AHANW Library
Letter for President Clinton
Digital
Pub: Aug 06, 2009
Submitted on request from The White House
for President Bill Clinton.
February, 2000
The Strange Birth of the Water Fuel Age:
The
Cold Fusion "Miracle" Was No Mistake by Eugene F. Mallove, Sc.D.
(Copyright 2000)
SUMMARY for President Clinton
Beginning in 1989, a class of
new energy technologies has been developed that has the potential to
provide pollution-free energy of a magnitude far greater than fossil
fuel, using forms of hydrogen from water as the fuel in novel
catalytic conditions. The technologies challenge the understanding
of physics which has been used to justify continued investment in
fossil fuels, nuclear power plants, and the so-called ?hot fusion?
energy research programs.
The U.S. government has spent at least $15 billion on
hot fusion without achieving the ?breakeven? point
already achieved by the new energy technologies.
Hydrogen as a
fuel in engines and fuel cells has been discussed and demonstrated
for several decades. Fuel cells are emerging into the commercial
market, using hydrogen-rich chemical compounds. These systems are
based on chemical reactions whose energy density (energy per unit of
fuel) is very low. There are serious problems in making, storing,
and transporting hydrogen. The new energy technologies use hydrogen
in a Jar different way that extracts thousands to millions of times
the ordinary chemical combustion energy of hydrogen. Thus, water
is fuel!
In 1989, after five years of work and investment of $100,000 of
their own money, Professors Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann
announced the release of nuclear-scale energy from an
electrochemical cell using palladium as the cathode metal. In the
cell, heavy hydrogen is forced into the palladium until a new class
of nuclear reactions occurs, in which energy of great intensity is
released without the deadly radiation or radioactive by-products
produced by other nuclear energy processes. The Pons-Fleischmann
announcement ignited a controversy that is documented in the body
and references of this memorandum.
The DOE Energy Research
Advisory Board ?Cold Fusion Panel? was convened at the
direction of President Bush to review the zoid fusion? controversy
in its early days. The panel relied heavily on misleading
reports from the California institute of Technology, Harwell
(England), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Reports
from all three sources were negative, and ERAB recommended against
any government investment in ?cold fusion.? This had
far-reaching consequences, which seriously impeded but did not stop
advances in the field.
After over a decade of work, hundreds of
peer-reviewed scientific papers from laboratories around the
world confirm the PonsFleischmann discovery. It was just
the tip of an iceberg of a whole class of nuclear reactions—and
other new hydrogen reactions—which occur in metals that are heavily
loaded with heavy or normal hydrogen by any of several means. These
are often called Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR), or
Chemically-Assisted Nuclear Reactions (CANR). There is also a
process, pioneered by BlackLight Power, Inc., that produces
catalytically a!tered hydrogen atoms. What these process have in
common is the release of intense, nuclear-scale energies
without damaging radiation or radioactive by-products.
Reactors are small scale, requiring simple apparatus and
common materials with hydrogen as the fuel. Transmutations of the
metal cathode materials are commonly produced. In some cases, where
radioactive materials such as uranium and thorium are used in the
cells, these are rapidly transmuted into harmless byproducts
without production of harmful radiation or explosions.
In principle, radioactive waste from nuclear reactors can
similarly be deactivated without the political and economic costs of
burial.
Collectively, these emerging technologies point to a much
brighter future for mankind. They do not require resources
controlled by any small group of countries. They are concentrated,
portable, and democratic. Low cost realization and distribution of
devices and systems based on these technologies will require the
resources of a market economy and the removal of imitenial
opposition from vested interests in the U.S. government and
industries, including arbitrary blocking of ?cold fusion?
patent applications by the U.S. Patent Office. Originators of these
technologies may make fortunes, but in the emid mankind will be the
beneficiary. Mr. President, you need do only one thing now:
Publicly state that you are going to investigate this matter and
then: do it. Anything that is theoretically possible will be
achieved in practice, no matter what the technical difficulties, if
it is desired greatly enough.?
(Arthur C.
Clarke),
Profiles of the Future,1963.
It was 1870, just five years after the carnage of the American
Civil War. Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island challenged readers
with an audacious prediction: "I believe that water will one
day be employed as a fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute
it, used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of
heat and light, of an intensity of which coal is not
capable... I
believe then that when the deposits of coal are exhausted, we shall
heat and warm ourselves with water. Water will be the coal of the
future." ? Though Verne predicted advanced submarines and flights to
the Moon— even the competition between the United States and Russia
in a lunar race, he was more prescient than anyone could have
imagined, at least not until the last decade of the 20th Century. He
turned out to be more than right about the power of water. Water
will begin to be the fuel of the future, in all probability this
decade.
There is an incontrovertible fact well known to scientists
working to control thermonuclear fusion energy for peaceful power
production: Within only one cubic kilometer of water, there exists
enough heavy hydrogen isotope, deuterium (heavy hydrogen), such that
if it is fused to the element helium at multi-million-degree
temperatures, enough energy is released to equal the combustion
energy of all the world?s known oil. This planet has at least
one billion cubic kilometers of water; there is no danger of running
out of this fuel. Or, look at it this way: In only one gallon of
ordinary water, there is enough heavy hydrogen to produce the energy
equivalent of 300 gallons of gasoline. For worry warts: The
heavy hydrogen comprises only 0.015 percent of all the hydrogen in
the ordinary water, ergo there is no danger of a water depletion
crisis from fusion energy! Heavy hydrogen or deuterium, by the way,
is simply hydrogen that bears an extra neutron in its nucleus. It is
non-radioactive and easy to extract from water very cheaply.
