Tag: LENR

Posted on

Sterling Allan on Ca$h Flow: “It’s an act of revolution to support free energy”

“Cold fusion is no longer a maybe-possibly-probably not-junk- science. It is now real and it is emerging into the marketplace and we will see the first 1 MW power plant coming in mid-October of this year which will be producing 300,000 units per year. And that’s just starting. And so this is a great opportunity for people to get involved in a technology that can completely revolutionize the planet energy wise and get us off our dependence on fossil fuels.” –Sterling Allan

James Martinez Live had a surprise guest on last Tuesday, April 26 on his Cash-Flow show, when Sterling Allan swooped in for a visit. He is the man behind Pure Energy Systems, the yellow pages of new energy researchers. Allan has also formed the New Energy Congress, whose purpose is “to provide quorum review of leading technology claims, to assess viability and prioritize; then facilitate advancement”. His PESWiki allows for contribution by members of the new energy community.

Pure Energy Systems has a “Top Five Exotic Free Energy Technologies” listing of breakthrough technologies that got the attention of Gerald Celente, and made it into the Trends Journal 2011. Andrea A. Rossi’s Cold Fusion Generator is number one.

In the effort to move minds into action, and instigate the public to demand cold fusion, James Martinez began by stating flatly “It’s really up to you, the public to…vote for your children’s future … and liberate yourself.” This is aligned with Sterling Allan’s plea to “hound your representatives and tell them there are solutions. Stop saying they are not [any]!” Their hour-long conversation exposed what solutions to our energy crisis look like.

Listen to the full hour and download .mp3 on our Audio page.

A few highlights are transcribed below. In one exchange, James asked Sterling about the nature of implementing new technology into the current paradigm, and he lamented the bureaucracy that gets in the way of both scientists and students who want to study cold fusion. Sterling responded:

“It really is amazing to see how the role of politics in science can really stifle the development of science. Scientists, we would like to think, are really open-minded; something new comes along, they’re going to embrace it, they’re going to be excited about it, but in practice , the old Not-Invented-Here syndrome gets really really tight. If the scientist didn’t come up with it, if it wasn’t first published in some scientific journal, gone through the rigamaroll that they’d like it to go through, boy …. and that’s what we specialize in: when something makes the professor’s eyebrows raise, that’s when we start getting interested.”

He also recited a proverb posted on his website:

“He who is one-step ahead is a genius.
He who is two-steps ahead is a crackpot.”

When Sterling presented that to an audience in Estonia, somebody in the audience quipped, “He who is one-step behind, is the government.”

Then he added academia to the that same equation with “academia is so bureaucratic now, they are as bad as the government in stifling innovation.”

Listeners to the archive will enjoy the strange protracted silence, right before James comes back and relates his experience with a high school student who wanted to be a cold fusion scientist and James was setting up a cold fusion scientist to go and visit him at school. However, the young man’s school thwarted the effort. James then reminded us, “Learning institutions are supposed to be open-forums for discussion.”

Two years ago, prompted by the Navy’s research which was “basically saying cold fusion was real”, Sterling started a collection of positive reports on cold fusion that were printed in mainstream news and scientific journals around the world, “all basically announcing that cold fusion should be taken seriously.” [See this bit of presentation here on Youtube.]

“You think that would mark the turning point in the scientific world, that now we would start taking cold fusion seriously. But no, that wasn’t the case.

To this day, even with this Rossi cold fusion happening, if you go to academia and you say cold fusion with a straight face, you’ll be laughed at as a crackpot; it’s still junk science, because of politics, not science.”

James responded with some practical advice for young people in these lean financial times. “Forget the schools. Learn it yourself.”

The conversation inevitably touched on the lack of funding in cold fusion research. Sterling Allan responded:

“I learned a long time ago to not even glance at the government for any kind of leadership when it comes to this stuff. I go to the private sector. It’s the private sector that you get the receptive ears and you get the people that are excited. You get a phone call from somebody from NASA every once in a while that’s interested. You’ll get a cloaked email from somebody from some academic institution that’s kind of contacting you on the side, or on the sly so to speak.

But there are a lot of people that are supportive of these technologies and they are moving forward. The momentum is on our side.

We are moving into a state where we will lose our dependence on a central authority and we will gain our independence energy-wise, so that each house will have its own power device, each vehicle will have it’s own power generator so you won’t have to stop for fuel, it’s pulling energy from the inexhaustible sources all around us.”

