User:Abd/Cold fusion and the issue of "majority" for the DoE

About the issue of "majority" for the 1989 and 2004 U.S. Department of Energy review panels.

This is long, and I don't have time to edit it down. it can be moved to its own page as an essay, if desired.

Repeatedly, at fusion, information about the 2004 U.S. Department of Energy review has been removed. I am currently topic banned on en.wiki, on the topic; however, the other editors working on the article do not seem to be sufficiently knowledgeable as to sources; the three or four most knowledgeable editors having been banned: Pcarbonn, Jed Rothwell, myself, and some odd company: the editor known as Nrcprm2026, who evades blocks as IP or with various sock puppets.

In any case, I was asked if I had a source for the text removed here. The short answer is No, because that text is misleading. What would be more to the point would be the original problem edit of JzG way back, 13 July, 2006: [1]. This was reverted by Pcarbonn, [2], and from that an apparent long-term conflict was born.

When I discovered a problem blacklisting by JzG of lenr-canr.org, I begen to look into the article and the topic. I had enough physics background to understand the issues, and I was familiar with the events of 1989, but I'd been left with the same impression as nearly everyone else: that the original reports had been bogus, that there was no evidence for low-energy nuclear reactions. However, I did read the 2004 report, and one of the first edits I made to the Cold fusion article was this: [3]. This was reverted by Eric Naval: [4], with a comment that was original research and not true. Given the rest of the report of the 2004 Panel, the unanimous recommendation of the panel for further research was not mere boilerplate, it was a recognition that there are definitely anomalies, or the reasonable appearance of same at least, and that further research is needed. This comes into focus more clearly when the 2004 panel's work is compared with that of 1989, which I'll get to.

I tried again with [5]. This was reverted by Noren.[6], back to what has frequently been the text: The report summarized its conclusions as being similar to those of the 1989 review. This is, of course, true, and the report states that explicitly. However, what conclusions were similar. Some were quite dissimilar.

To answer this question it's necessary to read between the lines a little. What was the purpose of the two reviews? I won't go for sources on that yet, because it is obvious: to determine whether or not a special program (perhaps even a "crash program"), heavily funded, should be recommended. And the conlusion on that point, the basic purpose of the panels: was the same. No. But encouragement of further research. Look at the specific recommendations.

(But first, see also JzG's edit: [7] This was 26 January 2009, two and a half years after JzG's first foray into this issue. Hadn't learned a thing, still pushing the same POV. But we'll see, the primary focus of this essay is how, exactly, did the 2004 report resemble that of 1989, and how did it differ.)

1989 panel, see Huizenga, Cold fusion, the scientific fiasco of the century, 1993, or see the ERAB panel report. In particular, Conclusions. There are three parts to the 1989 Conclusions: The Preamble, the Conclusions, and the Recommendations.

The story of the Preamble is told by Gary Taubes, by Huizenga, and by Simon (in Undead Science, Rutgers University Press, 2002). I'll follow Huizenga for the moment, a highly biased observer, which makes what he says all the more reliable in certain respects. The Preamble was submitted by Norman Ramsey, co-chair of the ERAB, who threatened to resign if it was not accepted. Huizenga describes this as an attempt by Ramsey, a "new Nobel Prize winner in physics," to "weaken the panel's conclusions." The decision was made to accept the Preamble in order to avoid what would have been a very embarrassing resignation, though the preamble was "modified slightly."

Why did Ramsey think it necessary to threaten to resign? Well, the panel, overall, was very negative. From reviewing the sources, Ramsey's position may have only had one or two panel members in support. We have no direct information on voting by the panel that I've seen. Huizenga ascribes (p. 92) Ramsey's intransigence to his friendship for Julian Schwinger (also a Nobel Prize winner) and Willis E. Lamb, Jr. "who had invented 'explanations' of cold nuclear fusion in atomic lattice. Remember, the basic position taken in the Wikipedia article is that there are no such explanations, that cold fusion is against all accepted principles of physics. Schwinger's explanation was almost certainly incorrect, though I haven't reviewed it specifically. Nobody expected what is probably happening. But it does not, apparently, violate any laws of physics, it's just that nobody thought of what might be possible in the condensed matter nuclear environment, and the math is horrific. The Preamble was not mere boilerplate, there was a point being made: we don't know everything.

Then there were the "Conclusions" themselves. (paraphrased in part for brevity)

1. Reports "to date do not present convincing evidence that useful sources of energy will result frmo the phenomena attributed to cold fusion.

