advance the "nonsense" that the patent office has branded their science.
Figure 2. Photograph of some of the attendees at the 19th International Conference on Cold Fusion (ICCF) held April 13-17, 2015 in Padua, Italy.
Perhaps, the most intriguing aspect of the cold fusion (LENR) work is that there appears to be a number of different processes involved in a growing number of reported successful experiments. However, there is not yet an accepted theory that encompasses this work. Nevertheless, young companies are emerging with names like Brillouin Energy Corp. and Industrial Heat that are receiving venture capital support with hopes of becoming the 'Davids' who might slay the 'hot fusion Goliath' in spite of the U.S. Patent Office's continued reluctance to grant cold fusion patents.
It's too early to tell if the Davids will win or even survive. It is also too early to tell if the name change to LENR will work any magic at the patent office. But pressure is building there. A 'cold fusion' patent titled FLUID HEATER was actually issued to Andre Rossi (U.S. 9,115,913) on August 25, 2015 using the subterfuge of totally avoiding the use of the words 'fusion' and 'isotope' that might otherwise raise a red flag leading to rejection. And a patent application (U.S. 14/696423) titled SPONTANEOUS ALPHA PARTICLE EMITTING METAL ALLOYS AND METHOD FOR REACTION OF DEUTERIDES was filed earlier this year by the present author who is a patent agent as well as a Ph.D. physicist. This patent application addresses the reluctance of the patent office to grant cold fusion patents head-on by making a solid case for granting patents on the basis of advancing the state-of-the-art in this field even if an application does not disclose a fully working apparatus.*
And now, eager young students at MIT can take an introductory course in Cold Fusion presented by highly respected faculty members. The chemistry and physics are intriguing, but the secrets of the sun have not yet been fully revealed. So, the big question is will LENR become that disruptive and transforming fusion energy technology or just remain the 'fiasco of the century'? I believe that it will be big – but stay tuned.
* PERSPECTIVE [Extracted from patent application U.S. 14/696,423]
The inventor is well aware that the subject matter in a patent application must be 'useful' and satisfy the requirement of utility. Further, as stated by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, "the term 'useful' in this connection refers to the condition that the subject matter has a useful purpose and also includes operativeness, that is, a machine which will not operate to perform the intended purpose would not be called useful, and therefor would not be granted a patent".
In this regard, the inventor makes no claim that the subject matter in this patent application will solve or mitigate the present or future energy problems facing humanity. Nor does the inventor represent that the subject matter in this patent application can be used to produce any commercially useful amounts of energy. Rather, the subject matter is "useful" for two reasons, (1) it would be generally agreed by persons of normal skill in nuclear arts and also based on the teachings of conventional physics that purposely triggering a LENR by employing the subject matter in this patent application would enhance the reaction rate (thereby making the subject matter operative) – even though the magnitude of the enhancement is not presently known, and (2) the subject matter is expected to contribute to a better understanding of the LENR process that will likely continue to be explored by researchers throughout the world for years to come. In this regard, the availability and use of spontaneous alpha particle emitting metal alloys, encouraged by this invention, should be useful in advancing the understanding of LENRs and may also lead to possible future commercial applications. These factors are considered to be more than sufficient to satisfy the criteria of utility.
—Douglas A. Pinnow, Ph.D. Contact
ICCF-19 start of "new cycle"
The 19th International Conference on Cold Fusion has closed and attendees are arriving back home.
"There were many high points," said Michael McKubre, who spoke at the conference on Cold Fusion for CMNS Present and Projected Future Status.
Steve Katinsky, one of the leaders in the formation of the new LENR Industry Association said, "I would describe an undercurrent of anticipation."
"Though this is only my third ICCF conference, something intangible was different in Padua," Katinsky said. "While it is hard to know for sure, perhaps it is the precursor to a tipping point, and a subsequent acceleration of resources and activities in the field."
Michael McKubre wrote a history of the ICCF conferences for the event, now archived on ICCF19 website. "I wrote the conference histories in groups of three for practical reasons, but these blocks do cycle progressively in tone. ICCF19 was the start of a new cycle and definitely felt that way."
"I keep fairly abreast of technical progress, so for me the positive results of all conferences, except the first few, have mostly been the aspects of interpersonal bonding and team building. For this conference, with many newcomers, a major benefit was the possibility to get to know members of the next generation," he said.
Technical talks paired with policy-making
David J. Nagel speaking at the 2014 CF/LANR Colloquium
"Scientists are generally interested in the practical aspects of LENR, and entrepreneurs want to understand the science," said David Nagel, formerly of the Naval Research Lab and currently a professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. who spoke on High Power Density Events in Lattice-Enabled LENR Experiments and Generators.
