Just months away from their final deadline, scientists at the National Cold Fusion Institute worked frantically to finish a complicated program of experiments. Money was tight.
Then the beleaguered institute got a big bill - amounting to about one-third of its remaining budget - for more legal fees. Rather than spending the rest of the state's funding on science experiments, the money went to patent attorneys.That investment rankles scientists.
University of Utah and state officials banked on the institute becoming the world's cold-fusion mecca. But now the state's $5 million investment is spent, and on June 30 the laboratory that became something of a scientific mirage will close.
Two years ago, officials opened the fusion institute, hoping it would turn U. research professors B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann's cold-fusion experiments into an energy generator. In 1989, Pons and Fleischmann electrified the scientific world when they announced they had achieved fusion using palladium rods and heavy water. Fusion is the kind of reaction that generates the sun's power, and proponents hoped the Utah research would solve the world's energy problems.
But few laboratories were able to replicate Pons and Fleischmann's claims. And the two researchers were reluctant to disclose the details of their work on the advice of their patent lawyers.
As cold-fusion experiments continued to generate megawatts of controversy, the Utah institute wasn't able to attract private funding.
Now out of money, institute equipment will be farmed out to various U. departments. Work will go on, officials say, but progress will be slower.
"What hurts most is we've begun to see a few interesting results between the cooperating groups," said Haven Bergesen, a U. physics professor. "With the breakdown of the whole system, with the dispersal of everybody, it's going to be a lot harder to bring the same results."
As closing day nears, university officials admit there isn't much to show for the state's investment, except for patent applications on an experiment that remains very much in the experimental stage.
"I don't even regard it as a very significant event," John Morris, associate U. vice president for academic affairs, said of the institute's closing. "It just turned out not to be the appropriate way to do this cold-fusion research.
"I'm not criticizing the people who put it together, but I also think they had unrealistic expectations of how long it would take to take this technology and use it for something."
Morris said the university hopes experiments will continue and researchers will obtain private grant funding.
"We felt we had to do it," said James Brophy, U. vice president of research. "We did it. It didn't work out."
Fritz Will, executive director of the institute, will become a research professor of chemical engineering. The U. has a long-term lease on the Research Park laboratories, so Will's group of scientists will continue work there.
"I feel that a lot of mistakes were made, hundreds and hundreds of mistakes," said John Ralph Peterson, a research associate at the institute.
But experiments are producing results on a more regular basis. "Work will go on, and the work that we have produced will contribute to the world effort."
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All done
"We are going to dismantle our experiments," said B. Stanley Pons, U. research professor. "As far as I am concerned, our work at the National Cold Fusion Institute is finished."
Pons said he's made a request to continue his experiments on campus. "In making that request, I assume there will be research funds to continue with the labor and operating expenses, but I have had no indication there will be additional funds."
Meanwhile, "Martin (Fleischmann) and I are continuing work elsewhere in Europe and plan to continue to do so."