NASA on LENR, Again

There have been a number of articles showing up on various blogs this week talking about NASA’s work on LENR — specifically the work of Joseph Zawodny. I had been trying figure out why the story was showing up all of a sudden, and a kind reader pointed me to an article on NASA’s Global Climate Change site entitled “The nuclear reactor in your basement” written by Bob Silburg of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The article contains quotes from Dennis Bushnell, chief scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center, and Joseph Zawodny, senior scientist there. We have discussed their work in the past, and it seems their interest in LENR is still strong.

Zawodny is interested in the theoretical side of LENR rather than doing blind experimentation, explaining that LENR is very complex, and experiments could be dangerous. He says:

“There are a lot of people who are trying to just build something without understanding anything . . . It worked for Edison and the light bulb, but it took him a long time and that was a simple system. This is very complex. And if they make something that just barely works, and accidentally one in a thousand works really, really well, it’s going to take down a house with their trial-and-error method.”

Zawodny and Bushnell seem to be focused on trying to find out if the Widom Larsen theory of LENR can be verified. Zawodny says, “All we really need is that one bit of irrefutable, reproducible proof that we have a system that works,” Zawodny said. “As soon as you have that, everybody is going to throw their assets at it. And then I want to buy one of these things and put it in my house.”