I haven’t yet seen the Associated Press publish anything about the recent cold fusion revival, so I was a little surprised to find an article from the AP about research the University of Missouri’s Sidney Kimmel Institute for Nuclear Renaissance.
The article, titled “MU professor revisits decades-old fusion project” has been published on the Kansas City Star’s web site and focuses on the work of Mark Prelas who is picking up on cold fusion experimentation that he abandoned in 1991 when he lost funding.
Few details are provided about the experimental setup, but the article does talk about results Prelas obtained.
In the original experiment, the team created an emitted neutron-recording device and expected to count about 10 neutrons a second. The card’s storage was used up in less than one-hundredth of a second. Then, the team used a counter with the capacity to track up to 1 million neutrons and timed it again. They reached a million neutrons in a second.
“This was incredible to us,” Prelas said in an email. “The neutron production went on for five minutes and then I decided to put the device back into liquid nitrogen to shut the reaction down. We thermal shocked the device two more times and each time we produced large neutron bursts.”
Prelas’ research will now be able to continue thanks to funding provided the University of Missouri by the Sidney Kimmel foundation. Next summer the university will host the 18th International Conference on Cold Fusion where I would expect this research, and other projects carried out at the Kimmel Institute to be highlighted. Maybe the AP will be there!