He found the talks on "materials from Coolescence, SKINR and ENEA to be very good. Much progress has been made on understanding experimental procedures to achieve high loading of deuterons into Pd," he said.
The detailed schedule is posted here.
Katinsky agreed, "The talks and posters overall were very good."
"Mitchell Swartz's work that Peter Hagelstein presented in Padua always captures my imagination. David Kidwell in his Q&A talked about having too much He4, and I would like to hear more about that, and I was intrigued by Mark Davidson's presentation."
Dr. Mitchell Swartz, JET Energy and Steve Katinsky, LENRIA at ICCF-18 Banquet 2013
"For me, in addition to a great range of scientific reports, were the talks of Tom Darden and Mike McKubre."
Katinsky said, "There was both formal presentations and posters, and informal conversations and socializing; that together made for a very rewarding conference experience."
LENR Industry Association is forming
Conversations with Steve Katinsky about the new LENR Industrial Association (LENRIA) were both very productive and pleasant," Nagel said. "We get a lot done when we can talk."
Katinsky added, "We had many requests for slides and information on membership, for when it opens. While commercial activity is nascent, this is the right time to get started."
Asked how they will move forward from here, Katinsky replied, "We are close to having our initial web site up, where people and companies can register to be notified when membership opens. Also, many of the materials we have developed in support of forming the association shall be available there. Next, our efforts shall turn to seeking contributions to help with costs, and to developing our membership and some initial services."
"Our formation of LENRIA might be somewhat early," said Nagel, "but that, if so, is wrong in the right direction."
Biggest crowd yet
A relatively large number of people attended, although the final count is now available yet.
Nagel said, "I also had a good conversation with Lowell Wood, an old friend from Livermore, who has followed this field for many years."
Dr. Vittorio Violante and Dr. Michael McKubre both presented at European Parliament ITRE meeting.
Lowell Wood attended ENEA Labs with Bill Gates and entourage when they were educated on the latest science by Vittorio Violante.
Katinsky liked "having the opportunity to get to know better the journalist Mats Lewan, Mike Nelson from NASA, Robert Godes of Brillouin Energy Corporation, David Kidwell of NRL and Mel Miles.
"The Great Hall was exquisite and the Orchestral start was sublime," said McKubre.
However, the large room lacked intimacy.
"There was large attendance in an even larger hall that diminished speaker – audience connection. Overall there was a conspicuous absence of in-depth discussion and the configuration and acoustics were not particular;y conducive."
"A lot of original attendees were prevented from attending by age or worse, and a lot of new faces were present. Obviously the presence of many new faces is only good but it meant that many old questions needed to be asked and answered again."
Open Power collaborated with MFMP in Parkhomov Padua
One group had wanted to present their work to the community, but were not able to be scheduled in the program.
Luciano Saporito of the Open Power Association said, "We are ready to talk about our work everywhere we will have invitation: but our patent speaks for itself…"
"We are engaged in experiments," said Ugo Abundo, a lead researcher at Open Power.
The Hydrobetatron at Open Power Lab
"A fundamental point of our Patent Application filed on March 10, 2015 (the importance of lithium) is enjoying numerous confirmations in the recent period, with the reports about E-cat to the replications of Parkomov, and so on, as cited in our short article (http://www.hydrobetatron.org/files/01_Lithium-fusion-since-1932-and-the-role-of-Li-in-the-LENR_ers2dr96.pdf).
Nevertheless, Open Power participated.
"In perfect style of Open collaboration, we contributed along with MFMP during a Parkomov replication at Padua during the Conference."
"As Bob Greenyer said: 'We would very much like to work together with you again. I was VERY impressed with the willingness to help in Italy in general.'"
The results of the conference remain to be seen, but participants are going home with a big to-do list.
"From here it is a short step to victory," says McKubre. "Resources are entering the field. If we can find some commonality of action to ensure that the sum is greater than the parts then we will all win. I am highly encouraged."
"One of the highlights of ICCF19 definitely was ICCF20. With the next continental rotation returning to Asia (and Oceania) it was surprising and unprecedented that four countries were seriously interested in hosting the next conference: China, Japan, India, Russia."
"The IAC was faced with the happy need to make the diplomatic decision to hold the primary conference at Tohoku University in Sendai, on the East Coast of Japan, with a satellite meeting follow on meeting at Xiamen University on the East Coast of China."
Live Long and Prosper – Cold Fusion Now!
Title graphic: Cold Fusion Then – Cold Fusion Now!.
