How Low Energy Nuclear Reaction and Cold Fusion Work

The Science:
In the movement towards “cold” fusion, (Which in reality only means NOT Hot fusion.) the practitioners actually do not care for that term. Instead they use: Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) or Chemically Assisted Nuclear Reaction (CANR) or the newest term, employed by the International Conferences on Cold Fusion: Condensed Matter Nuclear Science. For over twenty years, scientists have known the basic principals to make LENR work. It is a natural process that atoms undergo as they decompose and recreate themselves. In fact, it has been proposed that this is how the Universe came about. The primal substance, Hydrogen atoms, bumping into each other, they began decomposing and realigning to form new atoms. This is just one theory of creation.

The Process:
We do understand how the process of change that takes place within the atoms, even though atoms are so small we cannot see them. Each atom has a natural repellence to keep them separated and maintain their continuity. This is called the Coulomb barrier, which has been one of the problems that have to be overcome. As long as the atoms are separated, the neutrons in each atom repel the neutrons of other different atoms. However, when the atoms become close enough together and touch, the natural attraction of the protons takes over and they merge. When this happens they “fuse” together to form a single larger heavier nucleus. This produces the increase in energy. The idea of “Cold” fusion is to get this process to happen without needing an extreme thermonuclear reaction to dissolve this barrier, which has been accomplished by nuclear fission with the hydrogen bomb.

Methods:
Thermonuclear devices attack the negative repulsion factor of all the neutrons in the atom, which was like “splitting” the atom, to dissolve the whole barrier at once. Instead, in cold fusion, each neutron at the edge of the atom, merges with another; it starts what they now call “tunneling” which interaction continues until the “fusion” of the nuclei takes place. A few different ways have been used to accomplish this result. The basic idea is to create some kind of catalyst, or “event” which can initiate the change process. The accepted way used by nuclear fission was heat. Cold fusion proponents have tried magnetism, which can create attraction. It was found that magnetism could manipulate rotation of the electrons around the nucleus. Low energy orbits become successively larger orbits, increasing speed and produce more energy. Pressure devices show promise as these can crowd the atoms together until they begin to fuse naturally. CANR method has been commonly used to initiate the process towards fusion. That is the introduction of a chemical compound that has either already undergone some change, or when introduced with hydrogen, will initiate the process in the base compounds.

Swedish scientists in 1927 had fused hydrogen into helium in an electrolytic cell with palladium electrodes. A variation of his process was used again twenty years ago by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, who used heavy hydrogen, which is called deuterium, with palladium. Deuterium is abundant in seawater, which makes it a good prospect for low cost energy production. Although science has found many of these procedures have worked they had not produced enough “excess heat” to make them practicable for heat production. The Pons, Fleischmann work was the first to establish their process both worked and created positive excess heat. Unfortunately, political and economic forces worked against science, to discredit this research and put cold fusion research back many years.

Outlook:
That has changed now, although there are always skeptics. More work is ongoing that uses these process and others to work towards practical applications. In the past, this has been accomplished many times. However, some were not consistent or only able to produce intermittent bursts of energy. Other times devices were not able to maintain level outputs of energy for any length of time. The working systems today begin with some base compound, which will be interacting with hydrogen. A particular catalyst material or process is then introduced to the compound along with hydrogen, which will be transmuted in some manner when fusion takes place. The ultimate result of the fusion process to be realized is the net energy gain. Whether there is a gain of “excess heat” is determined by measuring the amount of energy input into the process or device, against the energy output. The process or device must be able to sustain the level of energy produced for a substantial period of time. It also needs to be consistent among each use or application of the process or device. All things lead us to believe that science has finally found the answers and the world will soon be better for it.

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