FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Brillouin Energy Corp. presented its groundbreaking thermal energy technology on Capitol Hill last week. Attendees included Members of Congress, congressional aides, federal government officials, industry representatives, and citizens’ groups concerned with the federal government’s progress on developing clean energy solutions.
“It was great to see that much interest in DC for a true safe green nuclear power technology,” commented Brillouin’s President and Chief Technology Officer, Robert Godes.
Attendees were able to learn about Brillouin’s prototype LENR reactors and hear from a number of speakers, including Dr. Michael McKubre of Stanford Research International (SRI). Brillouin and SRI have entered into a technology research agreement under which SRI is engaged in calibration testing and independent analysis of the Brillouin technology.
As Dr. McKubre noted in a report distributed at the event, “it is very clear that something on the order of four times (4x) and potentially more gain in power (and therefore ultimately energy) was achieved at an impressive and industrially significant operating temperature of around 640°C. To my knowledge this had not been achieved before in the LENR field. The fact that the Q pulse input is capable of triggering the excess power on and off is also highly significant.”
In addition, Dr. Banning Garrett, former Strategic Foresight Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, was also present and issued a report detailing the current status of the LENR field and credibility of Brillouin’s claims. As Dr. Garrett noted, “LENR power generation, if realized, has the potential to become one of the technologies for transformation of the global energy system.”
Brillouin’s breakthrough technology is now garnering national and international attention and the company looks forward to working with government and industry leaders to bring this technology to market.
Background on Brillouin
Brillouin Energy Corporation is a clean-technology company based in Berkeley, CA, which is developing, in collaboration with the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), an ultra-clean, low-cost, renewable energy technology that is capable of producing commercially useful amounts of thermal energy.
The Brillouin technology is based on low energy nuclear reactions (LENR). The result is ultra-clean, low-cost, and sustainable renewable energy that doesn’t rely on any type of fossil fuel, chemical, or nuclear fuel. This process produces zero emissions and no solid wastes which pollute the environment.
Brillouin’s technology is a proprietary method of electrical stimulation of nickel metal conductors using a proprietary control system. The process pulses the system to generate excess heat. The excess heat produced is a product of reactions in hydrogen (from water or gas) in the nickel metal lattice. The process is neither fission nor fusion—rather, electrons change protons to nearly-stationary neutrons in the nickel metal lattice, generating heat.
The reactor converts hydrogen into helium, which has slightly less mass—that mass difference creates a large amount of thermal energy without burning any hydrocarbon energy sources. The reactor is very small relative to the amount of thermal energy output, making the technology very clean and efficient with a virtually inexhaustible fuel supply. Brillouin is currently working to scale the heat production up to commercial output levels.
Brillouin has developed TWO systems:
1) The WET™ Boiler, which is being designed to generate heat from 212º to 302º Fahrenheit, and is intended for home heating and hot water use.
2) The HHT™ Boiler, which is being designed to generate heat at 932º to 1,112º Fahrenheit, and is intended for commercial electricity generation.
For more information:
POC: Robert George
RWGeorge@BrillouinEnergy.com
22nd Russian Conference on Cold Nuclear Transmutation of Chemical Elements and Ball Lighting
Chairman of the RCCNT&BL-22 Organizing Committee Yury Bazhutov
Vice-Chairmen Vladimir Bychkov, Nikolai Samsonenko
Sept 27-October 4, 2015
Dagomys, Sochi, Krasnodar region, Russia
The anomalous heat effect on D/H loaded Palladium: Exploration at an atomic level, preliminary perturbed angular correlations studies
by Juliana Schell, Vittorio Violante, Graham K. Hubler
and Collaborators: Moustapha Thioye, Jinghao He, João G. M. Correia, Iberê R. S. Junior, Izabela T. Matos, Michel Zoghby
Wednesday, 14 October 2015 from 14:30 to 15:30 (Europe/Zurich)
Geneva, Switzerland
Dr. Mitchell Swartz of JET Energy was supposed to present at ICCF-19 on his NANOR technology but was unable to attend, and Dr. Peter Hagelstein stepped in and spoke about the tiny reactor. Dr. Swartz posted on his Cold Fusion Times this translation from Dr. Jean-Paul Biberian‘s original post in French about Day 1:
“David Knies of American society Coolescence studied the influence of the crystal orientation of the palladium surface and the addition of impurities on the loading of deuterium. It appears that the crystal orientation is not important. For cons, the addition of some metallic elements in very small quantities increases the load. David Nagel of George Washington University has studied the case of electrochemical cells explosions. It seems that in certain circumstances, unclear, chain reactions occur. He began by recalling the 1988 episode experienced by Pons and Fleischmann of the merger of the cubic electrode 1cm3 of palladium has melted and through the work plan. He then toured the other experiences that took place in different laboratories, and the Rossi reactor that exploded. Obviously, before placing on the market of such equipment will need to understand what happened.