James remarked that this technology of the gentle green giant nuclear power from water will “liberate humanity from the dependency on these oil companies and BP spilling hundreds of millions of gallons and getting away with…it’s an end to that.”

Later, Sterling echoed the responsibility of the current energy corporations in the current lack of vision in our energy technology:

“We need to shame the energy industry in the United States, and probably elsewhere in the world, not as bad in Europe as it is in the United States. The United States is almost the worst case scenario when it comes to energy. They are supporting the wrong horse and suppressing the right horses.

If you look at industry in general, the amount of money industry spends from their budget on research and development is 3.1%.

On the other hand, industries like communications, they spend 26% on research and development, software spends 15%, pharmaceuticals is like 14%.”

He then turned the tables and asked James if he knew what percentage of their budget the energy industry spends on research and development. A tiny 0.3% was the answer!

The entire energy industry in the US spends 0.3% of their budget on research and development — a shockingly low number.

“An order of magnitude lower than the industry average! Energy is so important…..we have to start spending our research and development money on new ideas. There are plenty of places to put that money, I promise you that,” Sterling said.

At the start of the second half of the show, James announced he had spoken with Andrea Rossi earlier in the day about an interview, but Mr. Rossi declined at this time, and all the way through October. He’s too busy working on his Energy Catalyzer (E-Cat) with his company Defkalion Green Technologies.

“They will be building 300 smaller, officially-rated 2.5 Kw reactors”. The reactor chamber is 50 cubic centimeters — 3.2 cubic inches. Then he characterized Andrea Rossi’s discovery as finding the catalyst to the nickel-hydrogen reaction, or the additive to the nickel powder. (In subsequent correspondence, Sterling (via his associate Hank Mills) added that: Andrea Rossi replaced the nickel rods or wires used in other Ni-H Cold Fusion experiments with nano-nickel powder, which greatly enhanced the surface area of the nickel. More surface area resulted in more sites at which the hydrogen could react. By combining this nano-nickel powder with two undisclosed elements (which he calls the catalyst) the fusion reaction was further enhanced.)

Addressing the cost issue for the average home user, Sterling noted that “a 2.5 Kw solar system would cover both roofs”. And Rossi’s device might cost “somewhere in the low thousands.”

“But an easier number people can relate to is cents per kilowatt-hour. Where I live [in Utah, US] we probably have the cheapest at 4 cents a Kwh wholesale”, he said. “Rossi cold fusion will deliver for 1 cent per Kw, one-quarter of the price“. He did add that the first applications would be in creating heating systems, and a turbine added to make the electricity would initially add to the cost.

He reminded listeners that though cold fusion is a nuclear process, there is no radioactive materials used, and there is no radioactive waste to get rid of. Mr. Sterling continued the good news throughout the interview.

“The coming year is going to be phenomenal in terms of the emergence of breakthrough energy technologies, clean energy technologies, affordable, portable…there’s a lot of stuff breaking out, this is one of them. This (cold fusion) is number one in our top five on our homepage of http://freeenergynews.com. This is our top one, but it is not the only one that’s to emerge this year. Some are expected to emerge even before this one.

This technology, from what I understand, is really quite simple to implement. It is something that could be licensed by a large number of manufacturers around the world and deployed very rapidly to create jobs and infrastructure that goes along with those jobs and all the various iterations of this. There’s going to be a lot of research and development that will need to go into making this stable for transportation, for example.

When we talk about nuclear, we think of Fukushima and we think of disaster, and we think ‘Oh my gosh, I don’t want that in my yard, let alone my garage’, but this is very different even though this is a nuclear reaction, if this was suddenly … a catastrophe happened, let’s say you were hit by a meteorite in your garage, and it smashed right into your cold fusion reactor, nothing would happen.

You don’t have radioactive elements leaking into the environment, you don’t have some big explosion taking place, it doesn’t runaway, it just stops. That’s all…

…Alternative energy can be our savior economically if we get on this fast enough, and the sooner we get on this, the more of a remedy it will be … and Gerald Celente actually predicted in his 2011 Trends Journal in January that 2011 would see the emergence, and he specifically mentioned Rossi’s cold fusion technology, that there’s going to be a breakthrough energy technology to come along that will be as big as the invention of the wheel or the discovery of fire in terms of its transformation capability for the human race.

