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Cold Fusion Gets a Boost From the US Navy
Tjeerd writes in to alert us to the publication in a highly respected, peer-reviewed journal of results indicative of table-top fusion. The US Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego, CA (called Spawar) has apparently been conducting research on "cold fusion" since the days of the discredited report of Pons and Fleischmann. They are reporting on the reproducible detection of highly energetic charged particles from a wire coated in palladium-deuterium and subjected to either an electric or a magnetic field. Their paper was published in February in the journal Naturwissenschaften (which has published work by Einstein, Heisenberg, and Lorenz). New Scientist also has a note about the fusion work but it is available only to subscribers.
There's a huge difference between mere fusion reactions and an actual fusion reactor that will sustainably produce power. From what I've read, this is about the former, so I'm not keeping my fingers crossed just yet. However, it's still good to see that fusion research is being carried out along several different approaches.
For an video/documentary outlining the status of the "Cold Fusion" field, see the following over on Google video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6426393169 641611451&q=COLD+FUSION&hl=en
With a ISI Impact factor of ~1.2, it really is not one of the best journals in the world. It is also featured principally as a "Biomedical and Life Sciences" journal, so it would seem strange that the authors would publish a physics related article in this journal.
Also, note that the list of previous famous contributors to the journal does not cite any *current* researcher. Maybe this used to be a great journal, but it's clearly no longer the case.
I agree with gp, in that the journal can have a brilliant reputation, but it's probably been a while since Einstein and Heisenberg wrote articles for it.
The contents page of the issues of 2007 seems to deal more in zoology, biochemistry, ecology and palaeontology than materials science or quantum chemistry. Why was this article not published in "US military journal of applied physics" (surely there must be something like this)?
Also, I didn't read gp as being derogatory of a journal because it's in German; that would just be silly.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Yup, Low Energy Nuclear Reactions or Chemically Assisted Nuclear Reaction. There is quite a lot that is published here: http://www.lenr-canr.org/. The SPAWARS work is quite impressive, with more links to it at http://www.lenr-canr.org/News.htm.s -selling-solar.html
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The energy produced per fusion event pretty much has to be the same, but the rate at which the fusion occurs is controled differently. If this can be harnessed for energy production, it may end up as distributed power generation rather than centralized power generation envisioned for hot fusion. There does seem to be sufficient palladium available to make significant levels of power.s -selling-solar.html
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"Nuclear catalyst" the most sensible phrase, given the theory (false or not) is that palladium can be used as a nuclear equivalent to a chemical catalyst (i.e. not used up in the reaction it assists). This "misue" of catalyst is also found in other approaches to fusion, such muon-catalyzed fusion and antimatter catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion.
I read the paper. As you note, it is a short communication documenting some observations from an experiment. It does not purport to be a breakthrough, although it does claim that the observations must be due to a nuclear reaction. The discussion clearly states that they have no theory as to the physical mechanism that might account for the observations.
As an editor or a reviewer, I might well choose to publish a paper -- especially a short paper -- that documented some experimental results, even if the mechanism behind those results was unclear. Maybe there's a future paper forthcoming that either contradicts the results, or offers an explanation, nuclear or not. It makes sense to me to document the alleged evidence in the archival literature.
I want to repeat that the conclusions of the paper are very weak. The outrageous claims have been added later by the popular press. And the argument that "Einstein published there 100 years ago, so it must be true" is unworthy of repetition or rebuttal.
Pons and Fleischmann didn't begin with lab experiments but with a theory, that protons packed together under intense pressure would have a quantum probability of fusing, similar to the way that electrons tunnel. Palladium soaks up hydrogen (that's why it is used) and inside a palladium electrode, the hydrogen is forced by electric charge to be highly pressurized. Lab experiments have verified that funny things happen, resembling nuclear fusion, but to say there is no plausible theory as to why is just plain wrong.
Incidentally, guns on ships as an offensive weapon have been pretty much obsolete since Pearl Harbour, the occasional shore bombardment mission notwithstanding. The primary naval offensive platform is the aircraft carrier, seconded by the ballistic missile carrying submarine and the guided missile armed cruiser. The old battleship is a distant fourth, if in service at all, and even the use of guns as fleet defense is being phased out in favour of destroyers and frigates armed with guided missiles.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Actually, the budget that funded this paper was a few thousand dollars a year of discretionary funds http://newenergytimes.com/news/2006/NET19.htm#ee. One of the main contributions of Navy labs to this field is metalurgical skills. There has been actual funding from time to time but for the most part people work on this on their own time.s -selling-solar.html
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At this point, they are not aiming for net energy production. Their two main advances are to 1) use codeposition to get deutrium loading from the beginning and 2) using a detector that can fit within the experiment. The first advance means that the effects are seen just about every time, and the second means that the background has less of an effect on detection, particularly if charged particles are involved since these have trouble escaping the experimental setup owing to Compton losses. Getting more power out than in is not really the basic measure though. The power out so far is heat, so you want quite an excess before you can turn that back into something usable.s -selling-solar.html
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The energy content of 2 tons of TNT is about 8 gigajoules. That's rather a lot of energy. A kinetic projectile at 10,000 m/s -- mach 30 -- has 50 megajoules per kilogram. You'd need a 160 kg of projectile to reach 8 GJ. Seems possible for a shipboard system, but I bet the first applications are much smaller. Anyway, for something that size you'd want much more than a few hundred kw of generator -- even at 1MW, that's over 2 hours between shots with no inefficiencies anywhere. My personal guess is that the first deployed railguns will be moderate velocity ( 10 kps) moderate weight projectiles (a couple kg) intended basically for tank-killing and use against light ships. And even so, they'll be power-hungry, because they'll want to fire several times a minute.
