Successful Cold Fusion Experiment?

An anonymous reader writes "The italian economic journal 'Il sole 24 ore' published an article about a successful cold fusion experiment performed by Yoshiaki Arata in Japan. They seems to have pumped high pressure deutherium gas in a nanometric matrix of palladium and zyrcon oxide. The experiments generates a considerable amount of energy and they found the presence of Helium-4 in the matrix (as sign of the fusion). I was not able to find other articles about this but the journal is very authoritative in Italy. Google translations are also available."

Comments

Re:So-called geeks!

[Artraze]

> Any useful reactor is going to produce prodigious amounts of radiation, neutron and gamma.

Actually, the listed process is H-2 + H-2 -> He-4, this doesn't release a neutron. Gammas are (generally) released when a nucleus rearranges itself. For something the size of He-4 this isn't always necessary.

> Thirdly, remember thermodynamic efficiency.

For what, exactly? This is a nuclear process and has nothing to do with heat engines. Unless, of course, you're referring to the generator turbine, but that's not really what we're discussing. Finally, "cold" fusion (as often attempted) isn't exactly cold; when warm is about 15000C the 'cold' ain't exactly the freezing point of water.