Cold Fusion Now

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An ordinary person might wonder why cold fusion is not being explored more vigorously as the ideal energy source it promises to be. Why do public figures avoid discussing the idea and why do uninformed writers occasionally use cold fusion as an example of bad science? Twenty-one years ago when Profs. Fleischmann and Pons (Univ. of Utah) announced the discovery, skeptical attitudes were justified and widespread. The claims were and still are completely at odds with what is known about nuclear reactions. The idea that energy could be produced by fusing two deuterons in what looked like a Mason jar was crazy at the time and still is hard to understand. But now the situation has greatly changed. Hundreds of people in over 12 countries have been investigating the process with growing success. Thousands of papers have been published and are easily available for study at www.LENR.org and evaluated in the book “The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction” available from Amazon.com. Clearly, a new phenomenon has been discovered even though it has not been fully explained nor is easy to produce. Yet, the attitude toward the subject in the popular press and conventional science has hardly changed. Why has a change not occurred especially in view of the growing need for a non-carbon and a non-uranium based energy source? Indeed, the long running reluctance to accept cold fusion in the face of mounting evidence is unique to modern science, which has delayed accepting many new ideas, but never with as much determination.

The claim started with several strikes against it. First and most important, the claim was not easy to replicate. Most efforts, but not all, failed mainly because many people had a very poor understanding of what was required. They also expected the effect would be large and easy to detect once it was produced. Instead, the effect is difficult to produce even today and the results can be ignored as being caused by imagined prosaic processes. Frequently, these imagined processes require as much suspension of rational understanding as skeptics claim is being used to support cold fusion its self. In other words, each side in the debate has to make equally improbable claims, but with the claims made for the effect being supported by a growing collection of experimental evidence. Second, the claim was and is in conflict with what is known about nuclear interaction, causing many high profile scientists to conclude the effect is impossible. Third, if the effect turned out to be real, it would put the hot fusion program out of business. Billions of dollars have been spent on this effort over 60 years in an attempt to cause a similar kind of reaction to that produced by cold fusion, but with disappointing results. The physics professors at major universities funded by this program did not appreciate the possibility their careers might end because of an idea suggested by a couple of chemists.

Gradually, a myth was formed around cold fusion by the skeptics until it became the popular metaphor for bad science done by deluded scientists. Whenever a writer wanted to show how scientists can be deceived, cold fusion was combined with poly-water and n-rays as an example of how someone can be mislead if they are not careful and not skeptical enough, or not as skeptical as the writer. Once such a myth forms in popular journalism, it is very difficult to change, especially when the myth has a benefit to influential groups.

Modern society is filled with such myths, some of which are harmless but some will have devastating consequences if they are not changed. One such myth is that the earth is not getting warmer and that sea level will not rise as ice continues to melt. Efforts to cut back on the generation of CO2, the main cause of warming, are met with the same emotional rejection as is applied to cold fusion. In this respect, the myth of cold fusion and the myth of non-global warming have a lot in common. Rejection of global warming leads to the destruction of civilization while rejection of cold fusion eliminates a possible solution to this disaster.

Sooner or later scientists in some country will discover how to make cold fusion work on a commercial scale. When this happens, the countries that develop this technology will rapidly become richer and more powerful. The cost of energy for manufacturing will go down and processes that are not yet practical under most conditions, such as obtaining fresh water from the sea, will become widely used. These benefits will cause a rapid expansion in the power and influence of the countries using this inexpensive energy source. What about the countries that do not know how to make the effect work? Their scientists will attempt to reverse engineer the power generator, but in this field, such efforts will be difficult without an understanding of how the process works, an understanding that will not be shared by the discovers. Also, highly developed countries will have difficulty removing their present energy infrastructure and substituting this much simpler source. So, the race is on and the potential winners are not obvious. Nevertheless, it is obvious the winner will not be a country that ignores and rejects the reality of cold fusion.

That could be the headline, if you can describe, in 2000 characters or less, why Oprah should interview a cold fusion scientist!