Jean-Luc Payet, retired from the University of Aix-Marseille developed the theory of relativistic electrons deep could explain some of the cold fusion reactions. Francesca Sarto ENEA in Rome, has developed an in situ analysis method of the electrode surface by cyclic voltammetry which allows to know the electrode surface.
“Melvin Miles has had close relations with Martin Fleischmann, and has a large number of letters with him, he will publish soon. He revealed in particular that Martin Fleischmann had told him that the experience could not occur below 60 ° C. He also announced that in 1988 he and Stanley Pons had measured the production of helium. Peter Hagelstein, a very high level theorist MIT showed the production of X-rays with a high frequency vibration system on metallic films.
Vittorio Violante, ENEA in Frascatti showed the effect of pulsed magnetic fields in the production of excess energy in electrochemistry experiments. David Kidwell of the Washington Navy measured significant excess heat with gaseous deuterium absorption of palladium powders coated ZrO2. Orchideh Azizi, University of Missouri found that different pretreatments palladium electrodes did not change at the margin the rate of final loading of hydrogen palladium electrodes.
Jirohita Kasagi has shown that the deuterium-deuterium reactions with low energy beams of deuterium on a solid or liquid metal target occurred with reaction yields much higher than predicted by standard theories. There has low energy an anomaly. Dmitrii Filippov of the Kurchatov Institute, Russia, and collaborator Leonid Urutskoev showed that heavy nuclei could transmute under the influence of very strong magnetic fields.
Hioki Tatsumi, Toyota in Japan has studied the loading of deuterium in mesopores loaded palladium. Akira Kitamura of Technova company in Japan showed excess heat in experiments with palladium alloy powders and coated in a ZrO2 mass flow calorimeter cooled with oil.”
Here is Day 3 from Jean-Paul Biberian google-translated from French into English:
The third day was a little short at the scientific level, as the morning was dedicated to tourism.
David Knies of American society Coolescence studied the influence of the crystal orientation of the palladium surface and the addition of impurities on the loading of deuterium. It appears that the crystal orientation is not important. For cons, the addition of some metallic elements in very small quantities increases the load.
David Nagel of George Washington University has studied the case of electrochemical cells explosions. It seems that in certain circumstances, unclear, chain reactions occur. He began by recalling the 1988 episode experienced by Pons and Fleischmann of the merger of the cubic electrode 1cm3 of palladium has melted and through the work plan. He then toured the other experiences that took place in different laboratories, and the Rossi reactor that exploded. Obviously, before placing on the market of such equipment will need to understand what happened.
Jean-Luc Payet, retired from the University of Aix-Marseille developed the theory of relativistic electrons deep could explain some of the cold fusion reactions.
Francesca Sarto ENEA in Rome, has developed an in situ analysis method of the electrode surface by cyclic voltammetry which allows to know the electrode surface.
Mitchell Swartz posted Jean-Paul Biberian‘s report on Day 4 in English:
“Steven Katinsky created with David Nagel “the Industrial Association for LENR” whose objective is to return the area alongside other professional associations of energy. The construction site will lenria.org
Mitchell Swartz (JET Energy) could not come to the conference and his presentation was made by Peter Hagelstein. He outlined the latest developments in the Nanor, this small reactor compound powder or palladium, palladium-nickel or nickel coated with zirconium oxide, and charged deuterium. By passing an electric current through the powder, it gets energy by orders of magnitude gains. This method, although small is very interesting for future developments.
Alexander Gromov, was a reminder of the history of transmutations starting with biological transmutations, but also with the reactions in plasmas. He showed that the plasma electrolysis possible to obtain hydrogen production 8 times higher than those provided by Faraday’s law, because of the very high temperature electrodes that breaks the water molecules.