Think of it this way. When people are able to do what they’re good at and what they want to do, they are 7 times more productive than when they’re working for somebody else doing something they hate, especially if they are slaves to a system, and they’re on fluoride, and they’re not thinking straight. When they become independent and they think for themselves and they’re doing something they love, they are 7 times more productive.

So when people are given power, a device that can power their house in the garage, and they’re no longer dependent on a central authority, and they’re able to pursue their dreams, we’re going to see prosperity like never before. We will see an end to war. We will see an end to poverty. We will see an end to so many of the problems that plague this planet. And that’s why these bastards don’t want to see free energy emerge because it empowers the individual. It’s power to the people…

….It’s an act of revolution to support free energy, and today’s generation that does so will be the heroes of the coming generation.”

Supporting Links:

Sterling Allan Pure Energy Systems

Top Five Exotic Energy Technologies

Free Energy News

Intentional community project: www.safehavenvillages.org

Posted on

No fear of radiation from cold fusion

[latexpage]
This article organizes information about radiation in three sections.

1 Difference between radioactive materials and radiation.
2 Types of radiation emitted by nuclear processes.
3 No dangerous radiation in cold fusion.

1 Difference between radioactive materials and radiation.
Today’s nuclear fission reactors are more than a poor choice for a primary energy source because of the growing risk of contamination by radioactive materials, which can emit harmful radiation. Humans are not ready to take the responsibility for disaster that could last for geological time, when the amount, and type, of radioactive fuel used in these reactors has the potential to create dead zones for hundreds, if not tens-of-thousands of years.

Why go down this path when there exists an alternative ultra-clean nuclear power? Low-energy nuclear reactions LENR, or cold fusion, is nuclear power from hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, with oceans of it here on Earth. Cold fusion does not use radioactive fuel. Cold fusion does not create harmful radioactive waste. The nuclear reaction occurs inside a tiny piece of metal, like palladium or nickel, in a small device that sits on your tabletop.

Radiation is all around us, everyday, and some radiation of certain kinds can be good and healthy, while other radiation, or too much of the good kind, is bad. For instance, too much solar radiation can cause burns that lead to skin cancers later in life, while too little causes a vitamin D deficiency.

And all radiation is not alike. Of the sunlight reaching Earth’s surface, the ultra-violet portion can burn the skin while the radio-wave portion appears to have left life at the surface unaffected. Both sunlight and X-rays are forms of radiation that are created by nuclear and atomic reactions. But some materials spontaneously and naturally emit radiation, and they are called radioactive.  Here is a nice chart about the radiation around us and dosage.

Radioactive materials contain particles of atomic elements that are unstable, and decay, emitting electromagnetic radiation, or photons, as well as other particles, which may themselves also be radioactive.

Radiation describes the particles and photons emitted by a radioactive material.

Hydrogen and its Isotopes
Hydrogen and its Isotopes
An example of a radioactive material and the radiation emitted from it is given by the simplest element hydrogen. The element hydrogen H is composed of one proton and one electron. Hydrogen has two isotopes, deuterium $^{2}H$ and tritium $^{3}H$. Isotopes are atoms that have extra neutrons in their nucleus. Deuterium has have one extra neutron, making a total of two nucleons, while tritium has two extra neutrons, making a total of three nucleons.

While hydrogen $^{1}H$ and deuterium $^{2}H$ both are found naturally on Earth in abundance, tritium is not, for tritium is unstable, and decays with a half-life of about 12 years, meaning there is only half as much material left as there was 12 years earlier. This decay characterizes radioactivity.

Tritium is an example of a radioactive particle. During radioactive decay for tritium, the nucleus of the tritium atom, called a triton, which has one proton and two neutrons, turns into a Helium-3 atom $^{3}He$, an electron, and another tiny energetic particle called a neutrino, all releasing 18.6 keV of energy.[1]

A triton has one proton and two neutrons. The nucleus of the $^{3}He$ has two protons and one neutron. During radioactive decay of the tritium atom, one of the original neutrons in the triton turned into a proton, along with creating an electron and a neutrino in a process called Beta decay, written β−.

Beta decay
Beta decay
Beta decay describes when an electron, called a beta particle, and a neutrino fly out of a neutron, leaving a proton in its place. The radioactive material is the tritium, and the radiation is the electron and neutrino. Many elements that have an abundance of neutrons are radioactive this way, and sometimes decay splitting into two smaller atoms, naturally fissioning.

