An unusual public experiment took place at Osaka University. In the presence of 60 guests, including journalists from six Japanese newspapers and two leading TV channels, a group of Japanese physicists led by Professor Yoshiaki Arata demonstrated a cold fusion reaction.

The experiment was not simple and bore little resemblance to the sensational work of physicists Martin Fleishman and Stanley Pons in 1989, as a result of which, using almost ordinary electrolysis, they managed, according to their statement, to combine the atoms of hydrogen and deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen with an atomic number of 2) into one tritium atom. Whether they told the truth then or were mistaken, now it is impossible to find out, but numerous attempts to obtain a cold fusion in the same way in other laboratories were unsuccessful, and the experiment was disavowed.

Thus began the somewhat dramatic, and somewhat tragicomic life of a cold fusion. From the very beginning, one of the most serious accusations in science - the uniqueness of the experiment - hung over her like a sword of Damocles. This direction was called marginal science, even "pathological", but, in spite of everything, it did not die. All this time, at the risk of their own scientific career, not only "marginals" - the inventors of perpetual motion machines and other enthusiastic ignoramuses, but also quite serious scientists tried to get cold fusion. But - uniqueness! Something went wrong there, the sensors recorded the effect, but you can’t present it to anyone, because there is no effect in the next experiment. And even if there is, then in another laboratory it, exactly repeated, is not reproduced.

Cold fusionists themselves explained the skepticism of the scientific community (a derivative of cold fusion - cold fusion), in particular, by misunderstanding. One of them told an NG correspondent: “Each scientist is well versed only in his narrow field. He monitors all publications on the topic, knows the price of each colleague in the field, and if he wants to determine his attitude to what is outside this direction, he goes to a recognized expert and, without really delving into it, takes his opinion as the truth in the latter instances. After all, he has no time to understand the details, he has his own work. And today's recognized experts have a negative attitude towards cold fusion."

Like it or not, but the fact remained - the cold fusion showed amazing capriciousness and stubbornly continued to torment its researchers with the uniqueness of experiments. Many got tired and left, a few came in their place - no money, no fame, and in return - the prospect of becoming an outcast, receiving the stigma of a "marginal scientist."

Then, a few years later, it seems that they understood what was the matter - the instability of the properties of the palladium sample used in the experiments. Some samples gave an effect, others categorically refused, and those that were given could change their mind at any moment.

It seems that now, after the May public experiment at Osaka University, the period of non-repeatability is ending. The Japanese claim that they managed to cope with this scourge.

“They created special structures, nanoparticles,” Andrei Lipson, a leading researcher at the Institute of Chemistry and Electrochemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, explained to an NG correspondent, “specially prepared clusters consisting of several hundred palladium atoms. The main feature of these nanoclusters is that they have voids inside, into which deuterium atoms can be pumped to a very high concentration. And when this concentration exceeds a certain limit, the deuterons approach each other so much that they can merge, and a thermonuclear reaction begins. There is a completely different physics than, say, in TOKAMAKS. The thermonuclear reaction goes there at once through several channels, the main one is the fusion of two deuterons into a lithium-4 atom with the release of heat.”

When Yoshiaka Arata began to add deuterium gas to the mixture containing said nanoparticles, its temperature rose to 70 degrees Celsius. After the gas was turned off, the temperature in the cell remained elevated for more than 50 hours, and the energy released exceeded the energy expended. According to Arata, this can only be explained by nuclear fusion.

Of course, with the first phase of the life of a cold fusion - uniqueness - Arata's experiment is far from finished. In order for its results to be recognized by the scientific community, it is necessary that it be repeated with the same success in several laboratories at once. And since the topic is very specific, with a hint of marginality, it seems that this will not be enough. It is possible that even after this, cold fusion (if it does exist) will have to wait a long time for full recognition, as, for example, happens with the story around the so-called bubble fusion obtained by Ruzi Taleiarkhan from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

NG-Science has already talked about this scandal. Taleiarkhan claimed to have obtained a fusion by passing sound waves through a vessel with heavy acetone. At the same time, bubbles formed and exploded in the liquid, releasing enough energy to carry out thermonuclear fusion. At first, the experiment could not be independently repeated, Taleiarkhan was accused of falsification. He retaliated by attacking his opponents, accusing them of having bad instruments. But in the end, last February, an experiment conducted independently at Purdue University confirmed Taleiarkhan's results and restored the physicist's reputation. Since then, there has been complete silence. No confessions, no accusations.

The effect of Talleyarkhan can be called a cold thermonuclear effect only with a very big stretch. “In fact, this is a hot fusion,” Andrey Lipson emphasizes. “Energies of thousands of electron volts work there, and in experiments with cold fusion, these energies are estimated in fractions of an electron volt.” But, I think, this energy difference will not really affect the attitude of the scientific community, and even if the Japanese experiment is successfully repeated in other laboratories, cold fusionists will have to wait a very long time for full recognition.

However, many of those who are engaged in cold fusion in spite of everything are full of optimism. Back in 2003, Mitchell Schwartz, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, stated at a conference: “We have been doing these experiments for so long that the question is no longer whether we can get additional heat with a cold fusion, but whether can we get it in kilowatts?

Indeed, kilowatts are not yet available, and cold fusion is not yet a competition to powerful thermonuclear projects, in particular, the multibillion-dollar project of the international reactor ITER, even in the future. According to American estimates, their researchers will need from 50 to 100 million dollars and 20 years to test the viability of the effect and the possibility of its commercial use.

In Russia, one cannot even dream of such sums for such research. And it seems that there is almost no one to dream of.

“Nobody does that here,” Lipson says. - These experiments require special equipment, special funding. But we do not receive official grants for such experiments, and if we do them, it is optional, in parallel with the main work for which we receive a salary. So in Russia there is only a “repetition of backsides”.

The condition for a conventional thermonuclear reaction is very high temperature and pressure. In the last century, the desire was expressed to carry out a cold thermonuclear reaction at room temperature and normal atmospheric pressure. But still, despite numerous studies in this industry, in reality, it has not yet been possible to carry out such a reaction. Moreover, many scientists and experts recognized the idea itself as erroneous. The technique for implementing the so-called cold thermonuclear fusion reaction was developed by American scientists. This is stated in the German authoritative journal Naturwissenschaften, where an article was published that describes a method for implementing a low-energy nuclear reaction. The research was led by Pamela Moser-Boss and Alexander Shpak of the Center for Space and Marine Military Systems in San Diego State. In the course of research, a thin wire coated with a thin layer of palladium was exposed to magnetic and electric fields. Plastic film detectors were used to detect charged particles resulting from such an experiment. In the near future, the results of research by American specialists should be verified by independent experts.

There is a good article on this topic in the journal "Chemistry and Life" (No. 8, 2015)

Andreev S. N.
FORBIDDEN TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE ELEMENTS

Science has its forbidden topics, its taboos. Today, few scientists dare to study biofields, ultra-low doses, the structure of water ... The areas are complex, muddy, difficult to yield. It's easy to lose your reputation here, being known as a pseudoscientist, let alone getting a grant. In science, it is impossible and dangerous to go beyond the framework of generally accepted ideas, to encroach on dogmas. But it is precisely the efforts of daredevils, who are ready to be different from everyone else, that sometimes pave new roads in knowledge.
We have repeatedly observed how, as science develops, dogmas begin to stagger and gradually acquire the status of incomplete, preliminary knowledge. So, and more than once, it was in biology. So it was in physics. We see the same thing in chemistry. Before our eyes, the truth from the textbook “the composition and properties of a substance do not depend on the methods of its preparation” collapsed under the onslaught of nanotechnology. It turned out that a substance in a nanoform can radically change its properties - for example, gold will cease to be a noble metal.
Today we can state that there are a fair number of experiments, the results of which cannot be explained from the standpoint of generally accepted views. And the task of science is not to dismiss them, but to dig and try to get to the truth. The position “this cannot be, because it can never be” is convenient, of course, but it cannot explain anything. Moreover, incomprehensible, inexplicable experiments can become harbingers of discoveries in science, as has already happened. One of such hot topics, literally and figuratively, is the so-called low-energy nuclear reactions, which today are called LENR - Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction.
We asked Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Stepan Nikolaevich Andreev from the Institute of General Physics. A. M. Prokhorov RAS to acquaint us with the essence of the problem and with some scientific experiments performed in Russian and Western laboratories and published in scientific journals. Experiments, the results of which we cannot yet explain.

