Naturwissenschaften Publishes Krivit’s Critique of Storms’ LENR Review

Aug. 18, 2013 – By Steven B. Krivit –

On Aug. 15, Naturwissenschaften published my peer-reviewed comment that corrected two significant errors by Edmund Storms in his review of low-energy nuclear reaction research published in Naturwissenschaften in 2010.

Storms is a retired radiochemist who worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He has long been a promoter of the idea of deuterium-deuterium “cold fusion” and is the author of a 2007 book on the topic. Moreover, in 2010, he was selected by Naturwissenschaften to be the associate editor responsible for any LENR papers submitted to the journal.

Storms, like many scientists who have been involved in this field, has not adjusted his initial hypothesis of “cold fusion” despite more recent experimental and theoretical evidence. Newer research disproves the idea of appreciable rates of deuterium nuclei overcoming the Coulomb barrier at room temperature — in other words, “cold fusion.” The same evidence, however, supports the hypothesis of neutron and weak-interaction-based nuclear processes.

The first few paragraphs of my Naturwissenschaften comment follow:

“Storms’ paper, although replete with excellent experimental evidence, contains two significant errors. The first error is that Storms writes that, except for helium-4, all other nuclear phenomena in LENRs are a ‘side issue.’ They are not.

“Storms writes that ‘a search for the required nuclear product was rewarded with helium production being identified as the major reaction.’ His conclusion about helium-4 is not defensible because most experimentalists made no attempt to analyze for all possible products. Those who did found other energetic phenomena that could also explain the excess heat.

“Storms’ second error is that he gives examples in which researchers found no excess heat with normal hydrogen, but he omits other hydrogen experiments that did.”

For continued progress, reviews of the LENR field should include examples of a representative breadth of the experimental research. Storms excluded crucial research in his review, apparently in order to promote “cold fusion.”