Path: santra!tut!draken!kth!mcvax!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!ohstpy!perry
From: perry@ohstpy.mps.ohio-state.edu
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Another report on the Santa Fe cold fusion meeting (long)
Message-ID: <1228@ohstpy.mps.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 1 Jun 89 21:31:43 GMT
Lines: 699


This is yet another report of the Santa Fe meeting on Cold Fusion,
hosted by Los Alamos.  I will follow the agenda, but will not report on
most talks.  In particular, most speakers presented null results and
every talk about which I say nothing falls into this category.  It is
not my intention to introduce a bias in this manner, but there were
simply too many talks to report.

Before describing the results in detail, let me provide my own summary.
Cold fusion IS NOT DEAD.  If anything, the Santa Fe meeting was more
positive than any other meeting to date.  However, the prospects of
cheap and plentiful energy from fusion in Pd continue to fade.  I have
been satisfied with intriguing science and will not miss the diminishing
interest of the press.

There is evidence for excess heat, tritium and neutrons in a variety of
setups from a number of labs.  I asked everyone with whom I spoke at the
meeting whether they had reasonable explanations (e.g., temperature
gradients from inadequate stirring and chemiluminescence) for the most
notable positive results.  In each case, there were possible sources of
error one could imagine, but no consensus that such errors were likely.
In no case could anyone point to an obvious flaw and indicate how the
experiment could be corrected to give a null result.  The operative word
there is "obvious", because people did worry about less than obvious
problems.

Everyone agreed that the calorimetry results should be checked in a
closed system, in which evolved gasses are completely recombined.  The
tritium results were only a week old, and the people at Texas A&M
sounded like they wanted to dissect their equipment (not literally) to
search for sources of tritium.  Everyone seemed to agree that the
tritium is there, at 10**4 times the level that should be there; but few
were convinced that alternatives to fusion had been ruled out.  Finally,
neutrons have now been seen at so many places that sceptics are
beginning to admit (and I'm still one of them) that low-level emission
rates are being seen.  It is unfortunate at best that excess heat has
not been seen at the place with the best calorimeter, and neutrons have
not been seen by the best neutron detector.

Finally, no one seems to have any theory to explain a new source of
excess heat.  There are lots of ideas, but no theory.  Certainly no one
has any reasonable theory for enhancing fusion rates to a level required
to explain excess heat or tritium.  There are theories, but they all
invoke a miracle at some point.  Low level fusion rates needed to
explain Jones level neutron observations, and perhaps neutron bursts,
may be explained by small numbers of high energy deuterons generated by
short-lived electric fields induced by crack formation; however, it is
still not clear that the materials involved can support the requisite
fields.  In short, the best bet as far as conventional theory is
concerned is still experimental error.

One other thing most participants agreed upon:  There should be a
moratorium on conferences until the fall, with increased collaboration
between various groups until then.


Tuesday, May 23
---------------

 9:00 --  9:30 Evidence for Excess Heat Generation A.J.Appleby,S.Srinivasan,
           Rates During Electrolysis of D2O    O.J. Murphy,C.R. Martin
           in LiOD Using a Palladium Cathode - Texas A&M
           A Microcalorimetric Study
           (Invited Talk)

Someone from this group made the transparencies available.  They used a
Tronac model 350 microcalorimeter, which they claim allows the
measurement of heat generation from 1 microwatt to 8 watt with about 3
microwatt precision.  Their electrodes were always either Pd or Pt. Their
electrolyte was 7.5-8.0 ml of 0.1M LiOD, 0.1M LiOH, 0.1M NaOD or 1.0M
LiOD.

Dr. Appleby showed several plots of excess heat as a function of time.
For all cases where this should be zero, it was.  In particular, when Pt
was used as the cathode or LiOH as the electrolyte (note: It is hard to
understand why this substitution should eliminate excess heat when D2O
is not replaced by H2O.), the excess heat was
zero.  With the 'correct' setup, excess heat of 30-40 mW was measured
for several days at a time.  It rose with current and dropped when
current dropped.  It dropped when LiOD was replaced with NaOD, but
stopped at 5-8 mW instead of 0.

