Nuclear Fussion at Low Temp

8/8/2019 Nuclear Fussion at Low Temp

1/17

Make by raj 9464554250

A

TERM PAPER OF

CHEMISTRYOn

TOPIC: NUCLEAR FUSION AT LOWTEMPERATURE

Submitted To: Submitted By:M/s.Lovely Institute ofTechnology

Jalandhar-Delhi G.T. Road (NH-1), Phagwara, Punjab (INDIA) - 144402. TEL:

+91-1824-404404 Toll Free: 1800 102 4431 [email protected]


2/17


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

With regards I would like to thanks my Lect. M/s. ..ha who helped me in

completing my Term Paper on the topic NUCLEAR FUSION AT LOWTEMPERATURE. Of subject CHEMISTRY. Due to his proper guidance andunder the shower of his eternal knowledge I was able to complete my Term Paper

comfortably which might not be possible without his efforts.I must say thanks to my friend who helped me in the completion of my Term

paper. I must say sorry for the errors if I have committed in my Term Paper.

..

Date: -.


3/17


INDEX

Sr.no Topic Name Page.no

y Introductiony 1 Prior use of the termy 2 History

o 2.1 Before the FleischmannPons experimento 2.2 FleischmannPons experiment

2.2.1 Events preceding announcement 2.2.2 Announcement 2.2.3 Attempts at replication in 1989 2.2.4 Critical responses

o 2.3 Further studieso 2.4 Publications and conferenceso 2.5 Further reviews and funding issues

y 3 Experimentso 3.1 Typical setup

y 4 Reported phenomenao 4.1 Excess heat

4.1.1 Non-nuclear explanations for excess heato 4.2 Neutron radiationo 4.3 Helium-4o 4.4 Nuclear transmutations

y5 Proposed explanations

o 5.1 Probability of reactiono 5.2 Observed branching ratioo 5.3 Conversion of gamma rays to heat

y 6 Patentsy 7 ICCF (International Conference on Cold Fusion)y References


4/17


Cold fusion

Diagram of an open type calorimeter used at the New Hydrogen Energy Institute in Japan.

Cold fusion is nuclear fusion of atoms at conditions close to room temperature, in contrast to theconditions of well-understood fusion reactions such as those inside stars and high energyexperiments. Interest in the field increased dramatically after nuclear fusion was reported in atabletop experiment involving electrolysis of heavy water on a palladium (Pd) electrode by

Martin Fleischmann, then one of the world's leading electro-chemists,

and Stanley Pons in 1989. They reported anomalous heat production ("excess heat") of amagnitude they asserted would defy explanation except in terms of nuclear processes. Theyfurther reported measuring small amounts of nuclear reaction byproducts, including neutrons andtritium. These reports raised hopes of a cheap and abundant source of energy. Enthusiasm turnedto skepticism as replication failures were weighed in view of several reasons cold fusion is notlikely to occur, the discovery of possible sources of experimental error, and finally the discoverythat Fleischmann and Pons had not actually detected nuclear reaction byproducts. By late 1989,most scientists considered cold fusion claims dead, and cold fusion subsequently gained areputation as pathological science. However, some researchers continue to investigate cold

fusion, and some have reported positive results at mainstream conferences and in peer-reviewedjournals. Cold fusion research sometimes is referred to as low energy nuclear reaction (LENR)studies or condensed matter nuclear science, in order to avoid negative connotations. In 1989, themajority of a review panel organized by the US Department of Energy (DOE) found that theevidence for the discovery of a new nuclear process was not persuasive. There have been fewmainstream reviews of the field since 1990. A second DOE review, convened in 2004 to look atnew research, reached conclusions similar to the first.


5/17


Prior use of the term

The term "cold fusion" was used as early as 1956 in a New York Times article about Luis W.

Alvarez' work on muon-catalyzed fusion.

E. Paul Palmer of Brigham Young University also used the term "cold fusion" in 1986 in aninvestigation of "geo-fusion", the possible existence of fusion in a planetary core.

History

Before the FleischmannPons experiment

The ability of palladium to absorb hydrogen was recognized as early as the nineteenth century byThomas Graham. In the late 1920s, two Austrian born scientists, Friedrich Paneth and KurtPeters, originally reported the transformation of hydrogen into helium by spontaneous nuclearcatalysis when hydrogen was absorbed by finely divided palladium at room temperature.However, the authors later retracted that report, acknowledging that the helium they measuredwas due to background from the air. In 1927, Swedish scientist J. Tandberg stated that he hadfused hydrogen into helium in an electrolytic cell with palladium electrodes. On the basis of hiswork, he applied for a Swedish patent for "a method to produce helium and useful reactionenergy". After deuterium was discovered in 1932, Tandberg continued his experiments withheavy water. Due to Paneth and Peters' retraction, Tandberg's patent application was eventuallydenied.