Anatoly Klimov of Russia Inflow Company has studied the effect of the plasma on the transmutations, and energy savings from February to October in spherical reactors.
Vladimir Vysotskii of the University of Kiev showed how with bacteria, he could transmute the cesium barium. In particular, it was able to reduce the radioactivity of Cs-137 by 50% in 4 days, turning it into Ba-138.
Changlin Liang Tsinghua University in Beijing showed the importance of lithium in cold fusion experiments.
Igor Goryachev of Technology showed radioactive products transmutations by plasma Sr-90, Cs-137, Pu-239.
In the afternoon, we had an informal presentation of Alexander Parkhomov who gave us information on the experience that produces large amounts of heat with a mixture of powder and nickel powder LiAlH4.”
Vladimir Vysotskii presented his work in transmutation of Cesium 133 by anaerobic sea bacteria. This is so fantastic that it deserve an independent post.
He explained first that Cesium, 133 and 137 were the most dangerous nuclear waste in fission, because of their biological characteristics.
Previously he observed some transmutations of cesium to barium, at rate allowing reduction by half in 200 to 500days.
The problem is that to decontaminate place like Fukushima you needed bacteria living in seawater. He decided to use anaerobic methanogenic bacteria form the sea sludge.
His experiments was designed with 3 control experiments, without either the bacteria, the cesium, or the nutrient.
The result was amazing, and he observed 50% reduction of cesium in 8 days.
I thought about possible contamination by bottle, but we should not forget there are 3 control experiment that should be impacted by any artifact you imagine…fascinating!
Another example of the quality of Russian science, in LENR especially.
Clean Planet and Friends at ICCF-19 in Padua, Italy 2015.
Clean Planet posted on their Facebook page how they and their team were interviewed by Italian radio after their presentations.:
We are in Podova in Italy for ICCF-19 (The 19th International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science) this week.
Our Professor Iwamura and Professor Kasagi successfully made inspirational presentations.
Brazilian Minter of Economics is at the conference to seek for the way to utilize this new clean energy technology in Brazil.
Claudio Pace, a blogger in Italy, has posted the slides from Yasuhiro Iwarmura’s presentation outlining the new collaborative effort in Japan focused on energy production and the amelioration of radioactive waste. In Italian: http://www.claudiopace.it/iccf19-primo-giorno/
During the conference that is taking place in Padua , the directors of ‘ ISCMNS – reported premiered this morning at 22 steps his vice-president Francesco Celani – decided that the next international conference on cold fusion will be held in October 2016 Japan Sendai, at Tohoku University (as was rumored since last month), but that soon after followed by a post-conference in China. In the arm of iron for the allocation ICCF-20, of which there was referring few days ago , is therefore a compromise is reached, demonstrating in all cases than the international interest on the cold fusion – also witnessed all’ICCF -19 underway in Padua – is incredibly high.
PS Yesterday Radical Radio interviewed Iwamura and Takagi. The interview will air next week.
And the second hippest place on the planet?
The MFMP Facebook page. where they posted this SEM of Alexander Parkhomov’s fuel, saying, “Preliminary, single source SEMs and Elemental assay of Dr. Alexander Parkhomov’s 3 day experiment shown at ICCF19”
[]=Project Dog Bone=[] Fuel – Nickel (bright), LiAlH4 (grey)
Finally, the new movie from Cold Fusion Now! Following Nature’s Documents Stan Szpak LENR Co-deposition made the news of Fusione Fredda today. Grazie Fusione Fredda!
Patent lawyer David French said “It was a great first day. Started at 9:30AM with a one hour concert by a 25 piece orchestra.”
Cold Fusion Dog Dr. Bob estimates approx 300-400 in attendance and, “I would definitely not go so far to say that there was a lot of [media] coverage of this event.”
Klee Irwin, lead investigator at Quantum Gravity Research sent this photo of the musicians and the beautiful setting for the presentation of research and reports of progress in the field of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science, both scientific and commercial.
Cold Fusion Now! is not in attendance, but our associates Cold Fusion Dog Dr. Bob, and Alain Coetmeur of LENR-Forum are reporting in through Twitter. E-Cat World has a live thread here with video of Tom Darden of Industrial Heat from Cold Fusion Dog Bob.