Cathode      Anode   Electrolyte   Current Density   Excess Heat Rate
                                     mA/cm**2          W/cm**3 of Pd
-------      -----   -----------   ---------------   ----------------
Pd                                     300                 16.3
0.5mm dia.    Pt       0.1M LiOD       600                 19.3
10mm long                             1000                 18.5

Pd
same          Pt       0.1M LiOH       600                  0

Pt
same          Pt       0.1M LiOD       600                  0

Pd
1.0mm dia.    Pt       0.1M LiOD       600                 4-7
10mm long

Pd
2.0mm dia.    Pt       0.1M LiOD       600                 6-12
sphere
------------------------------------------------------------------

It is worth noting that these rates are in the same range as reported by
Fleischmann and Pons, but are not scaling up with current and volume. My
rough calculations seem to indicate that excess heat is possibly
independent of volume at Texas A&M.

Cathodes from both the Bockris and Appleby group were checked for 3He
and 4He, with null results in all cases.  The lower bounds were
< 0.2-1.2 * 10**9 atoms in samples with masses between 8.79 and 14.49 mg.
My understanding is that 4He is not very mobile in Pd, and will
remain trapped if produced in the volume of the electrode.  Before the
mass spec searches for He were performed all species of H were removed,
so that no one has looked for tritium and 3He in the same electrode.
The removed H gas could be collected and analyzed.

Tritium was found in 7 of 10 cathodes, and I believe all of the results
reported by Appleby were for cathodes from the Bockris group.  If I am
not mistaken, none of these cathodes were checked for heat production.
All were wire (?) 0.1cm dia. by 4cm length, charged at 60 mA/cm**2 for
two weeks, and maintained at 500mA/cm**2 for 6-8 hours.  In
disintegrations per minute per ml (dpl), the rates were:

2.0E6, 4.8E6, 3.6E6, 2.2E6, 3.6E4, 2.4E4, 6.3E4, and 210 for blank
LiOD.

They claimed that there was no recombination of D2 and O2 above the 1%
level, ruling this out as a source of heat.  They noted that 20W/ml for
100 hours is equal to 0.75 keV/Pd atom, while the bond strength is only
0.67 eV.  They also mentioned that the formation of a Pd-D alloy would
only allow the release of 20W/ml for about 170 seconds.



 9:30 --  9:50 Neutron Emission and the TritiumK.L. Wolf, N. Packham,
           Content Associated with Deuterium   J. Shoemaker,F. Cheng,
           Loaded Palladium and Titanium Metals    D. Lawson
                                               Texas A&M

No paper was made available and my notes are poor.  I talked to Dr.
Wolf, and he was at least quite open about his work while explaining the
somewhat complicated dynamics between the three separate groups at Texas
A&M.  The neutron results he reported were at a low level, and were met
with a good deal of scepticism.  Of 25 active cells, some produced
counts and some did not.  (Remember, this group does not have a
calorimeter, and as far as I know no simultaneous search for heat and
neutrons was conducted.)  All runs with Ti were negative, and no excess
gamma-rays above a level of 60 per minute were found.

To detect neutrons, two identical NE-213 detectors were used, with pulse
shape discrimination employed to identify neutrons.  The background was
0.8 neutrons per min., dropping to 0.4 n/min. when analyzing for 2.5MeV
neutrons. (Sorry, I didn't write why.)  Also used a surrounding plastic
scintillator for cosmic ray rejection.  The neutron efficiency of their
detectors was about 5%.  Wolf showed one plot with about nine points on
it spread over 250 min.  The count rate climbed from about 1 per min. up
to 3-4 per minute, then oscillated and went back to a background level
of about 1 per min.  This was supposed to be an 8 sigma signal.  In the
20 minute data cuts, they were seeing about 40-60 counts.