For a limited time, we can fill a form from Oprah.com at
https://www.oprah.com/ownshow/plug_form.html?plug_id=3337311 and request Oprah interview a cold fusion scientist!

From Oprah’s site:

The Oprah Winfrey Show will come to an end in 2011, but before ‘it’s a wrap’, who do you want to see sitting next to Oprah?

We always love hearing from our viewers so now it?s your turn to tell us who YOU want Oprah to interview before the show ends. Maybe it’s someone she’s never talked to? Or maybe it’s your favorite guest you want us to invite back? A famous actor? A musician or a politician? An athlete? International icon? The cast from your favorite movie or TV show? You tell us ? they can be unexpected, notorious, head-turning, tear-jerking, headline-making…we want to know who you’ve always wanted on Oprah. Email us your ideas now!

Oprah is the real President of the planet and the power of the TV landscape is great. Let’s send her the message of cold fusion to propogate. She is Wise, and will not fail to recognize this powerful solution to the energy problems the world faces.

There is huge public support for green energy, but cold fusion has been left out of the discussion. Cold fusion is real, and the public-at-large should recognize this. Getting the words spoken and written by a critical mass will enable public support to accelerate the process of development. We need to get fusion power back into th discussion and Oprah can do it.

Here’s what I sent; character count with spaces 1679. Copy, paste this into Oprah’s box, and edit to your liking:

BEGIN*********************
Hey Oprah!
“Cold fusion” refers to a safe, green energy source with no harmful byproducts and could supply 100% of our energy needs, replacing dirty sources such as oil, gas, and coal forever.
Cold fusion was the name given to the energy effect announced in 1989 by Professors’ Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann. Energies produced were unable to be explained by the conventional electro-chemical processes, but by fusion reactions.
Conventional theories have fusion reactions occur under conditions of extreme heat and pressure, like inside stars. The Pons/Fleischmann effect was produced inside a glass, on a table top, at room temperature.
Controversy erupted when not all scientists could immediately reproduce the power-generating effect, and it was shunned. But some scientists did reproduce it, and have been working on this ever since.
These scientists include, Dr. Edmund Storms, a long-time researcher in nuclear physics and author of The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions; Dr. Michael McKubre of SRI International, and Dr. Robert Duncan, Vice-Chancellor of Research University of Missouri.
Despite their technical background, they’re very communicative and absolutely eloquent when speaking to the public.
There are others who write and publish in the New Energy Times and Infinite Energy. Librarian and translator Jed Rothwell could also survey this promising energy source.
“We’ve reached the end of the beginning”, says Michael McKubre. Now, greater funding is needed to develop technologies useful to people.
This kind of energy could liberate humanity from the need for dirty oil and coal and usher in new world where we don’t have to fight over scarce resources.

END*****************************

This form is easy to fill out.
Activiate all your bodies for a clean energy future.

And to give Oprah the interview of her life, go to https://www.oprah.com/ownshow/plug_form.html?plug_id=3337311

This is a pretty heavy science article referencing cold fusion.

If you’ve got science speak – GO FOR IT!!!

http://froarty.scienceblog.com/32155/relativistic-interpertation-of-casimir-effect-expanded/

A friend of mine recently sent me a link to a talk by Ed Moses from the National Ignition Facility (NIF https://lasers.llnl.gov/) about laser fusion technology entitled “Clean Fusion Power This Decade”. You can download and listen to an mp3 posted on the Long Now site here:
http://www.longnow.org/seminars/02010/jun/16/clean-fusion-power-decade/

In the talk, he describes ignition occurring in the 02010-02012 range, with a prototype reactor ready by the 02020 range and I want to thank Dr. Moses for his work and effort to communicate that research.

I had been a fan of hot fusion technology for years before I knew that cold fusion was real. In 02002 I went to the San Diego fusion facility (https://fusion.gat.com/global/Home) for a teacher training and professional development workshop. I toured the tokamak and met lots of smart and extremely generous people, enthusiastic about a fusion energy future. I wish them, and the NIF, the best of luck in reproducing star-power. It would be a major achievement.

