The current status of cold fusion (CANR) in a nutshell
by Edmund Storms
March 26, 2001
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A variety of nuclear reactions, including fusion, have been demonstrated to occur spontaneously in special chemical environments at very low levels. Some of these reactions produce detectable heat. Occasionally, these reactions can be made to occur at potentially useful rates, but the reasons are not yet known. Until the necessary environment is identified and can be produced in large quantity, the field continues to have only scientific interest to a few people. However, once the novel environment has been identified, normal engineering methods can be applied to make the material in quantity for use in a suitable power plant.
This scientific interest has discovered thirteen different ways to initiate the reactions and has demonstrated different aspects of the effect hundreds of times in many laboratories world-wide. These demonstrations include production of anomalous energy, helium, tritium, and a variety of elements not previously present in the experimental container. Clearly, the phenomenon is not limited to fusion. Because the novel chemical environment is largely produced by chance, many efforts to replicate the effect fail. Such failure frustrates an understanding and emboldens skeptics.
Explanations for the effect are being provided by dozens of theoreticians, with growing success. The major problem has been that present understanding rests on observing such nuclear reactions after applying high energy - a brute force method. Naturally, this approach and resulting theory do not apply to the conditions being explored in this work. Subtle forces and process are overwhelmed by this large energy and made invisible. Indeed, many people noticed that when the applied energy is reduced, more fusion is observed than "theory" would predict. This behavior has been frequently ignored because the intent of conventional work is to make fusion happen at the highest possible rate. The CANR effect has shown that if the environment is optimized, the required energy can be minimized. Consequently, the phenomenon is just a natural extrapolation of conventional studies, but with the environment no longer being ignored.
The phenomenon demonstrates that within the correct chemical environment, a wide variety of nuclear reactions can be initiated without producing harmful radiation and with few radioactive products. This phenomenon provides a potential way to generate clean, inexhaustible energy as wellas to reduce radioactive waste obtained from fission reactors to nonradioactive elements.
Although the effect is now being studied and the results patented in at least six countries, work in the U. S. is minimal , can not be patented, and can rarely be published in conventional scientific journals. An official bias against the phenomenon exists in the U. S. government that inhibits both public and private financing.