https://arxiv.org/pdf/2208.07245v2
Cold nuclear fusion is real! But it’s also extremely lame. Apparently when deuterium gas is put in contact with solid palladium metal the gas can find its way into the crystalline metal structure and fill voids in the lattice of palladium atoms and the structure of the metal lattice can somehow shield the deuterium nucleii from each other’s positive charges in order to fuse into a helium atom (²H + ²H → ⁴He).
Unfortunately, the rate of fusion is so low that it’s barely detectable. And if energetic means such as lasers are used to enhance the rate then the energy balance is extremely poor with much more energy put in to speed up the reaction than is produced by the fusion reaction. As a practical energy source this would be described by the technical term “lousy.”
But all is not yet lost. The authors of the paper speculate if three separate accelerating processes are employed simultaneously there is the potential to produce the forty orders of magnitude improvement needed to make cold fusion a useful energy source.
Forty orders of magnitude. Hmm. That’s a lot of orders of magnitude you know. That’s 1040. That’s a really, really big number. If I had 1040 pennies I’m pretty sure it would form a black hole of pennies. It’s a lot.
So somehow they think they can increase the fusion rate that much? Hmm.
So I really like the idea of cold fusion. The fact that you can take palladium and heavy hydrogen at ambient temperatures and somehow get a nuclear reaction that produces really clean energy is extremely appealing to me. It sounds like what E. E. “Doc” Smith used as his source of energy for interstellar flight in the “Skylark” series of space operas. It’s amazingly exciting. But 1040 anything is a lot. So I’ve decided not to hold my breath or invest heavily in the technology or rip the oil burner out of my basement just yet.
The good thing about cold fusion research is that you don’t need billions or even hundreds of millions of dollars to work on it. You don’t need magnetic containment to avoid your nuclear plasma from eating through the metal walls of your reactor. And you don’t need giga-watt lasers to blast a pellet of boron hydride or anything else that would break the budget of any second world nation. It can all be done in a lab with all the stuff found in MIT or even Brooklyn College for that matter. So I’m all for research into this avenue of science. After all twenty years ago cold fusion was declared a hoax and that turned out to be wrong. Who knows what else they’ll find. Maybe if you use alloys of several of the platinum group elements the geometry of the spaces in the lattice will make the process run at some phenomenally faster rate. Maybe not 1040 times faster but something reasonable and that would be enough to throw the whole thing into the range of practical applications. But to reiterate I won’t be holding my breath.
But it is something cool to think about. Or even write into an sf story! But instead of palladium I’m going to make it tantalum. It’s just cooler.
Workable cold fusion, Jimmy Hoffa, Amelia Earhart, DB Cooper, Jack the Ripper and the Zodiac murders. All will not be solved in my lifetime and maybe not for another 200 years, if ever.
I would like to see workable fusion so we can stop wasting hydrocarbons by burning them. They are too valuable. Heck, until fusion, hot or cold, comes on line I want to see us convert to fission power along with hydro.
200 years sounds about right. Or maybe 2,000 years. After all Archimedes was aware of steam power but it took 2,500 before someone made steam power something other than a toy. But the key is having scientists and engineers who aren’t ruled over by Gaia worshippers. And it won’t happen if America becomes a land of serfs. The middle class is who buys the innovations like automobiles and television sets.
I second that. Fission and hydro for the near term. Fusion when it becomes practical.