December 2010 – Page 2 – COLD FUSION NOW!

December 12, 2010May 3, 2012

“Renewable Energy: Facts and Fantasies” has conversation on cold fusion

A new publication Renewable Energy: Facts and Fantasies by Craig Shields, the editor of www.2greenenergy.com, surveys the renewable energy field and has a chapter on cold fusion.

It consists of a short conversation with Wally Rippel, a long-time researcher in electric vehicle batteries who has worked in both government and industry.

The 5-page conversation begins on page 171 and is most interesting for the bit of background given on Wally’s experience talking about cold fusion at Caltech, one of the premier research universities in the US.

Here’s a brief excerpt of the conversation the author/editor Craig Shields had with Wally:

CS: OK, thanks. I think I understand the physics now—at some level, at least. But why is this so controversial? Why do people believe that this is bad science, a hoax? I would think that it either happens or it doesn’t.

WR: Actually, the human side of the equation is even more interesting than the science. There has been a calculated effort to discredit the idea of cold fusion. For obvious reasons, cold fusion threatens existing energy-related interests, and those interests have been intensely aggressive with throwing people off the trail.

CS: But I heard that the people who looked into this couldn’t find nuclear products.

WR: Ah. That’s simply not true. The researchers from Cal Tech and MIT did find nuclear products; they fudged the numbers to get the DoE off the case. The US Navy and Lawrence Livermore have also found clear evidence of nuclear results. And even when they admit they find nuclear products, they would say things like, “Oh the engineering on this will be really hard.” I’m not saying it will be easy, but that’s like saying, “There is a trillion dollars in that safe over there, but there is no use trying to get at it because the combination lock might be hard to open.” All these ridiculous ideas are a result of the enormous pressure to agree with the idea that cold fusion is a hoax.

CS: To me, this sounds a lot like what I hear about the science—and the politics—behind global warming. I hear that even extremely senior people are ostracized all the time for not conforming to the mainstream viewpoints on the subject.

WR: Exactly right. Dr. Peter Hagelstein at MIT, best known for his X-ray laser, is also a strong proponent of cold fusion. He’s been isolated from the entire scientific community because of that belief. Some of the people who had investments in cold fusion testified against it, apparently so that they could maintain majority control of the development of the technology.

“Yet despite all the active attempts to divert attention away from cold fusion, the technology carries with it an enormous amount of credibility—but most of it is very quiet. For instance, the US Navy has performed experiments producing neutrons in groups of three. Also, there is an internal memo within DARPA in which they clearly state that they believe that cold fusion is real.”

“Energy companies have worked hard to discredit cold fusion, though, with the Obama administration, they will have a harder time doing this than they did under Bush.”

“Cal Tech has done almost no research in the subject. After the Great Electric Car Race, I was asked to be the parade master for the celebration in Pasadena. When he talked publicly about the race, [Cal Tech president] Dr. Lee DuBridge always used my name rather than his own in discussing the project. I once asked him why he did this, and he told me, “As the president of Cal Tech, my number one responsibility is fund-raising. That’s all I’ll say.”

“What you need to know to understand this is that the oil companies make huge annual contributions. Fred Hartley, Union Oil’s president and trustee of Cal Tech, explained that he would tell the school, “We won’t be able to continue to make these contributions if you are developing technology that represents a threat to us.” What Union Oil is doing is not illegal. There’s no law that says an oil company has to contribute to Cal Tech. Depending on your viewpoint, it’s not even immoral.”

End quote.

A summary/review by George Alger of the the book is available here at Renewable Energy World.

The book is available for purchase or a free download if your register here.

December 10, 2010September 8, 2013

1976 Edison Electric Institute pamphlet

I love old information.

Rather, I love the way old information is presented, for the very act of noticing that a document is old has littler to do with its content than the presentation, the words, the pictures, the style, the medium.

In 1976, the Viking 2 spacecraft landed on Mars, and Apple Computer was formed.

In 1976, the gold price hit a bottom of $102 per ounce, oil averaged $12.37 a barrel, and the United States celebrated its 200th birthday.

And in that year, M. King Hubbert, who in 1956 correctly predicted the peak of oil production in the US would be between 1965 and 1970 (peak production in the lower 48 occurred 1970/1), made a video clip explaining his idea of Peak Oil to the public.