Note "useful sources of energy." That remains true today. There is now an emerging consensus that low energy nuclear reactions do indeed occur (and other examples were previously known), but translating this into a useful source is quite another matter. General opposition to LENR has disappeared from the peer-reviewed literature, only specific criticism remains that generally accepts LENR, if not cold fusion, and positive publications have been on the rise since about 2004, including major journals.

2. Major fraction of experiments report neither excess heat nor fusion products.

This is apparently no longer true, but this would still have been reasonable to say in 2004. The problem is that the effect is fragile and the conditions that produce it were very poorly understood. It's now clear that most of the early replication efforts were doomed to failure, they did not allow sufficient time for loading ratio to reach what was required. No reaction means, certainly, no heat and no fusion products! However, by the mid 1990s, with "success" rates being substantially higher, more like 60% of cells, helium was being correlated with measured excess heat within what would be expected from fusion. No excess heat, no helium. Excess heat, almost always helium. This work has since been massively confirmed.

3. The early claims of fusion products (neutrons) [were not confirmed]. The present evidence for the discovery of a new nuclear process termed cold fusion is not persuasive.

The early reports of neutrons were artifact, most notably Fleischmann's report. Neutrons are now know to be emitted from codeposition cells, and probably other types, but at extremely low levels, so low that it is a practical certainty that the primary reaction, whatever it is, does not emit neutrons. But any emission of neutrons at all indicates nuclear reactions. The fusion product that is known to be found is helium. That, as well, is conclusive, if the measurements are accurate. (The amount of helium expected from the excess heat is sometimes below background, but experimental design and correlation of excess heat and helium answer the objection of "background" helium being present due to leakage.)

4. Current understanding of the very extensive literature of experimental and theoretical results for hydrogen in solids gives no support for the occurrence of cold fusion in solids.

The rest of this conclusion assumes that the reaction would be d-d fusion, and this conclusion essentially says: we didn't expect to see this, and so we won't look at the actual results. Fleischmann later wrote that he regretted claiming fusion, because what he knew was excess heat. And his measurements of excess heat were never successfully impeached, and they have been, in fact, confirmed by more than 150 peer-reviewed reports to date.

5. Nuclear fusion at room temperature, of the type discussed in this report, would be contrary to all understanding gained of nuclear reactions in the last half century; it would require the invention of an entirely new nuclear process.

What happens when "understanding" collides with experimental results? And "invention"? How about hypothesizing that that there is some undiscovered nuclear process, not anticipated except, in fact, by Fleischmann and Pons, who themselves expected it was a long shot, likely to occur, if it occurs at all, below what they could detect. They decided to look anyway.

Now, this was a quite negative set of conclusions. We will below compare this with the 2004 report. It was very different.

Then there were the Recommendations:

1. ... against special funding ... special programs or research centers....

2. sympathetic toward modest support for carefully focused and cooperative experiments within the present funding system.

This was, unfortunately, pretty much a lie. Huizenga did everything he could to torpedo any efforts to gain funding for whatever proposal came up. No example is known of a proposal that was supported. Why waste money researching what we already know can't happen?

3. recommend efforts focus on confirming or disproving reports of excess heat.

This was done by the research community. There is no longer any controversy among those familiar with the research. There is controversy from some segments of the scientific community that remains unwilling to look at the research, and we can see this in the 2004 report; but the underlying balance has radically shifted.

4. A shortcoming of most experiments reporting excess heat is that the yare not accompanied in the same cell by simultaneous monitoring for the production of fusion products. If the excess heat is to be attributed to fusion, such a claim should be supported by measurements of fusion products at commensurate levels.

This was amply done by the mid 1990s. It was not easy. The ERAB panel expected that neutron radiation or tritium would be major products; that's what would be expected from deuterium fusion. The reality is that the only product, apparently, for the basic reaction, is helium, which is much more difficult to detect than neutrons or gamma rays or tritium. There has been high-quality work that has done exactly what was recommended: detect a fusion product, helium, at quite the levels expected from deuterium fusion. Which does not prove that the reaction is simple deuterium fusion, for there are other possible nuclear reactions which might produce helium at those levels. Identification of the actual reaction remains very controversial among LENR researchers. For an example of a possibility: Takahashi has done theoretical work predicting, based on quantum field theory and some very hairy math, that if what he calls a Tetrahedral Symmetric Condensate forms, which might be explained as two deuterium molecules becoming transiently present in a single cell of the palladium lattice, which would obviously occur at very low levels, if at all, this condensate would collapse and fuse, 100%, within a femotsecond. The product would be an excited Be-8 nucleus, which would emit energy with photons, transferring heat to the lattice, before it decays into two alpha particles, i.e., two helium nuclei. The net energy released would be the same as for deuterium-deuterium fusion, but the reaction is not d-d fusion, and so all the objections based on the characteristics of d-d fusion are off point. But nobody has proven that this is the reaction. It would not be easy, the levels are very low, and the presence of double confinement would be very rare and highly transient, to my knowledge. But to explain the excess heat, relatively few occurrences are needed. Basically, good thing it's rare, or there would be some big holes in the ground where there were once labs.