If
we only had a way to tap this fusion energy safely and cheaply, the
world's energy problems would be over; most if not all environmental
problems would be well on their way to solution. If we could find a
way to release this fusion energy benignly without deadly radiation,
and on a small scale, rather than in the stadium-like tokamak
thermonuclear fusion reactors—smaller, dysfunctional prototypes of
which are being tested at fantastic cost at Princeton, MIT, and
elsewhere—a millennial revolution in energy technology would break
out. It would mean an age in which the recurring cost of energy
production would approach zero, since the heavy hydrogen is
virtually free. The scope of that revolution would dwarf today's?
Internet-World Wide Web upheaval. The age of ?free
information? would have a partner: the age of virtually free
energy! It may surprise you to learn that the energy
discovery described above was made in the United States in the early
1980s, announced in 1989, and subsequently confirmed by solid
published scientific research—some of that by Federal
laboratories. 1-7
So why have you not heard about it? This
new energy revoulution is, indeed, in progress around the world. It
is called ?cold the Exxon-Valdez grounding, the difficult opening
stages of a fusion? energy, but, like many other scientific
revolutions of modern-day ?miracle? was taking place beneath the
snow-coy-great import, the infant discovery and technology is having
a ered Wasatch Mountains of Utah. Thursday, March 23, 1989, very
difficult birth. One hopes that the influential readers of this
brought a glimmer of hope from a city that had grown up near essay
will stay the hands of the paradigm-paralyzed critics in the barren
flatlands of the Great Salt Lake. At 1:00 p.m. in Salt the
scientific community who have maliciously and in some Lake City,
chemistry professors Martin Fleischmann and cases illegally
obstructed the field at every turn. Whether from Stanley Pons
burned their names into the history of the quest for ill will,
jealousy, or sheer misinformation, the antagonists energy from
water. Essentially unknown to the thermonuclear, ?know not what
they do? to one of the the brightest promises of hot fusion
community, they claimed to have achieved what our age? Now for the
rest of the story... seemed to be impossible: power-producing
fusion-like reactions
at or near room temperature—without deadly
radiation that the
The Stage is Set hot fusioneers had planned to
use to make electricity from their fter Verne?s astonishing
suggestion of 1870, oil from the reactors! Fleischmann and
Pons, and those who would later
A bowels of the Earth, not water,
emerged as the ?coal of confirm their work, posed an immediate
threat to the hot fusion the future.? We entered the 20th
Century and wars and physics establishments. The heretics
were dealt with as one were fought over this black gold. Even World
War II had its might expect. The argument became, ?Since you are not
dead roots, in part, over the control of oil by Japan or the
United States from the radiation our theory expects from your
process, oil. That war was ended by fission nuclear weapons, the
must be incompetents or frauds.?
sequel to a controversial
discovery made in Europe in 1938—a The massive Exxon-Valdez oil
spill drew deserved national discovery, incidentally, that was
itself almost missed, but for attention and outcry, but it did not
eclipse the extraordinary some open-minded, concentrated thinking.
Fission was the news from Utah about cold fusion—a concept
that seemed to ?cold fusion? of the 1930s, sans critics! drop
from the sky like an alien intruder straight into the
public. In 1988, physicist Emilio Segre? reflected on
the 1930s discov- psyche. At the press conference held at the
University of Utah, ery of fission by Hahn, Strassman, and Meitner:
? Their early American Stanley Pons, professor of chemistry and
chairman of papers are a mixture of error and truth as complicated
as the the Department of Chemistry at the University of Utah, and
mixture of fission products resulting from the [neutron] bom-
British colleague Martin Fleischmann, professor of
electrochembardments. Such confusion was to remain for a long
time a istry at the University of Southampton, England and Fellow of
characteristic of much of the work on uranium.? In their the Royal
Society, really did disclose an amazingly simple remarkable paper of
December 22, 1938 in Naturwissemmschaftcn method to create
power-producing nuclear reactions—possibly announcing the fission
discovery, Hahn and Strassman wrote, fusion—not at hundreds of
millions of degrees in imitation of ?As nuclear chemists working
very close to the field of physics, the stars, but at room
temperature from a solid-state reaction.
We cannot yet bring
ourselves to such a drastic step, which goes The Genie of fusion
shrugged in his ancient vessel that year against all previous
experience in nuclear physics." Yet nuclear and amazed the world.
The spring of 1989 will long be rememfission was real. It became a
world-changing discovery, relative- bered as a time of unexpected
shaking, when extraordinary ly easy to reproduce, but a bit harder
to make into bombs (for- claims by groups of researchers in Utah and
subsequently tunately!). It ended a terrible war and it preserved
the peace around the world led some scientists, even open-minded
ones among superpowers long enough for Communism to collapse in
hot fusion (especially in Japan), to reexamine a
decades-long, in Europe. multi-billion dollar quest to tame nuclear
fusion. The struggle is
Yet as the 20th Century merges into the
21st, oil, coal, and to bring this power of the stars down to
Earth, much as fabled natural gas have remained kings. The Chernobyl
disaster of Prometheus snatched fire from the gods. The
interest of the sci1986 dealt a devastating political blow to plans
for expanding entific community and the public at large in 1989 was
temthe fission economy, which might have given some respite from
porarily galvanized by the idea that a new kind of fusion the
tyranny of fossil fuels. Even in peacetime, oil and other fos-
process might soon lead to a way to get the fusion Genie to stop sil
fuels take their tolls in death and destruction—from burn- shrugging
and come completely out of his bottle. He's half out ings and
explosions in transportation, to slow deaths from now and will soon
be out completely.
Atmospheric pollution. Late in the 20th
Century, a greater consciousness about the environment arose, yet
still the world Paradigm Paralysis and Confirmation
remained in
the grip of fossil fuels. Ordinary renewable energy startling events
occasionally make us step back to get a bet-technologies, for all
their good, remained much too limited and ter view of our pursuits
and to examine cherished assumpproblematic to be the solution to the
world?s energy problems. tions. This often leads to rededication, to
unforeseen possiMillions of people continue to die every year from a
variety of biities, and to new directions. The shaking of
complacency now ills attributable directly or indirectly to the
global dependence and then in a positive way is healthy, no more so
than in the on fossil fuel combustion. The threat of global warming
hangs fields of science and technology, where intense concentration
on in the air. Whether real or misjudged, the threat has to be con-
an established course sometimes promotes a too narrow focus
considered. As you will increasingly see, cold fusion energy is the
sadly, there arose an unusual brutality about the way the cold
perfect preventative fusion claims and confirmations were
treated.