A loose transcript of the address by Tom Darden was posted on E-Cat World. We reproduce it here:
What an honor it is to be here today to address those of you who have done so much to change the way we address our energy needs and our environmental needs, to change science. I’m the founder of Cherokee, and I’ve been asked to tell you we are the body that created Industrial Heat as a funding source for LENR inventors. Unike many of you, I’m not a scientist, I’m an entrepreneur. We share the common bond of innovation . . . Entrepreneurship sees the major task in society as doing something different, rather than doing something better than is already being done. Doing better something that is already being done is like making coal power plants more efficient — you are working to make them unneccessary. Thank God there are some, like many of you, who have the courage to disrupt. In 1921, experts determined that the limits of flight had been reached already. In 1932 it was determined that nuclear fission was unlikely ever to be feasible. And in the 1950’s, when I was born, it was widely believed that pollution was a necessary part of economic development. Paradigm shifts do not come easily, especially in science — it is not a smooth road in the nature of scientific revolutions. Usually they are born out of the crises of our time. If you are on the leading edge of a paradigm shift, you will be attacked by your peers, and you will be attacked by the institutions of the status quo. We feel called to upset two core business paradigms. First, the traditional ethos of environmentalism is that we should strive to be ‘less bad.’ But as America’s leading environmental philosopher puts it in his book Cradle to Cradle, being ‘less bad’ is not being good, it’s still being bad, just a little bit less so. If you are driving a car towards a cliff, it doesn’t help you to slow down — you need to turn around and go in a different direction.
We need solutions that don’t create pollution in the first place, not solutions that only reduce pollution. Second, let’s challenge the assumption of scarcity, at least with respect to energy. Sadly, due to society’s ineffectiveness to date, the world struggles with energy scarcity. What we burn from petroleum or coal, which unlocks only a tiny fraction of the true energy inside, when we do this we release almost all the mass of coal into the air as stack emissions. We scatter this mass around the planet. Carbon and heavy metals can be highly beneficial — they’re not necessarily pollutants — but they are if they’re in the wrong place. C02 in the air is a pollutant; carbon in a tree is not. Heavy metals can be highly beneficial unless they’re in the wrong place like farmlands in China, or in our oceans.
We need an entirely new paradigm. This hopeful vision was the genesis of our work at Industrial Heat. When I entered school, the United States was in the midst of an environmental crisis. Most people have forgotten about this, or perhaps never even new of it, but when I was young periodically industrial rivers in our cities would burst into flame due to pollution, and sometimes in our worst polluted cities, people drove with their headlights on during the day. Our air pollution was as bad as in China in some cities. This was America when I began to think of my place in the world. I was worried when I saw that photo, the first photo of our living planet from space. Many of you will remember that — we had never seen the earth, which is ironic because we live on it. We could see that it was a living planet. I felt compelled to do something about it. Later at university I wrote my master’s thesis on acid rain, air pollution and coal plants. My first job was at the Korean Institute of Science and Technology in Seoul, where I worked on pollution, converting coal which was used for cooking. I saw pollution throughout East Asia. I returned, and went to Yale, to become an environmental lawyer, but in the US, practicing law, some people think it’s somewhat [draining?]. I fell in that category and thankfully I got a job at Bain and Co. working in steel plants, on energy efficiency. In 1984 I converted brick plants from burning fossil fuels into burning biogas which was being dumped into landfills where it turned into methane gas . . .
. . . We were mostly carbon neutral, except for our electricity use, and I obsessed on finding ways that we could make carbon free electricity. I was never successful. In 1985, I discovered soil pollution at on of our brick plant sites, from decades of petroleum use. I found some professors at Virginia Tech University, which is not far away, professors who dealt with soil bacteria, so we began to grow bacteria which would consume pollution in the ground. I funded their business via systems technology and we created Cherokee Environmental to clean up contaminated soil all over the east coast and over the years we’ve cleaned up over 15 million tons of dirt. That would be enough, that if you stacked it all up under a golf course, it would raise the level of that golf course about 400 feet or 130 meters. We bagan to buy contaminated property to clean up. We raised over $2 billion for this, buying and remediating land. We’ve owned 550 properties in the US, Canada and Europe, including a refinery site not too far from here (Trieste).
