Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico - the lab where the first atomic bomb was built and today one of the federal government's main nuclear research institutions - have officially confirmed the production of tritium in cold nuclear fusion experiments.
And the Department of Energy has allocated hundreds of thousands of dollars to enable the researchers to continue their experiments.Tritium production up to almost 100 times the starting concentration has been recorded by scientists Edmund K. Storms and Carol Talcott, according to a new report.
Tritium is a gaseous, radioactive telltale byproduct of nuclear fusion. Its production all but confirms that fusion has taken place.
"It's the end of the game - the beginning of a new tomorrow. The battle is finished," said Texas A&M scientist John O. Bockris, who verified the Los Alamos findings on Friday. "I don't think there is any more that anyone else could say. If they know the facts, there is not any doubt about cold fusion now because of the findings at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos."
Earlier this month scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee also announced confirmation of the fusion experiments of University of Utah chemists B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann.
Their findings, which mirrored the production of excess heat, neutrons and tritium in fusion experiments at Texas A&M and at the U., were presented at meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Oak Ridge's announcement was the first public confirmation of the phenomenon, which has stirred heated controversy for the past nine months.
While government and private fusion researchers have shared successful findings via FAX machines, the DOE has kept a tight lid on research results in their laboratories.
Even in June when Storms told the Deseret News that he and Talcott had found tritium in "significant amounts" (4,000 counts per milliliter) in two cells, Los Alamos officials described Storms' early findings as "not news."
"We can't consider it news until there is a confirmation and published report," said lab spokesman Jeff Schwartz. "If the research holds up under the entire process, then we have news."
Schwartz said his concern is that when it comes to tritium, "the potential question of contamination is a very real possibility and something that has to be addressed very strongly."
Bockris says Storms' latest report is indeed news.
He said Storms and Talcott, who began their fusion experiments shortly after the Pons/Fleischmann discovery was announced in March, reported two cells with "copious amounts of tritium and another 10 or 15 cells with small, but significant amounts of tritium - more than would be observed by ordinary chemical means."
Based on the variety and intensity of their experiments, the scientists said they believe that the tritium is real; it is not caused by contamination and it is not a product of normal electrolysis.
Bockris, a distinguished professor of chemistry, believes the announced findings of the two government labs will further silence cold fusion critics.
"What happens in the United States, being a pluralistic society, there are always many people for and many people against," he said. "I think a number of people against have just flipped over and become for.
"And all of those people who were so denigrating endanger themselves of losing their jobs because of the grand mistake they made."
But Bockris said this doesn't mean that the DOE as a whole has suddenly become pro fusion, as evident by the recommendation by a DOE advisory committee. The Energy Research Advisory Board recently downplayed the Oak Ridge report, and recommended against an all-out special cold fusion research effort.
Nonetheless, Bockris said Storms has told him that he and Talcott have been given $331,000 to continue their cold-fusion research at Los Alamos.
According to Bockris, the lab, run by the University of California and funded by the federal government, is in some sense is the most authoritative in the country because it's the national tritium center."
"What this (the funding) means is that as far as the Los Alamos National Laboratory is concerned, the bosses there - the people who control the funding - have decided that the thing is real. And they are going in for it," Bockris said.