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Cold Fusion Is Hot Again
60 Minutes: Once Considered Junk Science, Cold Fusion Gets A Second
Look By Researchers
(CBS) Twenty years ago it appeared, for a moment, that all our
energy problems could be solved. It was the announcement of cold
fusion - nuclear energy like that which powers the sun - but at room
temperature on a table top. It promised to be cheap, limitless and
clean. Cold fusion would end our dependence on the Middle East and
stop those greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. It would
change everything.
But then, just as quickly as it was announced, it was discredited. So
thoroughly, that cold fusion became a catch phrase for junk science.
Well, a funny thing happened on the way to oblivion - for many
scientists today, cold fusion is hot again.
"We can yield the power of nuclear physics on a tabletop. The
potential is unlimited. That is the most powerful energy source known
to man," researcher Michael McKubre told 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley.
McKubre says he has seen that energy more than 50 times in cold
fusion experiments he's doing at SRI International, a respected
California lab that does extensive work for the government.
McKubre is an electro-chemist who imagines, in 20 years, the creation
of a clean nuclear battery. "For example, a laptop would come
pre-charged with all of the energy that you would ever intend to use.
You're now decoupled from your charger and the wall socket," he explained.
The same would go for cars. "The potential is for an energy source
that would run your car for three, four years, for example. And you'd
take it in for service every four years and they'd give you a new
power supply," McKubre told Pelley.
"Power stations?" Pelley asked.
"You can imagine a one for one plug in replacement for nuclear fuel
rods. And the difference only would be that at the end of the
lifetime of that fuel rod, you didn't have radioactive waste that
needed to be disposed of," McKubre replied.
He showed 60 Minutes just how simple the experiment looks; there are
only three main ingredients. First, there is palladium, a metal in
the platinum family. Second, one needs a kind of hydrogen called
deuterium which is found in seawater.
"Deuterium is essentially unlimited. There is ten times as much
energy in a gallon of sea water, from the deuterium contained within
it, than there is in a gallon of gasoline," he explained.
The palladium is placed in water containing deuterium and the third
ingredient is an electric current.
The experiment is wrapped in insulation and instruments. They're
looking for what they call "excess heat." In other words, is more
energy coming out than the electric current puts in?
No one knows exactly how excess heat would be generated, but McKubre
showed 60 Minutes what he thinks is happening.
At the atomic level, palladium looks like a lattice and the
electricity drives the deuterium to the palladium. "They sit on the
surface and they pop inside the lattice," he explained, using an
artist's rendition of the lattice.
McKubre believes there is a nuclear reaction - possibly a fusion
process like what happens in the sun, but occurring inside the metal,
at a slower rate, and without dangerous radiation.
Scientists today like to call it a nuclear effect rather than cold
fusion. At least 20 labs working independently have published reports
of excess heat - heat up to 25 times greater than the electricity going in.
"This little piece of palladium metal has about a third as much
energy as the battery in your automobile. So very small volumes, very
small masses can produce large amounts of energy," he explained,
holding a small piece of palladium foil weighing just 0.3 grams.
McKubre has been working on this since that first discredited claim
of cold fusion made headlines 20 years ago.
"To work on this issue is almost to put your scientific credibility
at risk and I wonder why you've done it?" Pelley asked.
"My belief is that if there's a one percent chance that Fleischmann
and Pons were correct, and I now believe that possibility is 99
percent. I have a duty to work on it," he replied.
Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons amazed the world in 1989 with
their cold fusion news conference at the University of Utah.
Fleischmann in particular was one of the world's leading
electro-chemists, and the announcement of room temperature fusion set
the world on fire.
With so many open questions, 60 Minutes wanted to find out whether
cold fusion is more than a tempest in a teapot. So 60 Minutes asked
the American Physical Society, the top physics organization in
America, to recommend an independent scientist. They gave us Rob
Duncan, vice chancellor of research at the University of Missouri and
an expert in measuring energy.
"When we first called you and said 'We'd like you to look into cold
fusion for 60 Minutes,' what did you think when you hung up the
phone?" Pelley asked Duncan.
"I think my first reaction was something like, 'Well, hasn't that
been debunked?'" he replied.
We asked Duncan to go with 60 Minutes to Israel, where a lab called
Energetics Technologies has reported some of the biggest energy gains yet.
Duncan spent two days examining cold fusion experiments and
investigating whether the measurements were accurate.
Asked what he thought when he left the Israeli lab, Duncan told
Pelley, "I thought, 'Wow. They've done something very interesting here.'"
He crunched the numbers himself and searched for an explanation other
than a nuclear effect. "I found that the work done was carefully
done, and that the excess heat, as I see it now, is quite real," Duncan said.
Asked if was surprised that he'd hear himself saying that, Duncan
told Pelley, "Very much. I never thought I'd say that."
And we've found that the Pentagon is saying it to. The Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA, did its own
analysis and 60 Minutes obtained an internal memo that concludes
there is "no doubt that anomalous excess heat is produced in these
experiments."
Asked if he feels vindicated after all these years, McKubre told
Pelley with a smile, "I don't have any real need for vindication. I
know what I've seen."
"That was a pretty big smile on your face though," Pelley pointed out.
"It's good. It's not bad. Certainly it's good," McKubre replied.
Now the Pentagon is funding more experiments at the naval research
lab in Washington, D.C. and at McKubre's lab in California.
60 Minutes wondered what Richard Garwin would think of the Defense
Department's appraisal.
"The experiments leave 'no doubt that anomalous, excess heat is
produced,'" Pelley told Garwin.
"Well, that's a statement," Garwin said. "I am living proof that
there's doubt. Now, they can say that there, that excess heat is
being produced. But they can't say there's no doubt. All they can say
is they don't doubt. But I doubt."
"If you ask me, is this going to have any impact on our energy
policy, it's impossible to say, because we don't fundamentally
understand the process yet. But to say, because we don't
fundamentally understand the process and that's why we're not going
to study it, is like saying, 'I'm too sick to go to the doctor,'"
Duncan argued.
"You know, I wonder how you feel about going public endorsing this
phenomenon on 60 Minutes when maybe 90 percent, I'm guessing, of your
colleagues think that it's crackpot science?" Pelley asked.
"I certainly was among those 90 percent before I looked at the data.
And I can see where they'll be very concerned when they see this
piece. All I have to say is: read the published results. Talk to the
scientists. Never let anyone do your thinking for you," he replied.
There was one more scientist 60 Minutes wanted to find, a man who
left America in disgrace and retired with his wife to the English countryside.
Martin Fleischmann, the man who announced cold fusion to the world,
is hindered by years, diabetes, Parkinson's disease and maybe a
little bitterness. At home, he pulled out an improved version of his
experiment, something that he was working on when he was hounded out
of science.
"When you hold that in your hand and you think back on what's
happened these last 20 years, what do you think?" Pelley asked.
"A wasted opportunity," Fleischmann replied.
He thinks this way because it was discredited at the time.
He told Pelley he has two regrets: calling the nuclear effect
"fusion," a name coined by a competitor, and having that news
conference, something he says the University of Utah wanted.
"Now that you know that your experiments have been replicated and,
and improved upon in labs all over the world I wonder, do you see a
day when homes will be powered by these cells, when cars will be
powered by these cells?" Pelley asked.
"I think so. It wouldn't take very long to implement this,"
Fleischman replied, laughing. "You make me feel that I should take a
part in this?"
"I'm getting you interested again?" Pelley asked.
"Yes," Fleischmann replied, laughing. "The potential is exciting."
