In the modern history of news, reports of ‘cold fusion’ in 1989 became the ‘biggest news story’ of all time

A bigger story than even the first manned landing on the moon!

This post begins to uncover the mystery of who’s out to kill cold fusion! It’s a far more dramatic tale than ‘who killed the electric car.’ Most importantly because cold fusion refuses to die.

Why are the mass media avoiding publication of last weeks report on the industrial success of cold fusion?

Following a quarter of a century of ‘spin mastered’ controversy the reported demonstration of a working megawatt cold fusion machine powering an American factory in a year-long proof doesn’t even rate a blip in the news. Now that is just plain suspicious!

For a very few people cold fusion is a story they have followed in science for a long time, some like me for more than 25 years. For most the response is “cold what”? I became ‘hooked on cold fusion’ when back in 1989 I was working in the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto California. There I heard about cold fusion the morning after it was announced when I walked to my regular coffee break room on the floor of the institute where I worked. For reasons that will become clear as you read on I also have accepted the conspiracy exposed that has fought to suppress it for so many years.

The room had been taken over by the nuclear power group who had a big TV set up and a video recording of the press conference from the day before on-screen. The nuclear engineers were there with notebooks, measuring tapes, and ‘slide rules’ making measurements of what could be seen on-screen and reverse engineering the ‘cold fusion’ reactor that was shown in the TV news press conference.

On screen we could all see the two inventors in Utah, of all places, holding the device in their hands. They told the story of their incredible moon shot. Their names were Martin Fleischmann (the elder professor emeritus/guru) and Stanley Pons (well-respected Chairman of the university Department of Chemistry) both highly respected electrochemists.

Their cold fusion reactor was no more complicated than a simple test tube, yet the results they claimed were so profound that if true it would become an infinite safe clean source of energy to power the world where the fuel cost would be essentially zero as the fusion fuel was the hydrogen atoms in water!

The EPRI room filled with nuclear scientists and energy industry engineers was wild with excitement and all manner of conversation from the most learned speculations about it being transformational energy technology that might well end the use of fossil fuels and in more cerebral domains how it must be happening due to some ‘theoretical’ loophole provided by quantum physics!

Here’s the original televised cold fusion press conference from March 1989

It was a day full of bad news for the oil industry as that same day the super-tanker Exxon Valdez was run onto the rocks in Alaska creating the largest oil spill in history.

Good News For The Planet But Not Welcomed By All As Trillions Invested In Other Energy Resources and Technologies To Become Stranded Assets

By the end of the day the EPRI nuclear engineers had a design on paper and within a few days they had replication experiments underway in neighboring Stanford scientific labs. Every day coffee break was a post-doctorate education as ideas were brainstormed. The results of the first experiments soon came in.. IT JUST WORKS! Given that the EPRI group represented an industry with hundreds of billions invested in the known world of energy this news that a wonderous unknown world filled with low hanging energy fruit was at hand was not met with joy by all.

So what happened. We all are familiar with the mythical stories of big energy, big money, and big power insiders being on the prowl to suppress great energy developments. Most of the claims in that arena are so outlandish as to be impossible to make sense of. The car that runs on water instead of gasoline or worse… the stuff of Area 51 and TV shows like the X-Files. But cold fusion was certainly real and revolutionary so extra-ordinary efforts to kill it would be needed.

Cold fusion would soon become another of those urban myth stories that would be spin mastered as ‘too good to be true.’ Soon countless testimonials from ‘experts’ proclaimed that it was ‘against the laws of physics,’ the result of simply dumb mistakes by incompetent scientists – after all it came of Utah of all places not exactly a Zion of Science, or it was just plain fraud. Half a dozen books have been written about it. This blog has more than you are likely to be willing or able to absorb about the ‘depth and breadth’ and just how ‘real, ready, and revolutionary’ cold fusion really is. If you think the story/movie “Who Killed The Electric Car” revealed nefarious behind the scene activities just wait for the full story of Cold Fusion plays out.

