Quote from Eric Walker

Not sure I fully understand your complaint, but there are several such claims, e.g., as made in this 1987 patent by William Barker:

This choice of an example kind of makes the point. It’s not LENR. There are no nuclear reactions claimed. The blue sky claims of waste remediation I referred to involve transmutation to more stable isotopes, which could be demonstrated by putting a radioactive sample in a LENR device, and taking out a less radioactive sample.

As for the patent, well sometimes patents are granted for claims that have not been realized, and considering that this idea has not been widely implemented and has not resulted in fame and glory for the inventor, it’s a safe bet this is one of those patents. I don’t know if one should take seriously an inventor who thinks 2 of the 3 most important isotopes in nuclear waste are U-238 and U-235. U-238 is not particularly radioactive, but in any case, neither isotope is actually made in the reactor. U-238 was there (in nature) to begin with, and U-235 is *depleted*. Not that that diminishes the importance of affecting alpha-decay with small electric fields — if it were possible — but it says something about the inventor’s competence in the field, in addition to the point made by HGB.

“I vaguely recall claims to change activity among LENR researchers, e.g. George Miley. The question for me is whether there is any reproducible "lab rat" experiment to be found among or derived from such experiments.”

Your recollections are vague, because the claims are vague. Reducing the activity of a radioactive sample would not be a vague claim. But yes, I’m referring to claims that other qualified scientists can verify.

“This would surely be interesting, but possibly inconsistent with whatever mechanism might be at play assuming a subset of LENR results are real.”

Ah yes, nature contrives to make any unambiguous indication of LENR inconsistent with whatever mechanism might be at play. That’s why levels of tritium or neutrons or gamma rays commensurate with excess heat are never seen. Nature also seemed to foil every attempt to determine the rest frame of the ether, until Einstein came along and declared it superfluous.

Quote from Shane D.

If it is real as GEC claims, it will revolutionize space travel, and shortly thereafter upend science here on terra firma...embarrassing the hell out of Louis in the process.

After years of expecting Rossi to embarrass the hell out of skeptics, and then ending up totally red-faced yourself, you are understandably hoping for some pay-back.

But it won’t come this way. If GEC could make power reactors based on LENR, they would not start with space travel, even though that is an obvious application. Imagine someone inventing a potion that can cure all disease, and then making an agreement with NASA to use it to prevent motion sickness among astronauts, before, oh, I don’t know, eradicating cancer and heart disease on earth. Not really a plausible script, is it?

The growth whisker structure inside a larger snowflake pattern needs specific condition and time, High temp morar mixes.

Quote from Shane D.

GEC did try to save the planet first, starting with Guam, before having to switch gears and conquer space propulsion.

I think that decision had something to do with their technology being a little too close to nuclear energy for comfort.

It’s not “close to nuclear energy”, it *is* nuclear energy. That is the appeal of it.

In spite of the down-sides of current nuclear fission technology, and the public’s fear of it, there are hundreds of reactors in operation, and some still being built. In this context, the introduction of a successful sub-critical fission technology that could use U-238 and Th-232, with their 500 times greater abundance (not to mention the ability to burn actinide waste, and remediate fission products) would be met with an enthusiastic welcome, at least within the industry. So, the only plausible explanation for not deploying it on earth is that they can’t. The Guam deal was probably fiction. Otherwise the NASA agreement would not involve validation as a first step.

(Of course, if the SPAWAR team could scale neutron production up by some kind of fusion reaction, that would already be highly exothermic, and the first step would be to exploit that heat, rather than use the neutrons to induce fission, so their plan looks totally implausible from an even earlier stage.)

Quote from Shane D.

Yes, that is something all LENR supporters, from bloggers like me, to those in the labs, will have to learn to deal with. We blew it. Going forward, the Rossi disgrace will be used by the mainstream scientists you represent, to reject any new successes coming from the field.

Nah, the mainstream would eat up good evidence for cold fusion, regardless of Rossi. In 1989, for a brief period, they couldn’t get enough of what they only *thought* was good evidence for cold fusion. It was rejected when they discovered it was not good after all.

Rossi however serves the useful purpose to show that most of the cold fusion community is not qualified to tell the difference between good evidence and bad evidence.

Those NYT articles were published *after* the brief period of adulation for Pons and Fleischmann.

One of the mainstream scientists most critical of cold fusion was Morrison, and here's him not being able to get enough of it in the weeks after the P&F news conference.

"… I feel this subject will become so important to society that we must consider the broader implications as well as the scientific ones. Looking into a cloudy crystal ball, […] the present big power companies will be running down their oil and coal power stations while they are building deuterium separation plants and new power plants based on cold fusion. No new nuclear power stations will be built except for military needs…."

But don't take my word (or Morrison's) for it. Storms has a detailed account in his 2007 book on how the mainstream went totally nuts for cold fusion -- for a while.

Quote from Shane D.

LR,

You and your colleagues gave FP's 3 months -at best, before kicking off the "Cold Fusion is dead" parties, and passing out the T-shirts saying the same thing....yes newbies, that really happened.

So is 3 months the norm for vetting a new science?

No, most similarly far out claims are dismissed in much less time. This one was given more credibility because of the stature of the claimants.

But, the time to rejection has nothing to do with the question of whether the mainstream was open to the possibility. This is a matter of record: They were not just open, but positively giddy about cold fusion. Pons got a standing ovation from thousands of mainstream scientists. Labs all over the world put aside their research to look at cold fusion. Everyone “wanted to get in on the action. If real, such an important discovery hardly ever happens during a scientist’s career” as Storms puts it.