FleischmannPons experiment

Events preceding announcement

Electrolysis cell schematic


6/17


Martin Fleischmann of the University of Southampton and Stanley Pons of the University ofUtah hypothesized that the high compression ratio and mobility of deuterium that could beachieved within palladium metal using electrolysis might result in nuclear fusion. To investigate,they conducted electrolysis experiments using a palladium cathode and heavy water within acalorimeter, an insulated vessel designed to measure process heat. Current was applied

continuously for many weeks, with the heavy water being renewed at intervals. Some deuteriumwas thought to be accumulating within the cathode, but most was allowed to bubble out of thecell, joining oxygen produced at the anode. For most of the time, the power input to the cell wasequal to the calculated power leaving the cell within measurement accuracy, and the celltemperature was stable at around 30 C. But then, at some point (in some of the experiments),the temperature rose suddenly to about 50 C without changes in the input power. These hightemperature phases would last for two days or more and would repeat several times in any givenexperiment once they had occurred. The calculated power leaving the cell was significantlyhigher than the input power during these high temperature phases. Eventually the hightemperature phases would no longer occur within a particular cell.

In 1988, Fleischmann and Pons applied to the United States Department of Energy for fundingtowards a larger series of experiments. Up to this point they had been funding their experimentsusing a small device built with $100,000 out-of-pocket. The grant proposal was turned over forpeer review, and one of the reviewers was Steven E. Jones of Brigham Young University. Joneshad worked for some time on muon-catalyzed fusion, a known method of inducing nuclearfusion without high temperatures, and had written an article on the topic entitled "Cold nuclearfusion" that had been published in Scientific American in July 1987. Fleischmann and Pons andco-workers met with Jones and co-workers on occasion in Utah to share research and techniques.During this time, Fleischmann and Pons described their experiments as generating considerable"excess energy", in the sense that it could not be explained by chemical reactions alone. They feltthat such a discovery could bear significant commercial value and would be entitled to patentprotection. Jones, however, was measuring neutron flux, which was not of commercial interest.In order to avoid problems in the future, the teams appeared to agree to simultaneously publishtheir results, although their accounts of their March 6 meeting differ.

Announcement

In mid-March 1989, both research teams were ready to publish their findings, and Fleischmannand Jones had agreed to meet at an airport on March 24 to send their papers to Nature via FedEx.Fleischmann and Pons, however, pressured by the University of Utah which wanted to establishpriority on the discovery, broke their apparent agreement, submitting their paper to theJournalofElectroanalyticalChemistry on March 11, and disclosing their work via a press conference on

March 23. Jones, upset, faxed in his paper toNature after the press conference.

Fleischmann and Pons' announcement drew wide media attention. The 1986 discovery of high-temperature superconductivity had caused the scientific community to be more open torevelations of unexpected scientific results that could have huge economic repercussions and thatcould be replicated reliably even if they had not been predicted by current theory. Cold fusionwas proposing the counter-intuitive idea that a nuclear reaction could be caused to occur inside acrystal structure, and many scientists immediately thought of the Mssbauer effect, since it was


7/17


an example of this happening, and its discovery 30 years earlier had also been unexpected and ithad been quickly replicated and explained within the existing physics framework.

Attempts at replication in 1989

Several laboratories in several countries attempted to repeat the experiments. A few initiallyreported success, but most failed to validate the results; Nathan Lewis, professor of Chemistry atthe California Institute of Technology, led one of the most ambitious validation efforts, tryingmany variations on the experiment without success, while CERN physicist Douglas R. O.Morrison said that "essentially all" attempts in Western Europe had failed. Even those reportingsuccess had difficulty reproducing Fleischmann and Pons' results. One of the more prominentreports of success came from a group at the Georgia Institute of Technology, which claimedobservation of neutron production. The Georgia Tech group later retracted their announcement.Another team, headed by Robert Huggins at Stanford University also reported early success, butit was called into question by a colleague who reviewed his work. For weeks, competing claims,counterclaims and suggested explanations kept what was referred to as "cold fusion" or "fusion

confusion" in the news.