The exemplar of all that was wrong with the Age of Oil
struck Confirmation of the remarkable cold fusion claims of
1989 on March 24, 1989 at 12:04 a.m. In the pristine waters of
Prince was not to come easily. Unusual doubt and confusion William
Sound off the coast of Alaska, the Exxon Valdez ran (inevitably
termed ?fusion confusion?) beset a baffled, aground and
spilled eleven million gallons of crude oil. The bemused, and even
outraged scientific community. A long quest horrific, foolish
disaster symbolized the ultimate futility of our ensued to confirm
or disprove the claims that nuclear fusion dangerous dependence on
the planet's subterranean fossil reactions can occur in apparatus no
more complex than a labofuels. In what may eventually be considered
one of the most ratory electrochemical cell, in pieces of metal
infused under profound coincidences in history, less than twelve
hours before pressure with heavy hydrogen gas, or in other systems.
Many more variants of the cold fusion process have been
discovered and even patented since 1989. Some of these employ the
ordinary (light) hydrogen in water; others operate at high
temperatures in the gas phase—having nothing to do with
electrochemistry; still others employ thin, layered metallic films
that seem destined to draw from the advanced materials science and
manufacturing infrastructure of the semiconductor industry. And,
strange but true, there may even be significant implications for the
biotechnology industry. It now seems that what Fleischmann and Pons
discovered in the early 1980s was but the tip of the iceberg of a
much larger class of fantastically important phenomena connected
with the catalysis of hydrogen and its isotopes. There will
likely be found multiple, interlocking physical mechanisms necessary
to encompass it all. The implications transcend energy
science, but energy alone would be enough reason to make it one
of the highest national priorities:
All obstacles must be removed
from this science and technology—from obstruction at the U.S. Patent
Office to official interference by DOE officials. The subject must
be discussed openly by officials.
A small fraction of the
compendious scientific findings that support the phenomena of
cold fusion energy are referenced at these web sites:
and . Anyone who pontificates against this science ought to perform
a step-by-step critique of this evidence. The opinion of anyone
who argues against the experimental scientific evidence solely on
theoretical grounds should be immediately dismissed. Science
does not move forward only by gauging new discoveries against past
theories. This seems to have been forgotten by some of the elite
purveyors of nonsense against cold fusion. Not that there are
not large numbers of theories in support of cold fusion;
there are. The late Julian Schwinger (physics Nobel prize co-winner
with Feynman) was a noted cold fusion theorist. He was so
outraged by the treatment of cold fusion by the American
Physical Society (APS) that he resigned from the organization.
Dr. Michael McKubre at SRI International, prime author of the
1994 Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) study,89? which
concluded that the Fleischmann and Pons discovery had been confirmed
by their work, had this to say: ?Fortuitous or not, in the first
experiment that we ran, some three or four months after the initial
announcement, we saw some evidence of excess heat, which has really
sustained me ever since. Having seen the effect with my own eyes,
the claims from a few that this is impossible, or inconsistent with
all known laws of nuclear physics, these suggestions are in fact
irrelevant. There is no theoretical objection to cold fusion,
it's just unlikely given our experience with hot fusion.?
The uninitiated might gauge the ?religious belief? against
cold fusion in the almost humorous utterance by physics Nobel
laureate, theorist Steven Weinberg, who in an aside attacked cold
fusion in a recent New York Review of Books article,10 even
though he gives no evidence of
having considered experimental data:
|
There do not seem to be any exceptions to this natural
order, any miracles....The evidence for all these [biblical]
miracles seems to be considerably weaker than the evidence for
cold fusion, and I dont ?believe in cold
fusion.?
To give another example of egregious misconduct
against science by the critics, here are the foolish words of Dr.
Robert L. Park, who claims to speak for the American Physical
Society. In his book, Voodoo Sciemmce: Time Road from Foolishness to
Fraud., Park dismisses cold fusion at its very first mention,
referring to it as ?the discredited ?cold fusion? claim made
several years earlier by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann.? He
says that a
?dwindling band of believers? continue to
gather each year ?at some swank international resort? in an attempt
to ?resuscitate? cold fusion. He asks, ?Why does this little
band so fervently believe in something the rest of the scientific
community rejected as fantasy years earlier?? He speculates
later, ?Perhaps many scientists found in cold fusion relief
from boredom.? He complains that no helium nuclear ash results were
forthcoming from Fleischmann and Pons by June 1989, ergo, cold
fusion is fraud. Since at least 1991, Park has been informed by
fellow APS scientists, such as Dr. Scott Chubb of the Naval Research
Laboratory (NRL), about helium detection in cathodes and in the gas
streams of cold fusion experiments. These independent
experiments have been published in the U.S. and Japan in
peer-reviewed journals. There is absolutely no doubt that Park knows
this, yet Voodoo contains no mention of this data, an
egregious fraud by Park on journalists, government leaders,
and the general public. Mr. President, this is the level of
inappropriate discourse that you must see through.
The Politics of Cold
Fusion
Cold fusion energy offers the
prospect of energy abundance over times comparable to geological
ages, in contrast to the microscopic blip in human history of
reliance on fossil fuel. If we expect our descendants to live
virtually indefinitely on this planet—until perhaps our Sun, our
hot fusion reactor in the sky, ?dies? some five billion years
hence— we had better plan now to possess a source of inexhaustible
power. Cold fusion is one energy resource that is virtually
infinite, but how to bring it about sooner rather than later? To
understand how to move forward, we need to back up and examine what
happened and what has been discovered this past decade.