Some people think Cherokee is a real estate company because it owns a lot of property, but our property work is driven by our pollution focus. I saw that we could affect pollution by working with smart scientists at Virginia Tech. We don’t internally have the capacity for scientific innovation — we’re business people, not scientists — but we realized we could find scientists who had ideas. So we branched out. We kept doing this with other professors at other universities. Between 1985 and the present we’ve invested in over 100 venture or startup companies. These addressed water or air pollution, or grid management; almost none of these were our own ideas, these were others’ ideas. My primary goal is to reduce pollution so for years we’ve been going abroad to transfer technology because that’s where most of the pollution is. I go to China regularly to advise officials and business leaders on methods and processes addressing pollution. They’ve declared 19 percent of their land too contaminated for agricultural use. This is mostly due to air pollution — air pollution dropping contaminants on the land. Obviously this is a huge social issue. I began to do this in the former Soviet Union in the 1990s, and we’ve also explored similar paths in the Middle East, India, and Indonesia, focusing on areas of most population. In order to address the globe’s environmental problems, the solutions must be ubiquitious — they cannot exist only in Europe or the United States.
In the early part of this decade Cherokee had entered a relatively stable part of its history. The next generation of leaders was being prepared to carry our guides and processes forward, and existing projects were operating smoothly. My children were in their 20s and 30s and I was spending time with them and with my wife for the first time in nearly 35 years. I had rebuilt my experimental airplane, and I was installing a parachute in it, looking forward to using it more . . .
One day I received a random call about cold fusion. I didn’t give it much credence because I remembered in detail the disclosure about Fleischmann and Pons years before, and I believed the subject was dead. Then thirty days later I received another related inquiry from a different group, so we began to do some research, and then thirty days later, I received a call from another group. We had invested in 100 startup companies and I had never gotten an inquiry about fusion or about LENR: three in 30 day intervals. We funded two of these groups, and then later, as many of you know, we licensed Andrea Rossi’s technology. Since then we’ve made grants to university groups doing research in this space, and we continue to fund additional teams. We envision an ecosystem of collaboration with great scientists who work together to develop the many systems and technologies society will need to shift away from polluting fossil fuels. Our goal is to bring non-polluting energy to those who need it most, especially in the developing world. We also don’t believe there is one solution, we believe there are many solutions to these problems. To implement this vision, we determined that a business-based approach would be the most effective strategy; we looked at many others.
I know that some of you have felt that business are, and have been adversarial to [??] I understand that. But recall that commerce has long proven to be primary agent of change in every technical endeavor. We engage with large companies and we all need them to achieve ubiquity for your ideas. We want to work in a collaborative way with many more [challenges, charities?], and we want to help others do that. We started Industrial Heat because we thought that LENR technology was worth pursuing, even if we were unsuccessful. We were willing to be wrong, we were willing to invest time and resources to see if this might be an area of useful research in our quest to eliminate pollution. At the time we were not especially optimistic, but the global benefits were compelling.
We’ve had some success, and we’re expanding our work. We’re collaborating with and investing alongside fellow researchers and developers. Scientists compete to be the first, and they count on potent sharing of what has been discovered to advance the process. They want to be able to be able to share their work in an environment where why they do what they do, truly matters . . . they want to know that their work will be funded and their ideas will be merit tested, and advances merited, and they will be rewarded fairly. We’re privileged to be creating that kind of environment at Industrial Heat. We believe we may be at last on the verge of a new paradigm shift — one that will create new opportunity for innovation and entrepreneurship to advance the cause of abundance in the face of scarcity, and the continuing calls to be less bad. When I look around this room, I’m filled with two strong sentiments . . .
You’ve given your lives to your research . . . you’ve made a great difference to the world. Thank you for your years of hard work and progress. Every day I think of you and I am inspired.
At the same time, I would like to say how truly sorry I am that society has attacked you for the last three decades. The treatment of Fleischmann and Pons, and the treatment of any of you by mainstream institutions and the media will go down in history as one of the great examples of scientific infanticide . . . this seems to be a dark component of human nature . . . but notwithstanding this longsuffering, you remain faithful to your work. Thank you for your intense focus and contributions in the face of challenges. We [notice] all of your good faith, good will, good intentions and honesty, driven by the better angels of our nature, not appearing to be constrained by the behavior of others. We also need not be constrained by our own minds; ironically the expert who proclaimed that flight had achieved its limits in 1921 was Orville Wright, and the expert who declared that fission was not likely was Einstein . . . your time is come; for instance fear gripping China and India reporting air pollution and water pollution creating an enormous demand for new ideas, less constrained by the past. Second, the increasing reports of success by many of you continue to offset the presumptions of skeptics. But it does not benefit any of us nor does it benefit society, if we achieve success but lose our battles. Let’s encourage each other to put the needs of society and the needs of other first as we contemplate how to achieve victory.
