VIEWPOINTS : WILL COLD FUSION STAY HOT? : It’s a Big Leap From Lab to the Payoff

Suppose it’s all true. Suppose, in a startling redefinition of nuclear physics, the folks in Utah have created fusion in a flask. Take a palladium electrode, platinum, add heavy water and stir. . . . What’s next?

Would it be, as one physicist proclaimed, “the greatest invention since fire”? More likely, it’s just the first tiny scientific step toward a technology that could take decades to unfold. Remember, nuclear power (the fission variety) was once trumpeted as an energy source that would prove “too cheap to meter”; photovoltaic cells were going to harness the limitless energy of the sun, and whatever happened to synfuels? Scientific revolutions don’t always lead to marketplace revolutions, even if the tantalizing promise of cold fusion has everyone reexamining their assumptions about the future of energy.

“This is much more readily commercialized than superconductivity,” says John Doerr, a partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield & Byers, the venture capital firm that helped start up such technology companies as Genentech, Compaq, Sun Microsystems and Lotus Development. “If there is a net (heat-generating) process, it will take five years to get something to market.”

But no matter how enchanting the breakthrough might be, that’s optimistic. The reality is that the leap from basic science to applied technology is as unpredictable as the weather and twice as foggy. A Rothschild once commented that he had discovered three ways to lose money: Women were the most pleasant; gambling was the quickest way, but innovation was the surest way. If cold fusion really can generate more energy than what’s put in, the overarching question then becomes: Can cold fusion generate more cold cash than what’s put in?

“There may be 50 cold fusion systems developed, but only three may be economically viable,” says Richard Foster, a McKinsey & Co. director who heads the consulting firm’s worldwide practice on technology management. “It’s not clear how well this will pass financial muster. If the costs are only competitive with existing facilities, it would get its fair share of growth. Figuring the current growth in demand and the rate facilities are being retired, it might take 20 to 30 years before the technology has a big impact.

Even if cold fusion proves very economical, Foster says, it probably will take close to 10 years to work out all the engineering problems and put it onto the market. “You really can’t design a system well without an understanding of the basic science,” he says.

And then there’s the matter of raw materials. The Utah fusioneers rely on a brew of palladium and platinum. Dan Yergin of the Cambridge Energy Research Associates points out that these metals come primarily from South Africa and the Soviet Union. Perhaps the OPEC of tomorrow will stand for the Organization of Platinum/Palladium Exporting Countries. These countries can hardly be considered friendly and reliable suppliers.

What’s more, adds Cambridge Energy Research Associates’ Chip Bupp, even if you figure that a mere 10th of an ounce of platinum could generate a full 20 watts of energy (a tremendous conversion rate by any measure), it still would take billions of dollars of investment in the metal before the new technology would significantly affect America’s energy consumption.

Even in cost-effectiveness, fusion-in-a-flask poses dozens of feasibility questions. “What is the optimum scale for this technology?” asks McKinsey’s Foster. “Can we do this in a glass jar for homeowners or do we build megaplants for cities?”

Indeed, does this fascinating new scientific phenomenon “scale up”? In other words, does more material mean more energy? If so, how much can it stand? Where is the point of diminishing returns? You don’t power a city by putting a forest to the torch. Conversely, hydroelectric dams don’t scale down to automobile engines.

Size, structure, scale and power density are all crucial in the evolution of a new energy source--as the nuclear power industry and the soft energy solar and wind advocates have discovered the hard way. The future pervasiveness of cold fusion power depends in large part on how it has to be packaged.

“We don’t know if this can be ‘plugged in’ or if it can be mobile,” says a senior staffer on the Senate Energy Committee. “We don’t know if this technology will operate more like a battery or like a power plant.” That potential won’t be understood for some time. For example, if cold fusion can pack the right kind of power in the right-sized package at the right price, it could be used to power the next generation of high-performance automobiles.

When could Detroit start building this new-era auto, blending high mileage per palladium and low-level emissions? “Maybe it won’t be Detroit but somebody else,” the staffer shoots back. New technology frequently makes old expertise obsolete. In fact, some industries would be instantaneously transformed by cold fusion.

But new technology always brings new and unexpected problems along with the opportunities. Indeed, the new technology would probably require special shielding and as yet not appreciated safeguards. “There’s no reason, in principle, to suppose that fusion--hot or cold--would be inherently safer than other fuels,” says Cambridge Energy’s Bupp. “There’s almost certain to be unanticipated side effects.”

One top Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist with a Washington background argues that “there will be a huge regulatory question--there must be and there should be”--because if this technology truly works, “the changes won’t be incremental--there’ll be such a revolution that it will be impossible to predict what might come of it.” He speculates that the process could spawn fundamental changes in energy supply ranging from cheap hydrogen as a source of fuel to major plants that would power cities.

So in the oily wake of the Valdez and the global warming caused by fossil fuels, just like a Promethean Lone Ranger from a test tube, “technology comes to the rescue just as a whole slew of nasty environmental and ecological problems come to the fore,” says Cambridge Energy’s Yergin. The timing is almost too good to be true--and it probably is.

MIT Prof. Lawrence M. Lidsky, a nuclear engineer openly skeptical of the Utah findings, agrees with the notion that these tentative results might be more analogous to the discovery of DNA’s double helix back in 1953 than to the repertoire of genetic engineering techniques now driving the biotechnology revolution.

Discovering DNA was a monumental (albeit less controversial) breakthrough, but it has taken more than 20 years to assemble the knowledge, tools and expertise to transform molecular biology from a scientific inquiry to an engineering discipline. If the Utah assertions are verified, cold fusion “could be a genuine breakthrough or just a clue that might lead to a genuine breakthrough,” Lidsky says.

Whichever it may be, discovering nature’s innermost secrets is fundamentally different from subjugating them at a price we can all afford. Hope is a great thing--but scientists, entrepreneurs and policy makers are kidding themselves if they believe for a second that even the greatest breakthrough in post-War physics will lead to a source of energy that’s “too cheap to meter.”