Electrons are usually thought of as carrying electrical current to power our appliances. But a large charge of current can be deadly. A beta particle (electron) will fly out with a varying kinetic energy averaging 5.7 keV. [1] This particle is incapable of penetrating the skin. External sources of beta decay from tritium will not harm the body.

But if a radioactive particle is inhaled or ingested, then beta-decay can cause damage to the cells of the body. The radioactive particle will eventually decay and emit a Beta particle that can then collide with internal tissue, perhaps ionizing the atoms in cells. If the Beta particle hits a DNA molecule, lasting genetic consequences can ensue.

Exit sign is powered by tritium.
Tritium and beta decay is used to light red Exit signs and glow-in-the-dark watch hands.
As long as you don’t breathe it in, or eat it, tritium decay poses little threat to humans and tritium is used in devices such as betalights, which use the electrons emitted by tritium just like electrons that provide electrical current, to provide power to stand-alone illuminated night signs, as well as provide illumination for watches.

There is little naturally occurring tritium here on Earth because most of it has decayed away. Tritium is manufactured for commercial use and for use in hot fusion reactors selling for \$30,000US a gram.[1]

Tritium is not used in cold fusion research. Cold fusion cells use hydrogen $^{1}H$ and deuterium $^{2}H$, both cheap, plentiful, and evenly distributed around the earth in sea-water. No radioactive fuel is used in the cold fusion process.

2 Types of radiation emitted by nuclear processes.
In the conventional nuclear reactions of fission and hot fusion, the main types of radiation seen are particles like alpha particles, beta particles, and electromagnetic radiation such as gamma rays or x-rays. The three main types of radiation are named in the order that they were discovered and after the first three letters of the Greek alphabet. Conventional nuclear fission which relies on a chain-reaction, also produces neutrons.

Alpha particles are helium nuclei. That is to say that alpha particles are the nucleus of helium atoms, consisting of two protons and two neutrons $^{4}He$. Alpha particles are emitted by the natural radioactivity of the heavier elements and their isotopes. Alpha particles are larger clusters of nucleons and generally have low energy that a piece of paper will shield against alpha particles.

Beta particles β−, are electrons that are emitted during beta decay. Beta-emitting isotopes can have a half-life as long as $10^{16}$ years or as short as milliseconds. Beta particles can also be positively- charged positrons denoted β+. Beta particles can be stopped by ”a few millimeters of aluminum”.[2]

Gamma radiation is made up of light, or high-energy photons, that have an extremely small wavelength. They are similar to x-rays, with gamma rays carrying more energy. ”X-rays result when electrons return to a lower energy by emitting electromagnetic radiation and gamma radiation result when particles in the nucleus return to a lower energy.” [1,153]

Electromagnetic spectrum is composed of radiation.
The light we see is radiation; radio waves are radiation; the whole electromagnetic spectrum is radiation -- of photons.

Both gamma radiation and x-rays will penetrate the body easily and they can be harmful to living tissue.  Only shielding made of lead will stop gamma radiation.

Some nuclear reactions can also create neutrons. Neutrons can be dangerous as they can penetrate the body, ionizing cells and creating genetic damage.

3 No dangerous radiation in cold fusion.
While no source of energy is 100% clean, cold fusion ranks cleaner over oil, gas, coal, today’s nuclear fission, hot fusion, solar and wind. Solar and wind are renewable sources, but the materials and manufacturing of solar panels and wind turbines given their energy density don’t compare to cold fusion.

First of all, LENR is a process of that does not involve today’s nuclear fission power designs, so there is no chain-reaction. A cold fusion cell will not ”runaway” like critical masses and fission bombs. Cold fusion energy devices will turn on and off when you want them to.

Edmund StormsEdmund Storms, a nuclear scientist who has researched cold fusion for over two decades wrote a survey of the field called The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction. Published in 2007, it is a technical summary of results for a scientific reader. In it, there are clear statements about the lack of radiation from cold fusion cells.

This table from Storms’ Science provides the general experimental results regarding radiation from LENR experiments.

Table 14 Expected but missing behavior. [1,176]
1. Gamma emission is rare.
2. Neutron emission is rare.
3. Alpha emission rate is not consistent with accumulated helium.
4. X-rays expected when a significant alpha flux is absorbed are missing.
5. The second nuclear product resulting from transformation is frequently missing.