Also that year, Edison Electric Institute, Inc, the Association of Shareholder Owned Electric Companies in the US, put out a pamphlet describing the changes that would be occurring in our lives due to the depletion of fossil fuels.

Entitled The Transitional Storm -Or The Changing Energy Epoch, the four-page pamphlet has a brief history of human energy use, describing how each energy epoch has transitioned from one type of fuel to another somewhat smoothly, meaning that historically, humanity has been able to discover new forms of power generation and fuel before the previous technologies fuel ran out.

In other words, we found coal before all the trees were burned. We found oil before all the coal was burned.

However, they go on to say, “Today it is different.”

“The fossil-fuel epoch and the next age are not completely interlocking. There is some overlap, but there also is a large supply-demand gap, and we call this gap a “transitional storm”-you’ve heard it called an “Energy Crisis.”

The essay quotes M. King Hubbert as saying that a full 80% of the total global supply of fossil fuel will have been consumed in “the incredibly short period of only 300 years.”

In other words, the Oil Age is on the down-slope.

But there is hope for the future. According to Edward Teller, the laws of thermodynamics say our energy sources are virtually inexhaustible. From page 2,

“As Edward Teller puts it, “Thermodynamics teaches us that unlimited energy exists. What is missing is the practical way to use this energy efficiently.” In other words, the shortage is not of energy or of fuel, but of conversion technology-the “smarts” to convert available fuel into useful energy.”

The pamphlet notes the various forms of energy we could transition to, including wind, solar, and hydro, as well as nuclear fission and fusion.

The fuel for fusion, deuterium, gets special note.

“Interestingly, there is only one two-hundredths of an ounce of deuterium in a gallon of water. Yet if all the energy could be extracted from that small fraction of an ounce, it would be the equivalent of 300 gallons of high-test gasoline.”

The essay also make the claim that there’s enough deuterium in the oceans to last 500 million years.

Thus our problem is not shortage of fuel, it’s a crisis of conversion of energy.

Edison Electric puts the responsibility for transition squarely on the shoulders of the public who must, as consumers of electricity, “support and encourage research and development that will lead to new and improved conversion technologies.”

“But most importantly, they must take their position seriously-as seriously as they expect the government and the utility companies to take theirs.”

I wonder, under what circumstances, I would get a warning like this from a power company today? Thirty-five years later, “the transitional storm” is upon us, and thirty-five years later, the public has still not been educated enough to take this situation seriously.

As oil prices continued to drop into the 1980s, the transitional storm was forgotten, and we built more infrastructure based on fossil fuels. We didn’t prepare for “a new energy epoch” like we should have, and now, we’re going to have to scramble to develop solutions fast.

What is the solution?

For ultra-clean high energy-density power, there is only one choice, low-energy nuclear reactions, or cold fusion, using deuterium as a fuel.

Nuclear fission power plants that exist today are dirty and dangerous. They take a decade to build with enormous costs financially and environmentally.

Meanwhile, conventional hot nuclear fusion has not advanced enough to be a viable alternative. It requires a complex engineering structure to potentially provide a centralized power source with a high capital cost.

Cold fusion does not produce radioactive waste, and is decentralized, with fuel available to anyone who can access water. The nuclear fusion reaction occurs inside a small piece of metal, giving a super-high-energy density per unit volume of metal.

This technology has been neglected for the past two decades with 0% of the funding that hot fusion has received from the Department of Energy, and we need to remedy this immediately.

The essay ends with Dr. Glenn Seaborg, a Nobel prize-winning nuclear chemist and advocate for the peaceful use of nuclear power (albeit the fission kind), though no friend to cold fusion:

“The wise use of energy,” says Dr. Seaborg, “can restore nature and rejuvenate man. It can help us to turn green again much of the desert wasteland that was once natural gardens. It can help us clean up our man-made environment and rebuild the lives of men and the lands and cities they inhabit. It can help us build the foundation for lasting peace on this planet. And it can give us the means to explore beyond this planet-to open new frontiers to man, physical frontiers and those of the mind and spirit.

In short, the future of energy is the future of man. Without it we become nothing. With it, we become whatever we wish to be.”

Click the images below to open a .pdf of each page of this document in a new tab.

And check out the graphic on page 3 “How Man Has Spent His Time”. Only 10% of Industrial man’s time was spent working???

