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Oct. 28, 2016 – By Steven B. Krivit –

The Chilean government and Ministry of Mining are interested in LENR (low-energy nuclear reactions), according to a businessman who met with Chilean government representatives recently about the matter.

Roberto Sone, the president of Sciencenergy, a private company in Valparaíso, Chile, told New Energy Times yesterday about the meeting. Sone provided a Web link to a press release at the Ministry of Mining.

According to the press release, Sone, a mechanical engineer, and his associates at Federico Santa Maria University, spoke at a hearing on Oct. 17 at the Ministry of Mining. There, they met with Jimena Jara, the Chilean undersecretary of energy, and presented a proposal for LENR research. Continue reading »

Tesla Model S on Fire

Oct. 13, 2016 – By Steven B. Krivit –

On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that Samsung has no idea why the lithium-ion batteries in its Galaxy Note 7 smartphones continue to intermittently burst into flames and spontaneously explode. Low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) theorist Lewis Larsen, in Chicago, told New Energy Times that LENRs may be one of several factors that can be triggering these fires.

A LENR event inside a battery could create a microscopic ball of ionized plasma at 4,000-6,000 degrees Celsius, which is hot enough to ignite any materials in the battery. Continue reading »

Stanislaw Szpak

Oct. 13, 2016 – By Steven B. Krivit –

Electrochemist and low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) researcher Stanislaw Szpak, 95, died yesterday, according to his colleague Frank Gordon. Szpak and Gordon were part of a small LENR team at the U.S. Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) in San Diego, California.

The initial core SPAWAR LENR group consisted of Szpak (b. 1920), Pamela Mosier-Boss (b. 1957), and Jerry Smith (b. 1939), a chemist who worked for the Department of Energy (DOE). In the first two decades of the field, the SPAWAR group was the only U.S. government group to consistently publish the LENR research in the open, peer-reviewed literature. A primary reason for the continuation of the SPAWAR LENR work and the publication of the group’s results was the support of Frank Gordon (b. 1944), who, in 1989, was the head of the Department of Anti-Submarine Warfare at the San Diego laboratory, later renamed SPAWAR. Continue reading »

WALTER B. JONES

Sept. 27, 2016 – By Steven B. Krivit –

On May 11, 2016, New Energy Times reported that, on May 4, the U.S. House Committee on Armed Services directed the Secretary of Defense to provide a briefing on low-energy nuclear reactions (LENRs). The briefing was to occur by Sept. 22. Several news outlets, including New Scientist and the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., have incorrectly reported facts about this briefing.

New Energy Times spoke with Nick Mikula, the press secretary for the committee today. Mikula confirmed that the LENR briefing is not part of the “Department of Defense Laboratories: Innovation Through Science and Engineering in Support of Military Operations” hearing, scheduled for tomorrow.

Mikula does not know when the LENR briefing will take place; however, he emphasized important distinctions between briefings and hearings. Briefings are informal and are not open to the public. Hearings involve significant advance preparation and are open to the public. Mikula also told New Energy Times that the briefing was unlikely to result in any public document or announcement.

The LENR directive was sponsored by North Carolina Republican congressman Walter B. Jones. New Energy Times spoke today with Allison Tucker, the communications director for Jones’ office. Tucker did not know when the briefing would take place or who would provide it.

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Questions? Comments? Submit a Letter to the Editor.

Sept. 14, 2016 – By Steven B. Krivit –

A LENR report titled “Investigation of Nano-Nuclear Reactions in Condensed Matter,” with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) logo on the cover page, is circulating on the Internet. The report itself is factual. But it’s only connection to DTRA is that the agency was one of several government organizations that had sponsored research cited in the report. The report was written primarily by low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) researcher Pamela Mosier-Boss. The full story requires historical context.

Mosier-Boss is an analytical chemist who worked at the U.S Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) in San Diego from 1989 to 2015. In 2012, she was abruptly ordered to immediately terminate all of her LENR research, return any unused funds, and cease all further publications on the topic of LENRs. The full story about why she was ordered to terminate her LENR research is explained in my book, Hacking the Atom, Explorations in Nuclear Research, Volume 1.

Mosier-Boss’ report “Investigation of Nano-Nuclear Reactions in Condensed Matter” is a summary of the LENR research at SPAWAR. After her LENR research was terminated, she had to fight to write the report and to win its public release, as she explained to me in an e-mail last year.

“Admiral Brady didn’t want us to accept money to write the final DTRA report,” Mosier-Boss wrote. “In the end, I was allowed to write the report. I can’t share it with anyone who is non-DOD. My department head had me release it DOD only, even though the sponsor ultimately decides the distribution.

“The sponsor tried to get it released, but his superiors required a technical review of the report. We got it reviewed, and the reviewers recommended full unclassified distribution. The report is still in limbo and has been since 2012.”

On April 4, 2016, I sent a Freedom of Information Act request to DTRA for the report. I received nothing, not even an acknowledgment letter.

On Sunday, I contacted Mosier-Boss again to find out more about the report. She and her colleague, Larry Forsley, a researcher with JWK International Group, who is a co-author of the report, worked for four years to get permission to release the report publicly. Forsley, Mosier-Boss wrote, did most of the heavy pushing.

“The project was unclassified, and the DTRA program manager William Wilson agreed it should have public distribution,” Mosier-Boss wrote. “But he had problems at DTRA getting it released. He had to get it reviewed by three reviewers, which is unheard of for a final report. They said it should have public distribution. … We included the distribution statement on the last page in case we get any grief from SSC-Pacific.”

I wrote to Mosier-Boss that the DTRA logo on the cover page on her report looked strange; it is pixilated, and the aspect ratio is wrong. I asked her who put the logo on the report.

“I did,” Mosier-Boss wrote. “I downloaded a copy of it. I thought DTRA would replace the front page with one of their own. But they didn’t. When we wrote technical reports at SPAWAR, they had their own standard cover page. I assumed DTRA did, as well. Apparently, they don’t.”

On Monday, I contacted Ron Lovas, a public information officer at DTRA. After I explained that I had received no response from my April FOIA request and that the document was now showing up on the Internet, he sent me a copy immediately.

I asked Lovas additional questions. Here is our discussion:

Krivit: Is this, in fact, a DTRA report?
Lovas: The documents are authentic.

Krivit: Did DTRA have anything to do with the authorship of this report, and if so, what role did DTRA play?
Lovas: The report was drafted by U.S. government-funded scientists and delivered to DTRA as the final report when the effort was closed out.

Krivit: Did DTRA have anything to do with the release of this report, and if so, where did it release this report?
Lovas: The work done by U.S. government-funded scientists, which is detailed in the final report, was reviewed by the agency and cleared for public release.

Therefore, the document is a SPAWAR report written for DTRA. The minor exception is the single-page DTRA distribution statement that the authors appended to the end of the report.

______________________________________________________________
Questions? Comments? Submit a Letter to the Editor.

Consortium Proposes LENR Research to Chilean Government

Are LENR Processes Causing the Samsung Battery Fires?

U.S. Navy LENR Researcher Stanislaw Szpak Dies

Update on House Committee on Armed Services LENR Directive

The DTRA LENR Report That Isn’t a DTRA Report

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