In April 1989, Fleischmann and Pons published a "preliminary note" in the Journal ofElectroanalytical Chemistry. This paper notably showed a gamma peak without itscorresponding Compton edge, which indicated they had made a mistake in claiming evidence offusion byproducts. Fleischmann and Pons replied to this critique. The preliminary note wasfollowed up a year later with a much longer paper that went into details of calorimetry but didnot include any nuclear measurements.

Nevertheless, Fleischmann and Pons and a number of other researchers who found positiveresults remained convinced of their findings. In August 1989, the state of Utah invested $4.5

million to create the National Cold Fusion Institute.

In the ensuing years, several books came out critical of cold fusion research methods and theconduct of cold fusion researchers.

Critical responses


8/17


"Triple tracks" in a CR-39 plastic radiation detector claimed as evidence for neutron emissionfrom palladium deuteride, suggestive of a deuterium-tritium reaction

The extraordinary nature of cold fusion claims together with theoretical issues have caused thescientific community to come to a general skeptical conclusion with regards to the subject. Newexperimental claims are routinely dismissed or ignored by the community.

In May 1989, the American Physical Society held a session on cold fusion, at which were heardmany reports of experiments that failed to produce evidence of cold fusion. At the end of thesession, eight of the nine leading speakers stated they considered the initial Fleischmann andPons claim dead with the ninth abstaining. In July and November 1989,Nature published paperscritical of cold fusion claims. Negative results were also published in several scientific journalsincluding Science,PhysicalReview Letters, andPhysicalReview C(nuclear physics).

The United States Department of Energy organized a special panel to review cold fusion theoryand research. The panel issued its report in November 1989, concluding that results as of thatdate did not present convincing evidence that useful sources of energy would result fromphenomena attributed to cold fusion. The panel noted the inconsistency of reports of excess heatand the greater inconsistency of reports of nuclear reaction byproducts. Nuclear fusion of thetype postulated would be inconsistent with current understanding and, if verified, would requiretheory to be extended in an unexpected way. The panel was against special funding for coldfusion research, but supported modest funding of "focused experiments within the generalfunding system." Cold fusion supporters continued to argue that the evidence was strong, and inSeptember 1990 the National Cold Fusion Institute listed 92 groups of researchers from 10

different countries that had reported corroborating evidence. However, by this point, academicconsensus had moved decidedly toward labeling cold fusion as a kind of "pathological science".

The Nobel Laureate Julian Schwinger, in a shock to most physicists, declared himself a supporterof cold fusion after much of the response to the initial reports had turned negative. He tried topublish theoretical papers supporting the possibility of cold fusion in Physical Review Letters,was deeply insulted by their rejection, and resigned from the American Physical Society(publisher ofLetters) in protest.


9/17


Further studies

Fleischmann and Pons themselves relocated their laboratory to France under a grant from theToyota Motor Corporation. The laboratory, IMRA, was closed in 1998 after spending 12million on cold fusion work. Between 1992 and 1997, Japan's Ministry of International Trade

and Industry sponsored a "New Hydrogen Energy Program" of US$20 million to research coldfusion. Announcing the end of the program in 1997, the director and one-time proponent of coldfusion research Hideo Ikegami stated "We couldn't achieve what was first claimed in terms ofcold fusion." He added, "We can't find any reason to propose more money for the coming year orfor the future." Also in the 1990s, India stopped its research in cold fusion because of the lack ofconsensus among mainstream scientists and the US denunciation of it.

In February 2002, the U.S. Navy researchers at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center inSan Diego, California who have been studying cold fusion continually since 1989, released atwo-volume report, entitled "Thermal and nuclear aspects of the Pd/D2O system," with a plea forfunding.

A 2008 demonstration in Bangalore by Japanese researcher Yoshiaki Arata revived some interestfor cold fusion research in India. Projects have commenced at several centers such as the BhabhaAtomic Research Centre and the National Institute of Advanced Studies has also recommendedthe Indian government to revive this research.

Publications and conferences

Cold fusion reports have been published over the years in Naturwissenschaften, JapaneseJournal of Applied Physics, European Physical Journal A, European Physical Journal C,International Journal of Hydrogen Energy , Journal of Solid State Phenomena, Journal of

Electroanalytical Chemistry, and Journal of Fusion Energy. In the 1990s, the groups thatcontinued to research cold fusion and their supporters established periodicals such as FusionFacts, Cold Fusion Magazine, Infinite Energy Magazine, and New Energy Times to cover thedevelopments in cold fusion and related fringe science topics that were being excluded from themainstream journals and the scientific press. The first International Conference on Cold Fusion(ICCF) was held in 1990 and has been held every 12 to 18 months in various countries aroundthe world since then.