How things have changed… Got to get to work! Bye!

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December 5, 2010September 19, 2012

Enough revisions to go around…

A recent article Mercury serves up a nuclear surprise by Eugenie Samuel Reich and published by Nature, describes how the “discovery of a new type of fission turns a tenet of nuclear theory on its head.”

From the article:

Nuclear theorist Witold Nazarewicz of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville says that the study demonstrates the extent to which, more than 70 years after the discovery of nuclear fission, we are still learning about the process. “This is very important information for any model of the nucleus,” he says.

Nazarewicz says that although engineers’ practical knowledge of fission has progressed far enough for us to build nuclear bombs and reactors, “I don’t think we have a firm understanding of fission rooted in the interactions of the proton and neutron building blocks.”

At least there’s one thing nuclear scientists can agree on! Cold fusion scientists know a little something about revisions of the nuclear model.

When it comes to cold fusion, claims that “they are measuring the input power wrong” are just not going to cut it anymore.

A new model of nuclear particle interactions is required to encompass both hot fusion and low-energy nuclear reactions, and will be based on the many-bodied physics that takes place on the nanoscale dimension.

Perhaps now there might be some sympathy in the nuclear fission community?

December 5, 2010March 7, 2012

Future new-energy scientist: “Allow cold fusion to flourish.”

Now a sophomore in high-school, Eric‘s class projects are all about fusion power and what it would mean for our planet.

While most of his school peers don’t understand the importance of energy for their future, Eric remembers first hearing about cold fusion when he was around 8 years old – from his dad.

James Martinez interviewed this young man on his Ca$h Flow show Thursday Dec. 2, and asked Eric how his interest on Cold Fusion became sparked so strongly.

Eric described a book he read by Michio Kaku called Hyperspace, which categorizes civilizations into three types based on their energy usage and technological development where the higher their technological development, the more their energy usage.

Type 1 civilizations control planetary forces such as hurricanes and earthquakes.
Type 2 civilizations have spread out into the solar system, establishing themselves on the outer planets and moons.
Type 3 civilizations have colonized their galaxy.

Earth is currently ranked as a Type 0 civilization, since we are still using fossil fuels. Eric estimated that about roughly 180 petawatts, or 180 quadrillion watts, of power is available to our planet, but the human race only uses about 10 terawatts, or ten trillion watts of power.

Showing more understanding than most adults, this remarkable 10th-grader notes that “energy needs grow exponentially“. He quotes Michio Kaku as saying we could be a Type 1 civilization within 100-200 years, and it’s fusion power that can take us there.

This is what prompted his study of nuclear physics and cold fusion.

Initially, his teachers at school were surprised to hear about the cold fusion effect, and like most people, were worried about the effects of radiation. After they learned there is no dangerous radiation emitted like in hot-fusion reactions, and no radioactive waste generated like conventional nuclear fission, Eric’s teachers now fully support his cold fusion research projects.

It was Jed Rothwell’s book Cold Fusion and the Future that influenced his ideas on how cold fusion technologies will change our planet. Eric believes that the first applications of this technology will be home-heating and transportation, and that the electric grid will be obsolesced by smaller decentralized power units. While there will most certainly be disturbances from the implementation of this new technology, overall, he said, “the positive effects will far outweigh the negative effects.”

He also learned from his father that the reason cold fusion energy science has been marginalized was because older scientists have trouble accepting new ideas. This is why Eric is careful about choosing a college to attend: he wants to go where cold fusion science has supportive professors so he can eventually “work with the leaders in the field, who know the most information.”

With kids like this riding the wave of new energy science, hope remains strong for a positive future on this planet. We look forward to hearing more from this young man, and others like him.

It’s up to us grown-ups to put our youth on the right path of discovery and invention, fully engaging them to find the solutions so desperately needed on our planet today. Perhaps there’s someone in your local school who is waiting to be inspired.

If you have a science background, drop by your neighborhood high-school, and make a donation of your time by giving a talk on new energy science. You can also make a big difference by donating books and DVDs on new energy science to your local high-school library, or media resource center.

Listen to the interview with this amazing young man by going to the Cash-flow archives for Thursday, December 2, or, download the .mp3 directly from our Cold Fusion Now audio page and be inspired to make a difference yourself.