Claims of cold fusion are no more convincing today
than they were 15 years ago. That's the conclusion
of the Department of Energy's fresh look at
advances in extracting energy from low-energy nuclear
reactions. A report released on 1 December 2004 echoes
DOE's 1989 study that followed the headline-making
claims of cold fusion by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann.
Since Pons and Fleischmann's claims, cold
fusion has fallen into disrepute among scientists,
with only a few soldiering on under professional adversity.
Most are funded by industry or various governments.
DOE revisited the topic at the behest of cold fusion
researchers (see
Physics Today, April 2004, page 27). The researchers
submitted a 30-page document, "New Physical Effects
in Metal Deuterides," which DOE had peer-reviewed
by 18 scientists, 9 of whom also attended a day of
oral presentations by 6 cold fusion research groups.
Reviewers were split on whether the experimental
evidence for excess power production is compelling.
But, the report says, most reviewers, even those who
accepted the evidence for excess power production,
"stated that the effects are not repeatable,
the magnitude of the effect has not increased in over
a decade of work, and that many of the reported experiments
were not well documented."
Cold fusion researchers put a rosier spin on the
report. "The greatest vindication for the cold
fusion community was that, instead of being treated
like cripples, lepers, and idiots, we were treated
like normal scientists in the handling of this review,"
says Michael McKubre, an electrochemist at SRI International
in Menlo Park, California. "Just the fact of
the review has heightened the level of discussion.
There's been a huge upswing in interest in funding
cold fusion research." Adds MIT theorist Peter
Hagelstein, "A door has been opened by the reviewers.
Whether anybody actually manages to go through it
remains to be seen."
The DOE report does not recommend setting aside
government money for research into cold fusion. Rather,
it identifies areas of research that "could be
helpful in resolving some of the controversies in
the field"—specifically, characterization
of deuterated metals and the search for fusion in
thin deuterated films—and recommends that agencies
consider funding individual proposals in those areas.
Considering individual proposals is nothing new, says
Jim Decker, principal deputy director of DOE's
Office of Science. "We have always been receptive
to research proposals. We make decisions on funding
research proposals on the basis of peer review and
relevance."
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