Utah pours megabucks into cold fusion.

Utah pours megabucks into cold fusion

A Utah state panel voted Aug. 8 to release $4.5 million of the public funds appropriated at a special April session of the state legislature as "seed money" for a National Cold Fusion Institute at Research Park, which is affiliated with the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. The panel decided to unleash the money despite a "no" vote and an abstention from the only two scientists on the nine-member panel, called the Fusion-Energy Advisory Council. Last month, a federal advisory panel concluded that the evidence for cold fusion was unconvincing and recommended against increasing federal funds for cold fusion studies or for establishing special research centers (SN: 7/29/89, p. 78).

In late March, B. Stanley Pons of the University of Utah and Martin Fleischmann of the University of Southampton in England claimed they had found a route to energy-releasing nuclear fusion reactions at room temperature by squeezing hydrogen nuclei together in electrolytic cells (SN: 4/1/89, p.196). Since then, hundreds of researchers around the world have failed to verify the claim, though a few have reported experiments yielding unusual levels of heat, neutrons or tritium--all possible, but not definite, indicators that hydrogen nuclei had fused.

"The feds can do their own thing," says Francine Giani, press secretary for Utah Gov. Norman H. Bangerter. She says Bangerter remains confident that Pons and Fleischmann have discovered something, perhaps room-temperature fusion. Although Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, will receive none of the newly released state monies, that university announced Aug. 7 it had established its own Center for Cold Nuclear Fusion Studies. Brigham Young researcher Steven E. Jones and his colleagues reported independent evidence in March for minuscule levels of cold fusion occurring in experiments somewhat similar to those of Pons and Fleischmann.