REACTOR "E-CAT" ANDREA ROSSI

In mid-October 2014, the world scientific community was excited by the news - a report was published by Giuseppe Levi, professor of physics at the University of Bologna, and co-authors on the results of testing the E-Cat reactor, created by the Italian inventor Andrea Rossi.
Recall that in 2011 A. Rossi presented to the public the installation on which he had been working for many years in collaboration with the physicist Sergio Focardi. The reactor, called "E-Cat" (short for the English Energy Catalizer), produced an anomalous amount of energy. Over the past four years, E-Cat has been tested by different groups of researchers as the scientific community insisted on independent review.
The reactor was a ceramic tube 20 cm long and 2 cm in diameter. A fuel charge, heating elements, and a thermocouple were located inside the reactor, the signal from which was fed to the heating control unit. Power was supplied to the reactor from an electrical network with a voltage of 380 volts through three heat-resistant wires, which were heated red-hot during the operation of the reactor. The fuel consisted mainly of nickel powder (90%) and lithium aluminum hydride LiAlH4 (10%). When heated, lithium aluminum hydride decomposed and released hydrogen, which could be absorbed by nickel and enter into an exothermic reaction with it.
The inventor does not disclose how the reactor works. However, it is known that a fuel charge, heating elements and a thermocouple are placed inside the ceramic tube. The surface of the tube is ribbed for better heat dissipation

The report reported that the total amount of heat generated by the device during 32 days of continuous operation was about 6 GJ. Elementary estimates show that the energy intensity of the powder is more than a thousand times higher than the energy intensity of, for example, gasoline!
As a result of careful analyzes of the elemental and isotopic composition, the experts reliably established that changes in the ratios of lithium and nickel isotopes appeared in the spent fuel. If the content of lithium isotopes in the original fuel coincided with the natural one: 6Li - 7.5%, 7Li - 92.5%, then in the spent fuel the content of 6Li increased to 92%, and the content of 7Li decreased to 8%. Equally strong were the distortions of the isotopic composition for nickel. For example, the content of the nickel isotope 62Ni in the "ash" was 99%, although it was only 4% in the original fuel. The detected changes in the isotopic composition and anomalously high heat release indicated that nuclear processes may have taken place in the reactor. However, no signs of increased radioactivity, characteristic of nuclear reactions, were recorded either during the operation of the device or after it was stopped.
The processes occurring in the reactor could not be nuclear fission reactions, since the fuel consisted of stable substances. Nuclear fusion reactions are also excluded, because from the point of view of modern nuclear physics, a temperature of 1400 ° C is negligible to overcome the forces of the Coulomb repulsion of nuclei. That is why the use of the sensational term "cold fusion" for such processes is a mistake that is misleading.
Probably, here we are faced with manifestations of a new type of reactions in which collective low-energy transformations of the nuclei of the elements that make up the fuel take place. An estimate of the energies of such reactions gives a value of the order of 1-10 keV per nucleon, that is, they occupy an intermediate position between "ordinary" high-energy nuclear reactions (energies of more than 1 MeV per nucleon) and chemical reactions (energies of the order of 1 eV per atom).
So far, no one can satisfactorily explain the described phenomenon, and the hypotheses put forward by many authors do not stand up to criticism. To establish the physical mechanisms of the new phenomenon, it is necessary to carefully study the possible manifestations of such low-energy nuclear reactions in various experimental settings and generalize the data obtained. Moreover, a significant amount of such unexplained facts has accumulated over the years. Here are just a few of them.

ELECTRIC EXPLOSION OF A TUNGSTEN WIRE - THE BEGINNING OF THE XX CENTURY

In 1922, employees of the chemical laboratory of the University of Chicago, Clarence Irion and Gerald Wendt, published a work devoted to the study of the electric explosion of a tungsten wire in a vacuum (G.L.Wendt, C.E.Irion, Experimental Attempts to Decompose Tungsten at High Temperatures. "Journal of the American Chemical Society", 1922, 44, 1887-1894).
There is nothing exotic about an electric explosion. This phenomenon was discovered no less than at the end of the 18th century, and in everyday life we ​​constantly observe it when light bulbs burn out during a short circuit (incandescent bulbs, of course). What happens in an electrical explosion? If the strength of the current flowing through the metal wire is large, then the metal begins to melt and evaporate. Plasma is formed near the surface of the wire. Heating occurs unevenly: “hot spots” appear in random places of the wire, in which more heat is released, the temperature reaches peak values, and explosive destruction of the material occurs.
The most striking thing about this story is that scientists initially expected to experimentally detect the decomposition of tungsten into lighter chemical elements. In their intention, Airion and Wendt relied on the following facts already known at that time.
First, there are no characteristic optical lines belonging to heavy chemical elements in the visible radiation spectrum of the Sun and other stars. Secondly, the temperature of the Sun's surface is about 6000°C. Therefore, they reasoned, atoms of heavy elements cannot exist at such temperatures. Thirdly, when a capacitor battery is discharged onto a metal wire, the temperature of the plasma formed during an electric explosion can reach 20,000°C.
Based on this, American scientists suggested that if a strong electric current is passed through a thin wire made of a heavy chemical element, for example, tungsten, and heated to temperatures comparable to the temperature of the Sun, then the tungsten nuclei will be in an unstable state and decompose into lighter elements. . They carefully prepared and brilliantly conducted the experiment, using very simple means.
An electric explosion of a tungsten wire was carried out in a glass spherical flask (Fig. 2) by closing a capacitor with a capacity of 0.1 microfarads charged to a voltage of 35 kilovolts. The wire was located between two fixing tungsten electrodes soldered into the flask from two opposite sides. In addition, the flask had an additional "spectral" electrode, which served to ignite the plasma discharge in the gas formed after the electric explosion.
Some important technical details of the experiment should be noted. During its preparation, the flask was placed in an oven, where it was continuously heated at 300°C for 15 hours, and all this time the gas was pumped out of it. Together with the heating of the flask, an electric current was passed through the tungsten wire, which heated it to a temperature of 2000 ° C. After degassing, the glass tube connecting the flask to the mercury pump was melted with a burner and sealed. The authors of the work argued that the measures taken made it possible to maintain an extremely low pressure of residual gases in the flask for 12 hours. Therefore, when a high-voltage voltage of 50 kilovolts was applied, there was no breakdown between the "spectral" and the fixing electrodes.
Airion and Wendt performed twenty-one electrical explosion experiments. As a result of each experiment, about 10^19 particles of an unknown gas were formed in the flask. Spectral analysis showed that it contained a characteristic line of helium-4. The authors suggested that helium is formed as a result of the alpha decay of tungsten induced by an electric explosion. Recall that the alpha particles that appear in the process of alpha decay are the nuclei of the 4He atom.
The publication of Irion and Wendt caused a great resonance in the scientific community of that time. Rutherford himself drew attention to this work. He expressed deep doubt that the voltage used in the experiment (35 kV) was high enough for electrons to induce nuclear reactions in the metal. Wanting to check the results of American scientists, Rutherford performed his experiment - irradiated a tungsten target with an electron beam with an energy of 100 kiloelectronvolts. Rutherford did not find any traces of nuclear reactions in tungsten, about which he made a short report in a rather sharp form in the journal Nature. The scientific community took the side of Rutherford, the work of Irion and Wendt was recognized as erroneous and forgotten for many years.

ELECTRIC EXPLOSION OF TUNGSTEN WIRE: 90 YEARS LATER
Only 90 years later, a Russian scientific team under the leadership of Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Leonid Irbekovich Urutskoev undertook to repeat the experiments of Airion and Wendt. Experiments equipped with modern experimental and diagnostic equipment were carried out at the legendary Sukhumi Institute of Physics and Technology in Abkhazia. The physicists called their installation "HELIOS" in honor of the guiding idea of ​​Airion and Wendt (Fig. 3). The quartz explosion chamber is located in the upper part of the installation and is connected to a vacuum system - a turbomolecular pump (colored blue). Four black cables run to the explosion chamber from a 0.1 microfarad capacitor bank discharger, which is located to the left of the installation. For an electric explosion, the battery was charged up to 35-40 kilovolts. The diagnostic equipment used in the experiments (not shown in the figure) made it possible to study the spectral composition of the plasma glow, which was formed during the electrical explosion of the wire, as well as the chemical and elemental composition of its decay products.

Rice. 3. This is how the HELIOS installation looks like, in which the group of L. I. Urutskoev investigated the explosion of a tungsten wire in a vacuum (2012 experiment)
The experiments of Urutskoev's group confirmed the main conclusion of the ninety-year-old work. Indeed, as a result of the electric explosion of tungsten, an excess amount of helium-4 atoms (about 10^16 particles) was formed. If the tungsten wire was replaced by an iron one, then no helium was formed. Note that in the experiments on the HELIOS facility, the researchers recorded a thousand times fewer helium atoms than in the experiments of Airion and Wendt, although the "energy input" into the wire was approximately the same. What accounts for this difference remains to be seen.
During the electric explosion, the wire material was sprayed onto the inner surface of the explosion chamber. Mass spectrometric analysis showed that these solid residues were deficient in the tungsten-180 isotope, although its concentration in the original wire corresponded to the natural one. This fact may also indicate the possible alpha decay of tungsten or another nuclear process during the electrical explosion of the wire (L. I. Urutskoev, A. A. Rukhadze, D. V. Filippov, A. O. Biryukov, etc. Study of the spectral composition of optical radiation during the electric explosion of a tungsten wire, “Brief Communications on Physics of the Lebedev Physical Institute”, 2012, 7, 13-18).