When as an MIT undergraduate I read George Gamow's
book, Thirty Years that Shook Physics: The Story of Quantum Theory
(1966) it was impossible to imagine that in less than 25 years
another revolution, such as has been brought about by cold
fusion, would shake physics in ways every bit as dramatic as
what happened from 1900 to 1930.
For just over a decade, the
Cold Fusion and Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions revolution has
been underway, whether or not the mainstream physics/chemistry
establishment and the general science media wish to agree. The
barrier that separated conventionally understood chemistry and
nuclear physics has come crashing down like the infamous Berlin
Wall. The barrier does not exist, at least not within special
microphysical domains of palladium, nickel, and other metals in
contact with hydrogen. Exotic new physics is at work. The myth of
the ?End of Science? again disproved. The revolution does not even
have a name on which all the revolutionaries can agree. ?Cold
Fusion? is likely to stick, if for no other reason than that is
where it all began. The terms LENR (Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions)
and CANR (Chemically Assisted Nuclear Reactions) have been tried.
Dr. Randell Mills of BlackLight Power, Inc., has a radically
different theoretical approach and an apparently robust commercial
activity. Recent reports suggest that Morgan Stanley-Dean
Witter is about to take his company public in 2000. (In February
2000 his company belatedly received U.S. Patent 6,024,935 on its
process.) This may be the first of many other private ventures in
cold fusion/new energy. Another company, Lattice Energy, LLC,
has just been formed to further the LENR work of nuclear engineering
Professor George Miley at the University of Illinois.
Several Fortune 100 companies are becoming involved in all this
work, though they are not quite ready to declare them-selves—in a
few more months, perhaps.
The revolution began inauspiciously,
with Drs. Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons working for five years
and spending some $100,000 of their own funds before they announced
their findings. Circumstances forced disclosure at a press
conference some eighteen months before the scientists had wanted to
publish. These complex matters, of historical importance only, are
chronicled in Fire from Ice: Searching for the Truth Behind
the Cold Fusion Furor (Mallove, John Wiley & Sons, 1991).
The scientific documentary video, Cold Fusion: Fire from
Water (1999) updates that story and provides insight into the
political dynamics of the controversy. (The White House was sent
these items in February 2000 and earlier.)
On that fateful
day in 1989, Fleischmann and Pons made their central claim, which
has been abundantly proved and never retracted, that in a heavy
water electrochemical cell near room temperature they had produced
excess energy orders of magnitude beyond explanation by chemistry.
This was like discovering a new kind of match that would not
?burn out? for weeks or months, yet would leave no initially
obvious signs of a reaction product. Certainly there was no chemical
ash. They said that they had detected neutrons and tritium in
addition to the excess heat. These were all signatures of
nuclear reactions.
Unfortunately, they did not emphasize
the difficulty of producing the effects. At the time, because their
hands were tied by lawyers focussed on patent issues and
conflicts with nearby Brigham Young University, they were not even
able to provide at their news conference a preprint of their
forthcoming Journal of Elect roanal ytical Chemistry paper. Their
neutron measurements were flawed, as they later admitted. This was a
failing, yet others would later confirm in cold fusion
experiments both low-level neutron radiation as well as tritium
evolution. The latter astonishing evidence has been irrefutably
proved by the work of Dr. Thomas Claytor?s group at Los Alamos
National
Laboratory.1 For national security reasons alone, the
President of the United States should cause heads to roll about
this matter! This is at least as important as the security
breach of computer files at LANL. Radioactive tritium, the
irrefutable evidence of a nuclear reaction— proof of the
reality of cold fusion, and a key material ingredient in
thermonuclear weapons—can now be produced in small quantities by
means far easier than with several multi-billion-dollar proposals.
However, this work cannot and should not be classified. It is
already in the public domain. (Significant improvement of the
process to practical tritium-production level might well need to be
classified.)
Most important to an understanding of the heated
debate of the past decade: The Fleischmann-Pons announcement
threatened an entrenched Federal research program. Over $15 billion
had been invested by the U.S. government in its decades- long hot
fusion program, which sought to emulate the thermonuclear
conditions in the cores of stars. Hot fusion had promised a
distant era of safe, clean, infinite energy—variously estimated by
funding seekers to begin by 2050 to 2100. These programs may have
resulted in useful plasma physics research, but no net energy
release in fusion energy beyond the magnitude of the electric power
put in—ever. Thermonuclear bombs were at ?breakeven,? but controlled
thermonuclear fusion reactors at Princeton and at MIT are not. The
magnetic hot fusion energy program should be terminated
quickly to prevent any more waste of research funding.
Fleischmann and Pons said in 1989 that they had achieved
breakeven already and, unlike hot fusion, there were no
deadly emissions. The claim of a chemically-assisted nuclear
fusion reaction with net energy release threatened to divert
Congressional funding from the hot fusion program. With
private zeal, and later public scorn, scientists supported by the
hot fusion program—particularly at MIT, my alma mater—sought
errors in the Fleischmann-Pons work. When the exact radiation
signatures and end-products of hot fusion reactions in a
vacuum were not found in the Fleischmann-Pon 5 results or in
quickiy-done tests at other laboratories, scientists at the
MIT Plasma Fusion Center yelled ?possible fraud,?
?scam," and ?scientific schiock.? On May 1, 1989, the story
planted in the Boston Herald by the then MIT hot fusion
director unleashed a torrent of anti-scientific bigotry. It did not
occur to most scientists that a new class of nuclear reactions might
have been discovered. As Nobel laureate Julian Schwinger would say
in a lecture at MIT in November 1991, ? The circumstances of cold
fusion are not those of hot fusion.?
