No to Cold Fusion Funding

Claims that excess energy can be produced by cold fusion raise some puzzling questions that deserve further research, but they are too weak to justify special government research efforts, an Energy Department advisory panel said Wednesday. The panel recommended to Energy Secretary James D. Watkins that no special funds be earmarked for investigating cold fusion and that the government not establish special programs or research centers to work on the issue.

Cold fusion, first reported last March by researchers from the University of Utah at Salt Lake City, involves the production of heat by platinum electrodes immersed in “heavy water,” water made from a heavy form of hydrogen called deuterium. The Utah researchers said that the cells produced more energy than could be accounted for by conventional chemical processes and they speculated that nuclear fusion--the joining together of two deuterium atoms to form tritium, accompanied by the release of heat--was occurring inside the electrodes.

Researchers have been unable to produce any evidence that such a nuclear reaction is occurring, however, and most physicists now dismiss the possible existence of cold fusion.

But the lure of cold fusion remains strong. At a recent meeting in Washington, physicist Edward Teller, founder of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory where much fusion research is conducted, recounted that he had undergone major surgery this summer. His last words before undergoing anesthesia: “I wish I knew what is the truth about cold fusion.”