Acceleration of alpha decay with a laser
Some processes that accelerate spontaneous nuclear transformations of radioactive elements can also be attributed to low-energy nuclear reactions. Interesting results in this area were obtained at the Institute of General Physics. A. M. Prokhorov RAS in the laboratory headed by Georgy Ayratovich Shafeev, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. Scientists discovered an amazing effect: the alpha decay of uranium-238 was accelerated under the action of laser radiation with a relatively low peak intensity of 10^12-10^13 W / cm2 (A.V. Simakin, G.A. Shafeev, Effect of laser irradiation of nanoparticles in water uranium salt solutions on the activity of nuclides, Quantum Electronics, 2011, 41, 7, 614-618).
Here's what the experiment looked like. A gold target was placed into a cuvette with an aqueous solution of uranium salt UO2Cl2 with a concentration of 5–35 mg/ml, which was irradiated with laser pulses with a wavelength of 532 nanometers, a duration of 150 picoseconds, and a repetition rate of 1 kilohertz for one hour. Under such conditions, the target surface partially melts, and the liquid in contact with it instantly boils. Vapor pressure sprays nanosized gold droplets from the target surface into the surrounding liquid, where they cool and turn into solid nanoparticles with a characteristic size of 10 nanometers. This process is called laser ablation in a liquid and is widely used when it is required to prepare colloidal solutions of nanoparticles of various metals.
In Shafeev's experiments, during one hour of irradiation of a gold target, 10^15 gold nanoparticles per 1 cm3 of solution were formed. The optical properties of such nanoparticles are radically different from the properties of a massive gold plate: they do not reflect light, but absorb it, and the electromagnetic field of a light wave near the nanoparticles can be amplified by 100-10,000 times and reach intra-atomic values!
The nuclei of uranium and its decay products (thorium, protactinium), which appeared near these nanoparticles, were exposed to multiply enhanced laser electromagnetic fields. As a result, their radioactivity changed noticeably. In particular, the gamma activity of thorium-234 doubled. (The gamma activity of the samples before and after laser irradiation was measured with a semiconductor gamma spectrometer.) Since thorium-234 results from the alpha decay of uranium-238, an increase in its gamma activity indicates an acceleration of the alpha decay of this uranium isotope. Note that the gamma activity of uranium-235 did not increase.
Scientists from the GPI RAS found that laser radiation can accelerate not only alpha decay, but also beta decay of the radioactive isotope 137Cs, one of the main components of radioactive emissions and waste. In their experiments, they used a green copper vapor laser operating in a repetitively pulsed mode with a pulse duration of 15 nanoseconds, a pulse repetition rate of 15 kilohertz, and a peak intensity of 109 W/cm2. Laser radiation acted on a gold target placed in a cuvette with an aqueous solution of 137Cs salt, the content of which in a 2 ml solution was approximately 20 picograms.
After two hours of target irradiation, the researchers recorded that a colloidal solution with gold nanoparticles 30 nm in size was formed in the cuvette (Fig. 4), and the gamma activity of cesium-137 (and, consequently, its concentration in the solution) decreased by 75%. The half-life of caesium-137 is about 30 years. This means that such a decrease in activity, which was obtained in a two-hour experiment, should occur under natural conditions in about 60 years. Dividing 60 years by two hours, we get that during the laser exposure, the decay rate increased by about 260,000 times. Such a gigantic increase in the rate of beta decay should have turned a cuvette with a solution of cesium into a powerful source of gamma radiation that accompanies the usual beta decay of cesium-137. However, in reality this does not happen. Radiation measurements showed that the gamma activity of the salt solution does not increase (E.V. Barmina, A. V. Simakin, G. A. Shafeev, Laser-induced caesium-137 decay. Quantum Electronics, 2014, 44, 8, 791-792).
This fact suggests that under laser exposure, the decay of cesium-137 does not proceed according to the most probable (94.6%) scenario under normal conditions with the emission of a 662-keV gamma-quantum, but according to another non-radiative one. This, presumably, is direct beta decay with the formation of a nucleus of the stable 137Ba isotope, which under normal conditions occurs only in 5.4% of cases.
Why such a redistribution of probabilities occurs in the cesium beta decay reaction is still unclear. However, there are other independent studies confirming that accelerated deactivation of caesium-137 is possible even in living systems.

Low-energy nuclear reactions in living systems

Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Alla Alexandrovna Kornilova has been searching for low-energy nuclear reactions in biological objects for more than twenty years at the Faculty of Physics of the Lomonosov Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov. The objects of the first experiments were cultures of bacteria Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia coli, Deinococcus radiodurans. They were placed in a nutrient medium depleted in iron but containing manganese salt MnSO4 and heavy water D2O. Experiments showed that this system produced a deficient iron isotope - 57Fe (Vysotskii V. I., Kornilova A. A., Samoylenko I. I., Experimental discovery of the phenomenon of low-energy nuclear transmutation of isotopes (Mn55 to Fe57) in growing bio-logical cultures, “Proceedings of 6th International Conference on Cold Fusion", 1996, Japan, 2, 687-693).
According to the authors of the study, the 57Fe isotope appeared in growing bacterial cells as a result of the reaction 55Mn + d = 57Fe (d is the nucleus of the deuterium atom, consisting of a proton and a neutron). A certain argument in favor of the proposed hypothesis is the fact that if heavy water is replaced by light water or the manganese salt is excluded from the composition of the nutrient medium, then the bacteria do not produce the 57Fe isotope.
Convinced that nuclear transformations of stable chemical elements are possible in microbiological cultures, A. A. Kornilova applied her method to the deactivation of long-lived radioactive isotopes (Vysotskii V. I., Kornilova A. A., Transmutation of stable isotopes and deactivation of radioactive waste in growing biological systems. “ Annals of Nuclear Energy", 2013, 62, 626-633). This time, Kornilova did not work with monocultures of bacteria, but with a super-association of microorganisms of various types in order to increase their survival in aggressive environments. Each group of this community is maximally adapted to joint life, collective mutual assistance and mutual protection. As a result, superassociation adapts well to a variety of environmental conditions, including increased radiation. The typical maximum dose tolerated by conventional microbiological cultures is 30 kilorads, while superassociations can withstand several orders of magnitude more, with little to no reduction in their metabolic activity.
Equal amounts of concentrated biomass of the above-mentioned microorganisms and 10 ml of a solution of cesium-137 salt in distilled water were placed in glass cuvettes. The initial gamma activity of the solution was 20,000 becquerels. Salts of vital trace elements Ca, K, and Na were additionally added to some cuvettes. Closed cuvettes were kept at 20°C and their gamma activity was measured every seven days using a high-precision detector.
For one hundred days of the experiment in a control cuvette that does not contain microorganisms, the activity of cesium-137 decreased by 0.6%. In a cuvette additionally containing potassium salt - by 1%. The activity decreased most rapidly in a cuvette additionally containing a calcium salt. Here gamma activity decreased by 24%, which is equivalent to a 12-fold reduction in the half-life of cesium!
The authors hypothesized that as a result of the vital activity of microorganisms, 137Cs is converted into 138Ba, a biochemical analog of potassium. If there is little potassium in the nutrient medium, then the transformation of cesium into barium occurs rapidly, if there is a lot, then the transformation process is blocked. As for the role of calcium, it is simple. Due to its presence in the nutrient medium, the population of microorganisms grows rapidly and, therefore, consumes more potassium or its biochemical analogue - barium, that is, it pushes the transformation of cesium into barium.
What about reproducibility?
The question of the reproducibility of the experiments described above requires some clarification. The E-Cat reactor, captivating with its simplicity, is being replicated by hundreds, if not thousands, of enthusiastic inventors around the world. There are even special Internet forums where "replicators" exchange experiences and demonstrate their achievements (http://www.lenr-forum.com/). Some success in this direction was achieved by the Russian inventor Alexander Georgievich Parkhomov. He managed to design a heat generator operating on a mixture of nickel powder and lithium aluminum hydride, which gives an excess amount of energy (A.G. Parkhomov, Test results of a new version of the analogue of the high-temperature heat generator Rossi. "Journal of emerging science", 2015, 8, 34- 39). However, in contrast to Rossi's experiments, no distortions in the isotopic composition of the spent fuel could be detected.
Experiments on the electric explosion of tungsten wires, as well as on laser acceleration of the decay of radioactive elements, are much more complex from a technical point of view and can only be reproduced in serious scientific laboratories. In this regard, the question of the reproducibility of the experiment is replaced by the question of its repeatability. For experiments on low-energy nuclear reactions, the situation is typical when, under identical experimental conditions, the effect is sometimes present, sometimes not. The fact is that it is not possible to control all the parameters of the process, including, apparently, the main one, which has not yet been identified. The search for the desired modes is almost blind and takes many months and even years. Experimenters more than once had to change the circuit diagram of the installation in the process of searching for a control parameter - that “knob” that needs to be “turned” in order to achieve satisfactory repeatability. At the moment, the repeatability in the experiments described above is approximately 30%, that is, a positive result is obtained in every third experiment. Much or little is for the reader to judge. One thing is clear: without creating an adequate theoretical model of the phenomena under study, it is unlikely that this parameter will be radically improved.

