About Steven B. Krivit and New Energy Times

 

Citations to Krivit’s Books, Publications, and Conference Presentations
Citations of Krivit and New Energy Times in the News Media

Recognizing Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) and Debunking “Cold Fusion”

Steven B. Krivit is an author, editor, publisher, and international speaker who has specialized in Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) research since 2000. He has written extensively about LENRs in four books, peer-reviewed articles in mainstream science journals, and invited chapters for encyclopedias published by Elsevier and John Wiley & Sons. He is an editor of three reference books on nuclear energy research and has written more than 1,000 news articles on nuclear science research. Krivit is an expert in the analysis of science conflict and also on the matters of power balance and fuel supply for thermonuclear fusion.

Recognizing Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) and Debunking “Cold Fusion”

Steven B. Krivit is an author, editor, publisher, and international speaker who has specialized in Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) research since 2000. He has written four books about LENRs and has been an invited contributor of journal and encyclopedia review articles about LENRs and its history. He is an editor of three reference books on nuclear energy research and has written more than 1,000 news articles on nuclear science research. Krivit is also an expert in the analysis of science conflict.

In 2000, he began reporting on the work of credentialed scientists who said that they had obtained experimental evidence of “cold fusion.” However, by 2008, Krivit had identified eight experimental facts that conflicted with the theory of “cold fusion,” and he presented his findings on Aug. 20, 2008, at the American Chemical Society national meeting. The nuclear products observed in LENRs, as well as their pairings, energies, and probabilities, were inconsistent with the nuclear products, their pairings, energies, and probabilities observed in thermonuclear fusion. The experimental evidence nevertheless showed that some kind of nuclear reactions were taking place in LENRs. In 2010, Krivit found that the experimental proof of LENRs as “cold fusion” had been fabricated.

Recognizing the Widom-Larsen Theory

Starting in 2005, Krivit began looking at an idea presented by two newcomers to the field, theorists Allan Widom and Lewis Larsen. On Nov. 10, 2005, Krivit was the first person to begin reporting on the Widom-Larsen Ultra-Low-Momentum Neutron-Catalyzed Theory of Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions. The proposed theory provides the first and, so far, only viable explanation for the experimentally observed nuclear phenomena in LENRs. It proposes that fusion is not involved but that neutrons with ultra-low momentum are the key. Scientists who believed in the “cold fusion” hypothesis rejected the Widom-Larsen hypothesis for a variety of poorly supported reasons.

Amazingly, in 1951, Albert Einstein intuited part of the concept elucidated 54 years later by Widom and Larsen. Although the Widom-Larsen theory was given a “cold shoulder” by most of the first-generation LENR scientists, it has been appreciated and recognized by independent parties outside of the field, including people with Boeing, DTRA, NASA, SPAWAR, and Johns Hopkins University.

Establishing LENRs

The LENR term was introduced by first-generation LENR scientists George Miley and John O’Mara Bockris in 1995. However, most of their peers continued to call the field and research “cold fusion,” partly from habit and partly to continue asserting their belief that LENRs were based primarily on room-temperature fusion.

From 2008 to 2016, Krivit led the initiative to identify the field and research as low-energy nuclear reactions rather than “cold fusion.” By 2020, the term LENR had become more-broadly adopted. The term LENR does not assert the room-temperature fusion hypothesis, and it allows for a variety of interpretations of the underlying process or processes.

In 2015, Krivit collaborated with the U.S. Library of Congress to develop distinct authoritative subject-matter headings: a refinement of the one for “cold fusion” and a new one for LENRs. In 2016, Krivit published the first U.S. books under the new LENR heading.

Publications and Encyclopedias

Link to Steven B. Krivit’s Books, Publications, and Conference Presentations

Krivit is the owner and publisher of the New Energy Times news service. Krivit does not accept any advertisements or outside funding for the news service. He is an author or editor of six books about LENRs. New Energy Times maintains a separate LENR Reference Site, consisting of more than 700 Web pages and 2,000 PDF documents about LENRs including basic information, scientific references, investigation reports, historical references, and archives.

Krivit is the leading author of review articles, encyclopedia chapters, and books about LENRs. He was invited to write and edit for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Elsevier, and John Wiley & Sons. He was an editor for the American Chemical Society 2008 and 2009 technical reference books on LENRs, as well as the editor-in-chief for the 2011 Wiley Nuclear Energy Encyclopedia. His most recent books are the highly acclaimed three-volume Explorations in Nuclear Science series: Hacking the Atom (Vol. 1), Fusion Fiasco (Vol. 2), and Lost History (Vol. 3).

In the Media

Link to Citations of Steven B. Krivit and New Energy Times in the News Media

Krivit and New Energy Times have been quoted or cited on LENRs in the U.S. and internationally, and Krivit has appeared on television and radio discussing LENR research. Although enthusiastic about LENR research, Krivit has also conducted investigations that uncovered significant misleading claims, including those made by Russ George, Andrea Rossi, Michael McKubre, and George Miley.

Lost History of Transmutation Research

While performing research for his book Hacking the Atom, Krivit uncovered an entire body of atomic research that had been forgotten and omitted from history and science books. In the 1910s and 1920s, years before scientists had developed an understanding of the nuclear structure of the atom, many low-energy-input experiments were reported under the term transmutation. It was, in fact, a prequel to the modern era of LENR research.

