Why haven't they invented...

Cold fusion?

A MERE 93 million miles from Earth is the sun, our closest star. It is so massive that it contains 98 per cent of the total matter of our solar system and 1.3 million Earths would fit inside it.

The sun is a massive ball of hydrogen and helium, that has burned brightly for the last 4.6 billion years. It supplies our planet with its energy needs, either directly or indirectly. But what powers this massive fire ball? The answer is nuclear fusion.

Deep within the sun’s core, where the temperature reaches over 15 million degrees and the pressure is more than 340 billion times the pressure on the Earth’s surface, atoms of hydrogen collide with each other at extreme speed forming helium and releasing the excess energy.

Every second, 700 million tonnes of hydrogen are converted into helium, releasing 384 yottawatts of energy (that’s an astonishing number every second)! So wouldn’t it be useful if we could use the fusion reaction of hydrogen to produce energy on Earth? Absolutely, but the problem is that recreating the high temperature and pressure of the sun on Earth isn’t easy. Hydrogen nuclei strongly repel each other normally but in the high temperatures and pressures of stars they collide furiously releasing energy.

Fusion power has been achieved on Earth though, primarily in nuclear fusion bombs (hydrogen bombs), and in controlled experiments. But commercial fusion power to produce electricity may be several decades away. Many methods are being explored including the use of lasers to superheat the hydrogen.

But another option, that may be able to avoid the need for such high temperatures, is cold fusion. This mechanism for the production of energy would see hydrogen atoms colliding at around room temperature.

The idea originated from experiments by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleishmann, two electrochemists, in the late 1980s. During experiments with electrolysis they noticed an unexplained increase in temperature (from 30 degrees to 50 degrees), which they attributed to the fusion of hydrogen atoms in the “heavy water” they were using. Heavy water contains deuterium – atoms of hydrogen with a neutron in their nucleus. Yet problems with their theory arose after the scientists were unable to repeat their experimental results.

Nevertheless, since then many scientists have tried to generate cold fusion reactions in the lab but with little success.

Recently two Italian scientists, Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi of the University of Bologna, announced that they developed a cold fusion device capable of producing 12,400W of power with an input of just 400W.

Rossi and Focardi claim that not only do they know how to build a cold fusion reactor, but that they already have. The say they have tested it, are able to mass produce them and will have them ready to ship in the next three months. Unfortunately, they say they don’t really understand how their reactor works but maintain it takes in nickel and hydrogen and produces copper and a lot of energy. They also claim their reactor has been powering their factory for the last two years but won’t tell anyone where it is.

The scientific community wants little to do with Rossi and Focardi and the pair had to create their own journal to get their scientific paper published.

This isn’t a good sign that cold fusion has been discovered. Cold fusion, or indeed fusion power in general, would potentially remove our dependence on fossil fuels. Deuterium, the main fuel for fusion reactions, is abundant in our oceans. Also, nuclear fusion doesn’t produce the toxic waste.

So, cold fusion is likely to remain the alchemy of science for a while yet (unless our Italian friends are telling the truth).

It seems more likely that “hot” fusion will form part of our planet’s energy production in the coming decades but, for the moment, your best chance of seeing fusion power in action is by studying the sun.

frogblog.ie