At 02:12 PM 8/20/2012, Terry Blanton wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus
Cool.
1973 - Beginning of design work
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25th June 1983 - Very first plasma achieved at JET
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9th November 1991 - The worlds first controlled release of fusion energy
In the history of fusion research the year 1991 is particularly significant: on the 9th November a Preliminary Tritium Experiment achieved the worlds first controlled release of fusion power. Six years later, in 1997, another world record was achieved at JET: 16 mega watts of fusion power were produced from a total input power of 24 mega watts a 65 % ratio. This is equivalent to a release of 22 mega joules of energy.
Cold fusion has, many times, released more power than was put in. Setting aside the current flap about NiH (Rossi et al), PdD cold fusion is not *reliable* yet, at those levels of result, but it's demonstrated and observed, and some workers have found almost 100% of attempts producing excess heat. Heat After Death results sometimes show infinite COP, because there is no input power. Likewise gas-loaded PdD shows excess power with no power input, confirmed many times.
It's real, because helium is being produced correlated with the heat (a "proof" that goes beyond all the careful and confirmed calorimetry, which really should have been adequate before the ash was identified in the 1990s).
Hot fusion is real and impractical. Practicality is aimed for, expected by maybe 2050. Cold fusion is real and impractical. Practicality is being researched, and already exceeds hot fusion in results.
If the reported NiH reactions are confirmed, it's totally over. Hot fusion is dead. The money -- research billions, over many years -- will shift to development of low-energy nuclear reaction science.
Short of that, proof of PdD cold fusion is readily available. Anyone can do the experiments, if prepared to spend the money and do the work (and that's true for all science.) It's real money, but compare that to the billions it takes to make a hot fusion toy. You can reliably observe, following the state of the art, cold fusion, for under $10,000 with many approaches. You may be able to observe some effects for $100. And NiH, if real, will blow this open completely.
There is no doubt: cold fusion funding should be very considerably increased. The first efforts to be funded governmentally should be precisely what was recommended, twice, by the DoE panels, in 1989 and 2004: targeted research to resolve basic issues.
Basically, what the hell is going on? "Unidentified error," the drumbeat and marching music of the APS, doesn't cut it. It's, in fact, preposterous, and has been for at least a decade or more.
It's time to confront, without apology, this pseudoskeptical pseudoscience that managed to dominate for two decades, and the hatred and contempt that were displayed by Lindsey of Nature, and others. It's time to return to real science, where theory follows experiment, instead of theory being used to distort and manage experimental results in a desired direction. Anything inconvenient? "Unexplained error." It works for any result you don't like.