But listening to Ed Moses, and now knowing (since 2003) that cold fusion has the promise to bring a decentralized carbon-free energy source with a simpler technology than large hot fusion reactors, I had to respond more critically. He envisions 9+ billion people populating this planet, concentrated in mega-cities, those cities above a population of 10 million, “because that’s where the jobs are, that’s where culture is, that’s where centers of power are, and by the way, they are more energy efficient.” There are many points to make in response to that scenario, let me make just a few.

Feeding and finding the resources for an additional 4 billion people, the majority of which are concentrated in cities, is quite a challenge even in a future with fusion technology. The carrying capacity of this planet is debatable. But where are we now with planetary resources for six and one-half billion people?

The oceans have been over fished with many species on the brink of collapse. Water resources have been privatized planet-wide and are being rationed. In the last several decades, food production has expanded only because of fossil fuels and the cheap oil available to produce and transport these foods worldwide. The heavy use of pesticides and fertilizers derived from petroleum has reduced topsoil around the globe to “merely a sponge”, a dead layer that has the capacity only to soak up more chemicals.

When Dr. Moses claims that cities are “more efficient”, what does he mean? More efficient than what? It’s not clear how he measures this efficiency. As I understand it, large centralized populations need huge influxes of food shipped in from very long distances. The majority of these shipments come on trucks using petroleum diesel as most mega-cities, that I know of, have no local food production. Many who live in mega-cities have a poor standard of living, with little access to nature.

Many of these large mega-cities of the world have their water transported hundreds of miles, from places that are becoming resentful about sending their water out of their local area. Some mega-cities situated in desert climates have expanded their population by mining water, i.e. tapping into underground water pools left by the recent ice age. These communities will experience a drastic and sudden need for more water when these one-time resources disappear.

I also wonder what kind of jobs are available in the mega-cities of the future? Will there be a second renaissance in advertising and marketing? Are the centers of technological revolution going to be located in these mega-cities? Is that a trend we can identify now? Are technology companies with huge job openings choosing to locate in cities now?

To say “we are in a non-local society” is to miss the dynamic changes occurring right now. We are fast flipping to a local society, where food, water, and energy resources are all farmed, pumped, and created locally. Geo-political forces are emerging that challenge the hegemony of superpowers’ reach abroad.

I just don’t see large cities as apart of our positive future, mostly because of a world population argument. The population explosion is directly related to the oil age. Controlling populations who need food, water, and jobs seems like it would require a police state, a total loss of personal freedom, and plenty of chemical inundation.

Dr. Moses contends that “2030-2050 is where things start happening”. I submit that things are starting to happen now. Perhaps the NIF would be willing to consider the plethora of displaced auto workers, the newly released mid-level office managers from marketing departments, or the shrimpers and fishermen, as new hires for their multi-billion dollar facility. If not, then Houston, we have a problem. The lights are going out all around the world right now as electrical grids are beyond capacity, and we need food, water, and jobs, for an increasing number of people.

Fusion technology will create its own environment, a vastly different one, not merely extend this present system. The Long Now seeks to find paradigms that last on the order of thousands of years, and perhaps large metropolis’ will emerge in that time frame, but the next hundred years are going to be a major transition, and I can only see a positive future if Earth’s population is reduced, not increased.

Every new technology creates an environment of services and disservices. Cold fusion technology, with its simple structure, small, compact and portable would surely allow the freedom to live in a decentralized world, closer to nature, if one so chooses.

Hot fusion technology is great. I hope that the NIF finds the answer to ignition soon. I am excited about basic research in science and have always been particularly interested in the science of stars, energy, rocket propulsion and space exploration. But hot fusion has had its share of the funding pie, with good results. Isn’t it time to take a look at cold fusion, low-energy nuclear reactions, which has had just as astounding results without the “infusion” of funding? One could argue the results that low-energy nuclear reaction scientists have obtained is even more remarkable given the paltry funding on the order of millions of dollars, as opposed to the tens of billions that hot fusion has received.