An attempt at interpretation

Despite the convincing experimental results confirming the possibility of nuclear transformations of stable chemical elements, as well as the acceleration of the decay of radioactive substances, the physical mechanisms of these processes are still unknown.
The main mystery of low-energy nuclear reactions is how positively charged nuclei, when approaching, overcome repulsive forces, the so-called Coulomb barrier. This usually requires temperatures in the millions of degrees Celsius. It is obvious that such temperatures are not reached in the considered experiments. Nevertheless, there is a non-zero probability that a particle that does not have sufficient kinetic energy to overcome the repulsive forces will nevertheless find itself near the nucleus and enter into a nuclear reaction with it.
This effect, called the tunnel effect, is of a purely quantum nature and is closely related to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. According to this principle, a quantum particle (for example, the nucleus of an atom) cannot have precisely given coordinates and momentum at the same time. The product of uncertainties (irremovable random deviations from the exact value) of the coordinate and momentum is limited from below by a value proportional to Planck's constant h. The same product determines the probability of tunneling through the potential barrier: the larger the product of the uncertainties of the particle's position and momentum, the higher this probability.
In the works of Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor Vladimir Ivanovich Manko and co-authors, it was shown that in certain states of a quantum particle (the so-called coherent correlated states), the product of uncertainties can exceed Planck's constant by several orders of magnitude. Consequently, for quantum particles in such states, the probability of overcoming the Coulomb barrier will increase (V.V. Dodonov, V.I. Manko, Invariants and evolution of non-stationary quantum systems. “Proceedings of FIAN. Moscow: Nauka, 1987, v. 183, p. 286)".
If several nuclei of different chemical elements find themselves in a coherent correlated state at the same time, then in this case a certain collective process may occur, leading to the redistribution of protons and neutrons between them. The probability of such a process will be the greater, the smaller the difference between the energies of the initial and final states of the ensemble of nuclei. It is precisely this circumstance that apparently determines the intermediate position of low-energy nuclear reactions between chemical and "ordinary" nuclear reactions.
How are coherent correlated states formed? What causes nuclei to combine into ensembles and exchange nucleons? Which nuclei can and which cannot participate in this process? There are no answers to these and many other questions yet. Theorists are only taking the first steps towards solving this most interesting problem.
Therefore, at this stage, the main role in the study of low-energy nuclear reactions should belong to experimenters and inventors. Systematic experimental and theoretical studies of this amazing phenomenon, a comprehensive analysis of the data obtained, and a broad expert discussion are needed.
Understanding and mastering the mechanisms of low-energy nuclear reactions will help us in solving a variety of applied problems - the creation of cheap autonomous power plants, highly efficient technologies for the decontamination of nuclear waste and the transformation of chemical elements.

July 24th, 2016

On March 23, 1989, the University of Utah announced in a press release that "two scientists have launched a self-sustaining nuclear fusion reaction at room temperature." University President Chase Peterson said that this milestone achievement is comparable only to the mastery of fire, the discovery of electricity and the cultivation of plants. State legislators urgently allocated $5 million to establish the National Cold Fusion Institute, and the university asked the US Congress for another 25 million. Thus began one of the biggest scientific scandals of the 20th century. Print and television instantly spread the news around the world.

The scientists who made the sensational statement seemed to have a solid reputation and were quite trustworthy. Martin Fleishman, a Fellow of the Royal Society and ex-President of the International Society of Electrochemists, who immigrated to the United States from Great Britain, enjoyed international fame earned by his participation in the discovery of surface-enhanced Raman scattering of light. Stanley Pons, co-author of the discovery, headed the Department of Chemistry at the University of Utah.

So what is it all the same, myth or reality?

Source of cheap energy

Fleishman and Pons claimed that they caused deuterium nuclei to fuse with each other at ordinary temperatures and pressures. Their "cold fusion reactor" was a calorimeter with an aqueous solution of salt through which an electric current was passed. True, the water was not simple, but heavy, D2O, the cathode was made of palladium, and lithium and deuterium were part of the dissolved salt. A constant current was passed through the solution for months without stopping, so that oxygen was released at the anode, and heavy hydrogen at the cathode. Fleishman and Pons supposedly found that the temperature of the electrolyte periodically increased by tens of degrees, and sometimes more, although the power supply provided stable power. They explained this by the inflow of intranuclear energy released during the fusion of deuterium nuclei.

Palladium has a unique ability to absorb hydrogen. Fleischman and Pons believed that inside the crystal lattice of this metal, the deuterium atoms approach so strongly that their nuclei merge into the nuclei of the main helium isotope. This process goes with the release of energy, which, according to their hypothesis, heated the electrolyte. The explanation was captivating in its simplicity and completely convinced politicians, journalists, and even chemists.

Physicists bring clarity

However, nuclear physicists and plasma physicists were in no hurry to beat the timpani. They knew perfectly well that two deuterons could, in principle, give rise to a helium-4 nucleus and a high-energy gamma-ray quantum, but the chances of such an outcome are extremely small. Even if deuterons enter into a nuclear reaction, it almost certainly ends with the birth of a tritium nucleus and a proton, or the appearance of a neutron and a helium-3 nucleus, and the probabilities of these transformations are approximately the same. If nuclear fusion really takes place inside palladium, then it should generate a large number of neutrons of quite a certain energy (about 2.45 MeV). They are easy to detect either directly (with the help of neutron detectors) or indirectly (because the collision of such a neutron with a heavy hydrogen nucleus should produce a gamma-quantum with an energy of 2.22 MeV, which again can be detected). In general, the Fleischman and Pons hypothesis could be confirmed using standard radiometric equipment.

However, nothing came of it. Fleischman used connections at home and persuaded the staff of the British nuclear center in Harwell to check his "reactor" for neutron generation. Harwell had ultra-sensitive detectors for these particles, but they showed nothing! The search for gamma rays of the corresponding energy also turned out to be a failure. Physicists from the University of Utah came to the same conclusion. Employees of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tried to reproduce the experiments of Fleishman and Pons, but again to no avail. Therefore, it is not surprising that the claim for a great discovery was crushed at the conference of the American Physical Society (APS), which was held in Baltimore on May 1 of that year.

Sic transit gloria mundi

From this blow, Pons and Fleishman never recovered. A devastating article appeared in the New York Times, and by the end of May, the scientific community had concluded that the claims of the Utah chemists were either extreme incompetence or an elementary scam.

But there were also dissidents, even among the scientific elite. The eccentric Nobel laureate Julian Schwinger, one of the founders of quantum electrodynamics, became so convinced of the discovery of the chemists from Salt Lake City that he canceled his membership in the AFO in protest.

Nevertheless, the academic careers of Fleishman and Pons ended quickly and ingloriously. In 1992, they left the University of Utah and continued their work in France with Japanese money, until they lost this funding as well. Fleishman returned to England, where he lives in retirement. Pons renounced his American citizenship and settled in France.

Pyroelectric cold fusion

Cold nuclear fusion on desktop devices is not only possible, but also implemented, and in several versions. So, in 2005, researchers from the University of California at Los Angeles managed to start a similar reaction in a container with deuterium, inside which an electrostatic field was created. Its source was a tungsten needle connected to a pyroelectric lithium tantalate crystal, upon cooling and subsequent heating of which a potential difference of 100–120 kV was created. A field with a strength of about 25 GV/m completely ionized deuterium atoms and accelerated its nuclei so that when they collided with a target of erbium deuteride, they gave rise to helium-3 nuclei and neutrons. The peak neutron flux was about 900 neutrons per second (several hundred times higher than the typical background value). Although such a system has prospects as a neutron generator, it is impossible to speak of it as an energy source. Such devices consume much more energy than they generate: in the experiments of Californian scientists, approximately 10-8 J were released in one cooling-heating cycle lasting several minutes (11 orders of magnitude less than what is needed to heat a glass of water by 1°C).

The story doesn't end there.

At the beginning of 2011, interest in cold thermonuclear fusion, or, as domestic physicists call it, cold fusion, flared up again in the world of science. The reason for this excitement was the demonstration by Italian scientists Sergio Focardi and Andrea Rossi from the University of Bologna of an unusual installation in which, according to its developers, this synthesis is carried out quite easily.

In general terms, this device works like this. Nickel nanopowder and a conventional hydrogen isotope are placed in a metal tube with an electric heater. Next, a pressure of about 80 atmospheres is injected. When initially heated to a high temperature (hundreds of degrees), as scientists say, part of the H2 molecules is divided into atomic hydrogen, then it enters into a nuclear reaction with nickel.

As a result of this reaction, an isotope of copper is generated, as well as a large amount of thermal energy. Andrea Rossi explained that during the first tests of the device, they received from it about 10-12 kilowatts at the output, while at the input the system required an average of 600-700 watts (meaning the electricity supplied to the device when it is plugged into a socket) . Everything turned out that the production of energy in this case was many times higher than the costs, and in fact it was this effect that was once expected from a cold fusion.

Nevertheless, according to the developers, in this device, far from all hydrogen and nickel enter into the reaction, but a very small fraction of them. However, scientists are sure that what is happening inside is precisely a nuclear reaction. They consider the proof of this: the appearance of copper in a larger amount than could be an impurity in the original "fuel" (that is, nickel); the absence of a large (that is, measurable) consumption of hydrogen (since it could act as a fuel in a chemical reaction); emitted thermal radiation; and, of course, the energy balance itself.

