One chapter has been written.
But the book on cold nuclear fusion won't be finished for years, say supporters who fear Utah is cashing in - just when cold-fusion research is taking off worldwide."I wish at times that we were just starting out on the state's program today - that the $5 million we had was just going to be spent now because so many things have happened . . . and the science has progressed to where I think we can point to certain areas and say, `Let's study these areas specifically,' " Raymond L. Hixson, chairman of the state's Fusion/Energy Council, said Monday.
The independent committee, appointed by Gov. Norm Bangerter to oversee the state's $5 million investment in fusion, gathered Monday at the State Capitol to wind up the business of the University of Utah's National Cold Fusion Institute. Lack of funds forced the institute to halt operations June 30 - seemingly at the height of fusion research worldwide.
A three-volume technical report issued by the institute says recent "strong findings" in support of cold fusion have been seen in U.S. labs and abroad - especially in laboratories financed by the Japanese. At the Utah fusion institute, scientists produced results confirming the presence of tritium, neutrons and other nuclear signatures in a range of cold-fusion experiments, according to the report, which U. officials said cost $10,000.
But during the past 23 months, most of the money legislators allocated to cold-fusion research in Utah has been spent. Research on campus and at the showcase institute produced nine patent applications but failed to explain the phenomenon - or attract outside private investors.
So is fusion research dead in Utah? Not totally.
The committee decided Monday that the remaining $100,000 of the state's investment will not revert to the state. It will go to scientists whose proposals for continued research are accepted. Equipment, already purchased by state funds, will be reserved for use in cold-fusion experiments by researchers who say they can now turn the heat off and on at will.
"We just have to forget our prejudices and get-rich schemes and our Nobel Prize plans and just do careful research and find out what the truth of this is," said Haven Bergeson, a professor in the U.'s physics department and one-time fusion skeptic.
Bergeson is one of several NCFI researchers who want to continue exploring cold fusion with whatever funds are available. So does former NCFI director Fritz Will, who will receive severance pay of $25,000 as part of an agreement with the university.
But what about the institute's star researchers, B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, who ignited the fusion controversy with the March 1989 announcement that they had achieved a sustained nuclear-fusion reaction in a tabletop experiment?
Both scientists are continuing to work on fusion, said state committee member Wilford Hansen, a Utah State University chemist/physicist who has been reviewing the Pons-Fleischmann data and recently met with Pons in Nice, France.
"I think it's a shame they are not here pursing that. Help them out," Hansen urged the committee. "Whatever their reasons for not being here may change in the future. After all, we wouldn't even have the issue of cold fusion, as far as I can tell, had it not been for Pons and Fleischmann."
Hansen said he believes the scientists, now reporting positive results in their fusion experiments abroad, would be happy to come back to Utah if the political climate were more positive.