NEWS
Nuclear Fusion Made Easy.. .Maybe Two electrochemists have captured international headlines and generated a storm of controversy with their announcement of an amazingly simple procedure for triggering nuclear fusion at room temperature. Martin Fleischmann, professor of chemistry at the University of Southampton, England, and B. Stanley Pons, University of Utah chemistry department chair, report that after electroPons lyzing heavy water (D2O), sometimes for days, deuterium nuclei adsorbed onto a palladium electrode suddenly undergo spontaneous nuclear fusion. According to the researchers, the fusion is marked by the appearance of tritium, neutrons at energies characteristic of fusing deuterium nuclei, and heat. "This generation of heat continues over long periods, is proportional to the volume of the elecFleischmann trode, and is so large that it can only be attributed to a nuclear process," says Fleischmann. Furthermore, in some experiments the heat output exceeded the energy required to initiate the fusion—the Holy Grail of fusion experiments. Details of the experiments, which the chemists funded with $100,000 of their own money, are found in the April 10 issue of the Journal of Electroanalytical and Interfacial Electrochemistry (Vol. 261, No. 2a, pp. 301-08). Two days later, Pons described the fusion experiments and answered questions before approximately 7000 chemists gathered at a late-breaking special session at the national ACS meeting in Dallas. During his talk, Pons referred to a familiar three-electrode cell (Pd-D reference electrode and LiOD electrolyte) immersed in a water bath. Using either long, thin Pd rods or sheets (< 5 mm thickness) for cathodes, Pons claims sustained energy outputs for as long as 120 hours with energy yields exceeding 4 MJ/ cm3 of electrode. Scaling up to a larger electrode, a 1 X 1 X 1 cm Pd cube, produced so much heat that the metal fused and partially vaporized. Although the energy output appears to be in the nuclear range, the numbers of neutrons emitted as byproducts of the cold fusion reactions fall short of what experts might predict from other fusion experiments. Skeptics argue that this neutron shortfall undermines the fusion claim, whereas supporters favor a different mechanism in this case. Whatever the energy source, at press time several groups of electrochemists had reported similar observations. Confirmation of sorts has also come from another Utah group. Physicists led by Steven Jones, an expert in cold fusion at
Brigham Young University, announced that they too observe room-temperature fusion of deuterium on titanium and palladium pellets. However, the energy output they measure is orders of magnitude less than the electrochemical experiments and falls short of the energy input. Announcement of these experimental results has stunned fusion researchers. Conventional wisdom dictates that initiating fusion requires imitating the sun, forcing hydrogen nuclei together with tremendous temperatures. According to Pons, the "farfetched experiment" was triggered by earlier observations that during electrolysis only deuterium nuclei, not D 2 , adsorbed onto Pd. Furthermore, D + freely roams about the metal lattice. Yet, according to electrochemical equations (relating overpotential to pressure), the nuclei are compressed on the electrode, suggesting that if two D + could collide, fusion might occur.
ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry Awards Ralph Adams, M. Bonner Denton, Gary Hieftje, and Theodore Williams are this year's winners of the ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry's annual awards. These honorées will receive their awards at the 1989 fall national meeting of the ACS in Miami Beach, FL. (For more details about the awards, see the NEWS section of the March 15 issue.) Ralph Adams, professor of chemistry at the University of Kansas, has been chosen as the 1989 recipient of the Division's Award in Electrochemistry (sponsored by the Electrochemical Instruments Division of EG&G Princeton Applied Research). Adams's early research centered on the mechanisms of organic electrode reactions, but in 1969 his interests shifted toward applying electrochemistry to problems in neuroscience. In June 1975 he completed three years of training in psychiatry at the Menninger School of Psychiatry. Currently his research focuses on using electroanalytical techniques to measure neurotransmitters implicated in mental illness, particularly schizophrenia. Adams received a B.S. degree in chemistry from Rutgers University (1950) and a Ph.D. from Princeton University (1953) under the direction of Ν. Η. Furman. In addition to being a member of the Department of Chemistry at Kan sas, Adams holds appointments in the Department of Bio chemistry and the Department of Pharmacology and Toxi cology. He is also affiliated with the Department of Psychi atry at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City. ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, VOL. 61, NO. 9, MAY 1, 1989 · 585 A