Wolf also reported on tritium results, and I believe he made the first
measurements.  He mentioned that the 10**4 enhancement of T
concentration cannot be explained by isotopic enhancement, which works
at about the 30% level, even if it worked at the 100% level.  This is
simply because they only add about 3 times the volume of D2O in a cell
during a run, and can therefore only triple the T level.  They claim
that all D2O and LiOD comes from the same source.  If true, extra T is
either produced by fusion or introduced in some other part of the cell.
Nobody came up with a popular candidate, although some people wondered
aloud whether there could be T in the Pd.


10:40 --   Measurements of Neutron and Gamma   D. Albagli,V. Cammarata,
           Ray Emission Rates and Calorimetry  R. Crooks,M. Schloh,
           in Electrochemical Cells Having Pd  M.S. Wrighton,X. Chen,
           Cathodes                            C. Fiore,M. Gaudreau,
                                               D. Gwinn,P. Linsay,
                                               S.C. Luckhardt,R. Parker,
                                               R. Petrasso,K. Wenzel,
                                               R. Ballinger,I. Hwang,MIT


Some of these results are now published in Nature, vol. 339, p. 183.
They employed isothermal calorimetry, maintaining constant temperature
with a heater and watching the required power.  No discussion of Pd
history (i.e., treatment).  Discussed runs employing 1mm dia. x 10 cm Pd
rods, with current density of 196 +/- 2 mA/cm**2 (nearly same for H2O).
No gammas, no 4He, no heat.  Bockris mentioned during questions that P&F
now claim one needs 4-6mm dia. rods and 72 days of charging time, and
argued that any discussion of null results for fusion products without
first seeing heat is premature.  He did not explain why Texas A&M is
seeing heat without following these criteria.


 1:50 --   Calorimetry, Neutron Flux, Gamma    Nathan S. Lewis
           Flux, and Tritium Yield from        Charles A. Barnes
           Electrochemically Charged Palladium Cal Tech
           in D2O


Dr. Lewis' talk was nearly identical to the one he gave at the Baltimore
APS meeting, with no new results as far as I could tell.  A wide range
of Pd electrodes, including 1 cast, 1 from Texas A&M and many treated in
a variety of ways that should enhance deuterium absorption, were tested.
No excess heat ( < 6%), no gammas (from 20 keV to 30 MeV), no neutrons (
< 1/10 per second), no tritium (at background level of 100 dpm) and no 
helium ( < 1 ppm).

I will not discuss experimental details.  In each case I believe that
they are not seeing a signal because it is not there.  They have done a
thorough job of building electrolytic cells.  Their results may not
prove that cold fusion and excess heat are fallacious, but certainly
demonstrate that if they are real they are difficult to reproduce.

Dr. Lewis explained to me how F&P got their percentage breakeven
numbers, and his explanation matched what I had guessed.  However, I
still cannot obtain their third breakeven percentage (the one with the
0.5V assumption).  If you know how to get this, please let me know.

During the question period, Dr. Bockris argued that null results could
be explained by insufficient D/Pd ratio.  This is
one of the conference themes, but it was not clear to me exactly what
other people were doing that was not done at Caltech to get a high
ratio.  It also was not clear to me that the need for a high ratio had
been established at Texas A&M.  Certainly no one showed a table with
excess heat vs. D/Pd ratio; so at this point this is just intelligent
speculation as far as I could tell.

Dr. Huggins claimed that Caltech had annealed at 300 C, which is not
nearly hot enough for Pd. 

 2:30 --   Tests for ``Cold Fusion'' in the   J.G. Blencoe,M.T. Naney
           Pd-D2 and Ti-D2 Systems at         D.J. Wesolowski
           350 MPa and 195-300K               ORNL

This was a null result in a Frascati-like experiment.  Several
interesting points were raised.  They observed a correlation in their
neutron background with atmospheric pressure.  They were able to get
counts by adding ice and condensing water on cables, by turning lights
on and off, and by setting up vibrations near their detectors.  These
are well-known problems with BF-3 detectors, but illustrate some problem
with detecting signals just above background.

