“Reviving Cold Fusion” — The American Chemical Society covers LENR

The most recent issue of the American Chemical Society’s Chemical and Engineering News magazine includes an article entitled, “Reviving Cold Fusion.” written by Steven K. Ritter. The brief summary reads, “After 20-plus years of outcast status, unconventional heat-producing nuclear reactions still seem plausible”. The ACS does not permit its publications to be published for free online, and copyright restrictions allow me to only provide selected excerpts here.

The article is really a review of the history and current state of LENR, much of its content is what people following recent developments in LENR research already know. Ritter contacted a number of people involved in the field, including Dennis Bushnell of NASA, Robert Duncan of the University of Missouri, Steven B. Krivit of New Energy Times, and Andrea Rossi. Quite a bit of the article is devoted to describing Rossi’s E-Cat, and emphasizes that as yet it is unproven.

Bushnell maintains that, “From more than two decades of experiments producing heat and transmutations, ‘something’ is real and happening.”

Krivit says of the E-Cat, ““Rossi has no credible evidence for his extraordinary claims, I have stopped paying attention to him.”

Duncan states, ” “I don’t need to have an opinion about the E-Cat. Nobody does. Rossi is claiming to be going commercial with it. If he does deliver to the marketplace, then the marketplace will decide the efficacy of the technology.”

Duncan explains that his work at the University of Missouri is focused on trying to understand the scientific origin of the anomalous heat effects in LENR, and is not involved in commercial pursuits. Duncan also says, “I like to call it an anomalous heat effect rather than cold fusion or a low-energy nuclear reaction,” Duncan says, “because we still don’t know exactly what the mechanism is.”

While there is not much in the way of new news in this article, I think it is significant that we see an open-minded and generally positive treatment of LENR in a publication of the American Chemical Society, and perhaps this brief article will help to raise awareness of the topic in scientific and engineering circles.