It was twenty-six years ago today that the world learned of a new form of energy that promised a green technological future for all life on Earth.
Twenty-six years later, we can't yet buy a reactor in Home Depot, but prototypes are multiplying in independent labs.
We don't yet have university labs training a new generation of scientists, but young entrepreneurs are self-organizing around open-science principles.
The ground is formed, and a figure emerging. A critical mass of awareness has occurred.
Could a man like Bill Gates ignore what he was told one day last fall?
And where would the most powerful man in the world go to get the real deal on the scientific question of our time?
The Department of Energy? Oh do not be cruel.
Dr. Robert Duncan at ICCF-18.
Dr. Robert Duncan, former Vice Chancellor of Research at University of Missouri, was key in creating the Sidney Kimmel Institute of Nuclear Renaissance (SKINR), now directed by Dr. Graham Hubler, formerly of Naval Research Lab.
Watch Graham Hubler's SKINR Overview from ICCF-18.
Slide from Graham Hubler's SKINR Overview at ICCF-18
Now Dr. Duncan is at Texas Tech University as Senior Vice President for Research, where he is Founder and Director for the Center for Emerging Energy Sciences (CEES). From the Texas Tech University Board of Regents Agenda Book for the meeting December 11-12, 2014 [.pdf], CEES will study the Anomalous Heat Effect (AHE), one of the many names for cold fusion that emphasizes the mysterious and as-yet-unknown reaction that creates fusion-sized heat from small, table-top reactors.
According to Texas Tech, total research expenditures topped $140 million in 2012. What portion will go to CEES? Even 1% would be a welcome change, but not enough to do what CEES wants: to discover the nature of the reaction, and engineer a technology.
They will partner with ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development and contract with a scientist "soon to retire" from SRI International. These two institutions are experienced in the field of condensed matter nuclear science, publishing major results over twenty-six years of research.
Dr. Vittorio Violante of ENEA at ICCF-18
Director of Energy Research at SRI International is Dr. Michael McKubre, whose lab dream team has reproduced results such as the correlation of excess heat from cells that use a fuel of deuterium with the amount of helium produced. ENEA's early experiments probed the properties of materials. Led by Dr. Vittorio Violante, the lab has worked the SRI regularly for the past two-and-a-half decades to produce unique metallic hydrides used in the numerous ground-breaking experiments. He briefed Bill Gates and friends last November.
The complete service environment for a new energy technology is now in place. We have the metal, we have the water, and we have a desperately broken global economy ready for re-tooling.
Alliances are forming. How will the LENR community respond?
Cold fusion scientists, so used to being ignored, now expect to be ignored. They are as ill-prepared today for the onslaught of attention as Drs. Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons were twenty-six years ago when the two quiet researchers emerged from their basement lab to tell what they had found, and were crushed by the satellite environment invading their every beaker.
Since then, the International Society for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science should have had CNN covering their conferences, but most of the time, they had NO ONE. When someone was there, it wasn't Anderson Cooper, it was Infinite Energy Magazine, and sometimes, those scalawags from Cold Fusion Now.
When the Gates Foundation does makes their move (and how could they not?), will the second tier of capitalists start jumping in? Will CNBC start sending professional crews for sit-downs with real video equipment – and lights?! You betcha!
And where will the press go to for clear information? How do you start to investigate a story that has been hiding in plain sight for two-and-a-half-decades?
Well, er, I am available as of this morning to design and manage any public relations campaign, so please do call.
UPDATE on Cold Fusion Now Actions
I have little time to blog anymore.
The poor Cold Fusion Now website is neglected and in disarray. (Wanna help re-design? Email me!)
My activity hasn't stopped…
Last fall, I was on our local TV news surreptitiously holding two cold fusion books, Developments in Electrochemistry Science Inspired by Martin Fleischmann and The Explanation of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction, as I talked about the upcoming Science Night at our community college.
More recently, our little town's tribute to Leonard Nimoy, simply called Spock Day, brought the news cameras out, and they caught a little promo I always bring with me. Notice the Cold Fusion Now sticker in the corner?! How about the new Hydrogen coasters on the bar? Check out these photos snapped off the TV:
Geek girl Ruby Carat, KIEM News Steve King, and Astronomer John Pedicino.
KIEM-TV's Brad Curtis photographed on TV with partial CFN sticker
Hydrogen atom coasters on the bar at Spock Day courtesy Cold Fusion Now!
Spock and CFN on TV together!
All lots of fun, but is it really making a difference?
While cartoons of hydrogen atoms, and running around leaving coasters on bars may seem like a joke to the serious-minded, (and I've gotten the "disgruntled" mail to prove it!) I believe that every act of advocacy is worthwhile, and has the potential to change one life, or a billion lives.
