Cold Fusion Claim in Error, 2 Experts Say : ‘Conventional Chemistry,’ Caltech Researcher Finds in Evaluating Utah Tests

Caltech and MIT scientists Monday leveled serious new charges at two researchers’ recent claims of room-temperature fusion in a flask, with the Caltech chemist concluding that “there is no evidence for anything other than conventional chemistry” in the cold fusion experiments.

Caltech’s Nathan Lewis told physicists here for a meeting of the American Physical Society that he had re-evaluated the available data of chemists B. Stanley Pons of the University of Utah and Martin Fleischmann of the University of Southampton in England and conducted his own experiments as well. His results indicate that the nuclear fusion first reported more than a month ago is the result of calculation errors made by Pons and Fleischmann and is not a real phenomenon, Lewis said.

Lewis charged that Pons and Fleischmann specifically did not obtain more energy from their fusion cell than they put in--a key component of their claims. Instead, he said, they made an assumption about how much heat they should be getting out and, when they obtained more, reported that as excess heat. In reality, he said, they were recovering only about 20% of the energy they were putting into the cell.

Lewis’ presentation was loudly applauded by a crowd of about 3,000 physicists who seemed to agree that reports of cold fusion are illusory. His speech had such an impact that half of the audience left the auditorium afterward without waiting for other presentations.

Also on Monday, MIT physicist Ronald R. Parker claimed that the Utah researchers’ measurements of radiation emitted from their fusion cell were in error.

The errors in radiation measurement, Parker said, are “a warning not to accept all their (Pons and Fleischmann’s) claims at face value and to to expect that there’s an overnight path to nirvana as far as energy is concerned.”

The Caltech and MIT scientists are among about 15 research groups who were expected to report at the society meeting Monday night that they had been unable to reproduce Pons’ and Fleischmann’s results. Several other groups have reported in the past two weeks that they have confirmed at least some of the cold fusion results, but none of them is scheduled to make presentations at this meeting.

Pons and Fleischmann were invited to attend the meeting, but declined.

The Utah and Southampton researchers created fusion fever a month ago when they reported that they had obtained more energy from a simple fusion cell than they had put in and that the excess energy was produced by fusion. Their cell involved simple palladium and platinum electrodes immersed in deuterium oxide--so-called heavy water--in which each hydrogen atom is replaced by a deuterium atom, which has an extra neutron.

The researchers said that the deuterium ions were forced into close contact in the palladium electrode by an electric field, and that contact caused them to fuse into helium atoms, releasing large amounts of energy in the process. Physicists scoffed at the report, however, because they could not conceive of any fusion reaction that did not release large amounts of radiation in the form of neutrons or gamma rays.

Pons and Fleischmann reported that they observed only about a billionth as many neutrons as would be expected to result if their excess heat had been caused by fusion.

Lewis and his colleagues reported about two weeks ago that they could find no evidence of fusion, and they reiterated that Monday. Mimicking the Utah apparatus as closely as they could with the limited information available, and using a variety of other experimental setups, Lewis said, “we found no evidence of neutron detection . . . and no gamma rays.”

They also found no excess heat production. Lewis noted that Fleischmann’s calculation of the heat output was based upon a hypothetical number, as Pons conceded in congressional testimony last week.

The Caltech researchers also cast doubt on some evidence the Utah researchers had cited in support of their conclusions. They had, for example, said that they had found both helium and tritium in their cell and claimed that as proof that fusion had occurred.

But Lewis noted that helium is present in the atmosphere of most chemical laboratories (because it is used in much scientific apparatus) in the same concentrations Pons and Fleischmann observed. In fact, he said, “the concentrations they observed were much higher than should have been there if it were produced by fusion.” He also found that chemical reactions in the cell could make it appear that tritium is present when it is not.

Concluded Lewis: “We have no reason to invoke fusion to explain any of their work.”

MIT’s Parker did not make many details of his report public before the Monday night session. In essence, however, he found that Pons’ and Fleischmann’s report that they had observed neutrons in their experiment contained inconsistencies that suggested errors in measurement.

“We’re asserting that their neutron emission was below what they thought it was, including the possibility that it could have been none at all,” Parker said.