Collaborationist Works on Thermal Energy

Grey River Argus, 28 February 1949, Page 5

Collaborationist Works on Thermal Energy

[From a Reuters Correspondent in Paris] A member of the French Academy of Sciences says there are great possibilities in a report on the substittution of thermal energy from beneath the earth for coal. The report was drawn up by 80 year old French scientist, Georges Claude, now imprisoned for life for collaboration with the Nazis. The calculations in the report which described the Prospects of heat 600 times greater than that generated by coal are perfectly correct, the Academy member savs_ Claude, who was the war-time Vichy Government’s leading propagandist has been working on the development of thermal energy in the prison o: Clairvaux in Eastern France, since he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1945. . Claude is being assisted in hs experiments by his scientist son, AndreGeorge, who visits him once a week. Claude, who denied allegations that he invented or helped to invent the flying bomb, waited in his cell while the Academy debated whether it woul{l receive his report. With only two dissenting votes, the Academy decided to receive the report. The Academy member who read the report said: “Claude has evaluated thermal energy and found it to be 600 times more powerful than coal eight kilometres (five miles) down. His idea is to pentrate below the earth layer with artesian wells and build thermic factories. Claude invented neon lighting and is an authority on the production of gases, liquid air, and artificial nitrates. He created widespread interest in 1934-35 with his experiments t;> obtain electric power from the sea oft Rio de Janeiro. This is not the first time Claude has attempted to utilise thermal energy. In the period between the two wars he experimented on producing energy from the difference in temperature in tropical waters between the air above the surface of the sea and the cool depths of the ocean. He sank a enormous cylinder for the purpose of his experiments. Ho abandoned this attempt in 1935.