ICCF-17 Update and News
Aug. 17, 2012 – By Steven B. Krivit –
New Energy Times has obtained additional papers from authors attending the 17th International Conference on Cold Fusion in Daejeon, Korea. New Energy Times had obtained and posted one batch of papers on Aug. 10. Today’s batch includes papers from Robert Godes (Brouillion), John Hadjichristos (Defkalion), Tatsumi Hioki (Toyota Central R&D Laboratories), Yeong Kim (Purdue University), Melvin Miles (University of LaVerne), Roger Stringham (First Gate Energies) and Vladimir Vysotskii (Kiev National Shevchenko University). New Energy Times has requested conference papers from the other authors as well as from the conference organizers.
The Toyota replication (the Hioki paper) of the Arata/Zhang experiment is encouraging both for the fact that Toyota measured anomalous heat generation and for the fact that a major industrial corporation is active in LENR research.
The Godes paper, which is co-authored by, among other people, Michael McKubre of SRI International, is interesting for several reasons. First, the authors propose the formation of an ultra-cold neutron, or di-neutron, through inverse beta decay, a weak interaction. The authors list several proposed reaction paths which are identical to those depicted by Widom and Larsen, Mizuno, Iwamura, Swartz, and Hull. (See this New Energy Times article.) The old idea of deuterium-deuterium “cold fusion” (D+D –> 4He) is not shown in the Godes paper.
Unlike Widom and Larsen, Godes and his co-authors do not have a precise and detailed explanation for their theoretical concepts. The authors do not cite Widom-Larsen’s peer-reviewed 2006 publication in European Physical Journal C – Particles and Fields, “Ultra Low Momentum Neutron Catalyzed Nuclear Reactions on Metallic Hydride Surfaces,” or the 2010 Srivastava-Widom-Larsen paper in Pramana – Journal of Physics.
Another interesting fact is that Godes has only worked with normal hydrogen. McKubre, on the other hand has, with rare exception, only worked with deuterium. For this reason, McKubre’s work with Godes represents a major shift. Even more interesting is McKubre’s reversal on the matter of theoretical ideas based on weak interactions and the production of neutrons to trigger LENRs.
On Jan. 7, 2008, during a presentation McKubre gave to members of the Indian Department of Atomic Energy, he said there were no neutrons in LENRs. But Francis Tanzella of SRI International had presented strong evidence for neutrons several months earlier at a conference in Italy. In my own lecture to the Indian Department of Atomic Energy on Jan. 9, 2008, I displayed that SRI International neutron data. Afterwards, McKubre told me his opinion about his own group’s neutron data. He didn’t believe it. “Bullshit” was the precise word he used.
New Energy Times has also obtained a copy of the ICCF-17 abstracts as well as the plenary lecture paper by conference organizers Sunwon Park and Frank Gordon. Please see our ICCF-17 page for all documents.
Park and Gordon make a very strong statement in their abstract in defense of “cold fusion.” However, the best experimental evidence for “cold fusion” turned out to be flawed and the nuclear products and emissions observed in LENRs and their respective energies, pairings, and proportions look nothing like nuclear fusion.
Here is the abstract from Park and Gordon’s’ paper:
The objective of ICCF-17 is to allow international groups of scientists to present their data to further the collective understanding of scientists working in the field and so that skeptical members of the mainstream scientific community, the media, and the public will see the evidence that “cold fusion” is real. Indeed, several groups are currently developing commercial products that produce energy using the “cold fusion” phenomena. Ultimately, the reality of cold fusion will be determined by the public acceptance of commercial devices. People and companies who continue to deny the existence of cold fusion will become irrelevant as the applications are placed into service.
Park and Gordon’s assertion about commercial validation of the hypothetical idea of “cold fusion” is difficult not only because of the lack of scientific support for a fusion-based process but also because commercial attempts based on the fusion paradigm failed to bring applications into service during the field’s 23-year existence.
On Aug. 6, Gordon told New Energy Times that he expected the rest of the ICCF-17 papers to be available on Aug. 13. On Aug. 14, that changed.
“I don’t know when the full papers will be available,” Gordon wrote. “We’re hoping to get them reviewed so that the proceedings can be posted by the end of October.”
Gordon told New Energy Times that the next cold fusion conference, ICCF-18, will take place in the U.S. July 19-26, 2013, at the University of Missouri, Columbia.
Robert Duncan, vice chancellor of research at the University of Missouri, will lead the conference. Duncan gained national attention when he endorsed the LENR research of Energetics Technologies on the CBS “60 Minutes” television show several years ago. According to Gordon, the conference will be co-hosted by the University of Missouri, the University of Illinois and Purdue University.