As provocative as it may sound, we’ve reached a tipping point. The potential of your work is so great. The signs of progress are now so significant. This is our simple manifesto: to pass on a world that is better than the one we received. Abundant non-polluting energy, widely available can make the greatest contribution to this goal. That’s a manifesto pledge for us to keep. It’s a promise to you, to those who went before you, to our children, and their children’s children. Thank you(Applause)
Questions for Tom Darden:
What is your timeframe?
TD: What is our timeline? I have found throughout our work that patience is a virtue, patience is important. And any people in business, and especially in the venture capital world, I hate to think we might be in the venture capital world, but I guess that’s what we do) want to move very quickly — we would like to move very quickly as well — but they tend to stop before success is achieve, and I think they tend to stop too quickly, and many instances we’ve stayed with technologies for fifteen or twenty years, and continued when we’ve seen promising results. For the most part we use our own money, so we’re not worried about investor returns as would be with some of the venture funds, but we don’t really have a distinct time frame. Sooner is better than later, but we are willing to stay for a long time, and I don’t want to move so quickly that we miss something. So I guess I would have to say we don’t really have a timeframe, and we don’t intend to give up. (Applause)
Follow this link for further updates at this historic conference.
In his post ICCF-19 Day 1, Dr. Bob reports that “McKubre spoke in his opening statements about the past, the now, and the future. He mentioned that for Cold Fusion the situation has always been a lack of funding, but now, we will see an abundance of funding, but lack of talent.”
A problem indeed, but one that can be fixed – with adequate funding.
During the afternoon, Bob tweeted this photo of Nicholas Chauvin’s core reactor! Slimline! Nicolas Chauvin of LENR Cars and MFMP displays tiny reactor core.
Of the sleek design, Bob remarked, “I did not speak to him yet, but Nicolas Chauvin from LENR Cars / MFMP showed me one of Parkhomov`s Dog Bone Cores.”
“Think about it – he is holding the most powerful and valuable technology, in the palm of his hand. It might now have lots of flashing lights or lasers, but the simplicity is in itself beautiful.”
“People actually walk around carrying these things in their pockets.”
“I imagine that If Apple created a (new) Cold Fusion Device – it would look just like that.”
Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project posted on their Facebook page this announcement:
Vindication
The MFMP is going to announce something very special, something everyone has wanted to know for years but that no one could expect to ever know.
Related to this announcement, we have been graciously donated, not 1, but 2 extremely rare 1989 minted “Cold Fusion” one ounce coins. These will soon be auctioned with the aim of part funding the path to new clarity that this special thing or things will deliver.
Cold Fusion Coins to MFMP from Anonymous donor.The last time one of these coins was sold – it went for around $5000. The anonymous donor once offered these very same coins to Martin Fleischmann, after holding them in his hands for a while pondering, he handed them back to their owner saying “no, you better keep them, one day you may be able to do something useful with them”
The MFMP and the coins current owners believe that time is upon us. Keep a look out for the link to the E-bay auction and other related vindication posts.
This is a re-post of “Scientists warming up to ‘cold fusion’, see potential in ‘other nuclear’ energy” by M Ramesh originally on Hindu BusinessLine. Links to relevant institutions and emphasis has been added.
Chennai, April 9:
About thirty scientists from all over India met in Bengaluru on Tuesday to discuss ‘the way forward’ in an emerging cheap and clean source of energy, called ‘low energy nuclear reactions’, or simply ‘cold fusion’. The meeting was chaired by Dr Anil Kakodkar, former Chairman of the Department of Atomic Energy.
Dr Raj did not give details of the meeting—he feels it is up to the Ministry to do so—but he said that the basic message that came out of the meeting was that there was a need to study ‘low energy nuclear reactions’ more.
The objective of the meeting was to further study the phenomenon of ‘cold fusion’, devices based on which are beginning to be commercialized elsewhere in the world.
Some experts, such as Dr Mahadeva Srinivasan, a scientist who worked for the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), believe that cold fusion has the potential to become the primary source of energy in the not-so-distant future.