He was
ignored. The furor over cold fusion in the spring of 1989
prompted President George Bush, through Energy Secretary Admiral
James Watkins, to convene a ?Cold Fusion Panel? of the U.S.
Department of Energy?s Energy Research Advisory Board (ERAB). The
late Nobel laureate Glenn Seaborg had told President Bush in the
Oval Office on April 14, 1989 that the Utah discovery was ? not
fusion,? thus poisoning the well and precluding an honest
investigation. One of the 22 ERAB panelists had thought at the
time: ?Just by looking at Fleischmann and Pons on television you
could tell they were incompetent boobs.? (Professor William Happer
of Princeton, quoted by G. Taubes in the book Bad Science.) So much
for the claim that the ERAB panel was ?unbiased.? The head of the
panel, Professor John Huizenga, was initially opposed to having any
investigation at all, yet he was allowed to lead it!
This
panel, convened by the Department of Energy, was assigned to assess
reports from various laboratories and to make recommendations to the
U.S. government. Three major laboratories submitted negative
reports. These were MIT, Caltech, and Harwell (England). The ERAB
report was negative, and quickiy so. A preliminary negative
conclusion came in July 1989 and the final report November 1, 1989,
with the following consequences: 1) No special funding by the
U.S. government for further research; 2) Flat denial by the U.S.
Patent Office of any application mentioning cold fusion
directly; 3) Suppression of research on the phenomenon in
government laboratories; 4) Citation of cold fusion as
?pathological science? or ?fraud? in numerous books and articles
critical of cold fusion in general, and of Fleischmann and
Pons in particular. Drs. Fleischmann and Pons would leave the United
States to work on cold fusion in France for a subsidiary of
the Toyota Corporation (IMRA Europe). Stanley Pons became a citizen
of France, in legitimate disgust with his treatment in the United
States. Mr. President, you simply must have the courage to
redress this outrage and have our government apologize to these
extraordinary scientists. The probably illegal killing of their
patent application must be redressed too.
The 1989 reports of
MIT, Caltech, and Harwell have each been analyzed by competent
scientists and these analyses have been published. 11-16 Each of the
widely cited 1989 ?null? experiments has been found to be deeply
flawed in experimental protocols, data evaluation, and
presentation. Each, in fact, contained some evidence of excess heat
as claimed by Fleischmann and Pons. In the case of the MIT data,
there is evidence of deliberate alteration of laboratory
measurements by a lower-echelon worker to erase an indication of
excess heat in official MIT publications and reports to a government
agency under the official seal of MIT. Certainly this report had a
dramatic impact on the perception of numerous scientists and most
journalists.
(Mr.President, this very unfortunate matter has now been referred
to the Inspector General?s Office at two Federal agencies.)
A
great irony: Each of these negative results were themselves the
product of the kind of low quality work of which Fleischmann and
Pons were accused. The difference was that the reports said what the
hot fusion community wanted to hear. This was the legacy of
the 1989 ERAB report, but that legacy must now be reversed—and it
will be, however long that takes. One method of ending the
charade would be for the President of the United States to issue
an executive order to the Secretary of Energy to conduct a thorough,
unbiased investigation of the entire cold fusion, low-energy
nuclear reactions question and to explore how the DOE came to play
such a negative, obstructionist role. DOE laboratories should be
compelled to work under the direction of those who have achieved
significant positive results, such that there can be no doubt in
anyone?s mind about these phenomena.
Almost two years after they
were concocted, Professor Ronald Parker of MIT?s Plasma
Fusion Center publicly stated that the MIT PFC cold fusion
calorimetry data were ?worthless? (June 7, 1991). In the same
period (August 30, 1991) after his data had been challenged,
Parker stated that ?MIT scientists stand by their
conclusions.? Which is it? The full story is given in detail in a
?Special Report: MIT and Cold Fusion? in the 10th
Anniversary issue of Infinite Energy, which The White House
has been provided. You will find the names of former Federal
officials in this document: CIA Director John Deutch and Air Force
Secretary Sheila Widnall.
Fleischmann and Pons have been
vindicated—if not by the media and by the establishment,
certainly by mountains of high quality published results. The
literature on the FleischmannPons effect is now voluminous. These
are not fantasies. This is solid work, the kind of pioneering,
exhaustive experimentation that could have been done at places such
as MIT, Caltech, and Harwell, but wasn?t. We must now go beyond this
sorry past.
The production of excess heat in the range of
hundreds of megajoules per mole of metal has been confirmed, as well
as the production of helium, tritium, and other elements.
Power densities of kilowatts per cubic centimeter of electrode have
been achieved by some researchers. The field of Low-Energy Nuclear
Reactions has been established, if not yet widely recognized.
Low-energy neutrons or weak gamma radiation are seen in some
experiments, but most produce excess heat with no radiation or
radioactive by-products. Rapid remediation of radioactive
materials has been demonstrated. What a fantastic opportunity for
universities such as MIT and private industry to become involved in
one of the most exciting scientific and technological revolutions of
all time. No massive Federal expenditures are required. This .is a
process that private industry can run with, as long as it is
unhampered by bureaucratic interference.
Certainly the
replication and commercial application of the Fleischmann-Pons
effect and similar effects has been inhibited by a lack of
understanding of the exact nature of the reactions, which are not
those known to plasma physicists. There is a severe and widespread
materials and theory problem related to materials that produce the
effects. Criteria are available to test materials for potential
activity, but knowledge of how to produce such material at will is
not yet available.
Sad to say, solving the materials problem may
be beyond the financial resources of the scattered researchers who
have worked to validate the Fleischmann and Pons effect, but it is
heartening that private corporations are taking the lead in
cor
recting the problem caused by some in government and the
academic establishment. Unfortunately, the negative reports by key
hot fusion laboratories to ERAB prevented diversion of
government funding from the failed hot fusion program to the
promising field of cold fusion. The patent-crushing ERAB
report also became a severe deterrent to private investment in the
new energy field.