 3:10 --   High Precision Cold Fusion         M.E. Hayden,U. Narger,
           Calorimetry Achieved by In Situ    J.L. Booth,L.A. Whitehead,
           Catalytic Recombination of Evolved W.N. Hardy,J.F. Carolan,
           Gasses                              D.A. Balzarini,C.C. Blake
                                        E. Wishnow,Univ.  of British Columbia
                                              Vancouver, Canada

These guys seem to have built the best calorimeter in the cold fusion
business.  Hopefully they will be given some Pd that is supposed to
produce excess heat and clear up some of the mystery.  They completely
recombine the evolved gasses, removing the major uncertainty in other
calorimetric results.

 4:00 --   Nuclear Reactions and Screened-    G.M. Hale,R.D. Smith,
           Coulomb Fusion Rates               T.L. Talley, LANL

This was one of the best theory talks presented, but I needed to get
many of the details outside the talk.  These calculations actually
handle both the nuclear and atomic portions of the fusion interaction
"correctly".  An R-matrix is used to describe the short range nuclear
interaction, while the long-range Coulomb interaction is treated
analytically using an approximate screened potential.  No substantial
increase in the fusion rate can be obtained using screening lengths that
might reasonably be obtained in a metal, unless one somehow increases
the energy of the deuterons.  Dr. Hale was quite surprised recently to
discover that one can drastically alter the balance between 3He+n and
3H+p using a reasonable R-matrix; however, his idea of drastic is a 40%
enhancement of one channel over the other, not a factor of 10**9.

 4:20 --   Molecular Dynamics Simulation of   Peter M. Richards
           PD1:1:  How Close Can Deuterons Ge SNL

For x = D/Pd < 1, D occupies octahedral sites in Pd, with an equilibrium
separation of 2.83 A.  For x > 1, D occupies the tetrahedral sites, with
an equilibrium separation of 1.73 A.  Using classical calculations, Dr.
Richards was unable to obtain equilibrium separations nearly as small as
found in D2.  In other words, the fusion rate should be much lower than
in molecular deuterium.

  Evening -- Jalbert et al, LANL, Results of tritium measurements on Texas
                                A&M samples

To make a long story short, although they had only been able to count
over the weekend, Los Alamos verified the tritium levels measured at
Texas A&M.  Some results:

                   Texas A&M      Los Alamos
                   ---------      ----------
  D2O              180 dpm/ml     100 dpm/ml
  D2O+LiOD         240            100
  Cell A (blank)   1300           900
  Cell B           2.1E6          2.0E6


Another group from LANL discussed various failed attempts to obtain D/Pd
ratios near 1.  Although there was certainly indication that they had
not tried everything, I still wonder whether anyone can achieve 1 in an
electrolytic cell.  This has to be well known, but I have not had time
to investigate.

Moshe Gai argued that one could not trust any of the low level neutron
rates coming from BF-3 detectors.  He claimed that they were simply
watching the gamma tail in their detectors, seeing the occasional gamma
ray which double scattered in their detectors.


Wednesday, May 24
-----------------

 8:00 --   Cold Nuclear Fusion in Condensed S.E. Jones
           Matter:  Recent Results and Open BYU
           Questions (Invited Talk)

Unfortunately Dr. Jones spent most of his time discussing sociology and
providing anecdotes, instead of discussing new results.  I admire the
way he has handled himself overall, but he needs to get back to "science
as usual."  The presentation primarily reproduced those given in
Baltimore.  

An overly brief discussion was given of new results at Los
Alamos, in which Dr. Jones claimed a 3 sigma signal for about 0.08
neutrons per second was seen.  I have to admit that after my first
glance at the plot showing the results, I would not have been surprised
to hear that the data was consistent with zero.  The setup was quite
similar to the original BYU setup, but the electrolyte had been
drastically simplified.

Dr. Jones was the first person I remember mentioning "fractofusion" in 
a talk.  I will have more to say about this below, but the idea is that
cracks develop in the electrode, accompanied by large electric fields
that accelerate a few deuterons to energies at which conventional fusion
becomes likely.  This requires no enhancement of nuclear cross sections,
but runs into several problems associated with generating and
maintaining sufficiently strong fields.  Hagelstein dismissed the idea
in private conversations, claiming that electrons would cancel large
fields long before deuterons (which accelerate about 2000 times more
slowly) could reach 10-100 keV.  He showed no calculations, however, and
the question remains open to my knowledge.