So, did the Italian physicists really manage to achieve thermonuclear fusion at low temperatures (hundreds of degrees Celsius is nothing for such reactions, which usually take place at millions of degrees Kelvin!)? It's hard to say, since so far all peer-reviewed scientific journals have even rejected the articles of its authors. The skepticism of many scientists is quite understandable - for many years the words "cold fusion" have caused physicists to smile and associate with a perpetual motion machine. In addition, the authors of the device honestly admit that the subtle details of its work are still beyond their understanding.

What is this elusive cold fusion, which many scientists have been trying to prove for decades? In order to understand the essence of this reaction, as well as the prospects for such studies, let's first talk about what thermonuclear fusion is in general. This term is understood as a process in which heavier atomic nuclei are synthesized from lighter ones. In this case, a huge amount of energy is released, much more than in the nuclear reactions of the decay of radioactive elements.

Similar processes constantly occur in the Sun and other stars, because of which they can emit both light and heat. So, for example, every second our Sun radiates energy equivalent to four million tons of mass into outer space. This energy is born during the fusion of four hydrogen nuclei (in other words, protons) into a helium nucleus. At the same time, as a result of the conversion of one gram of protons, 20 million times more energy is released at the output than when a gram of coal is burned. Agree, this is very impressive.

But can't people create a reactor like the Sun in order to produce a large amount of energy for their needs? Theoretically, of course, they can, since a direct ban on such a device does not establish any of the laws of physics. However, this is quite difficult to do, and here's why: this synthesis requires a very high temperature and the same unrealistically high pressure. Therefore, the creation of a classic thermonuclear reactor turns out to be economically unprofitable - in order to start it, it will be necessary to spend much more energy than it can generate over the next few years of operation.

Returning to the Italian discoverers, we have to admit that the "scientists" themselves do not inspire much confidence, neither with their past achievements, nor with their current position. Few people knew the name of Sergio Focardi until now, but thanks to his academic title of professor, one can at least not doubt his involvement in science. But with respect to a colleague in the discovery, Andrea Rossi, this can no longer be said. At the moment, Andrea is an employee of a certain American corporation Leonardo Corp, and at one time distinguished himself only by being brought to court for tax evasion and silver smuggling from Switzerland. But the "bad" news for supporters of cold thermonuclear fusion did not end there either. It turned out that the scientific journal Journal of Nuclear Physics, in which the Italians published articles about their discovery, is actually more of a blog, and an inferior journal. And, in addition, none other than the already familiar Italians Sergio Focardi and Andrea Rossi turned out to be its owners. But the publication in serious scientific publications serves as confirmation of the "plausibility" of the discovery.

Not stopping there, and digging even deeper, the journalists also found out that the idea of ​​the presented project belongs to a completely different person - the Italian scientist Francesco Piantelli. It seems that it was on this, ingloriously, that another sensation ended, and the world once again lost its “perpetual motion machine”. But how, not without irony, the Italians console themselves, if this is just a fiction, then at least it is not devoid of wit, because it is one thing to play on acquaintances and quite another to try to circle the whole world around your finger.

Currently, all rights to this device belong to the American company Industrial Heat, where Rossi leads all research and development activities regarding the reactor.

There are low temperature (E-Cat) and high temperature (Hot Cat) versions of the reactor. The first for temperatures around 100-200 °C, the second for temperatures around 800-1400 °C. The company has now sold a 1 MW low-temperature reactor to an unnamed customer for commercial use and, in particular, Industrial Heat is testing and debugging this reactor in order to begin full-scale industrial production of such power units. According to Andrea Rossi, the reactor operates mainly by the reaction between nickel and hydrogen, during which the nickel isotopes are transmuted with the release of a large amount of heat. Those. some isotopes of nickel pass into other isotopes. Nevertheless, a number of independent tests were carried out, the most informative of which was a test of a high-temperature version of the reactor in the Swiss city of Lugano. This test has already been covered. .

Back in 2012, it was reported that the first cold fusion unit was sold to Rossi.

On December 27, an article was published on the E-Cat World website about independent reproduction of the Rossi reactor in Russia . The same article contains a link to the report"Research of an analogue of the high-temperature heat generator Rossi" physicist Parkhomov Alexander Georgievich . The report was prepared for the All-Russian Physics Seminar "Cold Nuclear Fusion and Ball Lightning", which was held on September 25, 2014 at the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia.

In the report, the author presented his version of the Rossi reactor, data on its internal structure and tests. The main conclusion: the reactor really releases more energy than it consumes. The ratio of released heat to consumed energy was 2.58. Moreover, for about 8 minutes the reactor operated without any input power at all, after the supply wire burned out, while producing about a kilowatt of thermal power at the output.

In 2015 A.G. Parkhomov managed to make a long-term operating reactor with pressure measurement. From 23:30 on March 16, the temperature is still holding. Photo of the reactor.

Finally, it was possible to make a long-running reactor. The temperature of 1200°C was reached at 11:30 p.m. on March 16 after 12 hours of gradual heating and has been holding up to this day. Heater power 300 W, COP=3.
For the first time, it was possible to successfully mount a pressure gauge in the installation. With slow heating, the maximum pressure of 5 bar was reached at 200°C, then the pressure decreased and at a temperature of about 1000°C it became negative. The strongest vacuum of about 0.5 bar was at a temperature of 1150°C.

With long continuous operation, it is not possible to add water around the clock. Therefore, we had to abandon the calorimetry used in previous experiments, based on measuring the mass of evaporated water. The determination of the thermal coefficient in this experiment is carried out by comparing the power consumed by the electric heater in the presence and absence of the fuel mixture. Without fuel, a temperature of 1200 ° C is reached at a power of about 1070 watts. In the presence of fuel (630 mg of nickel + 60 mg of lithium aluminum hydride), this temperature is reached at a power of about 330 watts. Thus, the reactor generates about 700 W of excess power (COP ~ 3.2). (Explanation by A.G. Parkhomov, a more accurate COP value requires a more detailed calculation)

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The greatest invention in the recent history of mankind is put into production - with the complete silence of the media disinformation.

The first cold fusion unit was sold

First Cold Fusion Unit SoldThe first transaction for the sale of a 1 MW E-Cat cold fusion reactor power generation plant was completed on October 28, 2011, following a successful demonstration of the system to the buyer. Now author and producer Andrea Rossi is accepting assembly orders from competent, serious-minded, paying buyers. If you're reading this article, chances are you're interested in the latest energy generation technologies. In that case, how do you like the prospect of having a one-megawatt cold fusion reactor that produces a huge amount of constant thermal energy using a tiny amount of nickel and hydrogen as fuel, and operates autonomously with almost no input electricity? We are talking about a system, description which teeters on the edge of science fiction. In addition, the actual creation of such can immediately devalue all currently existing methods of energy generation taken together. The idea of ​​such an extraordinary, efficient source of energy, which, moreover, should have a relatively low cost, sounds amazing, doesn't it?

Well, in light of recent developments in the development of alternative high-tech energy sources, there is one real mind-boggling news.

Andrea Rossi accepts orders for the production of E-Cat cold fusion reactor systems (from the English energy catalyzer - energy catalyst) with a capacity of one megawatt. And this is not an ephemeral creation of the fantasy of another “alchemist from science”, but a device that really exists, functions and is ready to be sold at a real moment in time. Moreover, the first two units have already found owners: one has even been delivered to the buyer, and the other is at the assembly stage. You can read about the trials and the sale of the first one here.

These truly paradigm-breaking energy systems can be configured to produce up to one megawatt of power each. The facility includes between 52 and 100 or more individual E-Cat "modules", each consisting of 3 small internal cold fusion reactors. All modules are assembled inside a standard steel container (5m x 2.6m x 2.6m) that can be installed anywhere. Delivery by land, sea or air is possible. It is important that, unlike the widely used nuclear fission reactors, the E-Cat cold fusion reactor does not consume radioactive substances, does not release radioactive emissions into the environment, does not generate nuclear waste and does not carry the potential dangers of melting the shell or core of the reactor - the most fatal and, unfortunately, already quite common, accidents at traditional nuclear installations. Worst case scenario for E-Cat: reactor core overheats, it breaks down and just stops working. And that's it.

As stated by the manufacturers, full testing of the installation is carried out under the supervision of a hypothetical owner until the final part of the transaction is finalized. At the same time, the training of engineers and technicians, who will later serve the installation at the buyer's site, takes place. If the client is dissatisfied with something, the transaction is cancelled. It should be noted that the buyer (or his representative) has full control over all aspects of testing: how the tests are carried out, what measuring equipment is used, how long all processes last, whether the testing mode is standard (on constant energy) or autonomous (with actual zero at the input).

According to Andrea Rossi, the technology works without a doubt, and he is so confident in his product that he gives potential buyers every opportunity to see for themselves:

if they want to conduct a test run without hydrogen in the cores of the reactors (to compare the results) - this can be done!
if you want to see the operation of the unit in a continuous autonomous mode for a long period of time, you just need to declare it!
if you want to bring any of your own high-tech oscilloscopes and other measuring equipment to measure every microwatt of energy generated in the process - great!

For the time being, such a plant can only be sold to a suitable qualified buyer. This means that the client must be not just an individual stakeholder, but a representative of a business organization, company, institution or agency. However, smaller units are planned for individual home use. Approximate term for completion of development and start of production is one year. But there may be problems with certification. So far, Russia has the European certification mark only for its industrial installations.