A listing of the reported studies showing radiation detected in LENR experiments can be found in Table 11 of Storms’ Science[1]. Each entry is listed with radiation type and strength, along with the kind of cell that produced it. He writes:

”Fortunately none of this radiation is a health hazard nor is it easy to detect outside of the apparatus, which makes the process sate to study and safe as an eventual source of energy.” [1,105]

Quite simply, the type and quantity of radiation seen in today’s nuclear power does not show up LENR.

Cold fusion cells do not behave at all like conventional theories of nuclear reactions dictate. The fact that dangerous levels are missing from this reaction was in part responsible for many scientists dismissal of this as a nuclear effect. To quote Nobel laureate Julian Schwinger ”The circumstances of cold fusion are not those of hot fusion.”

Infinite Energy magazine published an FAQ containing this question: Why doesn’t cold fusion produce dangerous ionizing radiation and neutrons?

“Nobody knows for certain why the primary signature of cold fusion is excess heat, not deadly radiation. Nevertheless, many LENR theorists have put forth very intriguing proposals for the mechanism of these reactions. There are, in fact, many dozens of competing theories smaller number of which are very well fleshed out. The exact nature of the LENR reactions is one of the many unsolved scientific mysteries surrounding them. Some scientists think that because the effect does not produce intense radiation, it cannot be a nuclear process. Others say the energy is produced, but then somehow absorbed by the metal lattice either as high frequency vibrations, or through coherent processes in which many delocalized vibrations are involved.” [7]

LENR devices do not have any appreciable radiation from alpha particles, beta particles, high- energy neutrons, and there is no danger of a runaway chain reaction. What about the x-rays and gamma radiation, those high-energy photons that could pose a risk to biological life? Storms writes:

”Most X-radiation will be absorbed by the apparatus, thereby making its detection unlikely.”[1,153]

Andrea Rossi’s LENR-powered hot-water boiler, the Energy Catalyzer ECat, is expected to be the first commercial application of this new energy science and uses micro-sized nickel particles infused with hydrogen gas to initiate power production. The ECat is currently being tested and evaluated at the University of Bologna in Bologna, Italy. This device will be commercially implemented in a factory in Athens, Greece, where it will undergo further tests on its safety in an industrial setting.[3]

Andrea Rossi's E-Cat
Andrea Rossi's E-Cat prototype. Photo: Daniele Passerini

For wide-spread use of cold fusion technology, these devices must be safe for the public. This was noted by Jed Rothwell in his Cold Fusion and the Future.

“Some people fear there may be a hidden, long term threat to the health of people who work in close proximity to cold fusion reactors. So far, nobody has detected dangerous levels of x-rays or other emissions from a cold fusion cell. The autoradiographs prove that cold fusion does produce low levels of radioactivity, but the levels are so low that scientists have difficulty detecting them with sensitive instruments. Compared to the radiation from televisions and the natural background of radiation from space, radon and other sources, cold fusion radiation seems likely to remain so low as to be nearly undetectable. Still, cold fusion might conceivably produce some unknown form of radiation or some other deleterious effect. We will have to make sure this is not the case, by exposing rats and other laboratory animals to unshielded cold fusion reactors, and by carefully monitoring the health of the first group of people who work with the reactors every day.“[4]

On Rossi’s device, ”about 50 kilograms of lead shielding, about 2 centimeters thick, protects against any gamma radiation.”[6] During an open Q&A after the NyTeknik interview, the question of gamma radiation from the ECat was posed to inventor Rossi by a member of the public, Goran Ericsson. ”If no gammas are observed, what is the reason to believe nuclear reactions are involved?”

“Andrea Rossi: We observed gammas under the 300 keV range. We did not find, so far, the couple at 180 degrees at 511 keV, and the research we are continuing with the University of Bologna is aimed also to better probe the specter of the gamma produced. It will take some month of research, after which we will able to better understand the theory at the root of the thermal effect.

We have to calculate also the recoil energy, integrated with the kinetic energy we produce. We want to correlate the thermal effect with the gamma specter we will define. We also are continuing to analyze the atomic and isotopical transmutation, to correlate it to the gamma and to the thermal effect. I want to know if Cu-59, 60, 61, 62 decay by electron capture, instead of beta plus emission; if so a very interesting consideration can be derived.