Any moment, a teaching moment!
In a recent algebra class, I was demonstrating properties of polynomial functions. I brought up Making Sense of Alumina Spectral Emissivity, a new paper by Bob Higgins on his deep-dive into the thermal imaging of the nickel-hydrogen "dog-bone" reactors. It is an excellent introductory article to the sticky issues in thermal measurement. In the paper is the equation for radiant power emitted from a blackbody as proportional to the temperature of the body to the fourth power, M = εσ T4.
As I started to talk about how coefficients scale a function, and in particular how the emissivity effects the radiant power in this equation, several students brought up Andrea Rossi and the E-Cat – more than ever before! I was able to answer some questions, putting people on the path to reason, instead of reaction. Who knows what that will be inspired in the minds of creative youth?
Dr. Melvin Miles at SPAWAR
New movie finished; waiting for release!
Even more fun was the trip to San Diego this past January to interview Navy scientists on their work in cold fusion research.
Altogether, I filmed a total of five hours video interviews with Dr. Stanislaw Szpak, Dr. Frank Gordon, both from the SPAWAR lab, and Dr. Melvin Miles, from the China Lake Research lab. I have finished editing a first movie from those interviews, and I've already started on a second.
It's important to have these scientists who've worked so long alone to tell their own story. Cold fusion has a complicated history, with a complicated science, and complicated people. As it moves to the mainstream, and information begins to dissipate through the feeds, a need for simplicity will distort the truth of the real events as they happened.
If the people who lived it don't tell their story, someone else will. The LENR community must shape the story of what happened when one of the greatest discoveries of all time was kept from the world. It is important for the integrity of those who suffered the consequences; the intrepid researchers must be recognized, and the rest of us deserve a clean-energy future.
Hep the elite to what's going down!
Dr. Melvin Miles visiting Caltech January 2015.
I had picked up Dr. Miles for the trip to San Diego, and on the way back, we stopped in Pasadena, California at the campus of Caltech for a little advocacy. Dr. Miles and I dropped off copies of the chapter on cold fusion from Developments in Electrochemistry Science Inspired by Martin Fleischmann to a few key Caltech faculty. Written by Dr. Miles and Dr. Michael McKubre of SRI International, the chapters were distributed in mailboxes to such luminaries as David Goodstein and Nate Lewis. We were able to hand one personally to Dr. Harry Gray, an eminent researcher who Miles had met years ago at another college.
Walking into Dr. Gray's office, he was open to meeting us, and surprised at the activity in the LENR field. He remarked, "I've got a lot of catching up to do."
Postcard for LENR book on Caltech bulletin board.
I also put Cold Fusion Now stickers and postcards for Dr. Edmund Storms' The Explanation of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction on lots of Caltech bulletin boards, knowing many students will see them, and not be as closed-minded as their professors.
Rocket scientists always get the latest
Postcards, stickers, and magnets were left at Voyager Airport Restaurant.
Always a stop on my travels, the Mojave Spaceport got another dose of news when I dropped off stickers, postcards, and calendar magnets to Virgin Galactic's office there and the cafe where all the rocket scientists eat lunch.
I left a serious wad of materials on the way down to San Diego (I asked permission, and the gal said "Oh yeah, we're always happy to have more stuff to look at"), and when I came back through a week later, they were all gone, so I laid more down.
The Cold Fusion Now calendar magnet was still on the soda machine. Yah!
Cold Fusion Now calendar magnet sits at Mojave Spaceport soda machine!
Got a ticket for the ride of your life?
We have only to look back at the early publications of Infinite Energy Magazine, started by Eugene Mallove and Jed Rothwell, to see what lies ahead: an explosion of interest, and businesses popping up like clover. I get dizzy thinking about the speed at which this nascent technology will sweep the planet – and I can't wait!
For twenty-six years, the world has been moments away from breakthrough. We don't have to wait much longer. We will have a second chance at designing living arrangements for all the life on our planet – and we can begin now!
All in all, the lack of activity on the Cold Fusion Now website is only because we are taking our activism to a new level. I do want to sincerely apologize to everyone I have not written back this past year. Your messages are important to me, and give me a boost when I really need it. I thank you and am grateful for your support. With two p-t jobs and a mortgage, I haven't been able to respond in a timely manner. I will do better.
There is much more activity going on, but it's still premature to tell the details.
Like, did I ever tell you about the time …
..Aiy yai yai!
LIVE LONG AND PROSPER!
Ruby at Spock Day: "The good of the many outweighs the good of the few!"