U.S. Scientists to Be Shown Fusion Tests

Two researchers who say they have mastered fusion, the process that powers the sun and the stars, told Congress today that they will duplicate their experiments for government scientists in hopes of quieting skeptics.

“We have 19 experiments being set up now,” University of Utah chemist Stanley Pons told the House Science Committee, including a demonstration of room-temperature fusion for scientists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Pons said the federal scientists will monitor the experiment in Utah, then dismantle it and take it to the national laboratory in New Mexico for further tests.

Silence Skepticism

Pons and his collaborator, Martin Fleischmann of the University of Southampton in England, are making the arrangement to silence some of the skepticism about their claim to have discovered a way to achieve fusion using ordinary lab equipment assembled on a table top.

The two announced their discovery March 23, stunning nuclear physicists around the world who have attempted to achieve fusion for 25 years using multimillion-dollar machines.

The hearing was jammed with journalists, scientists and industrial representatives eager to learn more about a reaction that some predict could produce plentiful electric power with little environmental pollution or threat.

Gave Off Heat

Pons told the committee how he and Fleischmann had inserted electrodes of platinum and palladium in a flask containing deuterium oxide, or heavy water. Electrical current was applied to the platinum electrode, Pons said, forcing deuterium atoms into the crystal lattice of the palladium.

He said that after the experiment ran for several hours, the deuterium became compressed and fused.