here is a presentation of:
Jean-Paul Biberian
Born June 26, 1946 in Marseille
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Diplomas Engineer National School of Electricity and Mechanics of Nancy 1969
Diploma of Advanced Studies in Crystallography 1970
Doctor of Engineering, Aix-Marseille II University 1971
Doctor of Science, ENSCP, University of Paris VI 1975
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Cold Fusion
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It was on March 23, 1989, that the whole world learned that two electrochemists: Stanley Pons of the University of Utah in the United States and Martin Fleischman of that of Southampton in Great Britain had just shown that one could carrying out nuclear reactions at low temperature by passing electric current through an electrochemical cell composed of an electrode called a palladium cathode and a second platinum called an anode, in an electrolyte based on heavy water. The two professors observed that they obtained more heat than the electrical energy supplied. The amount of heat released could not be explained by a chemical reaction, so they immediately thought of a nuclear reaction.
Although no fundamental law of physics was violated on this assumption, the scientists were extremely skeptical. Many experiments were immediately made in many laboratories to verify the say of the two discoverers. Obviously many failed, but some succeeded. The US Department of Energy formed a team to analyze the phenomenon, and concluded that no special funding was needed for these studies, but that it could be done with standard budgets. This conclusion was in practice regarded as a ban on researching this subject which was brought to the level of quackery. Pons and Fleischman were called bad experimenters, even fraudsters, and had a very difficult time being heard.
Research on the Cold Fusion disappeared from mainstream media, and for everyone, especially scientists, the matter was closed, the subject did not exist. But many people of all stripes very often continued with makeshift means to try to improve the first results. The big criticism that was made in 1989 was the lack of reproducibility of the experiments. In science, and especially in physics, one must be able to reproduce an experiment as many times as desired, and by different groups. It was not the case at the time. Some experiences were positive and gave excess heat, and others gave nothing. The inventors of this new science quickly understood that the first batch of palladium they had received worked well, while the following ones no longer worked. It must be said that the manufacturer of palladium had changed its method of production, and did not want to reveal its manufacturing secrets!
Different teams got to work. They sought to understand the different aspects of palladium metallurgy, and little by little improvements came. Other methods to highlight the phenomenon have been developed. At the end of the day, we now know that the phenomenon is much more general than we thought. It is no longer simply a phenomenon of fusion of two deuterium nuclei (a hydrogen isotope) to make helium, but much more complex nuclear reactions, ranging from the fusion of nuclei to fission ( break a heavy nucleus to produce lighter ones by giving off heat), and even the transmutation of one element into another (the dream of alchemists).
Nuclear reactions were discovered by Beckerel, Pierre and Marie Curie. It was they who demonstrated for the first time that the atom was not necessarily stable. They have shown that certain atoms such as radium can transform into another. It was the first breach in Lavoisier's sacrosanct law "Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed". Later, experiments showed that uranium bombarded by neutrons would crack, and turn into two other lighter nuclei, as well as two or three neutrons with a release of energy. It is this reaction which is at the origin of the chain reaction at the base of current nuclear reactors, and of the atomic bomb.
Another form of nuclear reaction is possible. It is the fusion of light atoms to produce heavier ones with also a release of heat. This is what happens in the sun and the stars, where two nuclei of hydrogen merge. To succeed in such a reaction, it is necessary to make two nuclei of the same electrical sign touch each other, which tend to repel each other. In the sun, it is the very high temperature and pressure which reign in the center of the star, which allow these reactions to occur. The nuclei then come into contact despite the force of repulsion. When the nuclei are close to each other, the nuclear forces take over and allow the two nuclei to attract and merge. For fifty years, we know how to make this kind of reaction with the hydrogen bomb. In this case, in order to obtain the required high temperatures, a first nuclear fission bomb strongly compresses the hydrogen which fuses. This reaction is obviously not easy to carry out. We therefore know how to do it suddenly, but doing it in a controlled way is much more difficult. The international project ITER (International Torus Experimental Reactor), which will be installed in Cadarache, aims to show the feasibility of thermonuclear fusion. The method used is to confine the hydrogen in a toroidal enclosure. The gas is brought to a very high temperature, and prevented from touching the walls by strong magnetic fields. The gases are so hot that on the one hand they ionize, that is to say that the hydrogen nucleus separates from its single electron and on the other hand they reach such speeds that they can collide and merge to produce in the case of the ITER project helium and a neutron.
Cold fusion performs the same type of fusion reaction but in a solid and without radioactivity. The initial idea is to confine in the space between the atoms of a metal two atoms of hydrogen to force them to react. When two deuterium atoms fuse in this way, helium is produced, a very harmless gas that is used to inflate balloons! In reality, the phenomenon is much more complex, and more varied than that. During the last fifteen years it has been noticed that very special and unknown reactions take place in materials charged with hydrogen or its isotopes. Not only has it been shown that cold fusion can be done, but scientists have also shown that side reactions of transmutation and fission of nuclei can take place.
These phenomena are therefore not the exception. A whole field of physics is opening up. We are at the dawn of a new science whose consequences are absolutely unpredictable, in the good sense of the word. The applications seem immense: from the production of clean energy (no radioactive waste, no greenhouse gases), to the treatment of waste of all kinds: radioactive or heavy metals. Another part of science is opening up. This is what we now call Nuclear Reactions in Condensed Matter.
This new avenue of research is still in its infancy. After more than sixteen years of work, we are only sure of one thing: there is indeed a new phenomenon which had passed between the cracks of the net until now. On the other hand, we do not yet know which theory is capable of explaining it. Many of them are already supposed to explain the phenomenon. They range from the most classical quantum mechanics to assemblies of neutrons, vibrations of the metallic network, new atomic arrangements, magnetic monopoles and many others.
Scientists work in this field in fifteen countries and meet regularly.
In Russia, there is an annual meeting which brings together a large part of the 29 Russian laboratories working in this field.
In Italy, every two years, a very informal international meeting takes place in Asti, which takes stock of this work.
In Japan a learned society has been created which brings together the Japanese working in this field.
Finally, on a regular basis, almost every year an international conference takes place: the International Conference on Cold Fusion, the International Conference on Cold Fusion. ICCF11, the eleventh took place in Marseille from October 29 to November 5, 2004. 170 researchers from 20 different countries participated in this conference. The conference began on Sunday October 29 with a day of training in cold fusion for specialists, but also for people new to the field and who wish to know the basics of this specialty. On Tuesday, November 2, the conference took place at the Faculty of Sciences of Luminy, open to all scientists who wanted it. Finally the week ended with a press conference for scientific journals, but also for the mainstream media.
The last conference, ICCF12, took place in Japan from November 28 to December 2, 2005.
The next will take place in June 2007 in Russia.
It seems appropriate to us in this period when energy becomes a global concern to bring this information to the attention of the public, and to announce that other ways than those known exist. That nothing has been decided yet, and that other possibilities exist. It's not just oil, gas, nuclear and wind turbines. Perhaps in a few years, if we give ourselves the means, another inexhaustible and clean source of energy will be accessible to all.
ICCF12 "International Conference on Cold Fusion" reports
ICCF10
ICCF 9
