See:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=5&articleID=00059015-99C5-1213-987F83414B7F011C
PHYSICS
Back to Square One
Government review repeats cold fusion conclusions
By Charles Q. Choi
After 15 years, cold fusion got a second chance at legitimacy from the U.S. Department of Energy, often seen by cold fusion advocates as their greatest enemy. This rematch, many hoped, would vindicate the field or kill it once and for all. Instead history repeated itself, with a verdict that evidence remained inconclusive.
Conventional physics holds that nuclear fusion ignites at multimillion-degree temperatures. In March 1989 controversy erupted when electrochemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, then at the University of Utah, claimed room-temperature experiments with palladium electrodes in heavy water generated heat far in excess of any chemical reaction. The suggestion was that the deuterons--hydrogen nuclei bearing an extra neutron each--making up the heavy water were fusing....