The cost of a one-megawatt plant is $2,000 per kilowatt. The final price ($2,000,000) only seems sky-high. In fact, given the incredible fuel economy, it is quite fair. If we compare the cost and amount of fuel of the Rossi system, necessary to generate a certain amount of energy, with the same fuel indicators for other currently available systems, the values ​​will simply be incomparable. For example, Rossi claims that the dose of hydrogen and nickel powder needed to run a megawatt plant for at least half a year costs no more than a couple of hundred euros. This is because a few grams of nickel, initially placed in the core of each reactor, is enough for at least 6 months, the consumption of hydrogen in the system as a whole is also very low. In fact, when testing the first unit sold, less than 2 grams of hydrogen kept the entire system running for the duration of the experiment (i.e., about 7 hours). It turns out that you really need a meager amount of resources.

Some of the other advantages of E-Cat technology are: compact size or high "energy density", silent operation (50 decibels of sound at 5 meters from the installation), no dependence on weather conditions (unlike solar panels or wind turbines), and modular design of the device - if one of the elements of the system fails for any reason, it can be quickly replaced.

Rossi intends to produce between 30 and 100 one-megawatt units during the first year of production. A hypothetical buyer can contact his Leonardo Corporation and reserve one of the planned devices.

Of course, there are skeptics who claim that this simply cannot be, that manufacturers are obscure, not allowing observers from the main energy control organizations to test, and also that, if Rossi’s invention were really effective, the bigwigs of the existing system for distributing energy (read financial) resources did not allow would release information about it to the light.
Someone is in doubt. As an example, we can cite a curious and very detailed article that appeared on the website of Forbes magazine.
However, according to some observers, on October 28, 2011, the official actual start of the transition of mankind into a new era of cold thermonuclear fusion was given: the era of clean, safe, cheap and affordable energy.

Oh how many wonderful discoveries we have
Prepares enlightenment spirit
And experience, the son of difficult mistakes,
And genius, paradoxes friend,
And the case, God is the inventor ...

A.S. Pushkin

I am not a nuclear scientist. But I have illuminated one of the greatest inventions of our day, at least I think so myself.First wrote about the discovery of cold nuclear fusion CNS by Italian scientists Sergio Focardi and Andrea A. Rossi from the University of Bologna (Università di Bologna) in December 2010. Then he wrote here a text about the testing by these scientists of a much more powerful installation on October 28, 2011 for a potential customer-manufacturer. And this experiment ended successfully. Mr. Rossi signed a contract with one American major equipment manufacturer. And now, after signing the relevant contracts and observing the conditions that they will not copy the installation, anyone can order an installation with a capacity of up to 1 megawatt with delivery to the client, installation, staff training within 4 months.

I confessed earlier and now I will say that I am not a physicist, not a nuclear scientist. This setting is so significant for all of humanity, it can turn our ordinary world upside down, it will greatly affect the geopolitical level - this is the only reason I am writing about it.
But I was able to dig up some information for you.
For example, I found out that the Russian installation works on the basis of the CNS. In short, something like this: the Hydrogen atom loses its stability under the influence of temperature, Nickel and some secret catalyst for about 10\-18 seconds. And this Hydrogen nucleus interacts with the Nickel nucleus, overcoming the Coulomb force of atoms. There is also a connection with Broglie waves in the process, I advise you to read the article to those who are smart in physics.
As a result, it is CNF that occurs - cold nuclear fusion - the operating temperature of the installation is only a few hundred degrees Celsius, a certain amount of unstable copper isotope is formed -(Cu 59 - 64) .The consumption of Nickel and Hydrogen is very small, that is, Hydrogen does not burn and does not give simple chemical energy.

patent 1. (WO2009125444) METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR CARRYING OUT NICKEL AND HYDROGEN EXOTHERMAL REACTIONS

The entire market of North America and South America for these installations was taken over by the companyAmpEnergo . This is a new company and it works closely with another companyLeonardo Corporation , which is seriously working in the energy and defense sectors. It also accepts orders for installations.

Thermal Output Power 1MW
Electrical Input Power Peak 200kW
Electrical input Power Average 167 kW
COP 6
Power Ranges 20kW-1MW
Modules 52
Power per Module 20kW
Water Pump brand Various
Water Pump Pressure 4 Bar
Water Pump Capacity 1500 kg/hr
Water Pump Ranges 30-1500 kg/hr
Water Input Temperature 4-85 C
Water Output Temperature 85-120 C
Control Box Brand National Instruments
Controlling Software National Instruments
Operation and Maintenance Cost $1/MWhr
Fuel Cost $1/MWhr
Recharge Cost Included in O&M
Recharge Frequency 2/year
Warranty 2 years
Estimated Life span 30 years
Price $2M
Dimension 2.4×2.6x6m

This is a diagram of an experimental 1 MW installation that was made for the experiment on 10/28/2011.

Here are the technical parameters of the installation with a capacity of 1 megawatt.
The cost of one installation is 2 million dollars.

Interesting points:
- very cheap cost of generated energy.
- every 2 years it is necessary to fill the wearing elements - hydrogen, nickel, catalyst.
- service life of the installation is 30 years.
- small size
- environmentally friendly installation.
- safety, in case of any accident, the CNS process itself, as it were, goes out.
- there are no dangerous elements that could be used as a dirty bomb

At the moment, the installation produces hot steam and can be used for heating buildings. A turbine and an electric generator for generating electrical energy have not yet been included in the installation, but in the process.

You may have questions: Will Nickel rise in price with the widespread use of such installations?
What are the general reserves of Nickel on our planet?
Won't wars start over Nikel?

Lots of nickel.
I will give a few figures for clarity.
If we assume that Rossi's installations will replace all power plants that burn oil, then all Nickel reserves on Earth will be enough for about 16,667 years! That is, we have energy for the next 16,000 years.
We burn about 13 million tons of oil per day on Earth. To replace this daily dose of oil at Russian installations, only about 25 tons of Nickel will be needed! Approximately today's prices are $10,000 per ton of Nickel. 25 tons will cost $250,000! That is, a quarter of a lemon bucks is enough to replace all the oil in a day on the entire planet with a nickel-plated nuclear fuel!
I read that Mr. Rossi and Focardi are being nominated for the 2012 Nobel Prize, and they are currently preparing the paperwork. I think that they definitely deserve both the Nobel Prize and other awards. You can create and give them both the title - Honorary Citizens of the Planet Earth.

This installation is very important especially for Russia. Because the vast territory of the Russian Federation is located in the cold zone, without power supply, harsh living conditions ... And there are heaps of nickel in the Russian Federation.) Maybe we or our children will see entire cities covered from above with a cap-film made of transparent and durable material. Inside this cap, a microclimate with warm air will be kept. With electric cars, greenhouses where all the necessary vegetables and fruits are grown, etc.

And in geopolitics there will be such grandiose changes that will affect all countries and peoples. Even the financial world, trade, transport, migration of people, their social security and the way of life in general will change significantly. Any grandiose changes, even if they are in a good direction, are fraught with upheavals, riots, maybe even wars. Because this discovery, while benefiting a huge number of people, at the same time will bring losses, loss of wealth, political, financial strength to certain countries and groups. Essno these groups can protest and do everything to slow down the process. But I hope that there will be many more and stronger people interested in progress.
Maybe that's why so far the central media do not write much about Rossi's installation? Maybe that's why they are in no hurry to widely advertise this discovery of the century? Let until these groupings agree among themselves on peace?

Here is a 5 kilowatt unit. Can be placed in an apartment.

http://www.leonardo-ecat.com/fp/Products/5kW_Heater/index.html

• Translation

This area is now called low-energy nuclear reactions, and it can achieve real results - or it can turn out to be stubborn junk science.

Dr. Martin Fleischman (right), an electrochemist, and Stanley Pons, chairman of the Chemistry Department at the University of Utah, answer questions from the science and technology committee about their controversial cold fusion work, April 26, 1989.

Howard J. Wilk is a long-term synthetic organic chemist who lives in Philadelphia. Like many other researchers in the pharmaceutical field, he has been a victim of the decline in R&D in the drug industry in recent years and is now taking on non-science jobs. With free time, Wilk tracks the progress of New Jersey-based company Brilliant Light Power (BLP).

This is one of those companies that are developing processes that can be generally referred to as new technologies for energy production. This movement, for the most part, is a resurrection of cold fusion, a short-lived phenomenon in the 1980s associated with obtaining nuclear fusion in a simple desktop electrolytic device that scientists quickly brushed aside.

In 1991, the founder of BLP, Randall L. Mills, announced at a press conference in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, that he had developed a theory that an electron in hydrogen could go from its ordinary, ground energy state to previously unknown, more stable, lower energy states. , releasing huge amounts of energy. Mills named this strange new type of compressed hydrogen, "hydrino", and has been working ever since to develop a commercial device to harvest this energy.

Wilk studied Mills' theory, read papers and patents, and did his own calculations for hydrinos. Wilk even attended a demonstration at the BLP grounds in Cranbury, New Jersey, where he discussed hydrinos with Mills. After that, Wilk still can't decide if Mills is an unrealistic genius, a raving scientist, or something in between.