So what do you think happened between the initial enthusiasm and the later rejection? Do you think they suddenly remembered that their role was to reject new ideas to protect the status quo? Because that certainly didn’t occur to them a year or two earlier when high temperature superconductivity was discovered. That was also a far out claim, but the mainstream awarded that discovery with a Nobel prize.

No, what happened first and foremost, was that scientists had an opportunity to examine the evidence claimed by P&F, and to see how clumsy the experiments were, how equivocal the evidence was, and in some cases how blatantly wrong the interpretations were. That was enough for some (those who knew the most nuclear physics) to be confidently skeptical. Others took more time. The DOE panel studied it in depth for 6 months. Morrison continued to follow it closely for a decade.

And yes, the failure of many to replicate also contributed to the rejection, and maybe those early failures can be dismissed because the loading was not high enough, but at the same time, some claimed replications came within weeks.

Anyway, since the first month shows the mainstream is instinctively and enthusiastically open to cold fusion, it’s not 3 months that matters but the 30 years that have lapsed without any improvement in the evidence.

Pasadena don't agree. Caveat old memories.

1709.02380.pdf

Shane D.

Quote

GEC did try to save the planet first, starting with Guam, before having to switch gears and conquer space propulsion.
I think that decision had something to do with their technology being a little too close to nuclear energy for comfort. And an impeachment did not help matters either.

Now they are doing the smart thing by partnering up with NASA. Prove the tech is safe in space applications first -all the while under the US governments protective umbrella, and then go on to save humanity second

More likely, after all the time which has passed, it is because their technology does not work. As Louis Reed pointed out, it makes no sense at all to demonstrate a whole new idea by starting with a space application. The reasonable way to progress is to demonstrate with clear lab experiments, that the concept is valid. In fact, demonstrating an entirely new technology with a complex application is typical of what scammers do. Energy scammers in particular.

As Louis Reed wrote:

Quote

If GEC could make power reactors based on LENR, they would not start with space travel, even though that is an obvious application. Imagine someone inventing a potion that can cure all disease, and then making an agreement with NASA to use it to prevent motion sickness among astronauts, before, oh, I don’t know, eradicating cancer and heart disease on earth. Not really a plausible script, is it?

seven_of_twenty likes this.

Yup! It certainly is not, outside of a community of believers on faith.

Quote from Louis Reed

This is a matter of record: They were not just open, but positively giddy about cold fusion. Pons got a standing ovation from thousands of mainstream scientists.

This is not the record. You do not know the history of cold fusion. There are many original source documents published by both supporters and opponents of cold fusion at LENR-CANR.org. These documents show that you are wrong.

Pons never addressed "thousands" of scientists. He was applauded by a group of electrochemists, but attacked by physicists. See the books listed below.

Some people were enthusiastic about cold fusion but many others were not. In 1989 there were attacks against it in the mass media such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Nature and Scientific American which you can read at LENR-CANR.org. The attacks far outnumbered positive articles. See also these comments:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MalloveEclassicnas.pdf

See the comments by Schwinger:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/SchwingerJcoldfusiona.pdf

"The pressure for conformity is enormous. I have experienced it in editors’ rejection of
submitted papers, based on venomous criticism of anonymous referees. The replacement of
impartial reviewing by censorship will be the death of science."

And Hagelstein:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Hagelsteinontheoryan.pdf

See the books by Mallove and Beaudette:

https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Ic…/dp/B06XF7SF16/ref=sr_1_1

https://www.amazon.com/Excess-…/dp/B06VTH3TTF/ref=sr_1_3

Quote from JedRothwell

This is not the record.

Yes it is. I am talking about the first month after the press conference. There were some physicists who were highly skeptical from the start, but they kept their peace initially. The initial reaction in the press and in mainstream science was almost entirely positive. And that includes reactions from physicists like Morrison who would later (not very much later) become a vocal skeptic. All your citations post-date this period.

Read Storms chapter 2. It *records* the enthusiasm that swept mainstream science in the weeks after the press conference. He was at LANL, about as mainstream as you can get.

“Pons never addressed "thousands" of scientists. He was applauded by a group of electrochemists, but attacked by physicists.”

According to Nature (https://www.nature.com/news/20…full/news070326-12.html): “When Pons spoke at an ACS meeting in 1989 he was greeted by a standing ovation from a packed hall of thousands of chemists.” It was an ACS meeting, and they were not all electrochemists, and in fact there were many physicists in the audience as well. I know one of them, and he said people were hanging from the rafters in a large auditorium.

P&F were eventually attacked by physicists, but not in that first month. The attacks and all your citations happened after the Lewis/Koonin papers at the APS meeting 5 weeks after the press conference.

The enthusiastic reception that Pons and Fleischmann received in the first weeks after their press conference shows that the mainstream was open to the possibility of cold fusion. It fell apart because the evidence did not stand up to scrutiny.

Quote from Shane D.

I think you are missing the many years they did spend in the lab developing their technology. Mosier-Boss of SPAWAR and Forsley of JWK, started work on this well before their 2007 patent filing. This has been a long time brewing.

Right, but when SPAWAR shut them down, all they had was disputed claims of an extremely low neutron flux. What they are proposing requires a much higher neutron flux, and this has *not* been established in the lab.

“And to suggest they are scammers is preposterous.”

Making a fusion-fission reactor with the neutron fluxes they have claimed is preposterous too, but that doesn’t seem to bother you.

“Now they are working with NASA…”

It’s always a mistake to base confidence on associations. Didn’t IH and Rossi teach you that?