No, it's not.
Polywell operates by creating a converging potential well of tens of thousands of volts and dropping ions into it. At roughly 11,000 degrees kelvin per electron volt that's one HELL of a hot spot.
Tens of kilovolts, on the other hand, are easy to handle - in a near vacuum. The trick is to achieve sufficient DENSITY in that near vacuum and keep the particles at that temperature and pressure for enough TIME to end up with more fusion energy harvested than you put in to set uop the system.
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The Naturwissenschaften authors published an erratum in a later issue stating that the effect they had observed was explained by the following paper, of which they were unaware: Ultra low momentum neutron catalyzed nuclear reactions on metallic hydride surfaces
Have you read the crazy performance numbers they are projecting for a big railgun? They are talking about hundreds of miles of range, with projectiles that have active guidance (with movable fins).
Thus, a new weapons platform that can do many jobs that would currently require a missile, but the cost would be much less. And you can have a whole cargo hold full of warheads; missiles take up more room. And the kinetic punch of the warhead does the damage, so there isn't any explosive payload on the warhead; so if the ship takes a hit in the magazine, the railgun ammo can't explode.
So, guns are on the way out... but this is something new.
My library has a subscription.
Here's a freely available article that apparently explains the theory. It is cited in an erratum to the original paper.
You are stretching it to far... fusion is fusion, cold or hot. The main problem with it is overcoming Coloumb forces between the nuclei so that strong interaction can kick in and merge them, releasing residual energy surplus of course.
Disclaimer: IANANP and what follows is gross oversimplification.
Now, basically, with "hot" fusion, we try to give so much kinetic (thermal) energy to nuclei as well as cram a lot of them into confined space (raise pressure) so that statistically they have good enough chance of colliding.
With "cold" fusion, however, we are trying to take advantage of an unique property of hydrogen - because it is the smallest of atoms, it can enter inside the crystal grid of some metals, notably palladium or copper, in small space between the atoms making the grid. When it happens, hydrogen, or preferably, deuterium is well crammed into very confined space and then the probability of it running into other fusion-fuel brethen nuclei is allegedly much higher then in the open. It is quite a cunning trick and obviously very little energy is wasted compared to "thermal" method - therefore the "cold" fusion.
So, there you go, it is not that esoteric and mystical after all.
except that you don't have the stored chemical energy, you have to get the power for each shot from the ship generators.
Which they already have. Really, really big ones; it takes a crapload of energy to push a ship through the water quickly, too, and in order to do it, the Navy (and its contractors) have gotten good at extracting a lot of energy from either nuclear reactions or petrochemicals in short order.
A current-generation Aegis frigate has two GE LM2500 gas turbines, each producing 33,600 shaft HP, which is about 25MW. So that's 50MW right there, without any exotic technology; even accounting for the conversion to electricity, that's far more than you'd need for a railgun's accumulators.
The reason we don't have railguns on battleships right now (aside from the fact that we don't really have any battleships in service) are that there's no demand. Yeah, it would be cool to fire a tungsten slug at some ridiculous speed over the horizon, but then again you can do the same thing with a missile right now and not have to deal with Congress getting their panties in a bunch over how much money you're spending.
There are a whole lot of defense/military projects that are probably technically feasible, if anyone (anyone with a lot of money and resources, that is) wanted to build one -- but there hasn't been a whole lot driving military innovation since the end of the Cold War. There's just no reason to spend the money without any enemy that's close to developing the same thing.
Now, maybe in ten or fifteen years, the situation might be different, if the Chinese start spending a lot of money on advanced weapons programs. The U.S. military, historically, tends to be reluctant to change what it perceives to be a 'good thing,' right up until they are clearly shown to be behind the times, following which there's a massive rush to update everything. (Cf. naval aviation vs battleships, the Zero vs the Wildcat, long rifles vs submachine guns as personal weapons, or any number of other disputes.)
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