More cold water on cold nuclear fusion

Press, 28 June 1989, Page 40

More cold water on cold nuclear fusion

By

NIGEL MALTHUS

"J — A New Zealander closely involved in United States efforts to produce cold nuclear fusion is now “very, very doubtful” that it can be done. Dr Gordon Miskelly was part of a team at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) which tried to duplicate cold nuclear fusion after the announcement that it had been achieved by a University of Utah team headed by two chemists, Dr Martin Fleischmann and Dr Stanley Pons.

The Caltech team was not able to reproduce the Utah results, but was able to find non-fusion explanations of the Fleischmann and Pons findings, he said.

Dr Miskelly, aged 28, has just returned from a Fulbright Scholarship to the United States, working at Caltech and Stanford University. Although here on holiday — he is seeking an academic job, preferably in the United States — he has found interest in cold fusion so high he is booked to do seven lectures on the topic in three weeks. He said that New Zealanders probably did not realise the interest it created in the United

States, where the Fleischmann and Pons announcement was front-page news across the country. The “Los Angeles Times” devoted li/ 2 Pages to it.

Fusion, the process which powers the sun, consists of small atoms fusing into larger atoms with the release of energy. It could provide a safe and clean alternative to nuclear fission and fossil fuel power generation. Complex and expensive experiments to produce hot fusion have so far failed to produce more energy than they consume. Cold fusion, if it were possible, would provide virtually unlimited energy simply and cheaply. Dr Fleischmann and Dr Pons claimed to have achieved it by passing an electric current from palladium electrodes through heavy water — water rich in deuterium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen. Dr Miskelly said the Caltech group started almost immediately to try to reproduce the experiment after their announcement on March 23. They had no success and "went public” with their findings in early May, prompted by Dr Fleischmann and Dr

Pons’ approach to Congress for $25 million to develop their ideas. “Suddenly we found ourselves in the limelight as the big nay-sayers,” said Dr Miskelly. There were suggestions that the Caltech group deliberately set out to disprove the Utah claims. “The truth is, we were as keen to duplicate it as anyone.” “Everyone wanted it to be true. We almost felt bad about not being able to do it,” he said. Dr Miskelly was critical, however, of the way scientists used the news media to publicise their findings, instead of the cautious traditional approach of publishing in scientific journals and disclosing their methods for peer review and criticism. Dr Fleischmann and Dr Pons’ announcement raised a lot of ill-feeling, and left those trying to verify their findings to guess from news reports what their experimental set-up was. A public relations team at the University of Utah seemed to release tit-bits whenever interest seemed to flag, and other teams also rushed to announce findings by press conference instead of in a scien-

tific journal. At least two universities which publicly claimed to have verified the Utah result later had to retract, said Dr Miskelly. If cold nuclear fusion worked, the process would give off heat, neutrons, and gamma rays, and produce heavier nuclei such as helium. , The Caltech team found none of those, even after trying revised and more sensitive experiments. Since the initial flurry of activity, some teams were still working, trying to find evidence of lowenergy neutrons — which are harder to detect than high-level neutrons claimed by Dr Fleischmann and Dr Pons, but would still be evidence of some nuclear process occurring. But some teams had stopped research into cold fusion altogether and others were “treading water” while they waited for more concrete findings, said Dr Miskelly. He was doubtful, though, that even lowenergy neutrons would be found.

“Right now the whole issue of cold fusion looks to be doubtful,” he said.