INTEGRITY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
An interactive lecture-discussion experience held on November 17, 2000 outside Washington, DC Captured on one 6-hour VHS (NTSC) video for a reasonable price. Visit IRI order page. Featuring Dr. Scott Chubb, ModeratorSpeakers included: George Miley, Robert Bass, K.P. Sinha, Takahashi, Violante, Hagelstein, Melvin Miles, M.A. Imam, Mallove, Hal Fox, Mitchell Swartz, and others. An unofficial follow-up workshop to the American Nuclear Society LENR meeting with a 1) Heat Production Session, 2) Helium-4 Production Session, and 3) Theories.NOTE: For those of us who know very little about cold fusion, this one-day seminar was a wonderful introduction to the viable research that has been accomplished in this area. It tends to be called "Low Energy Nuclear Reactions" because "cold fusion" has such bad press (for no good reason).LENREW 2000 PROGRAM MORNING 9 AM – 12 NOON (30 minute sessions) 9:00 Melvin Miles "Excess Heat and Helium Production in Palladium-Boron" AFTERNOON 1 PM – 2:40 PM (25 minute sessions) 1:00 PM George Miley "Advances in Thin-Film Proton-Reaction Cell Experiments" LATE AFTERNOON 3 PM – 5 PM (25 minute sessions) 3:00 PM T. Chubb "Deuteron Fusion in Deuterium-Transition Metal Systems" ================================================================= AN INFORMAL REVIEW OF LENREW 2000 In 1989, two chemists from the University of Utah reported achieving what was thought to be impossible: nuclear fusion from simple electrolysis. The announcement touched off a storm of controversy that left the reputations of the two chemists in tatters and the budding field of low energy nuclear reactions dead. Nonetheless, official ostracism by the mainstream science establishment in the United States, has not extinguished interest in the phenomenon of low energy nuclear reactions, which we will refer to as LENRs. To the contrary, there have been eight annual conferences on cold fusion and other types of LENRs. In April 1999, the Integrity Research Institute sponsored the first conference on future energy, a large part of which was devoted to developments in the LENR field. IRI followed up this successful conference on November 17, 2000, with the Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Educational Workshop (Hence the name LENREW 2000). Fifty distinguished scientists from around the world gathered in College Park, Maryland to present their latest findings. France, Italy, India, Japan, and China, were among the countries represented at the workshop. THE REALITY OF LOW ENERGY NUCLEAR REACTIONS The wall of silence maintained by the nuclear physics community has not been able to stop the avalanche of experimental evidence from coming down upon its official denials. Since the fateful announcement in 1989 and the controversy that followed it, laboratory evidence has been accumulating, to the point at which cold fusion has been experimentally verified, and is now for all intents and purposes a scientific fact. Not only cold fusion, but several other types of LENRs have been observed and documented, including fission (transmutation) and nuclear collapse. Here is a brief history of the LENR field. In 1989, electrochemists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann set up an experiment consisting of a heavy water electrolyte solution in an insulated flask. Attached to the flask were a palladium cathode and a platinum anode. An electric current was passed through the heavy water solution, triggering an electrolysis reaction. What the experimenters expected was an ordinary attainment of equilibrium in which the heat loss in the solution would equal the input from the power source. There was no equilibrium. The temperature of the electrolyte heavy water solution continued to rise, while the electrical power input was reduced. In other words, the experiment generated heat that could not be accounted for under conventional electrochemical theory. Something hidden within the cell itself was responsible for the additional heat. Fleishmann and Pons posited that it was an unknown nuclear reaction that was generating the heat, a reaction that did not emit neutrons, gamma rays, or other dangerous radiation. Despite the absence of these lethal occurrences, the experiment left a nuclear signature: the presence of helium in significant quantities. The two chemists claimed to have discovered what has since been referred to as the deuterium-deuterium (d-d) cold fusion reaction. Deuterium (D2) is an isotope of hydrogen. Deuterium Oxide (D2O) is "heavy water" During this reaction, there is a nuclear exchange between atoms in the heavy water electrolyte solution and the atoms in the palladium cathode. The protons in two deuterium atoms apparently fused together, which resulted in Helium 4 (4He), the most common form of helium gas. This is what is referred to as the d-d cold fusion reaction. The two protons in the deuterium atoms fuse with two neutrons to form one atom of helium 4. The essence of their claim was that: a d-d reaction took place at room temperature; that the 20 watts of heat per cubic centimeter of palladium produced in the experiment could not be accounted for by chemical reactions; and the relative lack of neutrons ruled out conventional "hot" fusion as the energy source. Conventional "hot" fusion physicists, skeptical from the start, were outright hostile to the very notion of fusion taking place at room temperature. According to conventional nuclear physics, the electromagetic force that causes like particles to repel each other could only be overcome with tremendous force, such as hot fusion. This force, called the coulomb barrier prevents protons from joining together, and likewise keeps electrons apart. This is why, according to hot fusion physicists, fusion can take place only at extremely high temperatures, and cannot occur without the release of neutrons and gamma rays, exposure to which is invariably fatal. Thus, in order for cold fusion to have taken place, the protons in the deuterium atoms would had to have "jumped the fence" or gotten around, through or under the coulomb barrier without crashing through it, as they do in hot fusion. Despite the campaign of ostracism led by the nuclear physics community in the United States, the LENR phenomena has been experimentally validated. Experiments performed since 1989 have provided ample confirmation of the reality of low energy nuclear reactions. For example, Professor W. Hansen, also of Utah State University, confirmed the Fleischmann-Pons results in late 1989 and early 1990. He reported excess heat in several cells of about 6000 electron volts per atom of palladium, an enormous source of heat. (Beaudette, 184-86). Michael McKubre, working at SRI international devised a series of experiments that have steadily replicated the Fleischmann-Pons results for eight years (Beaudette 191). By the end of 1996, the anomalous power experiments of Fleischmann and Pons have attained a reproducibility level of 50% or higher for several experimenters. (Beaudette 208). IRI Note: The rest of this review, with paragraph summaries of each speaker, is available on the Members Page.
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Integrity Research Institute
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