This a very difficult research we are investing on (my money). And, at last, if we will not find high energy gamma and 511 keV couples, well, we will have to think about a new rule. It would not be the first time: they have digged a big hole, there in Geneva, to understand things, and they are finding things by the classic physics could not happen, particle that by the classic physics could not exist. But those things, evidently, are not good Physics students, so they insist to exist. Just read the ”Nuclear Models” of Greiner Maruhn to get a taste of this.“[5]

Speculating on what could happen if Rossi’s device broke, Hank Mills of Pure Energy Systems news wrote:

“There could potentially be a very brief spike of radioactivity for a moment if the vessel cracked or failed, but the venting of the hydrogen gas would immediately end the nuclear reactions taking place and any production of radioactivity.” [4]

An additional batch of questions from Ny Teknik’s readers was answered by Mr. Rossi, some of which addressed the question of radiation from beta decay and radioactivity.

“Peter Ekstrm: In the fusion of a proton with Ni-58 a substantial activity of Cu-59 is formed. Cu-59 decays with a half-life of 82 seconds by beta+ decay. In the Focardi and Rossi article it is stated that: ”No radioactivity has been found also in the Nickel residual from the process”. Considering the very high activity of Cu-59 that is produced, it is surprising that no activity is detected. Even ten half-lives after the end of a run the activity should be of the order of 1013 Bq, which is not only easily measurable (with a detector far away from the source) but also deadly for everybody present in the room! (Could you explain?)

Rossi: No radioactivity has been found in the residual metals, it is true, but the day after the stop of the operation. In any case you are right, if 59-Cu is formed from 58-Ni we should have the couples of 511 keV at 180 and we never found them, while we found keV in the range of 100-300 keV. I think no 59Cu is produced, I suppose only stable Cu is produced from the transmutation of the isotopes 62Ni and 64Ni. I desume this from what we find after the operations. Your observation is correct.”

Cold fusion technology is just beginning to emerge from a science into a technology. Much is still unknown about the science, and further testing will be taken over the next several years to ensure the safety of this technology. To date, cold fusion devices have not produced any appreciable dangerous radiation like that of today’s nuclear fission reactors. Scientists who have worked in this field for the past two decades are healthy and safe.

More importantly, LENR reactions produce energy that is cleaner than any source of power used today. Whether it’s hydrocarbons like oil, gas, or coal, or renewable technologies such a solar and wind, the power of cold fusion lies in its incredible energy density, a nuclear power from hydrogen and greener than today’s nuclear fission power plants.

References:

1 The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction by Edmund Storms World Scientific 2007

2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_particle

3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium

4 Jed Rothwell: Cold Fusion and the Future Part 1 – Revolutionary Technology http://www. infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue12/coldfusion5.html

5 Welcome Worry-Free Nuclear Power: Rossi’s Energy Catalyzer by Hank Mills Pure Energy Systems news

6  36 more ques- tions asked by the readers of NyTeknik http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3126617.ece

7  Why doesn’t cold fusion produce dangerous ionizing radiation and neutrons? Infinite- energy FAQ http://www.infinite-energy.com/resources/faq. html#Q21

8 UC Davis Training in Radiation http://www.research.ucdavis.edu/home.cfm?id=mrt,13,1137,1139

Posted on

Status of Cold Fusion 2010

Scientists have been researching low-energy nuclear reactions for the past 22 years, and what is now known as a powerful new energy source created in the nano-scale space between the atoms of a metal.

Using less than a gram of palladium, and a type of hydrogen found in sea-water called deuterium, hundreds of megajoules of energy can be created, all in a soda-can sized Pyrex glass, sitting on a table-top.

A nuclear-fusion sized power, using a fuel that will last millions of years, with no damage to the oceans, no CO2 emissions, and no radio-active waste.

A scalable, decentralized energy source to empower local communities and create a peaceful Earth.

You’d think a discovery of such magnitude would be the sole focus of society’s efforts, and we would be teaching high-school shop students how to build and maintain cells, but for two decades a near black-out of information about this incredible discovery has contained public knowledge of this science.

Fortunately, it’s not been extinguished.

In fact, despite lack of funding, cold fusion researchers have made great advances in understanding the conditions under which the cold fusion energy effect takes place, and they are getting closer to understanding the quantum physics driving this effect.

A thirty+ year veteran of Los Alamos National Labs, radio-chemist and nuclear scientist Dr. Edmund Storms, now running his own Kiva Labs, has researched this energy effect for the past two decades. He is also a scientist who communicates his research to the public as well as his peers, preparing a summary of current research in both book and article form, as well as video and a slide-show of his recent lectures.

