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Fusion Breakthrough Gains Backing, but Report Raises Puzzling Questions

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Times Science Writer

There is growing evidence that two scientists who claimed last month to have achieved a major breakthrough in nuclear fusion are at least partly correct, but recently acquired copies of their research report raise puzzling questions about one of their major findings.

At least a dozen major laboratories around the world are now trying to repeat the experiments announced by electrochemists B. Stanley Pons and Milton Fleischmann, and there have been scattered reports of some success. However, no one so far has reported producingmore energy than is required to run the experiment, and that part of the two scientists’ claim is still met with great skepticism.

What does seem to be the case, however, is that the simple, table-top apparatus created by the two scientists does produce relatively small quantities of neutrons, which would indicate that some nuclear reaction is taking place. But as the two men insisted in their report, which has just become available to scientists trying to duplicate their efforts, the energy released by the apparatus may be “due to a hitherto unknown nuclear process or processes.”

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“We’re going to see a lot of groups seeing neutrons” when they repeat the experiment, said Steven Dean, president of Fusion Power Associates, an educational organization sponsored by industries with an interest in nuclear fusion. “The effect is real.”

Only a week ago, many experts were saying they doubted that the device created by the two scientists could possibly produce neutrons, which are released when the nuclei of heavy hydrogen atoms, called deuterium, fuse. That process also releases energy.

Pons of the University of Utah and Fleischmann of the University of Southhampton in England said they have experimented with the process for more than five years and have perfected it to the point that they got out four times as much energy as they put in. No one else has been able to reach the point of just breaking even, despite the fact that billions of dollars have been spent on major research projects.

The announcement is tantalizing because fusion power could lead to an inexhaustible source of energy, using seawater as fuel.

The energy detected by Pons and Fleischmann is in the form of heat, and their research paper states that at one point they got so much heat that the apparatus vaporized, destroying the experiment. That would have required temperatures in excess of 2,829 degrees Fahrenheit.

“It is inconceivable that this could be due to anything but nuclear processes,” the scientists said in their report, a copy of which was obtained by The Times.

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It is that claim that now stands as the greatest barrier between the chemists and leading experts in nuclear fusion.

To have produced that kind of heat through fusion, the apparatus should have emitted hundreds of billions of high-energy neutrons per second, a level of radioactivity that would have made it deadly. But it produced only about 40,000 neutrons per second, which would seem to contradict the laws of fusion physics as now understood.

Every time two deuterium atoms fuse, one neutron should be released. And to produce even one watt of energy, there would have to be 100 billion fusions every second, producing 100 billion neutrons.

How could Pons and Fleischmann have produced so much heat through fusion and created so few neutrons? No one, including the two scientists, has an answer for that.

“We realize that the results reported here raise more questions than they provide answers, and that much further work is required on this topic,” they said in their research paper, which is to be published soon in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry.

The experiment has generated profound interest in the fusion community, even among skeptics, and it has led to many efforts by others to get the same results from other experiments--the ultimate manifestation of the scientific process.

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One major laboratory was already working on the project by the time Pons and Fleischmann made their startling announcement on March 23.

The Harwell Laboratory in England is that country’s premier research center for peaceful uses of atomic energy. A spokesman for the laboratory told The Times on Tuesday that efforts to duplicate the experiment began about three weeks before the scientists’ announcement.

“Fleischmann is a long-standing colleague and consultant to the lab,” the spokesman said. Fleischmann is highly respected in the field of electrochemistry, so when he went to the lab some weeks ago with details of the experiment, scientists there leaped on it.

For the last month, Harwell has been running “11 or 12” versions of the experiment simultaneously, said lab spokesman Nick Haned. Six scientists are assigned to the project.

“We’re repeating the experiment over and over,” he said. No results will be announced until after the project is completed, probably in two to three months, he said.

Fleischmann, Haned said, “has given us all of the information about how he conducted the experiment.” That gives the Harwell lab a considerable jump on other major laboratories trying to repeat the experiment. Other scientists are just now getting the details.

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Haned refused to describe the results that scientists at Harwell are getting, but he indicated that there is enough happening to keep them interested.

“We’ve not yet seen anything which would cause us to abort the mission,” he said with a chuckle.

Although the Harwell lab has refused to reveal its progress on the experiment, Fleischmann has told colleagues at the University of Southhampton that five laboratories have had some luck in reproducing it. The Associated Press quoted Robert W. Nesbitt, dean of the faculty of science at Southhampton, as saying that Fleischmann had told him that five laboratories “had produced positive results” while six others had been unsuccessful.

Two Hungarian scientists also claimed to have successfully carried out the experiment, although they released no details. The Harwell Laboratory has been assisted in its efforts by Fleischmann, who has visited the lab regularly over the last month. The Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in Northern California was also furnished some details, but there have been no reports yet of whether scientists there have met with any success.

By far the most convincing corroboration of the Utah experiment comes from physicist Steven Jones at Brigham Young University, who said he has achieved “cold fusion” with a system similar to that used by Pons and Fleischmann. But Jones makes no assertion of producing the considerable amounts of energy claimed by his colleagues in Salt Lake City.

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