With the founding in 2004 of the International Society for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science(ISCMNS), the conference was renamed the International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science an example of the approach the cold fusion community has adopted in

avoiding coldfusion as a term due to its negative connotations. Cold fusion research is oftenreferenced today under the name of "low-energy nuclear reactions", or LENR, but according tosociologist Bart Simon the "cold fusion" label continues to serve a social function in creating acollective identity for the field.

Thirteen papers were presented at the "Cold Fusion" session of the March 2006 AmericanPhysical Society (APS) meeting in Baltimore. In 2007, the American Chemical Society's (ACS)held an "invited symposium" on cold fusion and low-energy nuclear reactions while explaining


10/17


that this does not show a softening of skepticism. An ACS program chair said that "with theworld facing an energy crisis, it is worth exploring all possibilities."

On 2225 March 2009, the American Chemical Society held a four-day symposium on "NewEnergy Technology", in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of the announcement of cold

fusion. At the conference, researchers with the U.S. Navy's Space and Naval Warfare SystemsCenter (SPAWAR) reported detection of energetic neutrons in a standard cold fusion celldesignusing CR-39, a result previously published in Die Naturwissenschaften. The authors claimthat these neutrons are indicative of nuclear reactions, although skeptics indicated that aquantitative analysis would be necessary before the results are accepted by the scientificcommunity, and that the neutrons could be caused by another nuclear mechanism than fusion.

Further reviews and funding issues

Cold fusion researchers have complained there has been virtually no possibility of obtainingfunding for cold fusion research in the United States, and no possibility of getting published.

University researchers, it has been claimed, are unwilling to investigate cold fusion because theywould be ridiculed by their colleagues. In 1994, David Goodstein described cold fusion as "apariah field, cast out by the scientific establishment. Between cold fusion and respectable sciencethere is virtually no communication at all. Cold fusion papers are almost never published inrefereed scientific journals, with the result that those works don't receive the normal criticalscrutiny that science requires. On the other hand, because the Cold-Fusioners see themselves as acommunity under siege, there1 is little internal criticism. Experiments and theories tend to beaccepted at face value, for fear of providing even more fuel for external critics, if anyone outsidethe group was bothering to listen. In these circumstances, crackpots flourish, making mattersworse for those who believe that there is serious science going on here."

Particle physicist Frank Close has gone even further, stating that the problems that plagued theoriginal cold fusion announcement are still happening: results from studies are still not beingindependently verified and inexplicable phenomena encountered are being labeled as "coldfusion" even if they are not to attract the attention of journalists.

Cold fusion researchers themselves acknowledge that the flaws in the original announcement stillcause their field to be marginalized and to suffer a chronic lack of funding, but a small number ofold and new researchers have remained interested in investigating cold fusion. Responding torequests from cold fusion researchers, the DOE organized a second review of the field in 2004.Cold fusion researchers were asked to present a review document of all the evidence since the1989 review. The report summarized its conclusions thus:

While significant progress has been made in the sophistication of calorimeters since the reviewof this subject in 1989, the conclusions reached by the reviewers today are similar to those foundinthe 1989 review.

The current reviewers identified a number of basic science research areas that could be helpful inresolving some of the controversies in the field, two of which were: 1) material science aspectsof deuterated metals using modern characterization techniques, and 2) the study of particles


11/17


reportedly emitted from deuterated foils using state-of-the-art apparatus and methods. Thereviewers believed that this field would benefit from the peer-review processes associated withproposal submission to agencies and paper submission to archival journals.

Report of the Review of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions, US Department of Energy, December

2004

The mainstream and popular scientific press presented this as a setback for cold fusionresearchers, with headlines such as "cold fusion gets chilly encore", but cold fusion researchersplaced a "rosier spin"on the report, noting that it also recommended specific areas where researchcould resolve the controversies in the field. In 2005, Physics Today reported that new reports ofexcess heat and other cold fusion effects were still no more convincing than 15 years previous. In2010, a review by supporter Edmund Storms says that there are now plausible theories andsupportive evidence, and that "research is continuing in at least eight countries".