At the time, this transmutation research was known by scientists and by the general public. It was reported in popular newspapers and magazines, such as the New York Times and Scientific American. Papers were published in the top scientific journals of the day, including Physical Review, Science, and Nature. Prominent scientists in the U.S., Europe, and Japan and even Nobel Prize recipients participated in this research. They reported anomalous production of noble gases and increases in the abundances of rare metals.

However, the experimental results could not be explained by any scientific theory or principle. The results were difficult to replicate and generally were assumed to be the result of experimental error. By the 1930s, it was all dismissed as error. In his book Lost History, Steven Krivit is the first person to have critically examined and reviewed the early 20th century transmutation research. Krivit credits a man named Robert A. Nelson and his book Adept Alchemy for leaving behind the bread crumbs that helped Krivit find this long-forgotten history.

Rutherford Nitrogen-to-Oxygen Transmutation Myth

While conducting research for his book Lost History, Krivit stumbled on a 70-year myth that credited physicist Ernest Rutherford with the discovery of the first artificial transmutation. The credit belonged, instead, to a research fellow working in Rutherford’s laboratory named Patrick Blackett. The myth started with Rutherford, who, in 1932, began claiming the discovery for himself.

In January 2017, Krivit contacted prominent scientific and academic institutions in an effort to correct the recorded history. Scholars at the American Institute of Physics, Atomic Heritage Society, Cambridge University, Imperial College London, the Institute of Physics Digital Education, the Nobel Foundation, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Royal Society, University of California Santa Barbara, the University of Manchester, and the U.S. Department of Energy concurred with Krivit. Although the Nobel Foundation removed the discovery credit from Rutherford’s biography page, it was the only institution to refuse to reassign the credit to Blackett.

Krivit is directly acknowledged on the American Institute of Physics Web site and the Chemistry Views Web site. He was invited to contribute a letter to the Proceedings of the Royal Society A and cited by the U.S. Department of Energy. Krivit was credited by the following representatives: David Surman, the interim chair of the AIP Board of Directors; Malcolm Longair, the director of Development of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge; Tom Whelton, dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Imperial College London; Martin Schröder, vice president and dean, University of Manchester; and Eric Boyle, chief historian, Office of History and Heritage Resources, U.S. Department of Energy.

Fusion Reactor Power Myths

While conducting research for his book Fusion Fiasco, Krivit stumbled on a widespread misunderstanding about the most powerful fusion reactor result. This record-setting result occurred in the Joint European Torus (JET) reactor. This led Krivit to realize that a similar misunderstanding had developed about the projected result for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). The claims about these reactors are the subject of Krivit’s 2011 film “ITER, The Grand Illusion: A Forensic Investigation of Power Claims,” released on April 11, 2021, on Vimeo and YouTube.

JET had been widely reported to have produced thermal power from fusion at a rate of 67 percent of the input electrical power the reactor consumed. Krivit found that that rate was actually only one percent. ITER had been widely reported as designed to produce thermal power from fusion at a rate 10 times greater than the input power the reactor is designed to consume. From 50 megawatts of input power, proponents of ITER claimed the reactor would produce 500 megawatts of thermal power from fusion.

Krivit explained that the 50-megawatt value applied only to the injected heating power used to heat the fuel. Krivit located a dozen sources that revealed that the actual input power for the overall reactor would be 500 megawatts to initiate the reaction and at least 300 megawatts (more likely 440 MW) throughout the reaction. Krivit’s investigation shows that, accounting for conversion losses, and normalizing input and output values for an apples-to-apples comparison, the ITER reactor, if it works correctly, will be equivalent to a zero net-power reactor. Krivit published this information on Oct. 6, 2017, and in the following months and years, major international organizations involved in fusion research corrected their public statements.

An investigation produced by radio journalist Grant Hill aired on the Philadelphia PBS affiliate WHYY on May 7, 2021, and was the first mainstream news outlet to release a follow-up story. Krivit was featured on the radio program along with former ITER scientist Mark Henderson. Hill found that, despite Henderson’s recognition of the need to communicate accurately to public audiences, Henderson had also made misleading public claims about ITER.

National Ignition Facility

On August 29, 2021, Krivit was the first to report the real input energy, 400 MJ, required to operate the lasers at the National Ignition Facility. Many news organizations, deceived by the lab managment’s propaganda, reported that the NIF experiments consumed only 2 MJ.

Fusion Reactor Fuel Myths

For at least 50 years, fusion scientists were telling the public that the fuel for nuclear fusion is “abundant, virtually inexhaustible, and equally accessible to everyone, everywhere.” They were saying that there is enough fuel in ocean water to provide power for humanity for billions of years.

In response to a tip from one plasma physicist, Krivit uncovered the facts that show the required fuel for commercial thermonuclear fusion reactors does not exist and that (as of 2023) no known science or technology can produce it.

Krivit published a preliminary analysis on the tritium fuel issues on July 1, 2021, in slide numbers 67 through 83 of this presentation. Krivit published the first comprehensive analysis on the tritium fuel issues on Oct. 10, 2021, and the first comprehensive analysis on the lithium-6 fuel issues on Jan. 8, 2022.  (See Fusion Fuel Portal) Wired magazine was the first to do a follow-up story, Science magazine was the second.

© 2024 newenergytimes.net