Cold fusion may have revolutionary potential by Jed Rothwell

Jed Rothwell

Essay Abstract

Cold fusion is a form of nuclear energy produced in metals saturated with hydrogen or heavy hydrogen (deuterium). It has been replicated in hundreds of major laboratories, and these replications have been published in mainstream, peer-reviewed journals. This literature shows that cold fusion can generate heat at temperatures and power density equivalent to a fission reactor core. It has sometimes produced high power, 20 to 100 watts, in reactions that produced roughly 100,000 times more energy than any chemical fuel.

Author Bio

BA Cornell U. 1976 in Japanese language and literature Programmer and technical writer. Librarian at lenr-canr.org, an on-line library of 1,200 full text documents and a bibliography 3,500 items. Rothwell edited many cold fusion papers, especially for several ICCF conference proceedings. He translated several papers and one book from Japanese into English.

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Joe Fisher

Dear Mr. Rothwell,

I was very impressed reading your exceptional well written essay, and I do hope that it does well in the competition. May I just point out a problem that you did not mention?

The only way your wonderful Nuclear Fission Reactors can be built is by using present day technological methodology. According to the Rachel Maddow television show broadcast in my area at 9:PM on March 12, 2014, the State of North Dakota is having to deal with trying to dispose of a daily production of about 25 tons of natural radio-active material embedded in the mesh sleeves discarded by the fracking and oil well companies. All technology is destructive of natural resources. An overwhelming amount of radio-active material would come into existence long before one of your fission power stations could be brought on line.

Joe

Jed Rothwell

You wrote: "All technology is destructive of natural resources."

But some technologies are more destructive than others. For example, natural gas causes less harm than coal, and wind turbines cause less harm than natural gas.

"An overwhelming amount of radio-active material would come into existence long before one of your fission power stations could be brought on line."

This is fusion, not fission. It does not create much radioactive material. As I said in the first paragraph, "cold fusion produces only trace amounts of radioactive material, mainly tritium, which can easily be contained." Tritium is used in wristwatches, so it is not dangerous.

Theory cannot yet explain why cold fusion creates such small amounts of radioactive material, but this has been confirmed in many experiments.

Joe Fisher

I fully understand that Fission differs from Fusion. But it is impossible to mine any material without uncovering natural occurring toxic material. Once your technology has started to destroy, it is impossible to develop a technology that can reverse the amount of destruction that has already been caused.

Joe

Kevin O'Malley

Where is this essay? Was it removed for some reason?

Joe Fisher

Good question Kevin. This was a fine essay when I read it yesterday. I posted a comment about it and I gave it a rating.

Ben Stuttard

How can I access this essay? All the others seem accessible by PDF download. Many thanks.

Jed Rothwell

The people at FQXI say it was a temporary glitch, now fixed. That's computers for you.

Hasmukh Tank

Dear Jed Rothwell,

While I do appreciate your enthusiasm, 'cold fusion' is yet to be theoretically established; and its safe and controlled use for energy-production, is yet to be found. Therefore, it may be too early to arrive at firm conclusion.

Hasmukh K. Tank

Kevin O'Malley

Hasmukh K. Tank wrote:

***Cold Fusion is on the same ground as high temperature superconductivity, where the experimental results are established but the theory is not yet caught up. To say that it " may be too early to arrive at firm conclusion" is to go against the entire aim of this essay contest, wherein we look at how humanity should be steered.

Should humanity be steered into a direction where theory trumps experimental results? That strikes me as exceedingly unhealthy.

Kevin O

Ryoji Furui

Dear Jed Rothwell,

I am surprised to see you in fqxi because I have visited your LENR-CANR site sometimes in several years. you may trace my visiting log by the searched words "graphene" "carbon nano tube" at your front page. I would like you to evaluate my nuclear fusion idea by its possibilities and pros and cons newly categorized as "semi cold fusion".