Experiments

Typical setup

A cold fusion experiment usually includes:

y a metal, such as palladium or nickel, in bulk, thin films or powder;y deuterium and/or hydrogen, in the form of water, gas or plasma; andy an excitation in the form of electricity, magnetism, temperature, pressure, laser beam(s),

or of acoustic waves.

Electrolysis cells can be either open cell or closed cell. In open cell systems, the electrolysis

products, which are gaseous, are allowed to leave the cell. In closed cell experiments, theproducts are captured, for example by catalytically recombining the products in a separate part ofthe experimental system. These experiments generally strive for a steady state condition, with theelectrolyte being replaced periodically. There are also "heat after death" experiments, where theevolution of heat is monitored after the electric current is turned off.

The most basic setup of a cold fusion cell consists of two electrodes submerged in a solution of palladium and heavy water. The electrodes are then connected to a power source to transmitelectricity from one electrode to the other through the solution. Even when anomalous heat isreported, it can take weeks for it to begin to appear - this is known as the "loading time."

The Fleischmann and Pons early findings regarding helium, neutron radiation and tritium werelater discredited. However, neutron radiation has been reported in cold fusion experiments atvery low levels using different kinds of detectors, but levels were too low, close to background,and found too infrequently to provide useful information about possible nuclear processes.

Reported phenomena


12/17


Excess heat

An excess heat observation is based on an energy balance. Various sources of energy input andoutput are continuously measured. Under normal condition, the energy input can be matched tothe energy output to within experimental error. In experiments such as those run by Fleischmann

and Pons, a cell operating steadily at one temperature transitions to operating at a highertemperature with no increase in applied current. In other experiments, however, no excess heatwas discovered, and, in fact, even the heat from successful experiments was unreliable and couldnot be replicated independently. If higher temperatures were real, and not experimental artifact,the energy balance would show an unaccounted term. In the Fleischmann and Pons experiments,the rate of inferred excess heat generation was in the range of 10-20% of total input. The hightemperature condition would last for an extended period, making the total excess heat appear to be disproportionate to what might be obtained by ordinary chemical reaction of the materialcontained within the cell at any one time, though this could not be reliably replicated. Manyothers have reported similar results.

A 2007 review determined that more than 10 groups worldwide reported measurements of excessheat in 1/3 of their experiments using electrolysis of heavy water in open and/or closedelectrochemical cells, or deuterium gas loading onto Pd powders under pressure. Most of theresearch groups reported occasionally seeing 50-200% excess heat for periods lasting hours ordays.

In 1993, Fleischmann reported "heat-after-death" experiments: he observed the continuinggeneration of excess heat after the electric current supplied to the electrolytic cell was turned off.Similar observations have been reported by others as well.

Non-nuclear explanations for excess heat

The calculation of excess heat in electrochemical cells involves certain assumptions. Errors inthese assumptions have been offered as non-nuclear explanations for excess heat.

One assumption made by Fleischmann and Pons is that the efficiency of electrolysis is nearly100%, meaning nearly all the electricity applied to the cell resulted in electrolysis of water, withnegligible resistive heating and substantially all the electrolysis product leaving the cellunchanged. This assumption gives the amount of energy expended converting liquid D2O intogaseous D2 and O2.

The efficiency of electrolysis will be less than one if hydrogen and oxygen recombine to a

significant extent within the calorimeter. Several researchers have described potentialmechanisms by which this process could occur and thereby account for excess heat inelectrolysis experiments.

Another assumption is that heat loss from the calorimeter maintains the same relationship withmeasured temperature as found when calibrating the calorimeter. This assumption ceases to beaccurate if the temperature distribution within the cell becomes significantly altered from thecondition under which calibration measurements were made. This can happen, for example, if


13/17


fluid circulation within the cell becomes significantly altered. Recombination of hydrogen andoxygen within the calorimeter would also alter the heat distribution and invalidate thecalibration.

Neutron radiation

Fleischmann and Pons reported a neutron flux of 4,000 neutrons per second, as well as tritium,while the classical branching ratio for previously known fusion reactions that produce tritiumwould predict, with 1 watt of power, the production of 1012 neutrons per second, levels thatwould have been fatal to the researchers.

In 2009, Mosier-Boss et al. reported what they called the first scientific report of highly energeticneutrons, using CR-39 plastic radiation detectors, although some scientists say that the resultswill need a quantitative analysis in order to be accepted by the physics community.