If you are new to this science, and just learning about cold fusion, this is a great place to begin.

A set of powerpoint slides from Dr. Storms’ recent lectures compares hot fusion and cold fusion, and ends with an inventory of services and disservices of a cold fusion energy source for our planet. Click the link to open the lecture slides here: Status of Cold Fusion 2010. Don’t have Powerpoint? Try this Flash version linked here: Status of Cold Fusion 2010 Flash/html version.

For a comprehensive summary of the field, with just enough background, is Dr. Storms’ book The Science of Low-Temperature Nuclear Reactions: A Comprehensive Compilation of Evidence and Explanations about Cold Fusion .
The Science of Low-Temperature Nuclear Reactions

This is a technical book, with charts, graphs, and data, meant for the reader familiar with the vocabulary of nuclear physics, though there are some chapters easily accessible to the student.

A 2010 Status of Cold Fusion article published in Naturwissenschafften 97(10): p. 861-881 www.springerlink.com is his general survey of advances since.[1] (see below). Though a technical article meant for scientists, the first part is easily read by the informed reader.

And if you like audio and video, Kiva Labs’ You-tube channel has a 7-part series of videos Low-energy nuclear reactions featuring Dr. Edmund Storms explaining what is known about cold fusion with accompanying diagrams. Here’s Part I.

This selection of media gives the student of cold fusion a fair view of the current status of cold fusion science from a long-time researcher. The science isn’t yet engineering a working device for public use, but the advances made so far cannot be denied.

As this research continues, we move towards a clean and plentiful source of energy that would allow the people of Earth another chance for a positive future.

[1] There is a preprint of the Naturwissenschafften available at the LENR archive http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEstatusofcoa.pdf.

Posted on

Colin Campbell: “After oil, we’ll be happier.”

Colin Campbell, geologist, author, and founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas ASPO [visit] spoke with Jim Puplava on the Financial Sense Newshour Saturday, November 6 saying “The bulk of our oil came from just two epochs in our Earth’s long history, just 90 million and 150 million years ago, and we are now entering the second half of the oil age.”

In short, for the past 100 years, humankind has built a civilization using the energy derived from oil created from “very rare circumstances in geological time”.

World discoveries of oil fields peaked in the 1960s, and in 1981, the world began to use more oil than it found in new fields. Since then, we’ve been drawing from the same mega-fields discovered decades earlier.

A leading figure in the peak oil movement, Mr. Campbell admits that “there’s no good information about oil reserves in the public” but described what prompted the doubling of reported oil reserves in the 1980s.

Since prices were based on a quota system – which was based on reserves, when prices plunged in the mid-80s, countries like Saudi Arabia, whose land held the largest oil fields in the world, increased their reserves overnight, thereby increasing their quota, and elevating the price. Other members of OPEC followed suit, increasing reserves many times over with no new discoveries, only an accounting trick.

He believes, along with Ken Duffeyes [visit], that the peak of regular conventional oil was in 2005, and he puts the peak of all categories of oil, including deep water oil, tar sands, and these “more difficult things that are slower to extract”, in 2008.

“It [the date for peak] might have been influenced by the fall in demand due the economic recession, but that’s seems to be about the date as far as I can piece it together.”

Although there is great debate about the date of peak oil, focusing on a date misses the point. According to Mr. Campbell, the actual date of peak oil is “not as important as the vision of the long slope on the other side of peak, that’s really what’s going to change the world when we enter the second half of the age of oil, when production declines, and the economy contracts. It’s really very obvious.”

The decline is slow at only 2-3% per year, but it is declining. “The banks have been lending more than they have on deposit confident that tomorrow’s growth will be the collateral for today’s debt. Well that’s no longer valid, and so the thing begins to unravel”.

Robert Hirsch, who in 2005 did a study for the federal government on peak oil,
suggested that the best case scenario to mitigate the effects of peak oil was to start planning 20 years before the peak date, and the second best scenario would be to start planning 10 years before peak date.

Mr. Campbell agreed with Mr. Puplava that we probably don’t have twenty years, or even ten years to prepare. He thinks we face a radical change in the way our economy runs, and though he didn’t mention a cold fusion scenario, he’s optimistic that a more sustainable and local economy could be an opportunity for humanity, and that we could be happier than we are now.

