Subject was Re: [Vo]:Some doubts expressed about Celani demonstration
At 10:43 PM 8/17/2012, James Bowery wrote:
Isn't 23 years of torture enough?
On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 7:53 PM, Jed Rothwell
<<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]> wrote:
Several experts in calorimetry expressed doubts
about the Celani demonstration at ICCF17. Mike
McKubre in particular feels that it is
impossible to judge whether it really produced
heat or not, because the method is poor. He does
not say he is sure there was no heat; he simply
does not know. Others feel that he exaggerates the problem.
It is crucial that people who accept cold fusion,
who are knowledgeable about it, take on skeptical
roles. Otherwise those roles will be taken by people who are *not* acceptors.
One of the major skeptical arguments is that the
cold fusion community naively accepts every
report, that we are "believers," and the
pseudoskeptics only use this term for us. We are
"believers," as if cold fusion was our religion,
as if our belief in it is impervious to evidence,
as if we are not properly skeptical. It's
inherently insulting, but there is also a truth to it.
We are often reluctant to point out the most
obvious of errors. Some *really poor* research
has been published, even under peer review.
Calorimetric error is possible. Not all cold
fusion reports are free of calorimetric error.
Mike is pointing to certain problems in the
calorimetry. This may or may not be relevant to
Celani's research goals. Generally, at this
point, researchers are not out to prove "cold
fusion." The Celani demonstrations should not be
taken as if they were that. They are
presentations of current work, which can then be
seen in operation. Heat at the levels reported,
and with the calorimetric technique used, are not
going to convince a serious skeptic.
But that's not the purpose. Celani is
investigating the behavior of materials, and for
his purpose, every experiment is a control, with
respect to variations in material processing. He
doesn't need to scale up, and he doesn't need to
know absolute heat production. He only needs to
know *relative* heat production, and for that
purpose, absolute calorimetric error is not so important.
When he's found a reasonable optimization of his
processes, *then*, before he attempts to scale up
or to finalize his work, he'd want absolute accuracy in his calorimetry.
There is a constant drumbeat in this field to
demonstrate massive power generation. While some
will prefer to experiment and take their chances,
hoping to win the lottery and find the magic
combination, others will explore the parameter
space, seeking optimal operating points, and
seeking other evidence that might eventually lead
to understanding the nuts and bolts of whatever
effect is being demonstrated. Such as ash. If
Celani can get a few weeks of operation, even at
the relatively low power levels he's claiming, he
should be able to see transmutations, enough to
identify the ash, and possibly the fuel.
(Actually, 10 - 15 W is not really "low." 1 watt
in this field, if well above noise, is quite
decent. And it's spectacular if correlated with
helium, which probably requires the 1 watt to be continued for a decent time.)
We should ignore the marching orders from those
who want cheap energy (or "proof" that this isn't
all bogus). None of that is about the science,
which should take precedence, if we are sane.
Attempts to scale up cold fusion, to make it
reliable, have burned through as much as a few
hundred million dollars of investment (anyone got
a decent figure on that?). Much of that may have
been wasted, being directed toward a goal of
"more and better," instead of "what the hell is this?"
Obviously, "more and better" would be desirable.
But it puts the cart before the horse.
It is about time that we respect the
recommendations of both U.S. DoE reports for
basic research, before demanding massive
investment in cold fusion. A fraction of what has
been spent already on cold fusion could be
enough, and it would be a tiny fraction of what
is being spent on hot fusion, which we *know* is
unlikely to produce practical power for a very
long time, if ever. (Current estimates seem to be by 2050.)
See the current Wikipedia article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fusion_power&oldid=508022868
From the lede:
Fusion powered electricity generation was
initially believed to be readily achievable, as
fission power had been. However, the extreme
requirements for continuous reactions and plasma
containment led to projections being extended by
several decades. In 2010, more than 60 years
after the first attempts, commercial power
production was still believed to be unlikely before 2050.[3]
[3]
http://web.archive.org/web/20061107220145/http://www.iter.org/Future-beyond.htm
(That's horrible sourcing for something in the
lede of a Wikipedia article. Wikipedia has
definitely gone downhill since they banned the
editors who knew something about cold fusion.