Helium-4

Considerable attention has been given to measuring.He production. In 1999 Schaffer says that

the levels detected were very near to background levels, that there is the possibility ofcontamination by trace amounts of helium which are normally present in the air, and that the lackof detection of Gamma radiation led most of the scientific community to regard the presence ofHe as the result of experimental error. In the report presented to the DOE in 2004, He wasdetected in five out of sixteen cases where electrolytic cells were producing excess heat. Thereviewers' opinion was divided on the evidence for4He; some points cited were that the amountsdetected were above background levels but very close to them, that it could be caused bycontamination from air, and there were serious concerns about the assumptions made in thetheoretical framework that tried to account for the lack of gamma rays.

Nuclear transmutations

In 1999 several heavy elements had been detected by other researchers, especially TadahikoMizuno in Japan, although the presence of these elements was so unexpected from the currentunderstanding of these reactions that Schaffer said that it would require extraordinary evidencebefore the scientific community accepted it. The report presented to the DOE in 2004 indicatedthat deuterium loaded foils could be used to detect fusion reaction products and, although thereviewers found the evidence presented to them as inconclusive, they indicated that thoseexperiments didn't use state of the art techniques and it was a line of work that could giveconclusive results on the matter.

Proposed explanations

Cold fusion researchers have described possible cold fusion mechanisms (e.g., electron shieldingof the nuclear Coulomb barrier), but they have not received mainstream acceptance. In 2002,Gregory Neil Derry described them as ad hoc explanations that didn't coherently explain theexperimental results. Many groups trying to replicate Fleischmann and Pons' results havereported alternative explanations for their original positive results, like problems in the neutron


14/17


detector in the case of Georgia Tech or bad wiring in the thermometers at Texas A&M. Thesereports, combined with negative results from some famous laboratories, led most scientists toconclude that no positive result should be attributed to cold fusion, at least not on a significantscale. There are at least three reasons that fusion is an unlikely explanation for the experimentalresults described above.

Probability of reaction

Because nuclei are all positively charged, they strongly repel one another. Normally, in theabsence of a catalyst such as a muon, very high kinetic energies are required to overcome thisrepulsion. Extrapolating from known rates at high energies down to energies available in coldfusion experiments, the rate for uncatalyzed fusion at room-temperature energy would be 50

orders of magnitude lower than needed to account for the reported excess heat.

Since the 1920s, it has been known that hydrogen and its isotopes can dissolve in certain solids athigh densities so that their separation can be relatively small, and that electron charge insidemetals can partially cancel the repulsion between nuclei. These facts suggest the possibility ofhigher cold fusion rates than those expected from a simple application of Coulomb's law.However, modern theoretical calculations show that the effects should be too small to causesignificant fusion rates. Supporters of cold fusion pointed to experiments where bombardingmetals with deuteron beams seems to increase reaction rates, and suggested to the DOEcommission in 2004 that electron screening could be one explanation for this enhanced reactionrate.

Observed branching ratio

Deuteron fusion is a two-step process, in which an unstable high energy intermediary is formed:

D + D 4He* + 24 MeV

High energy experiments have observed only three decay pathways for this excited-state nucleus,with the branching ratio showing the probability that any given intermediate will follow aparticular pathway. The products formed via these decay pathways are:

n + 3He + 3.3 MeV (50%)p +

3H + 4.0 MeV (50%)

4He + + 24 MeV (106)

Only about one in one million of the intermediaries decay along the third pathway, making its products comparatively rare when compared to the other paths. If one watt of nuclear powerwere produced from deuteron fusion consistent with known branching ratios, the resultingneutron and tritium (

3H) production would be easily measured. Some researchers reported


15/17


detecting 4He but without the expected neutron or tritium production; such a result would require branching ratios strongly favouring the third pathway, with the actual rates of the first twopathways lower by at least five orders of magnitude than observations from other experiments,directly contradicting mainstream-accepted branching probabilities. Those reports of 4Heproduction did not include detection of gamma rays, which would require the third pathway to

have been changed somehow so that gamma rays are no longer emitted.

Conversion of gamma rays to heat

The -rays of the He pathway are not observed. It has been proposed that the 24 MeV excessenergy is transferred in the form of heat into the host metal lattice prior to the intermediary'sdecay. However, the speed of the decay process together with the inter-atomic spacing in ametallic crystal makes such a transfer inexplicable in terms of conventional understandings ofmomentum and energy transfer.