 8:30 -- Experimental Evidence for Cold A. Bertin,M. Bruschi,
     Nuclear Fusion in a Measurement    M. Capponi,S. DeCastro,
     Under the Gran Sasso Massif        U. Marconi,C. Moroni,
                                        M. Piccinini,
                                        N. Semprni-Cesari
                                        A. Trombini,A. Vitale,
                                        A. Zoccoli,
                                        Instituto Nazionale Di
                                        Fisica Nucleare,
                                        Italy
                                        J.B. Czirr,G.L. Jensen
                                        S.E. Jones,E.P. Palmer
                                        BYU

This talk summarized results that are found in the preprint of the same
name.  Since this preprint does not seem to be widely available for some
reason, I will repeat the most important points.

Cosmic ray backgrounds are drastically reduced under the Gran Massif
(muons reduced by 10**6), and natural radioactivity is low.  The entire
gamma-ray background is about 3.4E4 gammas per hour, and the neutron
background is about 5-10 neutrons per hour.  Fused Ti was used in the
original BYU mother earth soup, with three cells each containing about 1
gram of Ti, and all running simultaneously. 

Two NE-213 detectors are used to detect neutrons, one near the cells and
one removed by 8 meters.  Results were shown with various electronic
thresholds set to eliminate gamma-ray backgrounds, which are still much
larger than the neutron signal if not filtered.  
As the threshold is increased the
claimed signal for 2.5 MeV neutrons begins to stand out, although one
begins to cut into this count rate as the threshold is further
increased.  Moshe Gai still believes they are seeing gammas, and that
the only way to discriminate is to use two detectors (more below).  

The rate at which neutrons were seen increased after 1 hour and then
dropped to background rates after another three hours.  The total number
of neutrons collected after background subtraction was 875 +/- 183, 
and their energy spectrum was consistent with 2.5 MeV.  Taking into
account the efficiency of the detectors, and the weight of the samples,
and the total collection time of ten hours,
the neutron production rate seen under the Gran Sasso was claimed to be
consistent with the BYU results.  Note that this result is consistent
with the original high BYU rate of about 0.4 neutrons per second, not their
reduced estimate of about 0.06 neutrons per second.  The discrepancy
between these "high rates" and the fact that Jones continues to
emphasize the lower rates for the BYU results was not discussed.

 8:50 -- Neutron Emission from a        A.De Ninno,A. Frattolillo,
     Titanium-Deuterium System          G. Lollobattista,L. Martinis,
     (Invited Talk)                     M. Martone,L. Mori
                                        S. Podda,F. Scaramuzzi
                                        Centro Ricerche
                                        Energia Frascati, Italy

At least half of Dr. Scaramuzzi's talk focused on their original
results, which are available in a widely distributed preprint.  There is
a good deal of scepticism about these results, focusing on their neutron
detectors and the possibility of getting false signals from vapor
condensation, temperature changes, vibrations, etc.  In each run 100 g
of Ti shavings are degassed at 200 C, placed in D2 gas under a pressure
of 50 bar, then cooled to 77 K.  Finally the temperature rises as liquid
nitrogen levels decrease (why?), and neutrons are seen in bursts.  The
fact that neutrons are seen in bursts of 20 or 40 was explained by
detector saturation, and the fact that they appeared to last for about
55 microseconds was explained by the moderator in the detectors which
will naturally spread a signal over about 60 microseconds.

New results from ENEA were also reported, but my notes are poor.
Repeating the above procedure, counts were seen for three hours during
the heating phase.  I was sceptical of the results reported and would
like to wait for a preprint before saying more.