5. Investigations designed to check the reported observations of tritium in electrolytic cells are desirable.

Also based on expactations of tritium from deuterium fusion. Tritium has indeed been found, but at levels way too low to explain the excess heat.

6. Experiments reporting fusion products (e.g.) neutrons at a very low level, if confirmed, are of scientific interest bu have no apparent current application to the production of useful energy....

Notice again the emphasis on production of useful energy. This was the charge of both panels. Science was secondary, so to use the conclusions of these panels as if they were conclusive on the science is misleading. Where the reports resemble each other most is in the recommendations, which were very similar, explaining what the 2004 report said in comparing itself with 1989.

Now, the 2004 report. [8].

In 1989, the "conclusions were very negative as to the existence of evidence for cold fusion. By 2004, researchers had realized that the possibility was quite reasonable that the reaction was not "cold fusion" but some other nuclear reaction, so the field had become known as Condensed Matter Nuclear Science, or the 2004 DoE review was titled "Report of the Review of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions." Just before the section titled "Conclusion," reporting that their conclusions were similar to 1989, and in which they likewise recommend "basic research areas" to be pursued, there is another section which provides what was reported in 1989 as "conclusions." The "Conclusions" section of the 2004 report corresponds to the "Recommendations" section in 1989.

The previous section should be read. It is the core of the report as to the science, the "Conclusions" section relates to recommendations regarding supporting research regarding useful production of energy.

In 1989, there was hardly a reviewer to support the claims of adequate anomaly to seriously suspect "cold fusion." In 2004, the report tells us:

The excess power observed in some experiments is reported to be beyond that attributable to ordinary

chemical or solid state sources; this excess power is attributed by proponents to nuclear fusion reactions. Evaluations by the reviewers ranged from: 1) evidence for excess power is compelling, to 2) there is no convincing evidence that excess power is produced when integrated over the life of an experiment. The reviewers were split approximately evenly on this topic.

This is a far cry from 1989, when the excess heat reports were subject to severe skepticism from almost all reviewers. And then:

Two-thirds of the reviewers commenting on Charge Element 1 did not feel the evidence was conclusive

for low energy nuclear reactions, one found the evidence convincing, and the remainder indicated they were somewhat convinced.

We have no reports like this from 1989, which presents conclusions as if the panel were monolithic. Further, it's quite obvious that the short review (this was not a panel taking the necessary time to go back and forth, clarifying misapprehensions, etc., rather, it was the reading of a review paper, possibly review of a list of sources, and a one-day panel. Still, that one-third of the panel considered the evidence "somewhat convincing" is a sea change from 1989, especially when we realize that if there is no excess heat, there is no reason at all to ascribe it to low energy nuclear reactions! Is there excess heat?

Well, serious evidence was presented by the review paper, but it does seem it was misunderstood. In particular, this sentence from the review summary:

The hypothesis that excess energy production in electrolytic cells is due to low energy nuclear reactions was tested in some experiments by looking for D + D fusion reaction products, in particular 4He, normally produced in about 1 in 107 in hot D + D fusion reactions. Results reported in the review document purported to show that 4He was detected in five out of sixteen cases where electrolytic cells were reported to be producing excess heat. The detected 4He was typically very close to, but reportedly

above background levels. This evidence was taken as convincing or somewhat convincing by some reviewers; for others the lack of consistency was an indication that the overall hypothesis was not justified. Contamination of apparatus or samples by air containing 4He was cited as one possible cause for false positive results in some measurements.

This was a drastic misreading of the review paper. It took me some time to figure out what had happened. the "five out of sixteen cases where electrolytic cells were reported to be producing excess heat" does not exist in the review document. One reviewer misread the appendix, and then the DoE summarizer misread that review, further extending the error, and apparently did not check it with the review document. No wonder the evidence was not considered conclusive by some: 5/16 sounds like anticorrelation to me, not correlation. Others, "somewhat convinced," may have actually read the paper carefully, or may have read the other sources.

