EPRI News

This paper reports that from instant sensation to virtual pariah, cold fusion has had a stormy history since two University of Utah researchers first announced its discovery in March 1989. Research into this mysterious phenomenon has been plagued both by technical difficulties in replicating experimental results and by sometimes bitter controversy over scientific standards and personal credibility. Now, in a somewhat calmer atmosphere, significant progress is being made through experiments that are reproducible over long periods of time and under a variety of conditions. These experiments indicate that nuclear reactions may indeed occur at room temperature in a crystal lattice in ways not understood before. It's time we stopped calling these reactions cold fusion, says David Worledge, EPRI coordinator of research in this area. There is now good evidence that cold nuclear reaction of some sort are taking place, but also growing indications that they aren't conventional deuterium-deuterium fusion, as first assumed. Also, the cold nuclear reactions inferred from the neutrons that have been detected are not numerous enough to be responsible for the excess heat production still being reported in some experiments. In their original work, University of Utah scientist Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons used a simple laboratory apparatus consisting of a palladium rod surrounded by a platinum coil and immersed in heavy water. They reported that when a small electric current was applied to the cells, deuterium nuclei from the heavy water were driven into the palladium rod, where they were held in the metal lattice and apparently fused, producing 4 watts of heat for each watt of electric power supplied