 9:10 -- The Measurement of Neutron Emission  H.O. Menlove,M.M. Fowler
     from Ti Plus D2 Gas                  E. Garcia,A. Mayer,
                                          M.C. Miller,R.R. Ryan
                                          LANL

                                          S.E. Jones, BYU

This talk provided perhaps the most intriguing new results at the
conference.  During a light-hearted presentation Dr. Menlove reported
seeing reproducible bursts of neutrons in an experimental setup similar
to that at Frascati.  The neutron yields measured to date were too low
to determine energy, so the talk concentrated on total yields.

Once again this group provided copies of their transparencies, which
makes my job much easier.  Ti metal chips and sponge were placed in
pressurized D2 gas with the pressure ranging from 20 atm to 50 atm, and
the amount of Ti from 30 g to 500 g.  The neutrons were measured using
four detectors, the best of which employed 18 3He tubes to achieve an
absolute efficiency of 34%.  The gas cells were actually placed inside
the detectors, with various precautions being taken to guard against
spurious signals resulting from vapor condensation, etc.  Dummy cells
were run simultaneously, and never produced apparent neutron bursts. Two
control counters were placed next to primary counter.  The counters have
been run for more than a month with no spurious bursts.

Random neutron bursts and time-correlated bursts were observed.  The
time spread in individual bursts was about 200 micro seconds.  The
bursts were all observed after the cells were cooled to liquid nitrogen
temperature and allowed to warm for about 40 minutes, with random
emissions seen for at least 12 hours after the sample reached room
temperatures.  "The neutron emission rates were very low and the twelve
hour random emission rate was 0.05-0.2 n/s.  However, this yield was
still 11 sigma above the background.  The instantaneous neutron bursts
were more dramatic with yields several orders of magnitude above the
coincidence background rates."

Correlating the time at which bursts were seen in the warmup phase with
the rate at which the cells warm, they found that bursts seem to come
when the cell is near -30 degrees C.  Each burst consisted of 10-300
neutrons.  Their summary table:


   Sample      Number of bursts       Burst cycle number
   ------      ----------------       ------------------
   Ti-1                4                  3,4
   Ti-6                8                  4,5,6,7,8,9
   Ti-10               2                  5,7
   Ti-11               2                  4

I apologize for not being able to explain each of these columns, but my
notes are not good enough.  The main item to notice is that many bursts
were observed, and reproducibility should not be a problem.

The random emissions observed with three detectors varied in
significance: 4.3 sigma, 5.3 sigma and 11 sigma.


 9:40 -- Upper Limits on Emission Rates of M. Gai,S.L. Rugari,
     Neutrons and Gamma-Rays from ``Cold  R.H. France,B.J. Lund,
     Fusion'' in Deuterided Metals        Z. Zhao, Yale

     (Invited Talk)                       A.J. Davenport,H.S. Isaacs,
                                          K.G. Lynn, BNL

This group has now submitted an article to NATURE, and preprints were
available at the meeting.  I will not provide an extensive summary of
the results.  A variety of electrodes were used, both Ti and Pd.  In all
cases the Pd electrodes were annealed in air, argon or vacuum.  It
appears that in every case the Pd electrodes were only partly immersed
in the electrolyte.  Various electrolytes (including one run with the
original BYU soup) were tried.  In addition, one run was made with
pressurized D2 gas ala Frascati.  No neutrons or gammas were observed
above background.

The neutron detection system used in this experiment was better than
anything employed in experiments where neutrons have been seen.  To be
fair, however, in the runs that used the BYU electrolyte a Ti plate was
used instead of fused Ti.  Moshe Gai agreed to run a cell from BYU.
Hopefully Yale will also receive a cell from Texas A&M that is supposed
to produce heat and/or neutrons.

After all appropriate vetoes are made to remove spurious results, Yale
sees about 2 neutron counts in five days.  Their sensitivity is
obviously good enough to allow them to see neutron production rates
well below what has been claimed in all positive results reported.

