Cold Fusion News
Cold Fusion Energy & LENR News
Rossi: Three Ecat Units on the Way to America
Andrea Rossi has confirmed that three of his one megawatt ecat low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) units were shipped to the USA in April. In posts on his blog Rossi said that one industrial ecat unit and two experimental ecats were shipped to his unidentified USA partner.
Rossi stated that the units are going by ship and that it will take about 20 days for the units to reach the United States. Rossi gave no indications to the identity of the partner and he declined to say whether it was a company listed on the stock exchange. Rossi also promised that photos of the units will be published at some point.
In another post Rossi stated that the Units to be delivered will include: one low temperature industrial plant capable of generating one megawatt (1MW) of heat. His Leonardo Corporation will also ship one gas fired one megawatt ecat and one hot ecat plant capable of producing temperatures of around 800 degrees Celsius. Those units will be studied for industrialization.
Rossi wants Public Demonstration eCat Plant in Sweden
Andrea Rossi wants to build a plant to publicly demonstrate his e-cat low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) in technology this year. In posts on his blog Rossi indicated that his Northern European licensee HydroFusion wants to build a demonstration plant using the ecat technology somewhere near the Swedish capitol of Stockholm.
Stockholm could be home to an Ecat Demonstration Plant
Rossi also stated that the purpose of this plant would be to generate steam for heating purposes. Many communities in Sweden have public heating systems where a central plant generates heat for an entire neighborhood or town. I imagine Rossi wants to test his technology for such a purpose.
Rossi didn’t state if the plant would be built or tested in conjunction with the Swedish military. The Swedish military has shown some interest in LENR and ecat technology in the past. One possible test for ecat would be to heat a Swedish military base.
Defkalion plans to Unveil LENR device in August
Defkalion Green Technologies is planning to unveil an improved version of its low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) technology at the National Instruments NI Week corporate conference in August. The company’s CEO Alex Xanthoulis made that revelation to Pure Energy Systems’ Sterling D. Allan in an interview last week.
Defklaion seems to have made a lot of progress with its Hyperion LENR technology if claims made to Allan by Xanthoulis and his colleague Symeon Tsalikoglou can be believed. The Greek company which has relocated to Vancouver, British Columbia, has also gone much farther in commercializing LENR than any other organization if these assertions are correct.
Xanthoulis said that Defkalion has been approached by 450 different companies interested in licensing its technology. Unfortunately, neither he nor Tsalikoglou named any of these companies. They also claimed that they are working out license agreements with 20 companies but didn’t name any of those organizations either. They did claim that one of these companies is one of the largest auto manufacturers in Europe. That might be FIAT which is based in Italy where Defkalion has a research facility. FIAT currently owns Chrysler one of the Big Three American automakers.
New Obama Energy Policy and Energy Secretary no help for Cold Fusion
There seems to be little or no help for low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) or cold fusion research in President Obama’s new energy policy proposal. This is surprising in light of all the recent progress in the field. Some of which has even come from a US government agency NASA.
Obama will ask Congress to set aside $2 billion Uncle Sam receives from offshore oil revenues for energy research. On paper this sounds like a good idea but the problem is that the money would be spent on so-called green technology rather than promising fields like LENR or small scale hot fusion. The equivalent of this in 1903 would have been turning Henry Ford down for a loan to use the money to develop an improved horse and buggy.
Another problem and opportunity is that Obama doesn’t have the power to appropriate a cent. Only Congress can do that and there’s no guarantee that Congress will go along. The truth is Congress probably won’t approve the Obama plan because Obama’s fund would be outside of Congressional control. Hopefully Congress will divert some of the money away from the green technology boondoggle and to real research.
Swedish Government Reveals Cold Fusion Research
A government agency connected with the Swedish military has revealed that it is conducting low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) or cold fusion experiments. The experiments reportedly involve nickel and hydrogen reactions similar to those in Andrea Rossi’s ecat device.
Swedish infantry demonstrate the Carl Gustav Rocket launcher
The research is being conducted by the Defense Material Agency or FMW, Sweden’s equivalent to the America DARPA (Defense Advanced Projects Agency). Internet rumors indicate that DARPA is interested in LENR and might be the mysterious purchaser of Rossi’s ecat. Rossi has admitted that the first customer for his device is a military but he hasn’t said which military.