We return to George Gamow?s musings of 1966.
Gamow thought that the next major physics revolution would be in
understanding the very existence of elementary particles. He wrote,
?There is hardly any doubt that when such a breakthrough is
achieved, it will involve concepts that will be as different from
those of today as today?s concepts are different from those of
classical physics.? He was both wrong and right. He could not have
suspected that the next physics revolution would begin not with high
energy particle physics but with fundamental electrochemistry— and
that it would end with the birth of what might be called ?modern
alchemy.? The revolution will be the end of the world that we have
known, this time for the better.
Snatching Vktory from Ddeat
Rc
ent events: Senator John
McCain, running in the New Hampshire primary for the Republican
presidential nomnation, agreed to be briefed on cold fusion.
He kept his
word. Within a week of his promise, he sent a top
aide to our offices at the Bow Technologies Center. He received
briefing materials that were to be handed to the Senator. Thus,
Senator McCain became the very first major party presidential
candidate in history to receive a high-level briefing about cold
fusion. This briefing occurred before he won the February 1 New
Hampshire Republican primary by a large margin over Governor Bush of
Texas and others.
I later sought to ask Vice President Al Gore, while he was
campaigning in Concord, New Hampshire for the Democratic
Presidential nomination, whether he too would agree to a cold
fusion briefing. On January 13, I attended a Gore
question-and-answer meeting at Temple Beth Jacob in Concord, but was
unable to ask him the question—the Vice President was very long in
responding to so many of the other questions that time simply ran
out. This was the same venue in which eight years earlier, almost to
the day, I had asked you about cold fusion when you were a
candidate, Mr. President! You seemed to know something about it,
because you said that some Arkansas scientists had been
?stonewalled? on cold fusion by the DOE. In all
probability they were.
As has been reported in Infinite Energy, it is our
understanding that in the early 1990s Vice President Gore shied away
from a cold fusion briefing by qualified scientists, after
being urged to do so by a colleague at Apple Computer Corporation.
©American
Hydrogen Association |
The Vice President then reportedly stated that the topic was
?too controversial, too complex—give it to the science
advisor.? With your encouragement, we hope that the Vice President
will now be more open to discussions.
For the record, the
question that was handed to Mr. Gore?s representative on January 13,
2000:
Question for Al Gore from Dr. Eugene Mallove, Bow, NH
Since 1991 he has worked as a consultant to U.S. corporations and
investment firms doing and planning R&D in cold fusion.
He is the author of three science books for the general public,
including the Pulitzer-nominated book on cold fusion—Fire
from Ice: Searching for the Truth Behind the Cold Fusion Furor
(John Wiley & Sons, 1991). He has taught science journalism at
MIT and at Boston University; he was Chief Science Writer at the MIT
News Office when the cold fusion controversy erupted on March
23, 1989. Prior to that he was a top science writer and broadcaster
with the Voice of America in Washington, DC and also wrote science
and technology articles for magazines and newspapers, including MIT
Technology Review and The Washington Post.
Articles about Dr.
Mallove?s involvement in cold fusion research have appeared
in TWA Ambassador Magazine (Sept. 1997) and in Wired (Nov. 1998).
Dr. Mallove?s review article, ?Cold Fusion: The Miracle Was
No mistake,? appeared in the July! August 1997 Analog.
Eugene
Mallove was the Technical Advisor to the 1997 Paramount Pictures
techno-thriller, The Saint, starring
Elisabeth Shue and Val Kilmer, and is credited in the film. The
central theme of the movie is cold fusion. In April 1999, the
definitive cold fusion video documentary written by Dr.
Mallove and his colleagues, ?Cold Fusion: Fire from
Water,? appeared. Its narrator is James Doohan, ?Scotty? of
Star Trek fame. It features commentary by Sir. Arthur C.
Clarke and 22 cold fusion scientists and technologists.
P.O. Box 2816, Concord, NH 03302-2816
Ph: 603-228-4516 Fx:
603-224-5975
e-mail: editor@infinite-energy.com
http:/
/www.infinite-energy.com
1.Will you agree to help end the
Cold Fusion controversy by agreeing to a scientific briefing
here in New Hampshire, by representatives of the hundreds of
American scientists working in the cold fusion and low-energy
nuclear reactions field—including my colleague Dr. Edmund Storms of
Los Alamos National Laboratory?
2.After this, would you consider proposing a National Academy of
Sciences review of the cold fusion and low energy nuclear
reactions issue based on the large body of scientific evidence that
has built up since what we regard as the indefensible,
rush-to-judgment, even fraudulent report by the Department of Energy
in 1989?
Mr. President, the rest may be up to you. You have heard the
story. It is true. Every word. Nothing will hold back the cold
fusion! new energy revolution from happening in due course, but
with the stroke of your pen, a few taps on your computer, or perhaps
a few telephone calls, you have it in the power to help accelerate
the Cold Fusion/New Energy Age. Just as Secretary of War
William Howard Taft in the Roosevelt Administration cut through
bureaucratic opposition and forced the Army to call the Wright
brothers in 1908 to demonstrate their ?flyer? to a crowd of
thousands at Ft. Meyer, Virginia— and thereby ended years of doubt
about their 1903 accomplishment, launching the Aerospace Age— you
can break the opposition of the perpetrators of the
?HeavyWatergate? scandal. That act of courage and imagination
will never be forgotten. Thank you.
Let me end as I began with a
few remarks by Sir Arthur C. Clarke, who recommended that your staff
request this essay from me:
?Like everyone else, i was very
excited when the so-called ?cold fusion? announcement was
made. And then, again like everybody else, I became disappointed and
forgot about the whole thing when it seemed to be a mistake, though
I was rather puzzled why two world-class scientists could have made
such fools of themselves. Well, during the years that followed,
slowly, from time to time, there came news of other laboratories
repeating the experiment and getting positive results. And there has
been a sort of groundswell, all over the whole world, of new
information. And during the course of the last five years or so,
I've slowly become convinced, from my original skepticism, to 99%
certainty that it is for real. The evidence now is really
overwhelming.?