11:00 -- An Attempt to Measure Characteristic  R. Fleming,F. Donahue,
     X-Rays from Cold Fusion              S. Mancini,G. Knoll,
                                          B. Heuser,
                                          Univ.  of Michigan

This group took a new approach and looked for Pd K-shell X-rays that
should provide a signature for high energy charged particles inside the
Pd electrode.  Barring some miraculous means of instantly turning energy
released from fusion into heat, the only way to hide fusion products is
to require that all of them be charged particles.  Ignoring the fact
that no one has any idea of how to do this, and the fact that even if
you do you should see an occasional gamma-ray due to collisions with Pd
nuclei (enough to be easily detectable at the milliwatt power level),
one should still see a copious X-ray signal in coming out of thin
electrodes.  Using a Pd foil and 48 mA of current for 5 days, this group
observed no signal at the level of 50 d-d fusions per second.



 1:30 --   Two Fast Mixed Conductor Systems--  A. Belzer,U. Bischler,
           Deuterium and Hydrogen in Palladium S. Crouch-Baker,T.M. Gur,
                                               M. Schreiber,R.A. Huggins

This group has no problems with reproducibility, as it seems that they
always get excess heat when they should and never when they shouldn't.
I will not report on their electrode preparation, as this is described
in many other places.  Suffice it to say that it sounds like they spend
more time on this than anyone else at the conference.

The only measurements Dr. Huggins reported were calorimetric.  He claims
that they are now seeing more excess heat than TOTAL energy put into
their cells during electrolysis, with no induced recombination.  They
are now stirring their electrolyte, with no change in their results.  He
is either being dishonest on this point or his critics were wrong.  He
is willing to run an electrode that produced null results at Caltech as
a check.

I cannot judge the calorimetric results; however, I am baffled by the
lack of any apparent attempt to look for fusion byproducts.  At one
point Dr. Huggins acted as if it were not even clear whether they still
had their old electrolytes, so that someone could check tritium levels.
He seemed to be quite defensive (perhaps justifiably), and acted as if
they had never considered allowing someone else to come in and do the work
involved in looking for neutrons, gammas, tritium or helium.  He
mentioned that they had not had time to do so, but I could not determine
why they were not willing to allow someone else to do so.


 unknown time -- Dufour et al, Bugey, France
                 Neutron detection with low level background

I report this talk simply because their neutron detection is extremely
impressive.  They used an array of 98 NE-320 liquid scintillators
designed to be used in the detection of antineutrinos.  Their efficiency
was 15-17%.  Their reported neutron production rate was 0.4 +/- 1.6
neutrons per hour.  Their detector is more than 10 times as sensitive as 
required to see the lowest level BYU results, but thet ran only a few
cells and all were of the Fleischmann-Pons type.


 4:00 --   Seven Chemical Explanations of     J.O'M. Bockris,N. Packham,
           the Fleischmann-Pons Effect        O. Velev,G. Lin,
                                              M. Szklarzcyck,
                                              R. Kainthla,
                                              Texas A&M

Dr. Bockris postulated seven explanations for excess heat and argued
against each of them. The criterion for success was the ability to
produce 1-10 W/cm**3 for up to 100 hours.

100% recombination of D2 and O2 should do it, but he didn't think anyone
was sufficiently incompetent to have missed this.  Texas A&M
"pessimistically" estimates the recombination rate at less than 2%.

Expose the top part of the Pd rod.  At best you then recombine D2 and O2
on the exposed part of the rod, obtaining about 68 kcal/mole, or about
0.2 W/cm**2.  Texas A&M intentionally exposed rods and found no excess
heat.

The fact that excess heat is never produced when Pd is replaced by Pt
indicates that recombination in the gas alone will not work.

An alpha/beta phase transition in the Pd will only produce about 0.03
W/cm**3.

Even if one assumes a D/Pd ratio of 6, one can only obtain 0.6 W/cm**3
from the formation of the Pd-D "hydride".

If one assumes the entire electrode is somehow involved in the formation
of an alloy involving Li, one can get only 0.08 W/cm**3.

Pauling's ideas don't work.  (Sorry I can't elaborate.)

In conclusion, as a nuclear physicist I will continue to point my finger
at the chemists; but their task of explaining excess heat at these
levels may not be that much easier than ours would be.  I can't judge.
It seems impossible (if this word is to have any meaning) to explain
this heat using fusion, and I'm still not convinced it can't be
explained chemically.