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1995

also as i am japanese if i have any documents which need to have multiple translation, i would like to ask you?

wish you good luck!

ryoji

Jed Rothwell

Hi! I am pleased to hear you are reader.

I am afraid your paper about graphenes is too technical for me to understand.

We do have some Japanese documents. As it happens, I just finished translating one of my papers into Japanese:

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

We have a few others including the books by Mizuno and by me, and a paper by Takahashi:

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

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

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

I am translating another paper by Michael McKubre, and another one of my own. They should be uploaded in the next few weeks. If you would check them I would appreciate it.

Ryoji Furui

Thanks for many links, I would check them in detail more later.

ryoji

Anselm Smidt

Beschränkt breiten physikalischen Forschung.

Peter Jackson

Jed,

Thanks for a great heads up on cold fusion which I haven't come across in the journals. I've recently come to the conclusion that much of the mainstream PRJ system can work directly against advancement of scientific understanding, and the popular feeds follow their lead. All as seems to be the case here. I follow tokamak science and plasma fusion but had no idea of most of the info in your essay. Thank you. But it seems some good lab research is needed to get some idea of the mechanisms.

I suffer a little from the same. I hope you get to read my essay, deriving a comprehensible classical mechanism for so called 'quantum correlations'. Unfortunately the old paradigm has been in place for so long that nobody will countenance any breaking of ranks to even allow proper assessment. So much for the scientific method! Any idea for a solution? Good essay scores help, (boost coming) but even finishing with 2nd place score nothing last year! But we can only persist. Keep up the excellent work. I'll keep more of a lookout. I'd love to have a hint of the subatomic processes involved. I do have some very speculative inklings from recursive gauge dynamics I'd like to check out.

Thanks, and Best wishes

Peter

Kevin O'Malley

Hello Jed:

I thought I would stop by one last time and lend my support for your excellent essay.

As a fellow contestant and also someone who shares your passion for LENR, I hope that it gets noticed that this technology is gaining traction. I enjoy reading your posts on Vortex-L, and appreciate interacting with you there. I also am very impressed with the library you've put together at LENR-CANR.org. I hope some day you will write a book about your experiences in LENR.

best regards

Kevin O'Malley

Joe Fisher

Dear Mr. Rothwell,

All surfaces travel at the same constant speed. All sub-surfaces travel at an inconsistent speed that is less than the constant surface speed. All force, be it a natural force such as a volcanic eruption, or an unnatural force such as an atomic detonation merely causes interchangeability between a material surface and its underlying sub-surface. As best as I can tell, cold-fusion does not cause any meaningful alteration between surfaces, therefore, it is difficult for me to see how it could possibly work.

Ruefully,

Joe Fisher

Don Limuti

Hi Jed,

Your essay I believe goes after some relatively low hanging fruit. Let's go for it.

Good work.

Thanks,

Don Limuti

James Blodgett

You may know that another FQXi contest essay also touts cold fusion: "The LENR Techshop Y Prize Incentive Proposal" by Kevin O'Malley. He suggests awarding prizes for demonstrations. I have been thinking along similar lines about prizes in general.

Margriet O'Regan

Hello Jed

Bravo ~ I'm rating your essay very highly. I've been following 'free energy' // 'above unity' via the net for quite some time now. Little did I know that it not only comes in the form of the type of cold fusion you document but in numerous experimental sites around the world. And despite the lack of 'mainstream' support. Hurrah !!

As much as we require precisely the kind of energy break through cold fusion could supply there still remains the possibility that our numbers will simply soar 'unchecked' if everyone can have a cold fusion generator in their back yard .....

My own essay (second in the 'date of submission' listing) suggests a remedy for unchecked population increase.

Along with Stefan Weckback's essay concerning the creation of money out of thin air & Michel Muteri's suggesting using green biomass to not only clean the Planet but feed it too, in my estimate your essay belongs in a very special class of mine namely 'the doable' one & this despite (again) coming from outside the mainstream.

Thank you

Margriet Anne O'Regan