Dr Srinivasan, who attended the Bengaluru meeting, said that one of the decisions taken at the meeting was that four groups of institutions and scientists would get into cold fusion research and there would be an informal oversight committee. Some of the institutions involved are the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), which, incidentally, was once headed by Dr Baldev Raj, the IIT-Madras, and the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology.
What is ‘cold fusion’?
Just as energy (heat) is produced when a nucleus splits in the nuclear power plants that we have, energy gets generated also when two nuclei merge. But it requires enormous input energy to get them to merge, as they contain positively charged particles—protons—and same charge tend to move away, not to come close. Therefore, to get nuclear happen at room temperatures—cold fusion—has been thought to be impossible.
In 1989, two American scientists—Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons—conducted some experiments and observed more heat given out than they could explain and inferred that the excess heat was due to nuclear fusion reactions. They became instant celebrities in the scientific world, but in a matter of weeks they got branded as incompetent scientists, or even frauds, after thousands of others tried their experiment and got no excess heat. ‘Cold fusion’ was practically buried.
But the subject was roused again in 2011, when an Italian engineer called Andrea Rossi unveiled his invention—a fist-sized device that produced more energy than it consumed, using only nickel powder spiked with some chemical, and hydrogen as raw materials. He kept the name of the chemical secret.
An outraged scientific community branded Rossi a charlatan, but the engineer proceeded regardless and started selling his ‘E-Cat’ machines and has scaled up their capacity to 1 MW.
But lately the world is being less cold towards cold fusion, thanks to a number of experiments that proved that E-Cat-like devices work, though nobody, including Rossi, knows how.
For instance, a group of scientists performed “independent third party tests” on the E-CAT in February-March 2014 at Lugano, Switzerland and the results were announced in October. Their report said that the devices produced more heat than can be explained by chemical burning and conceded that they had “no convincing theoretical explanation”. But the report also said that the results were “too conspicuous not to be followed up.”
Another scientist, Alexander Parkhimov of Russia, also conducted experiments using E-Cat-like devices and said that they produced energy.
Furthermore, several universities (Texas Tech University of the US and the Tohoku University of Japan, to name two examples) are opening research divisions or forming committees to look into cold fusion.
Next week, the 19th International Conference on Cold Fusion (ICCF-19) will take place in Italy. The ICCFs have been generally dismissed as ‘meeting of believers’ but this time around many potential investors, notably the Bill Gates Foundation is taking part in it.
It is learnt that after the Power Minister, Piyush Goyal, was briefed about these developments, he personally requested Dr Kakodkar to look into the matter—which culminated in the Bengaluru meeting.
Title Photo: Professor Hiroyuki Hama of Tohoku University giving speech at Opening Ceremony
Photo: Research Center for Electron Photon Science at Tohoku University
The opening ceremony of Tohoku University Clean Energy Research Lab was held on 1st April 2015 at Mikamine Hall in the Research Center for Electron Photon Science of Tohoku University.
Hideki Yoshino of Clean Planet, Inc, one of the groups involved in the cooperative effort, says, “We still have not finished setting up the lab, it is about 90% completed. So, we don’t have photos of the new lab. However, we have some good photos from the opening ceremony.”
Masanao Hattori, from Clean Planet, presented a new sign for the Lab to Professor Hiroyuki Hama. Hiroyuki Hama is Chair of The Research Center for Electron Photon Science of Tohoku University. He made an inspiring speech there.
Masanao Hattori (with a green background), Profesor Jirota Kasagi (with a pen), Dr. Yasuhiro Iwamura, and Takehiko Itoh each made a speech to share their commitment for a realization of the project with other members.
Iwamura made a presentation updating everyone on the current status of research and to affirm the shared goal with members of The Research Center for Electron Photon Science of Tohoku University. Iwamura is one of the new lab’s leaders on the transmutation of radioactive materials.
Clean Planet’s Yoshino says, “We feel that it is our mission to find ways to transmute nuclear waste as well as to develop practical applications for clean energy using LENR for the global community.”
“The new research center is located near Sendai which is in the area where the huge earthquake and the following Tsunami hit 4 years ago; Fukushima Nuclear Fission Power Plants are only 111 km away, about a 2-hr drive. So, we feel it is what really needs to be done for the global community and we are determined to make it happen!!”
Workshop at Airbus