Present Day and Data

Last week and more than a year after an especially noteworthy cold fusion demonstration project began some details have began to appear, much in a formal press release. The story revolves around one particular branch of cold fusion different from the test tube liquid experiments of Fleischmann and Pons that were revealed in 1989. This form of cold fusion takes place in an industrial site in Florida in a dry test tube heated to a white-hot temperature to begin, HOT by any human notion but still cold in the context of where science has said real fusion takes place – in the center of stars or in hydrogen bombs. There the temperature is millions of degrees, ten thousand times hotter, so this report is still, in the world of science, COLD.

What was known about the Florida Fusion is that an Italian inventor by the name of Andrea Rossi had entered into an agreement with a US Venture Capitol investment by the name of Industrial Heat to demonstrate, and thus prove, the economic viability of a cold fusion plant called an E-CAT that was designed to deliver megawatts of useful heat in an industrial setting for at least 350 of a 400 day test.

As it happened the test was able to meet the 350 day milestone on day 350, which was about a month ago. Review of the performance of the cold fusion machine needed to be completed by all those involved and that was going on secretly until last week. The the news began to come out and the news cycle began, meanwhile the Florida E-Cat continues to power the Florida factory.  IT JUST WORKS!

The limited license agreement Rossi signed with the US Venture capital firm guaranteed that when the 350 day test was a success $89 million dollars would be paid to Rossi’s Leonardo Corporation by Industrial Heat which would then be able to build and deliver proven industrial scale cold fusion to American industry as fast as they could take orders (reportedly already backlogged), build, and install this energy revolution. Rossi and Leonardo Corporation would then begin delivering the technology to the rest of the world and indeed have reported to be about to do so with British and Scandinavian industrial developers.

A World Changing Energy Revolution Not Without Drama

Five days after the report on the success of the year-long Florida E-CAT operation Rossi asked for and was refused the $89 million payment Industrial Heat had agreed to pay. Rossi is no inventor bumpkin and had been careful and watchful with regard to his VC investor, one never knows in this world whether a VC investor is a ‘venture capital’ or ‘vulture capital’ investor. The oldest and most prominent game in the book between VC’s and Inventors is revealed in the omnipresent joke in such circles as to the stage in every new technology venture known as the ‘shoot the inventor stage.’ Rossi rightly immediately filed a lawsuit against IH to enforce the agreements they made with him.

The immediate filing of the law suit, documents covering same are all over the internet is clear evidence that Rossi who has his reputation and the value of his inventions intellectual property and patents on the line has to do this. If he were not absolutely sure that the data would define the drama he’d never do so but he has. Now it will be just a matter of legal time for the facts to become clear as to whether IH pays up and retains the American license on the technology or the whole thing goes up in a puff of cold fusion smoke. Most likely this is imply business as usual about the transfer of a large sum of cash, $89 million. Such cash transfers almost always are delayed while the parties strut and posture before coming to a ‘settlement agreement.’

One thing is for certain IH who has repeatedly made glowing statements about their trust in Rossi’s technology. They have reportedly even filed patent claims naming Rossi as inventor but with rights to said patents vested in IH. As proof of their ability and intent they have said they have raised scores of millions of dollars from the likes of major institutional investors, including $50 million from the Woodford Equity Income Fund. IH has the most to lose in this. If they are found as Rossi alleges to have not abided by either the letter or the spirit of the agreements they will be lost in a new world powered by cold fusion.

This isn’t a fantasy game and of course the drama is far deeper, wider, and more involved that what meets the eye at this point in time. We’ll be watching with bated breath to see the developments and outcomes and report with frequent updates to this on-going saga.

The question remains on why the major new media are not all over this story. You be the judge as to whether there is a news conspiracy exposed.

Below is a collection of links to posts relating some of the current cold fusion related stories afoot. There are many postings on this ‘atom-ecology blog‘ and elsewhere detailing the history and landscape of cold fusion.

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