“So I’m riding my bike down Main Street in Santa Monica, and a fellow pedals up along side and starts a conversation, right there in the bike lane. Seeing my Cold Fusion Now sticker deftly placed street-facing on the frame, and the new T-shirt I’m wearing (available SOON!), he remarks, “Wow, you’re really into this…” You have no idea, I think to myself. “I do clean energy advocacy for cold fusion.” At once, the young man proceeded to tell me that cold fusion wasn’t real, and was shown, years ago, to be a mistake. Taking a deep breath, I told him that if his knowledge of the situation stopped in 1989, then he’s missed the last two-decades of development, and could use an update. I rattled off a few facts that contradicted the myth he was stifled by.
Essentially, I listed a few well-known companies, agencies, and universities, actively engaged in serious research on cold fusion, also called low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR), lattice-assisted nuclear reactions (LANR), and quantum fusion.
– NASA is testing technology based on a LENR theory at Langley Research Center, and testing experimental cells at the Glenn Research Center.
– National Instruments, a billion-dollar multinational corporation that manufactures science equipment and laboratory software, featured LENR at their recent NIWeek, and has set up a lab testing cold fusion cells in Austin, Texas.
– University of Missouri has set up an Institute of Nuclear Renaissance with a $5.5 million grant to study LENR.
– University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne runs a LENR research laboratory under Dr. George Miley studying both excess heat and transmutations. Purdue University has LENR theorist Dr. Yeong Kim; University of LaVerne has researcher Dr. Iraj Parchamazad; Portland State University has Dr. John Dash; and Massachusetts Institute of Technology has Dr. Peter Hagelstein, all actively pursuing research experimentally or theoretically.
– SRI International, a world-renowned science lab based in Menlo Park, California operated under Dr. Michael McKubre, has been experimenting for over two-decades, amassing a huge database of results.
– Brillouin Energy Corporation, an independent new energy lab under the direction of Robert Godes in Berkeley, California, recently received private venture capital funding, and is now working with SRI International testing a new gas-loaded boiler design.
– The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) have consistently funded cold fusion/LENR research conducted by individual Naval scientists, the Naval Research Lab, and SRI International, to name a few.
– Japanese corporations Toyota and Mitsubishi have been funding research beginning twenty years ago, and are now dramatically increasing their support due to the recent technological advances.
– Researchers in Italy, India, France, Germany, Ukraine, China, Russia, Greece, and Canada, are among nations around the world racing to develop this science into a usable technology.
Read the entire article at the source: Cold Fusion Now
Note: There’s lots of additional LENR news. I’ve been posting some links in the Comments of my previous blog post: LENR Confirmed by Mainstream Scientists. A few stories that have me super excited include Dr. Celani’s public demonstrations of his LENR device. Celani has published a paper that describes how he makes his active materials (nickel-copper wire with microscopic crevices). The Hunt Utilities Group (very impressive work — please watch the video) is working to validate Celani’s findings and sell test units so others can run the experiment. Once independently confirmed and all the secrets of the active materials revealed, it won’t be long before hundreds of additional groups start building their own cold fusion reactors.
Anyone out there still reading this? A high ranking NASA scientist just observed a positive LENR experiment at Defkalion. He helped write the report and signed off on the results. Forbes Mag rather reluctantly ran a lukewarm story about this.
http://www.e-catworld.com/2012/10/defkalion-gt-publishes-test-results-from-unnamed-group/
What does it take to get lamestream media to cover real news? This is huge. (I know. Covering stories like this puts their advertising revenue from car companies, oil companies, etc. at risk.) I don’t know how these guys sleep at night. Journalists that bury the truth are accomplices to the cover up.
There is no doubt that LENR will bring on an economic disruption of epic proportions. If I was an oil company executive I would fight it tooth and tong, but in light of the benefits I would be on the wrong side of the issue. Evidently product is not ready for deployment. There is still a lot of fine tuning going on, but it cannot be far away.
The biggest risk in my opinion is LENR might get declared a state secret, especially if war breaks out. The gov might be waiting for Rossi to figure out the last few details to make it commercially viable.
If you slog through the literature, a basic experimental setup doesn’t look that hard. If you already have a garage workshop with metal shop tools (including arc welder) then we’re talking hundreds of dollars of materials. What it would eat is time. Compared to the billions of dollars for anything else in experimental physics, this is chump change.
And my wife won’t let me do it, afraid of what might happen if I do something actually mad science-y, and possibly steampunkish.
I go back and forth on this. Rossi’s original reactor mostly consisted of copper pipes wrapped in insulation, wires and electronic controls. This setup was enough to convince him and prof. Focardi of anomalous heat. So it seems a simple reactor can demonstrate proof of LENR. In practice though hundreds of scientists and inventors have tried and failed to produce reliable results. Many get reactors to overheat and melt down, which may be proof of LENR, but maintaining a controlled reaction is very difficult. So yes it’s possible but the odds of success are very slim. The costs really add up over time and some danger is involved.