(Who often also knew something about hot fusion.)
This is a hot fusion article, probably the main
one, as far as application for power is concerned.
This section of the article covers "current
status." It has a "factual accuracy tag" on it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fusion_power&oldid=508022868#Current_status
This is even worse. A century? For perspective, the section has:
In early 2012, NIF director Mike Dunne expected
the laser system to generate fusion with net
energy gain by the end of 2012.[56]
[56} http://optics.org/news/3/1/37
Wikipedia supposedly depends, for science
articles, on publication in peer-reviewed
journals, and, specifically, the gold standard is
a review published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Nothing less than that, really, should be
presented as fact. In this case, it's been
attributed (which is the proper way to do it),
but not quite accurately. What Mike Dunne actually said was:
We are now in a position to say with some
confidence that ignition will happen in the next
6-18 months, stated the former head of the
HiPER European laser fusion project, adding that
he felt personally that the breakthrough was
likely to happen in around nine months.
That was 26 January, 2012. What he actually said
wasn't the text in the article. It was a personal
feeling as to what was "likely." Yet, if he
needed to express something with "some
confidence," about what "we" are in a position to
say, it would be within 18 months. Maybe!
Now, realize this: what they mean by "ignition"
is that the reaction produces more energy than is
put in. So if they are consuming 50 megawatts,
they would produce more fusion power than that,
so total power dissipation, for some period of
time (how long?) would be above 100 MW.
(It's trivial to produce *some* power with hot
fusion, it's done in home labs with Farnsworth Fusors.)
They aren't there yet. I think there have been
one or more instances where a hot fusion device
has produced, for a very short time, more
additional power out than power in. Yet this is
*common* with cold fusion. (With "Heat after
death," there is no input at all, so all power
out, if it's not recombination, is additional
power. Some examples of HAD produced more power
out than all the power put in, even though most
of that input power resulted in burnable
deuterium and oxygen exhausted to the atmosphere.
The incredible mismatch between prospects and
actual funding is striking. Cold fusion, at this
point, needs a relatively small amount of funding
for basic research. Hot fusion is consuming vast
funding, every year. From the Wikipedia article cited above:
Nuclear fusion research receives 750 million
(excluding ITER funding), compared with 810
million for all non-nuclear energy research
combined,<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power#cite_note-44>[45]
putting research into fusion power well ahead of
that of any single rivaling technology.
ITER is budgeted, according to the article, at
10 billion, but the article doesn't give the
period for that funding. Again, from the article:
It is estimated that up to the point of possible
implementation of electricity generation by
nuclear fusion, R&D will need further promotion
totalling around 60-80 billion over a period
of 50 years or so (of which 20-30 billion
within the EU) based on a report from 2002.
Now, before we continue to spend over a billion
dollars per year for a technology that, at best,
is unlikely to produce results in the short term,
and produces shaky results long-term, including a
series of major problems (such as dealing with
radioactive waste from all the neutron-activated
material), wouldn't it make sense to spend 1
percent of that (or maybe even more!) to
investigate an alternative that already has shown
*some* promise, under poorly understood
conditions? The DoE reviews negated a massive
Manahattan-scale project, for good reasons: the
science is not well enough understood. But both
reviews recommended modest funding for research.
That funding was almost completely interdicted by
the intervention of physicists, like Park of the APS. Now, the dirty secret:
Hot fusion employs many physticists. Entire
institutions are maintained and supported by hot
fusion research. If hot fusion is abandoned,
there will be a lot of physicists out of a job.
Cold fusion requires, not particle physicists and
nuclear physicists, per se, but chemists and
materials scientists. Institutions accustomed to
governmental support from hot fusion research
would see contracts cancelled. That would include
MIT. There is a glaring conflict of interest here.
This has been a turf war. The loser? The public. It's about time this ends.
It's about time that the normal processes of
science be allowed to function. They will, and
they are, but under conditions that heavily retard progress.