A detailed discussion of this can be found at Talk:Cold fusion on en.wiki. Basically, some of the reviewers, at least, did not understand the helium results, at all. There is a good summary of them in Storms (2007); the basic work was done by Miles in the early 1990s, but has been replicated by others. I need to finish this essay, so I'm writing from memory. Miles found, with 33 cells, 12 cells with no excess heat and no helium detected, and 21 cells with excess heat. Helium was detected, in amounts "commensurate with d-d fusion" in 18 of the 21 cells where excess heat was found. Storms reports that of the three cells without helium, two were a very different electrode composition, and the remaining cell Storms considers may have involved calorimetry error.

In the report presented to the 2004 review, there was what has been described as a single very careful effort to recover all the helium, coupled with accurate calorimetry, that that experiment found 24.8 +/- 2.5 MeV/He. The theoretical value for d-d fusion would be 23.8 MeV. Many other labs have reported less accurate work that is, as described in the field, "consistent with" 23.8 MeV, it is typically a higher figure, because not all the helium is recovered.

Skepticism over LENR has vanished from the recent peer-reviewed literature, while serious work is being published that now, more or less, assumes the reality of the reactions.

The 2004 DoE report, to me, marks a rough watershed, when LENR claims became respectable, emerging science, still controversial, but with substantial support among experts, as the panel conclusions clearly show.

There is a lot of misunderstanding over the 2004 report. The lack of recommendation of major funding did not represent a rejection of the science, but of reason to believe that practical energy production from cold fusion was imminent. I agree with this. I'm currently setting up CF cells to be sold as kits to replicate recent work by the U.S. Naval laboratories in San Diego, SPAWAR, and if I'm able to duplicate the conditions (which has been done by others, so I'm not being particularly adventurous), I should see evidence of neutrons at low levels. This has practically nothing to do with "cheap energy." It's about science, only.

Much of the criticism of cold fusion has been on the level of "if it's real, how come there is no cold fusion hot water heater?" Well, there is no muon-catalyzed fusion hot water heater either, but that doesn't mean that it's rejected! There are people in the field who think that practical applications are just around the corner, but hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent, apparently, in the search, without much result. (There are results, recent peer-reviewed secondary source indicates multiple groups reporting 100% replication rate, i.e., all cells produce excess heat. There are techniques that do not involve the energy input of deuterium electrolysis, which is a red herring, because that is simply energy needed to generate the deuterium to load the palladium; gas-loading techniques don't involve this energy input complication, and the heat of formation of palladium deuteride is known, and likewise the possible chemical sources of energy in the mix. The excess heat found drastically exceeds that. But, still, turning this into a water heater might remain impractical. For one thing, palladium is seriously expensive. If it's going to work, the "catalyst" might have to be nickel, and insufficient work has been done. Fleischmann estimated a Manhattan-scale project would be necessary to engineer practical heat production, and my worry is that it still might fail.

But the science? Science is worth pursuing, and we never know what applications might fall out of it.

And it should be pointed out, as well, that billions of dollars have been poured into hot fusion research, without one kilowatt-hour of excess power being produced. How come I don't have a hot water heater powered by electricity from hot fusion? Does that mean hot fusion doesn't exist, or does it mean that the engineering is extraordinarily difficult? Fleischmann's experiment looked simple, so it got people excited, then mad, when they found that it was far from easy to duplicate his results. It was not simple. Experts who succeeded later said that this was the most difficult experiment they ever tried.

I'm working with a technique that was later developed that, I hope, is actually easy. It better be. I'm counting on it. I will not find excess heat, almost certainly, because I've scaled it down, not up. The experiment will be optimized for producing neutron tracks in a solid state nuclear track detector, tracks resulting from a flux of neutrons on the order of one per minute. Because the detector will be immediately adjacent to the cathode, even this low rate will produce, over about two weeks, track densities way above background, like hundreds or thousands of times background. If it works. I'm counting on the reviewers at Naturwissenschaften and other peer-reviewed journals, plus the amateur and professional replicators who worked on the Galileo project in 2007, following a protocol prepared by Pamela Mosier-Boss of the SPAWAR group. The major difference is that I'm using a gold cathode substrate, because later SPAWAR publications showed far higher neutron emission with gold than with the silver that was the Galileo default.