When Dr. Moses describes a “sustainable, carbon-free, not geo-political, safe, modular, compact, relatively rapid development path”, that “uses our existing infrastructure” and “accepts evolutionary improvements”, he is describing the technology of cold fusion. Yes, “it is too good to be true”.

ACTION Let’s contact the Long Now and ask them to present a cold fusion scientist to discuss the future of energy in a de-centralized and local world. You can find their contact information here: http://www.longnow.org/contact/

Edmund Storms is a long-time researcher in nuclear physics and cold fusion science, formerly of Los Alamos National Laboraory.  His most recent book is The Science of Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions: A Comprehensive Compiliation of Evidence and Explanations about Cold Fusion published by World Scientific Publishing Company 2007.

This is a reposting of a Q&A Dr. Storms had with Cold Fusion Now.

A:  Hard to tell because the money comes from different sources that don’t publish their accounting. l guess the total might be near five million dollars in the US. World wide expenditure is harder to guess but might be well over 10 times the US investment.

This depends on where the research is done. Universities generally have funds that can be spent on whatever the professor wants to study within reason. Government laboratories generally need to budget for the work. Private investors give money based on their personal interests.  Cold fusion is funded just like all other research efforts. However, in this case, the money available for research is very small compared to most other efforts of similar importance.

Most work in the US is either funded by private individuals or is part of larger programs funded by the government. Because of the negative history, direct funding of cold fusion by the US government was not possible until very recently.

A study requires very little palladium.  I have probably used no more than a few ounces in 21 years of work.

It makes energy.

All other sources of energy.

Impossible to answer.

The process that makes cold fusion work would also make possible the conversion of common elements into other more valuable elements.   In other words, the claim of the Alchemists would be realized.

If you are in southern California this Saturday June 26, get down to  the Long Beach Conference Center to hear a public lecture on cold fusion.  From the press release:

(PRWEB) June 3, 2010 — The 17th Annual Natural Philosophy Alliance (NPA) announces its first free Public Science Day on Saturday June 26, 2010 at the UC Long Beach Pyramid Pointe Conference Center from 9 am to 6 pm during its 4-day conference starting June 23 at Cal State Long Beach. Independent scientists from around the world will be on hand for a day of experiments, demonstrations, thought provoking lectures, and comradery.

“…In the early afternoon Dr. Michael McKubre will answer the question “How Hot is Cold Fusion?” as he did when he appeared on 60 Minutes in April 2009…”

“The NPA’s full scientific conference takes place at UC Long Beach from Wednesday, June 23 through Saturday, June 26. Independent scientists from around the world have submitted over 100 technical papers, to be collected in a conference proceedings book, available to the public for $25. From 8:30 to 6:00, Wednesday through Friday, many of these scientists will present the ideas from their papers to an attentive audience of peers. Interested students may also register for the conference and hang out to discuss physics with the many presenters in the campus dorms.”

“Admission is free on Public Day. For more information, call 562-508-4504, email contact(at)worldnpa(dot)org, or visit the website http://conf17.worldnpa.org.”

The press release is posted here or go to the NPA website http://www.worldnpa.org/main/

*****************************************************************************************************

Also recent article by posted on  The Examiner by Fred Burks touts cold fusion documentaries.  Read this other voice for a changing paradigm:
Energy crisis: Top scientists show how to make oil obsolete in two powerful documentaries
by Fred Burks

There’s a recent petition making it’s rounds on the net, titling itself as “Demand Clean Energy”, relating the action to the attack on the gulf.   People have been jumping all over this in light of the gulf disaster.  Signing it, posting and re-posting to their facebooks, twitters, email lists and so forth.

But what exactly is “clean energy”?  It sounds nice.  Seems like it should make sense.  But specifically what is supposed to suddenly stop all the drilling and allow us to power ourselves without petroleum?

