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462 Suppressed Inventions and Other Discoveries
There was also the problem of money. Whoever develops a working
fusion reactor—hot or cold—will be providing the source of energy that
mankind needs for the foreseeable future: perhaps for hundreds of years.
The patents involved in the technology, and the head start the patent owners
will have in setting up a new power industry, will be worth many billions
of pounds in revenue. It is potentially the most lucrative invention
ever made. With such big sums at stake, the scientists' university wanted
no future ambiguity about who was claiming priority, and hence encouraged
them to mount a very public announcement.
In the end, the two scientists agreed to a press conference that would
stake Utah University's claim to priority in any future patent applications,
followed by publication of a joint paper in their own professional journal,
The Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry.
There followed a brief honeymoon of a week or two, during which
newspaper libraries received more requests from the newsroom for cuttings
on fusion than in the previous twenty years, and optimistic pieces
about cheap energy from sea-water (where deuterium is common) were
penned to keep features editors happy. All over the world, laboratories
raced to confirm the existence of cold fusion, although many scientists
were unhappy at the lack of scientific detail and at having to learn about
such an important event from television news and the popular press. What
these researchers were looking for, with their £90-worth of precious metals
stuck in test tubes, were one or more of the key tell-tale signs that
would confirm cold fusion. When two deuterium nuclei fuse they produce
either helium and a neutron particle or tritium. So, if fusion really is taking
place, it should be possible to find neutrons being emitted, or helium
being formed or tritium being formed. It should also be possible to detect
energy being released, probably as heat, that is greatly in excess of any
electrical energy being put in. (Of course, if the cell does not do this it is
of no use as a power source.)
Despite the experimental difficulties it was not long before confirmations
were reported. First were Texas A & M University, who reported
excess energy, and Brigham Young University who found both excess
heat and measurable neutron flow. Professor Steve Jones of BYU said his
team had actually been producing similar results since 1985, but that the
power outputs obtained had been microscopically small, too small in fact
to be useful as a power source.
One month after the announcement the first support from a major
research institute came when professor Robert Huggins of California's
Stanford University said that he had duplicated the Fleischmann-Pons cell
against a control cell containing ordinary water, and had obtained 50 percent
more energy as heat from the fusion cell than was put in as electric-