Cold Fusion: Fire from Water,
1999
?If these new sources of energy do turn out to be real — and
as I say there are several totally different varieties — the
question is: What effect will this have on our society? On
the future? Well, it's just possible they may be no more than
laboratory curiosities, and can't be scaled up to commercial levels.
I think that's rather unlikely.? Nuclear energy was once a
laboratory curiosity. So let's assume that these devices can be
developed. The future is then almost unlimited. It could be the end
of the fossil fuel age: the end of oil and coal. And the end,
incidentally, of many of our worries about global pollution and
global warming.? Cold Fusion: Fire from Water,
1999
References
Los Alamos National Laboratory
1.· ?Tritium
Production from a Low Voltage Deuterium
Discharge on Palladium
and Other Metals,? TN. Claytor, D.D.
Jackson, and D.G. Tuggle,
published on WWW and reprinted in
Infinite Energy, No. 7,
March-April 1996, pp. 39-42,
Over the past year we have been able to demonstrate that a plasma
loading method produces an exciting and unexpected amount of tritium
from small palladium wires. In contrast to electrochemical hydrogen
or deuterium loading of palladium, this method yields a reproducible
tritium generation rate when various electrical and physical
conditions are met... We will show tritium generation rates for
deuterium-palladium foreground runs that are up to 25 times larger
than hydrogen-palladium control experiments using materiats front
the same batch. (See also, "Tiritium Evolution from Various
Morphologies of Deuterated Palladium Proceedigs of the
Fourth
International Conference on Cold Fusion, December 6-9.
1993, Maui, Hawaii, Edited by Y.O. Passell. EPRI TR-104188, July
1994.J
2.?Electrolytic Tritium Production,? by Edmund Storms and Carol
Talcott, Fusion Technology, Vol. 17, July 1990, pp.
680-695.
Fifty-three electrolytic cells of various configurations
and electrode compositions were examined for tritium production.
Significant tritium was found in 11 cells at levels between 1.5 and
80 times the starting concentration after enrichment corrections are
made.
3.· ?Review of Experimental Observations About the Cold
Fusion
Effect,? by Edmund Storms, Fusion Technology, Vol.20, December 1991,
pp. 433477.
The experimental literature describing the cold
fusion phenomenon is reviewed. The number and variety of careful
experimental measurements of heat, tritium, neutron, and helium
production strongly support the occurrence of nudear reactions in a
metal lattice near room temperature, as proposed by Pons and
Fieishamann, and independently by Jones.
Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, Research Department,
Chemistry Division and University of Texas, Department of
Chemistry
4.· ?Anomalous Effects Involving Excess Power,
Radiation,
and Helium Production During D20 Electrolysis
Using
Palladium Cathodes,? by Melvin H. Miles, Benjamin F. Bush,
and
Joseph J. Lagowski, Fusion Technology, Vol. 25, July 1994,
pp.
478486.
Previous experiments showed that eight electrolysis gas samples
collected
during episodes of excess power production in two
identical cells contained measurable amounts of 4He while six
control samples gave no evidence for helium... This places the 4He
production rate at 1011 to 1012 atom/s per watt of excess power,
which is the correct magnitude for typical fusion reactions that
yield helium as a product... Simultaneous evidence for excess power,
helium production, and anomalous radiation was present in these
experiments. Completely new experiments with more precise helium
measurements are reported that again show sintultaneous evidence for
excess power, helium production, and anomalous radiation.
5.· ?Anomalous Effects in Deuterated Systems,? by Melvin
H.
Miles, Benjamin F. Bush, and Kendall B. Johnson,
NAWCWPNS
Technical Publication 8302, September 1996, 99
pages.
Excess power was measured in 28 out of 94 electrochentical
experiments conducted using palladium or palladium-alloy cathodes in
heavy water.. .Results from our laboratory indicate that helium-4 is
the missing nuclear product accompanying the excess heat. Thirty out
of 33 experiments showed a correlation between either excess power
and helium production or no excess power and no excess helium The
collection of the electrolysis gases in both glass and metal flasks
place the helium-4 production rate at 1011 to i012 atoms per second
per watt of excess power This is the correct magnitude for typical
deuteron fusion reactions that yield heltum-4 as a product.
Anomalous radiation was detected in some experiments by the use of
x-ray films, Geiger-Mueller counters, and by tlte use of sodium
iodide detectors.
There was never any significant production of
tritiunt in any of our experiments. - . Our results provide
compelling evidence that the anomalous effects in deuterated
systents are real...lt is highly unlikely that our heat and helium
correlations could be due to random errors... Our best experiments
produced up to 30% excess heat, 0.52 watts of excess power, and 1400
kilojoules (kJ) of excess enthalpy. This amount of excess enthalpy
is difficult to explain by any chemical reaction.. - Anoattalous
radiation was detected in some experiments by the use of X-ray
filnts, several different types of Geiger-Mueller (GM) counters, and
sodiunt iodide (Nal) detectors. Norutal
radiation couitts were
always observed when no electrolysis experiments were running...
-
Naval Ocean Systems Center and
U.S. Department of Energy
(Washington)
6. - ?On the Behavior of Pd Deposited in the
Presence of Evolving Deuterium,? S. Szpak (Navy), J.J. Smith (DOE),
I.
Elect roanalytical Chemistry, 302 (March 11, 1991), pp.
255-260.
Three sets of preliminary experimental results are presented
here. i.e., the
production of excess enthalpy. the production of
tritium, and the presence of some fontt of radiation.
