On The Cold Fusion Researches{*}
Makoto Okamoto
{*} This essay was written as the foreword to the special issue "Cold Fusion" of International Journal of the Society of Materials Engineering for Resources (Japan) 6-1 (1998).
Makoto Okamoto (
Energy is the most important source for human life. Only the nuclear fission energy is non-fossil energy in our long-long history. We know the second atomic energy can be obtained by Nuclear Fusion reaction of the hydrogen isotopes. The study and technological development of the nuclear fusion energy have been carried out from almost same time as of the nuclear fission energy development. Unlike the nuclear fission energy, the nuclear fusion energy has been used only as hydrogen bomb. The nuclear fission energy can be liberated in the very simple system.
The core of the nuclear fission power plant consists of solid uranium fuel and liquid moderator/coolant in the room temperature. It can be easily realized by the special property of the neutron. The nuclear fission energy should be recognized as [very lucky energy] because every thing in the nuclear fission power plant can be performed in condensed phases at the room temperature. We have to know that we had nuclear fission reactors naturally occurred on the Earth. Unfortunately, the nuclear fusion reactions can be taken place in the plasma phase of the hydrogen isotopes, as in the Sun.
The [Test tube Nuclear Reaction] concept by Fleischmann and Pons consisted of the materials in the condensed phases at the room temperature. If d–d fusion reaction takes place in such a system, we can have a possibility to realize a nuclear fusion reactor similar to the lucky nuclear fission reactors. Their concept was completely unacceptable so far to the today's physics. But we never forget a phrase [What we know is like a mole hill, but what we do not know is like a mountain].
Many researchers have carried out many, many replication trials and several approaches have been tried to find the evidences of the d–d nuclear reactions in condensed materials. Even their hands could not succeed the replication of the Fleischmann/Pons phenomena. They have included Fleischmann/Pons reported different results in every time. The possible reason why the replications were unsuccessful may be that the conditions of the experimental could not be reproduced completely, because we must obtain the same results, when we can replicate the experimental conditions completely.
From the very poor reproducibility, the cold fusion phenomena had to be recognized as tremendously complicated phenomena overlapped strongly in chemistry, electrochemistry, nuclear chemistry, nuclear physics, metallurgy, calorimetry, and so on. Not a few researchers have found that reproducibility to catch the evidences of the anomalous phenomena were so poor. In this stage, they should know that the anomalous phenomena is governed by many complicated parameters, and should check the reproducibility of their experimental conditions as severe as possible. Unfortunately, most of the researchers did not care of the reproducibility of their experimental conditions. They were longing to find more intense evidences by modifications of the parameters with very poor scientific bases.
If, like Fleischmann and Pons concept, the anomalous phenomena are caused from the d–d nuclear fusion reactions, the distance between D and D atoms has to be tremendously shortened as expected in muon-catalyzed fusion model. But, there has been no models to accumulate deuterium with anomalously high density in Pd cathode to increase the reaction probability of the d–d nuclear fusion. The anomalously high density of the deuterium is only the base to find a way to use word of [fusion] in their discussions.
Moreover, there have been not a few reports in which instead of deuterium, protons induced some anomalous phenomena, such as very big excess heat generation, nuclear transmutations, etc. Even if the results reported were true, we cannot find any bases by which the results could be explained scientifically. In these cases, they have to obtain the same results by replication of their experiments. With poor reproducibility, nobody can approve the occurrence of the anomalous phenomena.
Experiment is only one method to find new phenomena and to verify the new phenomena to be true. To verify, we should obtain the same results with same conditions, and we should use the approved techniques in every issue. In the basic research program of the New Hydrogen Energy Research Project, there have been a series of experimental studies based on the [classic approaches], and found very interesting facts. These studies may be good examples to wipe out the dark cloud over the so-called cold fusion researches. I still now have an activity to find a possibility to utilize the nuclear fusion energy in some lucky concept like the nuclear fission energy systems.