Unfortunately reality doesn’t have anything to do with good intentions. When asked by most people what they believe the clean energy being proposed is,  likely you will hear the stock alternative energy responses:  Solar, wind, etc.

Why is it that people are still unaware that NONE of the stock clean energy alternatives, and NO combinations of the stock alternatives will be able to run what we are running now from oil?

It simply won’t work.

And this is old news.  It’s been mentioned time and again from experts over the better part of the last decade.  Yet the belief still exists that these will somehow work on large massive scales, that we have the time and resources to make this mass “flip of the switch” transition, and if we do it then in a few years we will all be driving around in electric cars.

This is how behind everyone is.  Lacking in specifics and putting it all under a vague and unrealistic umbrella of “clean energy”.

It’s time to get real, get honest, and get specific.  Start waking up to the realities of what won’t work on a massive scale, and the technologies that do actually have the potential to work on an enormous scale, and deserve the investment, willpower and push for immediate developments.

Yes, demand clean energy but be specific about it.  Demand cold fusion now.

Lets explore the present energy problem with total honesty and objectivity. As everyone now knows with overwhelming certainty, oil can cause great damage when it enters water, thanks to an accident. Less obvious damage results when CO2 enters the atmosphere after the oil is burned. Coal is even worse in generating CO2 and causing climate change. In spite of these disadvantages, oil and coal have too many advantages to be easily replaced. So, what can we do to gradually reduce their use?

Only a few sources of  renewable energy are known and accepted. These are solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, tidal, wave-action, temperature gradients, and biomass. Each of these has the disadvantage that the energy must be concentrated into some other form for it to be useful. This concentration process adds to the cost and complexity of the energy source. Nevertheless, all of these methods are being explored with success at a rate controlled by economic issues, as determined by the low cost of energy from coal, oil and natural gas. In a rational world, like in Europe, the cost of energy from these sources would be increased artificially by using taxes, the income from which would be used to develop sustainable sources and to encourage conservation. Unfortunately, the rational approach is too unpopular to enjoy widespread application. So, what else is possible?

Fission power based on uranium is proposed but it is not renewable. The uranium will eventually be exhausted just like oil. In addition, dangerous radioactive byproducts are made. While this is a plausible temporary solution, it has potential disadvantages, as Chernobyl demonstrated. Fission power based on deuterium is not renewable either, but so much deuterium exists in the oceans that the energy is infinite for all practical purposes. Unfortunately, this fusion process has not been found to generate practical energy even though attempts have been ongoing for 60 years while consuming at least 20 billion dollars and counting. Several basic problems raise serious doubts about whether this method will ever produce useful commercial power.

What else is possible? Various unconventional sources of energy have been discovered, but these have been systematically rejected by science and society. Whatever the reasons, this rejection has denied mankind potential sources of energy just when the need has become critical. In a rational world, all imagined sources of energy would be explored with enthusiasm. But, as we discovered earlier, this is not a rational world.

What are these unconventional sources? Three have been suggested: cold fusion, hydrino production, and zero-point energy.

Cold fusion is a method for causing a fusion-like reaction between deuterons that was discovered by Profs Fleischmann and Pons in 1989. Details can be found at www.LENR.org. This method was rejected by general science and is still used occasionally as a metaphor for bad science. Enough information has now been accumulated by work in over 10 countries to demonstrate that the process is real but not enough to understand the mechanism.

Hydrino formation is described by Randell Mills in numerous publications that can be accessed at www.blacklightpower.com. Dr. Mills proposes that energy can be extracted from hydrogen by causing the atomic electron to collapse closer to the nucleus by occupying orbits that are described by fractional quantum numbers. The process is being actively developed as an energy source without help from conventional science.

Zero-point or vacuum energy is proposed to be extracted from an energy field that permeates space. Various methods involving a combination of magnetic and electric fields have been proposed and explored to accomplish this feat. Many so-called over unity devices have been created, but doubt remains about which demonstration is actually producing the claimed effect.