NASA Lewis (Glenn) Research
Center
7.?Replication of the Apparent Excess Heat Effect in a
Light
Water-Potassium Carbonate-Nickel Electrolytic Cell,? by
Janis M.Niedra, Ira T. Meyers, Gustave C. Fralick, and Richard
S.Baldwin, NASA Technical Memorandum 107167,
February 1996.
Replication of experiments claiming to demonstrate excess heat
production
in light water-Ni-K2C03 electrolytic cells was found
to produce an apparent excess heat of 11 watts maximum for 60 w
electrical power into the cell. Power gains ranged from
1.06 to 1.68...
SRI International and Electric Power Research Institute
8.·
?Development of Advanced Concepts for Nuclear Processes in
Deuterated Metals,? M.C.H. McKubre, et al., EPRI
TR-104195,
Research Project 3170-01, Final Report, August 1994,
128 pages,
plus 342 pages on microfiche.
This work confirms the claims of Fleischmann, Pons, and Hawkins
of the production of excess power in deutcriun-loaded palladiuin
cathodes at levels too large for chemical transformation... Although
nuclear reaction products commensurate with the excess heat have not
yet been observed, small but definite evidence of nuclear reactions
have been detected at levels some 40 orders of magnitude greater
than predicted by conventional nuclear theory.
9.· ? Isothermal Flow Calorimetric Investigations of the
D/Pd
and H/Pd Systems,? M.C.H. McKubre, S. Crouch-Baker,
R.C.
Rocha-Filho, 5.1. Smedley, F.L. Tanzella, T.O. Passell, and
J. Santucci, Journal of Electroanaytical Chemistry, 368, 1994,
pp.55-66.
-- .the generation of ?excess power? was observed in a
series of deuteriumbased experiments, but not in a hydrogen-based
experiment. The results of these experiments enable several
(tentative) conclusions to be reached concerning the conditions
necessary for the reproducible observation of this anomalous thermal
effect.
10.a Steven Weinberg, New York Review of Books, Oct. 21,
1999.
11. Swartz, Dr. Mitchell R., ?Re-Examination of a Key Cold Fusion
Experiment: ?Phase-Il? Calorimetry by the MIT Plasma Fusion Center,?
Fusion Facts, August 1992, pp. 27-40.
12.· Swartz, Dr. Mitchell R., ?A Method to Improve Algorithms
Used to Detect Steady State Excess Enthalpy,?Proceedings:
Fourth
International Conference on Cold Fusion (December 6-9, 1993,
Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii), and in Transactions of Fusion Technology,
Vol. 26, December 1994, pp. 369-372.
13. · Swartz, Dr. Mitchell R., ?Some Lessons from
Optical
Examination of the PFC Phase-Il Calorimetric
Curves,
Proceedings:Fourth International Conference on Cold
Fusion
(December 6-9, 1993, Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii).
14. * Noninski, Drs. V.C. and C.I. ?Comments on
?Measurement
and Analysis of Neutron and Gamma Ray Emission
Rates,
Other Fusion Products, and Power, in Electrochemical
Cells
Having Palladium Cathodes,? Fusion Technology, Vol. 19,
May
1991, pp. 579-580.
15. Miles, Melvin H., B.F. Bush, and D. Stillwell, ?Calorimetric
Principles and Problems in Measurements of Excess Power During
Pd-D20 Electrolysis,? I. Physical Chemistry, Feb. 17, 1994, pp.
1948-1952.
16. Hansen, Wilford N. and M.E. Melich, ?Pd/D Calorimetry— The
Key to the F/P Effect and a Challenge to
Science,?Proceedings:
Fourthi International Conference on Cold
Fusion (December 6-9, 1993,
Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii), and in
Transactions of Fusion
Technology, Vol. 26, December 1994, pp.
355-368.
Mr. Vice President:
I'm Dr. Eugene Mallove, a member of this
Temple and editor of the scientific journal Infinite Energy
magazine. I would like to ask you two critical questions about
energy and the environment, because I know those topics are dear to
you—it may even help you win over Bradley because of the boondoggle
going on in his state at Princeton! [The Princeton tokamak fusion
reactor.] I hope that you will be very forthcoming in your response
— as Senator John McCain was when I asked him last week in Bow, at a
Town Hall Meeting. You can be instrumental in ending a scientific
scandal over energy that has been going on since the
Exxon-Valdez ran aground on March 24, 1989— the day after Drs.
Fleischmann and Pons made their cold fusion announcement at the
University of Utah. Candidate Bill Clinton, right here in this
room on January 12, 1992, told those assembled that he knew
something about the scandal—he said Department of Energy scientists
had ?stonewalled Arkansas scientists.? Despite that, I regret to
tell you he has done nothing about it except [by inaction due to
being misinformed] make the scandal grow worse. Here are the
two questions:
Biographical Note for Eugene F. Mallove
Since 1995, Dr. Mallove has been the Editor-in-Chief
and
Publisher of the bimonthiy Infinite Energy Magazine:
Cold
Fusion and New Energy Technology, based in Concord,
New
Hampshire. Now in its fifth year of publication, Infinite
Energy
has subscribers in 38 countries.
The magazine?s New
Hampshire-based parent company,
Cold Fusion Technology, Inc.,
operates the New Energy
Research Laboratory (NERL) and the
magazine publishing
facility at the Bow Technologies Center in
Bow, New
Hampshire. Dr. Mallove is President of Cold
Fusion
Technology, Inc. and Director of NERL.
Dr. Mallove
holds a Master of Science Degree (SM, 1970) and Bacheior of Science
Degree (SB, 1969) in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from
MIT and a Science Doctorate in Environmental Health Sciences (Air
Pollution Control Engineering) from Harvard University (1975). With
broad experience in high technology engineering at companies
including Hughes Research Laboratories, The Analytic Science
Corporation, and MIT Lincoln Laboratory, he has also had extensive
hands-on experience in laboratory settings.
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