Patents

Although the details have not surfaced, it appears that the University of Utah forced the 23March 1989 Fleischmann and Pons announcement in order to establish priority over thediscovery and its patents before the joint publication with Jones. The Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology (MIT) announced on 12 April 1989 that it had applied for its own patents based ontheoretical work of one of its researchers, Peter L. Hagelstein, who had been sending papers tojournals from the 5th to the 12th of April. On 2 December 1993 the University of Utah licensedall its cold fusion patents to ENECO, a new company created to profit from cold fusiondiscoveries.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) now rejects patents claiming cold fusion. Esther

Kepplinger, the deputy commissioner of patents in 2004, said that this was done using the sameargument as with perpetual motion machines: that they do not work. Patent applications arerequired to show that the invention is "useful", and this utility is dependent on the invention'sability to function. In general USPTO rejections on the sole grounds of the invention's being"inoperative" are rare, since such rejections need to demonstrate "proof of total incapacity",andcases where those rejections are upheld in a Federal Court are even rarer: nevertheless, in 2000, arejection of a cold fusion patent was appealed in a Federal Court and it was upheld, in part on thegrounds that the inventor was unable to establish the utility of the invention.

U.S. patents might still be granted when they are given a different name in order to disassociateit from cold fusion, although this strategy has had little success in the US: the very same claims

that need to be patented can identify it with cold fusion, and most of these patents cannot avoidmentioning Fleischmann and Pons' research due to legal constraints, thus alerting the patentreviewer that it is a cold-fusion-related patent.David Voss said in 1999 that some patents thatclosely resemble cold fusion processes, and that use materials used in cold fusion, have beengranted by the USPTO. The inventor of three such patents says that his applications wereinitially rejected when they were reviewed by experts in nuclear science, but that he managed tohave a second application reviewed instead by experts in electrochemistry, who approved them.When asked about the resemblance to cold fusion, the patent holder said that it used nuclear


16/17


processes involving "new nuclear physics" unrelated to cold fusion. Melvin Miles was granted in2004 a patent for a cold fusion device, and in 2007 he described his efforts to remove allinstances of "cold fusion" from the patent description to avoid having it rejected outright.

At least one patent related to cold fusion has been granted by the European Patent Office. A

patent only legally prevents others from using or benefiting from one's invention. However, thegeneral public perceives a patent as a stamp of approval, and a holder of three cold fusion patentssaid the patents were very valuable and had helped in getting investments.

ICCF (International Conference on Cold Fusion)

1. ICCF-1 Salt Lake City, 1990

2. ICCF-2 Como, Villa Olmo, 19913. ICCF-3 Nagoya, 19924. ICCF-4 Hawaii, 19935. ICCF-5 Monte Carlo, 19956. ICCF-6 Sapporo, 19967. ICCF-7 Vancouver, 19988. ICCF-8 Lerici, 20009. ICCF-9 Beijing, 200210.ICCF-10 Cambridge (USA), 200311.ICCF-11 Marseille, 200412.ICCF-12 Yokohama, 2005

13.ICCF-13 Moscow, 200714.ICCF-14 Washington, D.C., 200815.ICCF-15 Rome, 2009

References

1. Voss 19992. "60 Minutes: Once Considered Junk Science, Cold Fusion Gets A Second Look By

Researchers". CBS. 2009-04-17.http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/17/60minutes/main4952167.shtml.

3. Fleischmann & Pons 1989, p. 301 ("It is inconceivable that this [amount of heat] could be

due to anything but nuclear processes... We realise that the results reported here raisemore questions than they provide answers...")

4. Browne 1989, para. 15. Browne 1989, Close 1992, Huizenga 1993, Taubes 19936. Malcolm W. Browne (3 May 1989). "Physicists Debunk Claim Of a New Kind of

Fusion". The New York Times: pp. A1, A22.http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE2D71539F930A35756C0A96F948260&pagewanted=all.


17/17


7. Chang, Kenneth (2004-03-25). "US will give cold fusion a second look". The New YorkTimes.http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C01E0DC1530F936A15750C0A9629C8B63. Retrieved 2009-02-08.

8. Voss 1999, Platt 1998, Goodstein 1994, Van Noorden 2007, Beaudette 2002, Feder 2005,

Hutchinson 2006, Kruglinksi 200

6, Adam 2005

Date post:	10-Apr-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	raj-shah
View:	227 times
Download:	0 times

Nuclear Fussion at Low Temp

Documents