The FMW revelations revealed at the LENR News blog raise some intriguing possibilities. The FMW and not DARPA might be Rossi’s customer. Rossi has some connections to Sweden, the Northern European licensee for ecat Hydro Fusion is based in that country. Rossi has been given favorable coverage in the Swedish media and two prominent Swedish scientists have examined ecat and vouched for it.
Media Finally “Discovers” NASA LENR Experiments
The mainstream media or at least tech media has finally picked up on the low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) or cold fusion work being done at NASA and some of its implications. At least three stories about Joseph Zawodndy’s work at the Langley Research Center in Virginia are floating around online.
Phys Org writer Bill Silberg notes this means that average people could have nuclear reactors in their basements. He writes about the possibilities of LENR-powered water heaters, home heating systems, and electric production in the home. Another version of the story at GizMag and Extreme Tech notes that Zawodny’s process means that the fusion dream might be soon achieved.
This media attention indicates that NASA is serious about LENR and might soon be able to produce some sort of credible evidence to back up these claims. Zawodny would not be talking openly to the media if he couldn’t. The Gizmag piece quotes Zawodny’s boss Dennis Bushnell as saying that 1% of the world’s nickel production could meet the world’s energy needs at a quarter of the cost of coal if LENR is perfected. Bushnell wouldn’t be saying that unless he had something he could use against critics.
Black Swan Creator’s Latest Work has Intriguing Implications for LENR
The latest work from one of our greatest living philosophers, Nassim Nicholas Taleb creator of the Black Swan theory; has some interesting implications for Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) or cold fusion research. It also justifies the work of independent inventors such as Andrea Rossi and those involved in the Martin Fleischman Memorial Project.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb he looks more like a gangster than a philosopher
In a chapter of his latest book Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder Taleb conclusively demonstrates that many major modern technologies were invented by independent tinkerers with little or no input from established science. He even provides a list of such inventions on page 218 of the book. The list includes:
- The jet engine created by tinkering engineers and mechanics with little or no understanding of the science behind it not physicists as is often claimed. Taleb notes that Rutgers University History Professor Philip Scranton provided the proof of this and has delivered lectures on it.
LENR Researchers Making Slow but Study Progress
Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) researchers out there seem to be making slow but steady progress. No big breakthroughs are coming out but posts at Andrea Rossi’s blog and the Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project indicate some progress is occurring.
Andrea Rossi admits that he has produced some results with his ecat LENR device that he really doesn’t understand. He recently admitted that there is a strange energy side effect. Unfortunately it’s difficult to tell what this this is because Rossi refuses to reveal the inner workings of the reactor. He claims this is because he is having a hard time getting it patented due to recent patent law changes.
Rossi has also stated that the third party verification of the ecat claims he has promised is coming. It’s unclear when because Rossi himself doesn’t know when it will be published. The Third Party investigators apparently returned to Rossi’s facilities and conducted another round of testing in Mid-January.
Home Experiments show Independent Inventors are the future of Cold Fusion and Energy
Recent developments show that independent or back room inventors are the future of cold fusion and possibly nuclear energy in general. Slate magazine writer Charles Seife is right on in his criticism of big science’s efforts to harness fusion. If we rely on giant government projects to solve our energy problems solutions like low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) and hot fusion will always be twenty years in the future.
Independent inventors on the other hand are likely to provide working solutions for several reasons:
- First they are not bound by bureaucracy, politics and red tape. The guy in the next cubicle can’t shut them down and steal their piece of the budget by bad mouthing them at the water cooler.
- Second such lone wolves are free to pursue areas of research that may not be considered appropriate, politically correct or respectable by the people who write the checks.
Why is there so Much Resistance to LENR?
Even though Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) seems to be the best hope for solving humanity’s energy problems there seems to be a lot of resistance to it. Why are people including scientists, politicians and businessmen so reluctant to acknowledge the New Fire’s potential?
Part of the reason is the nature of cold fusion or the New Fire, it is simply outside most people’s understanding. Most people simply don’t know what it is and those that do reject it because mainstream science rejects it. The media refuses to cover LENR in the US largely because organized science has rejected it or worse branded it a fraud. The failure of government to acknowledge cold fusion has similar origins.
So why are scientists and others so reluctant to even take a look at LENR? Even when there is quite a bit of evidence that there is a real phenomenon that should be investigated? Here are a few hypothesizes: