Tabletop Nuclear Fusion
International experts on low-energy nuclear reactions meet at Mizzou
A cool scientific mystery is drawing researchers worldwide to Mizzou for a week in July to investigate recent developments in understanding how nuclear fusion could occur at or near room temperature.
Scientists representing the U.S. and 18 countries internationally will gather July 21–27 at the International Conference on Condensed Nuclear Matter Science to share information on low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR) that could someday provide a new energy source.
The idea of usable low-energy nuclear reactions is compelling to countries worldwide. Participants of the ICCF-18 conference include distinguished nuclear physicists and related research specialists from countries such as Italy, China, Japan, India, Russia, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates.
The researchers are looking for the capability to eventually produce high-performance, inexpensive, clean energy with few or no emissions. Such a sustainable energy source could eliminate the problems of greenhouse gases and heavy air pollution.
For years, scientists have either experienced or read reports of unexplained substantial levels of excess heat thought to be caused by nuclear phenomena that deviate from what is expected.
The regularity of these anomalous heat occurrences — reported by scientific observation worldwide — continues to pique interest, and logical conclusions seem to indicate the existence of an entirely new nuclear reaction that could become a source of energy.
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Experiments then and now
The first report of a possible low-energy nuclear reaction occurred in a 1926 test conducted in Germany by Austrian-born scientists Friedrich Paneth and Kurt Peters of the Berlin University Institute of Chemistry. The researchers were experimenting with palladium loaded with hydrogen. They reported that the process produced helium but later retracted their findings.
In 1989, electrochemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons at the University of Utah reported excess heat in their “cold fusion” experiments, but their work was later discredited when other researchers were unable to reproduce the results. “We understand now why these results were not immediately reproducible,” Duncan says.
Although the early experiments were difficult to replicate, other researchers through the years have observed similar anomalous heat effects in low-temperature nuclear research at several laboratories, including the Naval Research Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, ENEA (the national energy lab of Italy) and Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Bombay, India.
In 2009, when Duncan accompanied the 60 Minutes news team on an investigation of claims of LENR at Energetics Technologies in Israel, he was a good choice because he counted himself among the skeptics.
For two days on site, Duncan asked questions, measured, checked numbers and looked for errors and other explanations. What he found was repeatable results, leading him to conclude that “excess heat is quite real.” 60 Minutes broadcast his reports on a segment airing that year.
“In Israel, I found how important the research was. I think it surprised a lot of people when a main-street physicist found the research credible. Since then, there have been exciting new developments,” Duncan says.
Researchers working independently in 20 different laboratories have repeated the results, finding excess heat in low-temperature nuclear experiments, Duncan says. Some of those have been confirmed scientifically, making the study of LENR a new and real science.
