Artist’s visualization of 1MW plant on its way to “the customer.” Image courtesy JB Salvage.

Oct. 14, 2012 – By Steven B. Krivit –

New Energy Times has published three articles to bring our reporting of Andrea Rossi and his Energy Catalyzer hoax to a close.

On Oct. 11, we published transcript excerpts from my Bologna, Italy, video interviews of Rossi and his colleagues.

Also, on Oct. 11, we published “Rossi Investigation Summary.”

Today, we published “Chronology and Dramatis Personae in Andrea Rossi’s Confidence Game.”

Our Web page “Andrea Rossi Energy Catalyzer Investigation Index” provides links to these and many more resources on this story.

Oct. 8, 2012 – Article by New York Times, Photos by Steven B. Krivit –

The world’s most energetic laser has failed to meet its latest deadline for achieving ignition, the New York Times reports.

Source: New York Times

After spending more than $5 billion to build and operate a giant laser installation the size of a football stadium, the Energy Department has not achieved its goal of igniting a fusion reaction that could produce energy to generate power or simulate what happens in a nuclear weapon.

The latest deadline for achieving ignition was last Sunday, Sept. 30, the end of fiscal year 2012, but it passed amid mounting concerns that the technical challenges were too great to be mastered on a tight time schedule.

Congress will need to look hard at whether the project should be continued, or scrapped or slowed to help reduce federal spending.

Story Continues Here

Here are some photos I shot of NIF during a tour last year. Click each one to see larger versions. Continue reading »

Sept. 27, 2012 – By Steven B. Krivit –

[This is the fourth of a four-part series. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here.]

This article reports on low-energy nuclear reaction research performed by Brian Ahern, an independent researcher from Boxborough, Mass. Ahern has been researching LENRs for the past four years. He has worked on the nanomaterial and hydrogen-isotope-gas-absorption LENR method. His LENR research was partially sponsored by the Electric Power Research Institute, an independent research company that provides technology, policy and economic analyses to the companies that produce 90 percent of the electricity generated and delivered in the United States.

Ahern’s intention was to replicate the nanomaterial and hydrogen-isotope-gas-absorption experiment developed by professors Yoshiaki Arata and Yue-Chang Zhang at Osaka University beginning in 2005. (See New Energy Times story here.)

Since then, other groups, mostly in Japan, attempted replications of the Arata/Zhang work. These included a Technova-sponsored group at Kobe University, as well as a group at the Toyota Central Research and Development Laboratories in Nagakute, Aichi, Japan. (See the second and third articles in this four-part series.)

Continue reading »