The story began in 1989, when electrochemists Martin Fleischman and Stanley Pons made a startling claim at a University of Utah press conference that they had tamed fusion energy in an electrolytic cell.

When the researchers applied an electric current to the cell, in their opinion, the deuterium atoms from heavy water that penetrated the palladium cathode entered into a fusion reaction and generated helium atoms. The excess energy of the process is converted into heat. Fleishman and Pons argued that this process could not be the result of any known chemical reaction, and added the term "cold fusion" to it.

After many months of investigating their puzzling observations, however, the scientific community agreed that the effect was unstable, or non-existent, and that there were errors in the experiment. The study was discarded, and cold fusion became synonymous with junk science.

Cold fusion and hydrino production is the holy grail for producing endless, cheap, and clean energy. Cold fusion disappointed scientists. They wanted to believe in him, but their collective mind decided that this was a mistake. Part of the problem was the lack of a generally accepted theory to explain the proposed phenomenon - as physicists say, you can't trust an experiment until it's backed up by a theory.

Mills has his own theory, but many scientists do not believe it and consider hydrinos unlikely. The community rejected cold fusion and ignored Mills and his work. Mills did the same, trying not to fall into the shadow of cold fusion.

Meanwhile, the field of cold fusion has changed its name to low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR), and continues to exist. Some scientists continue to try to explain the Fleischmann-Pons effect. Others have rejected nuclear fusion but are investigating other possible processes that could explain the excess heat. Like Mills, they were drawn to the potential for commercial applications. They are mainly interested in energy production for industrial needs, households and transport.

A small number of companies created in an attempt to bring new energy technologies to market have business models similar to those of any technology start-up: define a new technology, try to patent an idea, attract investor interest, get funding, build prototypes, conduct a demonstration, announce worker dates devices for sale. But in the new energy world, breaking deadlines is the norm. No one has yet taken the final step of demonstrating a working device.

New theory

Mills grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania, earned a chemistry degree from Franklin and Marshall College, a medical degree from Harvard University, and studied electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a student, he began to develop a theory which he called "The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Physics", which he says is based on classical physics and proposes a new model of atoms and molecules that departs from the foundations of quantum physics.

It is generally accepted that a single hydrogen electron darts around its nucleus, being in the most acceptable ground state orbit. It is simply impossible to move the hydrogen electron closer to the nucleus. But Mills says it's possible.

Now a researcher at Airbus Defense & Space, he says he hasn't tracked Mills' activity since 2007 because the experiments didn't show clear signs of excess energy. “I doubt that any later experiments have passed scientific selection,” Rathke said.

“I think it is generally accepted that Dr. Mills's theory, which he puts forward as the basis of his statements, is inconsistent and incapable of making predictions,” continues Rathke. One might ask, "Could we have been so lucky to stumble upon an energy source that simply works by following the wrong theoretical approach?" ".

In the 1990s, several researchers, including a team at the Lewis Research Center, independently reported replicating Mills' approach and generating excess heat. The NASA team wrote in the report that "the results are far from conclusive" and said nothing about hydrinos.

Researchers have proposed possible electrochemical processes to explain the heat, including irregularities in the electrochemical cell, unknown exothermic chemical reactions, and recombination of separated hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water. The same arguments were made by critics of the Fleishman-Pons experiments. But the NASA team clarified that researchers shouldn't dismiss the phenomenon, just in case Mills stumbled upon something.

Mills speaks very quickly, and is able to talk forever about technical details. In addition to predicting hydrinos, Mills claims that his theory can perfectly predict the location of any electron in a molecule using special molecular modeling software, and even in complex molecules like DNA. Using standard quantum theory, it is difficult for scientists to predict the exact behavior of anything more complex than a hydrogen atom. Mills also claims that his theory explains the phenomenon of the expansion of the Universe with acceleration, which cosmologists have not yet fully figured out.

In addition, Mills says that hydrinos are produced by the burning of hydrogen in stars such as our Sun, and that they can be found in the spectrum of starlight. Hydrogen is considered the most abundant element in the universe, but Mills claims that hydrinos are dark matter that cannot be found in the universe. Astrophysicists are taken aback by such suggestions: "I've never heard of hydrinos," says Edward W. (Rocky) Kolb of the University of Chicago, an expert on the dark universe.

Mills reported the successful isolation and characterization of hydrinos using standard spectroscopic techniques such as infrared, Raman, and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. In addition, he says, hydrinos can react to produce new types of materials with "surprising properties." This includes conductors, which Mills says will revolutionize the world of electronic devices and batteries.

And although his statements are contrary to public opinion, Mills' ideas do not seem so exotic compared to other unusual components of the universe. For example, muonium is a well-known short-lived exotic entity, consisting of an anti-muon (a positively charged particle similar to an electron) and an electron. Chemically, muonium behaves like an isotope of hydrogen, but nine times lighter.

SunCell, hydrine fuel cell

No matter where the hydrinos are on the plausibility scale, Mills told us a decade ago that BLP had already moved beyond scientific confirmation and was only interested in the commercial side of the issue. Over the years, BLP has raised over $110 million in investments.

BLP's approach to creating hydrinos has manifested itself in many ways. In early prototypes, Mills and his team used tungsten or nickel electrodes with an electrolytic solution of lithium or potassium. The applied current split the water into hydrogen and oxygen, and under the right conditions, lithium or potassium played the role of a catalyst for the absorption of energy and the collapse of the electron orbit of hydrogen. The energy arising from the transition from the ground atomic state to a state with a lower energy was released in the form of a bright high-temperature plasma. The heat associated with it was then used to create steam and power an electric generator.

The SunCell device is now being tested at BLP, in which hydrogen (from water) and an oxide catalyst are fed into a spherical carbon reactor with two streams of molten silver. An electrical current applied to the silver triggers a plasma reaction to form hydrinos. The reactor's energy is captured by carbon, which acts as a "black body heat sink". When heated to thousands of degrees, it emits energy in the form of visible light, which is captured by photovoltaic cells that convert the light into electricity.

When it comes to commercial developments, Mills sometimes comes across as paranoid and sometimes as a practical businessman. He registered the trademark "Hydrino". And because its patents claim the invention of the hydrino, the BLP claims intellectual property for the hydrino's research. In this regard, the BLP prohibits other experimenters from conducting even basic research on hydrinos, which can confirm or disprove their existence, without first signing an intellectual property agreement. “We invite researchers, we want others to do it,” says Mills. “But we need to protect our technology.”

Instead, Mills appointed authorized validators who claim to be able to validate BLP's inventions. One is an electrical engineer at Bucknell University, Professor Peter M. Jansson, who is paid to evaluate BLP technology through his consulting company, Integrated Systems. Jenson claims that his time compensation "does not affect my conclusions as an independent researcher of scientific discoveries in any way." He adds that he "disproved most of the discoveries" he studied.

“The BLP scientists are doing real science, and so far I haven't found any flaws in their methods and approaches,” Jenson says. “Over the years, I have seen many devices in the BLP that are clearly capable of producing excess energy in meaningful amounts. I think that the scientific community will need some time to accept and digest the possibility of the existence of low-energy states of hydrogen. In my opinion, Dr. Mills' work is undeniable." Jenson adds that BLP faces difficulties in commercializing the technology, but the obstacles are business rather than scientific.

In the meantime, BLP has held several demonstrations of its new prototypes to investors since 2014, and has posted videos on its website. But these events do not provide clear evidence that SunCell actually works.

In July, after one demonstration, the company announced that the estimated cost of energy from SunCell is so low - 1% to 10% of any other known form of energy - that the company "is going to provide self-contained individual power supplies for virtually all stationary and mobile applications, not tied to the power grid or fuel sources of energy”. In other words, the company plans to build and lease SunCells or other devices to consumers, charging a daily fee, and allowing them to get off the grid and stop buying gasoline or solar oil, while spending several times less money.

“This is the end of the era of fire, the internal combustion engine, and centralized power systems,” says Mills. “Our technology will make all other types of energy technology obsolete. The problems of climate change will be solved.” He adds that BLP appears to be able to launch production to start MW plants by the end of 2017.

What's in a name?

Despite the uncertainty surrounding Mills and BLP, their story is only one part of the overall new energy saga. As the dust settled after Fleischman-Pons' initial claim, the two researchers began to study what was right and what was wrong. They were joined by dozens of co-authors and independent researchers.

Many of these scientists and engineers, often self-employed, were less interested in commercial opportunities than in science: electrochemistry, metallurgy, calorimetry, mass spectrometry, and nuclear diagnostics. They continued to run experiments that produced excess heat, defined as the amount of energy a system put out relative to the energy needed to run it. In some cases, nuclear anomalies have been reported, such as the appearance of neutrinos, alpha particles (helium nuclei), isotopes of atoms, and transmutations of one element into another.

But in the end, most researchers are looking for an explanation for what is happening, and would be happy even if a modest amount of heat were useful.

"LENR are in an experimental phase and not yet theoretically understood," says David J. Nagel, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University. George Washington, and former research manager at the Morfleet Research Laboratory. “Some of the results are simply inexplicable. Call it cold fusion, low-energy nuclear reactions, or whatever - the names are enough - we still don't know anything about it. But there is no doubt that nuclear reactions can be started with chemical energy.”