 4:20      Evidence Against Condensed Matter  K.Nagamine,T. Matsuzaki,
           Fusion Induced by Cosmic-Ray Muons K. Ishida,S. Sakamoto,
                                              Y. Watanabe,M. Iwasaki,
                                              H. Miyake,K. Nishiyama,
                                              H. Kurihara,E. Torikai,
                                              T. Suzuki,S. Isagawa,
                                              K. Kondo
                                              University of Tokyo/RIKEN

They used a muon beam to measure the rate of neutron production from
muon absorption in electrolysed Pd.  The rate was about 0.12 neutrons
per muon, not 300.  They pointed out that, as has been mentioned by many
people, there are many problems with trying to use muon-catalyzed fusion
to obtain Jones level neutron production.  The main problems are that
muons are primarily captured on Pd initially and after inducing a
fusion, and that fusion is not rapidly induced even after capture on 
deuterium because the equilibrium spacing between D's is so large.


Thursday, May 25, 1989
----------------------


 8:20 --   Interaction of Deuterium with   F. Besenbacher,B.B. Nielsen,
           Lattice Defects in Palladium    S.M. Myers,P. Nordlander,
                                           J.K. Norskov
                                           University of Aarhus
                                           Denmark

The most interesting result in this talk to me was the claim that the
chance of doubly occupying a site in Pd with D is zero.  One can
multiply occupy a defect in the metal of course, but the octahedral
sites are not multiply occupied.  The speaker acted as if this were
rigorously established, and I certainly have no reason to doubt it.  The
experimental results presented were the result of ion beam implantation.


 8:40 --   Search for Cold Fusion in       S.M. Myers,D.M. Follstaedt,
           Superstoichiometric Palladium   J.E. Schirber,P.M. Richards
           Deuteride Using Ion Implantation  SNL

By using ion implantation this group was able to obtain D/Pd ratios of
up to 1.3 .  This is determined by looking for fusion reaction products
coming from standard reactions of D in the 10 keV beam with D already
implanted.  To look for fusion, this group turned off the beam and just
continued to watch for tritium and protons.  They saw no evidence of
cold fusion.


 9:20 --   Nuclear Fusion from Crack-      F.J. Mayer,J.S. King,
           Generated Particle Acceleration J.R. Reitz
                                           FJM Assoc.,
                                           Univ.  of Michigan
                                           Ford Motor Rsch.  Lab

Once again, this speaker made his transparencies available.  This was
the only talk in which any quantitative discussion of fusion during
crack formation was provided.  The sequence is:

deuterium loading --> lattice stress  --> lattice cracking --> charge
imbalance as gap opens --> large voltage --> deuterons fall through
potential and collide to produce fusion at reasonable energies

Using gap sizes of 0.1 to 1 micron, and assuming an imbalance of 1
electron for every ten lattice cells on the face of the crack, one gets
potential differences of 1-10 kilovolts.

The neutron production rate from fusion increase from 10**-10 per second
per deuteron to about 1 as the energy goes from about 1.4 keV to 10 keV.

Modeling the crack as a capacitor plate shorted out along one side, the
time it takes to neutralize the charge imbalance through electron
conduction should be about the gap size divided by the speed of sound.
This is about 50-500 picoseconds for the above gap sizes.  It takes
about a picosecond for a free deuteron to fall through the above
potentials.

These rather simple arguments were intended to show that fusion induced
by crack formation is plausible, making no obviously absurd assumptions,
at the rates seen by Jones.  One has to fold the above considerations
with a rate at which cracks of various sizes are formed, determine
realistic charge imbalances and electronic response times.  Neutron
production has been observed during crack formation in LiD crystals
(Klyuev et al, Sov. Tech. Phys. Lett. 12, 551 (1986)), but it should be
much easier to set up large fields for sufficient times in dielectrics
than in metals.

---------------------------

Robert Perry
Dept. of Physics
The Ohio State University
Columbus, OH 43210
bitnet: perry@ohstpy
other: perry@public.mps.ohio-state.edu