“There could be better relationships and better understandings that flow from this… I don’t know if you’ve been to an airport in recent years, but it’s just a kind of nightmare experience.”

Listen to Colin J. Campbell on Jim Puplava’s Financial Sense Newshour archives for November 6 or click the link below for the 30 minute audio.

2010-1106-2 Colin Campbell by Cold Fusion Now

Posted on

Why is cold fusion rejected?

by Edmund Storms

An ordinary person might wonder why cold fusion is not being explored more vigorously as the ideal energy source it promises to be. Why do public figures avoid discussing the idea and why do uninformed writers occasionally use cold fusion as an example of bad science?

Twenty-one years ago when Profs. Fleischmann and Pons (Univ. of Utah) announced the discovery, skeptical attitudes were justified and widespread. The claims were and still are completely at odds with what is known about nuclear reactions. The idea that energy could be produced by fusing two deuterons in what looked like a Mason jar was crazy at the time and still is hard to understand.

The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions But now the situation has greatly changed. Hundreds of people in over 12 countries have been investigating the process with growing success. Thousands of papers have been published and are easily available for study at www.LENR.org and evaluated in the book “The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction” available from Amazon.com.

Clearly, a new phenomenon has been discovered even though it has not been fully explained nor is easy to produce.

Yet, the attitude toward the subject in the popular press and conventional science has hardly changed. Why has a change not occurred especially in view of the growing need for a non-carbon and a non-uranium based energy source? Indeed, the long running reluctance to accept cold fusion in the face of mounting evidence is unique to modern science, which has delayed accepting many new ideas, but never with as much determination.

The claim started with several strikes against it. First and most important, the claim was not easy to replicate. Most efforts, but not all, failed mainly because many people had a very poor understanding of what was required. They also expected the effect would be large and easy to detect once it was produced. Instead, the effect is difficult to produce even today and the results can be ignored as being caused by imagined prosaic processes.

Frequently, these imagined processes require as much suspension of rational understanding as skeptics claim is being used to support cold fusion its self. In other words, each side in the debate has to make equally improbable claims, but with the claims made for the effect being supported by a growing collection of experimental evidence.

Second, the claim was and is in conflict with what is known about nuclear interaction, causing many high profile scientists to conclude the effect is impossible.

Third, if the effect turned out to be real, it would put the hot fusion program out of business. Billions of dollars have been spent on this effort over 60 years in an attempt to cause a similar kind of reaction to that produced by cold fusion, but with disappointing results. The physics professors at major universities funded by this program did not appreciate the possibility their careers might end because of an idea suggested by a couple of chemists.

Gradually, a myth was formed around cold fusion by the skeptics until it became the popular metaphor for bad science done by deluded scientists. Whenever a writer wanted to show how scientists can be deceived, cold fusion was combined with poly-water and n-rays as an example of how someone can be mislead if they are not careful and not skeptical enough, or not as skeptical as the writer. Once such a myth forms in popular journalism, it is very difficult to change, especially when the myth has a benefit to influential groups.

Modern society is filled with such myths, some of which are harmless but some will have devastating consequences if they are not changed. One such myth is that the earth is not getting warmer and that sea level will not rise as ice continues to melt. Efforts to cut back on the generation of CO2, the main cause of warming, are met with the same emotional rejection as is applied to cold fusion. In this respect, the myth of cold fusion and the myth of non-global warming have a lot in common. Rejection of global warming leads to the destruction of civilization while rejection of cold fusion eliminates a possible solution to this disaster.

Sooner or later scientists in some country will discover how to make cold fusion work on a commercial scale. When this happens, the countries that develop this technology will rapidly become richer and more powerful. The cost of energy for manufacturing will go down and processes that are not yet practical under most conditions, such as obtaining fresh water from the sea, will become widely used.

These benefits will cause a rapid expansion in the power and influence of the countries using this inexpensive energy source. What about the countries that do not know how to make the effect work?

Their scientists will attempt to reverse engineer the power generator, but in this field, such efforts will be difficult without an understanding of how the process works, an understanding that will not be shared by the discovers.

Also, highly developed countries will have difficulty removing their present energy infrastructure and substituting this much simpler source. So, the race is on and the potential winners are not obvious.

Nevertheless, it is obvious the winner will not be a country that ignores and rejects the reality of cold fusion.

Top