Ball of Con Fusion – Part 2

In my previous post, I examined our current mix of energy sources and described why our continued reliance on fossil fuels has a wide variety of negative environmental consequences beyond contributing to climate change.  While wind, solar and other renewable sources have the potential to meet a higher percentage of our energy needs, they are not likely to completely fill the gap that would be created by completely abandoning the burning of fossil fuels. My post concluded with a brief discussion of nuclear fusion as a potential fuel for our future energy needs.

Fusion holds the promise of an energy source that does not release CO₂ or other greenhouse gases and generates very little waste.  It would use cheap, abundant seawater as its fuel.  It wouldn’t carry the risks of nuclear fission that led to the accidents at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.  Of course, after 60 years of trying, scientists have not yet solved the mystery of a controlled fusion reaction that could be used as a source of power generation. 

However, in February 2014 scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California reported that they had achieved a milestone of sorts in the quest to obtain a controlled fusion reaction.  Their experiment resulted in more energy being generated from the fuel core than the amount of energy that went into it.  A Washington Post article by Joel Achenbach described the breakthrough.  In his article, Achenbach quoted a scientist from the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory as saying, “In 30 years, we’ll have electricity on the grid produced by fusion energy – absolutely.”  Achenbach pointed out that one of the short-term problems of achieving further progress is lack of funds.  Congress appropriated only $500 million for scientific research into fusion in the federal budget for 2014.  He also quoted a New Jersey Congressman as lamenting the fact that the U.S. is losing leadership in fusion energy research to Europe, Japan, South Korea and China.  One wonders, however, why this has to be a competition.  Wouldn’t breakthroughs in fusion research benefit every country on earth?  This would seem to be an area where nations could pool their resources if it could mean achieving success more rapidly.

So if fusion is 30 years away or more, are there any other glimmers of hope out there that hold the promise of cheap, non-polluting energy?  Perhaps you remember something about “cold fusion” being achieved many years ago.  Way back in 1989, scientists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann reported achieving a fusion reaction.  They claimed to achieve it not at intensely high temperatures like those on the sun, but at normal room temperatures.  The early excitement of their discovery soon faded as other scientists were unable to replicate the results.  Also, the science of what happened in the reaction was murky.  Within a few weeks of the Pons/Fleischmann announcement, their discovery was described as “junk science,” and cold fusion as a concept was declared dead by no less an authority than the New York Times.

Despite the storm of criticism, research continued on cold fusion, or as it was renamed “Low Energy Nuclear Reactions” or “LENR.”  Twenty years after it had been declared dead, CBS News in an April 2009 report on its 60 Minutes program declared that “Cold Fusion Is Hot Again.”  CBS reported on work being done by Michael McKubre at SRI International, which is an independent, nonprofit research institure.  McKubre’s work seemed to confirm that whatever one calls the reaction, it was producing more energy than it was using.  CBS hired a renowned physicist, Robert Duncan, who was (and still is) Vice Chancellor of Research at the University of Missouri.  CBS News asked him to evaluate the results of experiments at Energetics Technologies – a laboratory in Israel that had reported the largest gains in energy as a result of LENR.  After studying their methodology and reviewing their results, Duncan concluded that “the excess heat was quite real.”

More recently, a January 2014 article by David Hambling in the UK edition of Wired magazine concluded that “LENR is fringe science, but continues to progress stealthily into the mainstream.”  According to the article, much of the current work on LENR is being done in the business world rather than by the government.  Italian inventor Andrea Rossi developed a LENR reactor he calls an Energy Catalyzer or E-Cat.  Derided as a hoax by some, it was reported in May 2013 that the E-Cat’s production of energy was verified by a panel of independent scientists.  Yet plenty of skeptics remain. 

Hambling’s Wired article also mentioned that the U.S. Department of Energy recently announced that it was providing some funding for LENR projects, so at least the U.S. government gives some credence to this technology.  Its advocates claim that commercialization of LENR as an energy source is a lot closer than it is for hot fusion. 

As non-scientists, there’s not much any of us can do to hasten the development of a clean energy source to take the place of fossil fuels.  Perhaps the best we can do is encourage efforts in the most promising technologies by asking our representatives in Congress to stop subsidizing fossil fuels and to start subsidizing energy sources that can meet our needs without poisoning our environment and contributing to global warming.  Beyond that, all we can do is continue to hope for a near term breakthrough in one of these technologies that would permit us to stop extracting and burning fossil fuels.