In spite of evidence being published showing the reality of unconventional energy sources, all of these methods have been actively ignored by conventional science and many governments. In general, the reason is based on the inability to explain the observed effects using conventional and accepted theory. In view of the disastrous consequences of using conventional carbon-based energy, the luxury of such intellectual arrogance is no longer justified. Even if some money is spent on studies that fail because the effect is not real, this loss is more than offset by unexpected discoveries that could solve our growing problems. After all, large amounts of money are routinely wasted on conventional studies that do not result in useful products. What have we got to loose by exploring unknown territory?

June 14, 2010 — The Gulf is a graveyard. Fishing is likely finished for the next several years, if not decades. Wildlife has been devastated, and some species may never return. Tourism to some of the most beautiful beaches in the US has plummeted. Shipping lanes are set to be sludge tracks. And hurricane season is just beginning.

BP attacks the Gulf, but the virtual surrender from the Feds hasn’t shamed the oily politicians enough to keep them from whining about more drill permits. An Exxon Valdez gushes into the Gulf every 3-4 days as a whole ocean clogs with crude. Listening to the army of those who want to expand drilling further into the last remaining wildlands is a surreal and sorry sound.

Even those who accept the Peak Oil scenario fret over “environmentalists going bonkers” with their “outrageous demands” to curb this sociopathic need to consume oil.

It shouldn’t be surprising. Petroleum revenues fuel our entire society. We are all complicit. Few of us have the skills to escape the ubiquity of the slick. Worse, our elected representatives, in training for industry jobs, deflect scrutiny of their oily paycheck by shouting: 50,000 jobs on the line if drilling doesn’t continue; the “growth” of our economy will halt; poor ole grandma won’t be able to heat her house in December.

Where was the whining as jobs were vacuumed up across the border over the last several decades? And define economic growth. Growth for who?

Sadly, when it comes to Grandma’s house, there is an element of truth. For Grandma won’t be able to heat her house in winter much longer, whether drilling continues or not. Indeed, the most compelling argument against further drilling is not about jobs or the environment. It’s about Grandma, and it’s strategic.

The world’s finite petroleum resource is about half gone; the easy discoveries have been made, and the easy oil has been extracted and burned. Global oil discoveries peaked in the early 1960s and as demand has grown, we’ve been nursing the same oil fields for decades without replacement. Only the difficult, dangerous, and more expensive to get at oil remains. Whether it’s tar sands or deep ocean, the price of oil is set to rise, going well beyond Grandma’s ability to pay.

It’s called rationing, price rationing to be specific. And the biggest victims will be oil’s biggest users – US.  With only the expensive oil left to extract, higher prices are inevitable. Eventually, Grandma and everybody else in the US will be priced out. Meanwhile, $10 a gallon won’t stop the guy on his tiny motorbike in Vietnam who only uses a quarter-gallon a week.

In a recent interview, Dr. Michael McKubre stated the most compelling argument.

“These days with what’s going on in the Gulf of Mexico, people are sensitized to the fact that oil is bad; it’s environmentally bad; burning it is bad; it is worse than bad – it’s crazy. It’s a one-time resource, it’s a chemical feedstock; it should be used to make our fertilizers and plastics and the things that make our society comfortable. We shouldn’t be burning it. Someone said burning oil to heat your home is like burning Rembrandts. It’s crazy.”

The range of materials that can be created from oil is extensive, from life-saving plastic medical devices to writing utensils. Notwithstanding polyester, petroleum products are a one-time gift to humanity. Continuing to run an entire transportation network on petroleum is a “huge mis-allocation of resources” and in no way sustainable.

Future generations will look back at this past century and shake their heads, mystified at our Medieval ways. How could a people so effectively misuse their resources? Shouldn’t we be preparing for this inevitable decline in the avaialablity of oil? Shouldn’t we make contingency plans to mitigate the inevitable higher prices? Shouldn’t we invest in a clean and safe energy source? Shouldn’t we have cold fusion now?