Piantelli’s patent applications explain almost everything you need to know to make your own LENR reactor:
http://images3.freshpatents.com/pdf/US20110249783A1.pdf
http://images3.freshpatents.com/pdf/US20120134915A1.pdf
You’re in the perfect place to have an affordable machine shop make these parts. Or China, not that far away from you either. mfg.com
Oh yeah. Like I told you before, you can have parts made super cheap in developing countries. Plus, people are designing some LENR reactors that are primarily made of stainless steel pipe and pipe fittings (off the shelf parts). The reactive materials are only a few grams of inexpensive metal. I wouldn’t be surprised if $200 garage made reactors were available at some point.
The controls are the most difficult part. Without controls the reactors will heat up and melt. I think companies like Hunt Utilities Group, who’s now testing Celani’s reactor, will start selling control panels. And once these hit the market, you’ll see dirt cheap knock offs available within weeks or months. There’s incredible demand for this because everybody worldwide wants affordable heat and electricity.
I will most certainly look at Hunt Utilities Group
I’ve kept half an eye on this since I was a kid and heard about the cold-fusion misnomer promoted by half-wit detractors. Yes, I was 11 and cared about such things… I kept waiting for some real, tangible proof-of-concept or prototype to appear. Here it is. There may yet be hope for our species…
There have been hundreds of successful replications since 1989 and thousands of articles published since cold fusion was supposedly debunked by MIT, Yale and Stanford (who had billions in hot fusion research at stake). Eugene Mallove, the former MIT journalist, blew the whistle on the scam and was murdered not long after. The patent office has blocked hundreds of cold fusion patents, and the largest science journals have gone along with the program. Those who don’t go along quickly lose their funding, jobs and get ostracized for working on what is ‘impossible.’ But the chickens are coming home to roost — big time. You can fool the masses for a while, but it’s pretty hard to stop hundreds of scientists all over the world who all know what’s really going on. For instance, Brillouin just got a cold fusion patent in China and have millions in investment lined up if they can deliver on their promises.
Missing is an efficient electrical conversion system.
Oh wait: http://www.infiniacorp.com/powerdish.html
…and it’s already coupled to a much better fusion reactor…
:-p
I saw a company making a 20KW version of this hyper-atmospheric gravity-induced fusion energy collector, too…
Surely I jest…. Sort of.
Turbines and large Stirling engines are fine for commercial power generation, but they’re not affordable for home use. I’m thinking something like the WhisperGen will work for residential use. There are mid-range systems for office buildings.
Tessera Solar was the name. Had the giant parabolic 20KW FPSE. Looks like their company took a turn for the worst. Perfect time to swoop up their 20KW FPSE and strap it to a Hot Cat.
The possibilities for/from LENR are breath taking! Will the ordinary person someday have access to “free energy”–hmmmmm!
The biggest unknown is how the ‘powers that be’ will respond. They have trillions invested in pipelines, oil refineries, tankers, etc. It’s not just oil and gas companies. The banks are heavily involved in financing everything, and governments are involved. Lots of people have mysteriously or suddenly died trying to develop alternative energy technologies. I’ll let readers do their own research so I don’t sound like a kook. But the more you look into this stuff the scarier it gets…
So I don’t know when LENR will be commercially available. I believe the secret ingredients and techniques will eventually leak out and then people with the skills and resources can build their own (it’s complicated). I know of about 6-8 open source projects that are working to develop this. Two promising projects are Zeocat and Hunt Utilities Group.
Been following this for a while but gave up a bit back, Just seemed like it was always “just about to break!” It’s got to go mainstream otherwise the energy interests will murder it…and anyone connected. Here;s hoping..Man, can you even imagine how this will help people get off the grid??!!
I understand. The story keeps going on and on. But I keep following it because more and more people are getting involved and verifying the claims. And, there have been regular exciting developments. Rossi’s latest test blows away all previous results. He’s gaining better control over the reaction (hardest part). His newest Hot Cat is more powerful than uranium nuclear power. Rossi just gave a news conference in Italy to a packed house. http://www.e-catworld.com/2012/10/report-of-pordenone-meeting-from-aldo-proia/
And next year Rossi is going to start testing his Hot Cat with turbines to generate electricity. Some of the electricity produced will go back into running and controlling the Hot Cat, thus closing the loop to create infinite COP (coefficient of performance).
Rossi’s Hot Cat is powerful enough (when multiple units are grouped together) to drive an industrial sized turbine at a power plant and generate electricity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation
His small residential units are bogged down in certification red tape. It should be much easier to get approval for industrial units where strict safety procedures are more easily maintained.
DIY units are probably 1-2 years away. Lots of people are posting info on the Internet and before long I believe we’ll hit a tipping point where the ‘cat is totally out of the bag.’
Good list, though you can never get through it all!
Ruby, you did a super job making this list interesting. I’d been wanting to do an update for sometime now since it’s been about 10 months since my last LENR, but I was not looking forward to compiling the latest, best sources. I jumped at the chance to use your list as soon as I saw it.
Let us know when your t-shirts are ready.
Oh, and the Zeocat project has more positive developments today.