Nagel prefers to call the LENR phenomenon "lattice nuclear reactions" because the phenomenon occurs in the crystal lattices of the electrode. The original offshoot of this area focuses on incorporating deuterium into a palladium electrode by supplying high energy, Nagel explains. The researchers reported that such electrochemical systems can produce up to 25 times more energy than they consume.

The other major offshoot of the field uses a combination of nickel and hydrogen that produces up to 400 times more energy than it consumes. Nagel likes to compare these LENR technologies to an experimental international fusion reactor based on well-known physics—the fusion of deuterium and tritium—that is being built in the south of France. The cost of this 20-year project is $20 billion and the goal is to produce 10 times the energy consumed.

Nagel says the field of LENR is growing everywhere, and the main obstacles are lack of funding and unstable results. For example, some researchers report that a certain threshold must be reached to trigger a reaction. It may require a minimum amount of deuterium or hydrogen to run, or the electrodes may need to be prepared with crystallographic orientation and surface morphology. The last requirement is common for heterogeneous catalysts used in gasoline refining and in petrochemical industries.

Nagel acknowledges that the commercial side of LENR also has problems. Prototypes under development are, he says, “quite crude,” and there has yet to be a company that has demonstrated a working prototype or made money from it.

E-Cat from Rossi

One notable attempt to commercialize LENR was made by engineer Andrea Rossi of Miami-based Leonardo Corp. In 2011, Rossi and colleagues announced at a press conference in Italy that they were building a tabletop Energy Catalyst Reactor, or E-Cat, that would produce excess energy in a process where nickel is the catalyst. To justify the invention, Rossi demonstrated the E-Cat to potential investors and the media, and appointed independent reviews.

Rossi claims that his E-Cat is running a self-sustaining process in which an incoming electrical current triggers the fusion of hydrogen and lithium in the presence of a powder mixture of nickel, lithium and lithium aluminum hydride, which produces an isotope of beryllium. Short-lived beryllium decays into two α-particles, and excess energy is released in the form of heat. Part of the nickel turns into copper. Rossi talks about the absence of both waste and radiation outside the apparatus.

Rossi's announcement caused scientists the same unpleasant feeling as cold fusion. Rossi is distrustful of many people because of his controversial past. In Italy, he was accused of fraud due to his previous business frauds. Rossi says those allegations are a thing of the past and doesn't want to discuss them. He also once had a contract to build thermal installations for the US military, but the devices he supplied did not work to specifications.

In 2012, Rossi announced a 1MW system suitable for heating large buildings. He also assumed that by 2013 he would already have a factory producing a million 10 kW, laptop-sized units annually for home use. But neither the factory nor these devices happened.

In 2014, Rossi licensed the technology to Industrial Heat, a public Cherokee investment firm that buys real estate and clears old industrial estates for new development. In 2015, Cherokee CEO Tom Darden, a trained lawyer and environmentalist, called Industrial Heat "a source of funding for LENR inventors."

Darden says Cherokee launched Industrial Heat because the investment firm believes the LENR technology is worth exploring. “We were willing to be wrong, we were willing to invest time and resources to see if this area could be useful in our mission to prevent [environmental] pollution,” he says.

Meanwhile, Industrial Heat and Leonardo had a falling out, and are now suing each other over breaches of the agreement. Rossi would receive $100 million if the annual test of his 1MW system was successful. Rossi says the test is over, but Industrial Heat doesn't think so and fears the device isn't working.

Nagel says the E-Cat has brought enthusiasm and hope to the LENR field. He claimed in 2012 that he did not think Rossi was a fraud, "but I don't like some of his testing approaches." Nagel believed that Rossi should have acted more carefully and transparently. But at the time, Nagel himself believed that LENR devices would be commercially available by 2013.

Rossi continues research and has announced the development of other prototypes. But he doesn't say much about his work. He says the 1MW units are already in production and he has received the "necessary certifications" to sell them. Home devices, he said, are still awaiting certification.

Nagel says the status quo has returned to LENR after the downturn associated with Rossi's announcements. The availability of commercial LENR generators has been pushed back several years. And even if the device survives the reproducibility issues and is useful, its developers will face a fierce battle with regulators and user acceptance.

But he remains optimistic. “LENR may become commercially available even before they are fully understood, as was the case with x-rays,” he says. He has already equipped a laboratory at the University. George Washington for new experiments with nickel and hydrogen.

Scientific legacies

Many researchers who continue to work on LENR are retired scientists. For them, this is not easy, because for years their papers have been returned unseen from mainstream journals, and their proposals for papers at scientific conferences have not been accepted. They are increasingly worried about the status of this area of ​​research as their time is running out. They want to either fix their legacy in the scientific history of LENR, or at least take comfort in the fact that their instincts did not fail them.

“It was very unfortunate when cold fusion was first published in 1989 as a new source of fusion energy, and not just some new scientific curiosity,” says electrochemist Melvin Miles. "Perhaps research could go on as usual, with a more accurate and accurate study."

A former researcher at the China Lake Naval Research Center, Miles occasionally worked with Fleishman, who died in 2012. Miles thinks Fleishman and Pons were right. But even today he does not know how to make a commercial energy source for the system from palladium and deuterium, despite many experiments in which excess heat was obtained, which correlates with the production of helium.

“Why would anyone continue to research or be interested in a topic that was declared a mistake 27 years ago? Miles asks. “I am convinced that cold fusion will someday be recognized as another important discovery that has been long accepted, and a theoretical platform will emerge to explain the results of the experiments.”

Nuclear physicist Ludwik Kowalski, professor emeritus at Montclair State University, agrees that cold fusion has fallen victim to a bad start. "I'm old enough to remember the effect the first announcement had on the scientific community and the public," says Kowalski. At times he collaborated with LENR researchers, "but my three attempts to confirm the sensational claims were unsuccessful."

Kowalski believes that the first infamy earned by research resulted in a larger problem unbecoming of the scientific method. Whether the LENR researchers are fair or not, Kowalski still thinks it's worth getting to the bottom of a clear yes or no verdict. But it won't be found as long as cold fusion researchers are considered "eccentric pseudo-scientists," Kowalski says. “Progress is impossible and no one benefits from the fact that the results of honest research are not published and no one checks them independently in other laboratories.”

Time will tell

Even if Kowalski gets a definitive answer to his question and the claims of the LENR researchers are confirmed, the road to commercializing the technology will be full of obstacles. Many startups, even those with solid technology, fail for reasons unrelated to science: capitalization, liquidity flows, cost, production, insurance, uncompetitive prices, and so on.

Take, for example, Sun Catalytix. The company exited MIT with the backing of hard science, but fell victim to commercial attacks before it entered the market. It was created to commercialize artificial photosynthesis, developed by chemist Daniel G. Nocera, now at Harvard, to efficiently convert water into hydrogen fuel using sunlight and an inexpensive catalyst.

Nosera dreamed that the hydrogen produced in this way could power simple fuel cells and provide energy to homes and villages in backward regions of the world without access to the grid, and enabling them to enjoy modern conveniences that improve living standards. But the development took much more money and time than it seemed at first. Four years later, Sun Catalytix gave up trying to commercialize the technology, went into flux batteries, and was then bought by Lockheed Martin in 2014.

It is not known whether the development of LERR companies is hindered by the same obstacles. For example, Wilk, an organic chemist who has been following Mills' progress, is preoccupied with wanting to know if attempts to commercialize BLP are based on anything real. He just needs to know if the hydrino exists.

In 2014, Wilk asked Mills if he isolated the hydrinos, and although Mills has already written in papers and patents that he succeeded, he replied that this had not yet been done, and that it would be "a very big task." But Wilk seems different. If the process creates liters of hydrine gas, it should be obvious. “Show us the hydrino!” Wilk demands.

Wilk says that Mills' world, and with it the world of other people involved in LENR, reminds him of one of Zeno's paradoxes, which speaks of the illusory nature of movement. “Each year they cover half the distance to commercialization, but will they ever get there?” Wilk came up with four explanations for the BLP: Mills' calculations are correct; This is a fraud; it is bad science; it is a pathological science, as the Nobel laureate in physics Irving Langmuir called it.

Langmuir coined the term over 50 years ago to describe the psychological process in which a scientist subconsciously distances himself from the scientific method and becomes so immersed in his work that he develops an inability to look at things objectively and see what is real and what is not. Pathological science is “the science of things that are not what they seem,” said Langmuir. In some cases, it develops in areas such as cold fusion/LENR and does not give up, despite being recognized as false by most scientists.

"I hope they're right," Wilk says of Mills and BLP. "Indeed. I don't want to refute them, I'm just looking for the truth." But if "pigs could fly," as Wilkes says, he would accept their data, theory, and other predictions that follow from it. But he was never a believer. “I think if hydrinos existed, they would have been found in other laboratories or in nature many years ago.”

All discussions of cold fusion and LENR end up like this: they always come to the conclusion that no one has put a working device on the market, and none of the prototypes can be put on a commercial footing in the near future. So time will be the last judge.

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